How SHOULD Health Care Work?

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Here is just one quote from Stuart Browning’s essay:
Let’s start with the fact that America’s health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.

In 2002 the United States spent $5,267 per person on health care. Canada spent $2,931; Germany spent $2,817; Britain spent only $2,160. Yet the United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than any of these countries.

What Krugman doesn’t say is that its easy to hold down health care costs if you do what Canada does: withhold medical treatment from sick and injured people. The U.S health care system could save billions of dollars if we drastically reduced the number of doctors, hospitals, outpatient clinics, medical devices and diagnostic machines available. If we followed Canada’s lead, we would severely limit each surgeon’s allotted hours in the operating room so that they couldn’t perform too many surgeries. Americans would wait months and years for critical medical tests and treatments - many would suffer greatly, become crippled, addicted to painkillers, go blind or die while waiting - however, the country would spend a lot less money on health care.
 
Stuart Browning’s essay is really excellent. Here is another brief quote:
While it may seem counterintuitive, there is very little correlation between the quality of a health care system and life expectancy averages. Many people die before encountering the health care system. Others would die prematurely regardless of the system - while some would live to a ripe old age anyway. Blacks have shorter life expectancies than whites, hispanics or asians. The black population of Canada is numerically insignificant while black Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population. Japanese females have the longest life-spans of all - regardless of whether they live in Japan or in America - i.e. regardless of the health care system they live under[3]. Thus, a good way for a country to raise the life expectancy average would be to import females of Japanese descent!

Instead of basing broad conclusions about the quality of the U.S. health care system on unreliable indicators - as Krugman does - why not judge our system by how well it prevents deaths from cancer, heart disease and other conditions that modern medicine can actually treat? Well, because the U.S. is better at these things than other nations - and that’s not part of Krugman’s message.

Consider breast cancer. In the U.S., the mortality ratio - the percentage of people with the disease who die from it - is 25%. The breast cancer mortality ratios for Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand are 28%, 46% and 46%, respectively[4]. The U.S. prostate cancer mortality ratio is only 19%. In Canada, its 25%, in France, its 49% - and in the U.K., over half - 57% - of men diagnosed with prostate cancer die from it[5]!
 
In exploring Browning’s Web site, I found a whole bunch more essays that he (and others?) wrote.

Anyway, here’s the URL … look down the right side for the titles of the essays.

Good stuff.

onthefencefilms.com/
 
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