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August 29, 2007
Bogus Healthcare Reports
by Tina Grazier
I’ve always thought John Stossel was an excellent reporter. His dispassionate style and his relentless pursuit of facts and context make his reporting both reliable and interesting. I trust him, something that’s quite rare these days.
Today his story, “Another Bogus Report Card for U.S. Medical Care” published at Real Clear Politics, reveals the flaws in a recent
doc_id=482678”>report released by the "Commonwealth Fund" and references an earlier article that notes similar problems in a seven year old study by the "World Health Organization." The Commonwealth study asserts that the US system consistently underperforms when compared to Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain and claims the reason is inadequate access to government healthcare: "The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes." But Stossel wasn’t satisfied with this statement…or, perhaps I should say, he wasn’t taken in: I see. America "underperforms" because we don't have enough government intervention. Stossel finds a number of other flaws in the left leaning Commonwealth report. No, he didn’t call the organization “left leaning”…I did, so whether you are right, left, or center politically, I urge you to read his articles. Quality, choice and timely availability are important differences in the American healthcare system and we should fight to preserve those things as we work to discover the best ways to bring down costs. Solutions that our legislators come up with will have a profound effect on all Americans; it’s important we get it right. Adopting fixes based on mediocre systems with stories of long waiting lists, less innovation and sadly, some very bad outcomes would be highly undesirable. Try this: Can we really say all people have adequate coverage in a universal system when that system causes waiting times that end in unnecessary pain, suffering and death? Surely, in this great nation, we can imagine and create something better. Posted by Post Scripts at August 29, 2007 11:42 PM This is a great topic and one that I am personally experiencing as we speak. Since the cost of my healthcare is almost unaffordable on a long term policy, I'm looking at about $450 a month with a high deductible, I went with a short term care policy, 6 months, for about $1200 total. It basically covers me only if I need some life saving operation or if I have a serious accident that hospitalizes me for a month or two, then it's like gold! Otherwise, for regular health care I pay 100% of office visits, meds and such. I know many older folks that are too young for medicare (you must be 65+) and too old with health problems (45+) for truly affordable health insurance on an income of under 38k a year. So they often do without and if they get seriously ill, well, they simply lose their life savings and then medical starts picking up the bill. That's pretty harsh and it shouldn't happen to anyone, but it does. I know we can do better and we should, as a compassionate and caring society with a lot of wealth. And I believe we can do it without socialized medicine. We just need to be more creative in our thinking. I'm confident a reasonable solution is out here, we just have to find it. A medical savings accounts is one way, maybe with matching government credits? Just a thought, it would be cheaper than government run healthcare. What are your ideas? I really want to hear them! Posted by: Jack Lee at August 30, 2007 02:00 PM
But while the U.S. lost points for not having national health insurance, the authors added, "[I]f insured, patients in the U.S. have rapid access to specialized health care services." *** That's an understatement. Insured Americans have almost immediate access to cutting-edge procedures performed by some of the best-trained doctors. It's why our outcomes for such diseases as prostate and breast cancer are markedly better than in Canada's and Britain's socialized systems. The Commonwealth Fund doesn't mention that.
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