a brilliant summary...
Aug. 23rd, 2009 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearBy T.R. Reid -- Five Myths About Health Care in the Rest of the World - washingtonpost.com:
In America, there's no single genetic tendency. Those of British descent have one set of age-related problems, those of Asian descent have another, those of Mediterranean have another, those of African yet another, so there's no single point for savings that the system can focus on the way the other nations can. And, of course, "political correctness" means that the system CAN'T acknowledge that one true distinction of "race" without all of the emotional baggage that goes with it, mostly out of the people's own ignorance and how it will be distorted back into realms of "superiority" that the anti-reformists keep trying to bring up without actually bringing it up.
In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.It should be noted that our "melting pot" is one reason why things are expensive. If there's a genetic tendency in a foreign country (heart conditions in the UK, for example), the system has evolved to optimize for it.
This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.
Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.
In America, there's no single genetic tendency. Those of British descent have one set of age-related problems, those of Asian descent have another, those of Mediterranean have another, those of African yet another, so there's no single point for savings that the system can focus on the way the other nations can. And, of course, "political correctness" means that the system CAN'T acknowledge that one true distinction of "race" without all of the emotional baggage that goes with it, mostly out of the people's own ignorance and how it will be distorted back into realms of "superiority" that the anti-reformists keep trying to bring up without actually bringing it up.
