Some stats: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649
Americans spend less time waiting for care than Canadians.
Americans have lower cancer mortality rate than Canadians.
Americans have better access to cancer screenings than Canadians.
Lower income Americans have better access to preventative cancer screenings than Canadians.
Americans have better access to new technologies.
I’ll never forget one of my fellow CCU RNs who was from Canada. Her dad (living in Canada still) had recently been diagnosed with a life threatening cardiac dysrhythmia (Ventricular tachycardia) but was told it would be three months to get his AICD. He came down for a “vacation” and wouldn’t you know it, he “passed out” and she took him to the ER where they of course took one look at the faxed records and he got his AICD the next day.
In other words, no way was she willing to let her dad wait three months so she flew him down here and pretty much the next day she took him to the ER where he told them he “passed out” (he did not really pass out while visiting her, but he did previously have multiple syncopal episodes while in Canada. )The US cardiologists obtained his records and felt he needed the AICD sooner rather than later.
Fact # 5 on your link is about low income seniors. They have a national health care plan.
There are a number of studies we all can post that argue in favor or opposition to the American system. What is indisputable is that we spend more than everyone else and we cannot continue to do so. We also spend more and leave a large portion of our population uncovered
We have 3 national systems Medicare, Medicaid and the VA which cover large portions of the population. No ther country does that because it is not efficient.
I posted earlier there are 2 systems I would like the US to look at Switzerland’s or Canada’s but to continue down the path we are on is a financial death trap.
Be aware that large companies are looking to drop employer coverage and have been doing so pre-ACA just like they dropped pensions.
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.] - See more at: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649#sthash.f5Uo0TDD.dpuf
Also from the linked article.
There, fixed it for ya.
BTW, like the link in the original post, the organization you cite, the National Center for Policy Analysis has a major agenda:
So they are hardly advocates for American consumers of health care. Their mission is to maximize profits for corporate America.
Some here will argue that the NCPA is a right wing extremist organization.
Edit:
Oh, @lasma already did.
Great minds think alike, Tom.
And I suppose the citations to souces like the Lancet and the CDC are also right wing extremist.
Tatin, no one disagrees that American medicine in innovative. The problem – follow me here – is access to all that innovation. Some Americans have fabulous medical care, no one argues that. But millions and millions and millions of Americans can’t get even the most basic care. I realize that’s not a problem you have. But can you understand that a lot of people do?
This thread is exactly why the US health care system won’t change any time soon.
Those who have resources, privilege, etc have great care and are unable to see beyond their own narrow scope of the world. And these are the people in power.
Those of us who are grossly disadvantaged by the system have no political or economic power to change anything and therefore are irrelevant. Our lives are expendable as long as we don’t inconvenience those in power.
And I’m not being hyperbolic here. When people die because of lack of coverage, we are telling them that their lives are expendable.
Just starting to follow some of the NCAP links. The two sources cited for point #3: One is the Cato Institute, another right-wing pro-corporate think tank. The other is from a source so old that the link has expired. But it’s safe to say that the healthcare landscape today bears little resemblance to 15 years ago, anywhere.
Not sure if this is relevant here: (I read this when this was a reading assignment to DS in his language art class I think.)
Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, “All animals are equal.” However, the reality becomes: “Some animals are more equal than others.”
Ironically, that is the system we want to beat.
My wife showed me an interesting joke the other day (but the plot becomes too complicated after the first few that I really could not remember it):
A person has two cows. This is what happens when this person lives in different social systems:
Communist: The government takes the two cows and gives him milk.
Socialist: The government takes one cow from him and give it to others. But hd is allowed to keep one cow.
TRADITIONAL Capitalism: Since both of his cows are male, he sold one cow in the market and buy a female cow. Then, after some time, they have 3 cows because the female cow gives birth to another cow.
I started to have troubles to follow all the innovation in the NEW capitalism and hard to follow how it works actually unless I have a PhD degree in economics or finance. (It uses a lot of big words like leverage, derivative, ingenious marketing ploy, or the insurance or bet on the transactions on “cow exchanges” of others who he has never met.) But magically, he claims that he owns 10 cows. The government agrees but somehow you can never see more than 2 cows in his farm.
And getting back to the original article: No one has yet explained or justified the merit in a system that would have patients waiting a year for thyroid surgery when 78% of newly minted ENT doctors cannot get a job. That is a waste on so many levels.
@tating One poster did explain it. He said it was the doctor’s own fault.
More on the NCAP “study.” I’ve been following the links on some of their “findings” and not surprisingly, their interpretation of the research leaves something to be desired in the accuracy department.
That’s not what this study finds at all. It finds that cancer survival rates are higher in higher-income countries. It also finds that cancer survival rates are higher in higher-income parts of the US, in other words, cancer survival rates are higher where more people have insurance.
Not true.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/cancer-rates-and-unjustified-conclusions/
From the extremist think tank the Cato Institute.
AND
Both of these conclusions are from the same paper by June O’Neill and Dave M. O’Neill. June O’Neill, in addition to believing that the US health care system works better than the Canadian system, also: Believes that women themselves are to blame for gender-based income inequality; Believes that blacks themselves are to blame for race-based income inequality; Believed that the massive 2003 tax cut was “fiscally responsible”; Works with the American Enterprise Institute, yet another one of those pro-corporate, right-wing think tanks; Believes that the minimum wage is “not a very effective way to reduce poverty.” In other words, straight corporate cheerleader right down the line.
Again, from the right-wing imagination of June O’Neill. She’s just dead wrong:
I could go on but you get the point: Don’t be fooled by such scholarly-sounding names as “National Center for Policy Analysis”, or their official-sounding summaries of research, with footnotes and everything! Check the links, and above all, understand the agenda.
Who is waiting year? And what’s the real “Why?” Not all surgery should or needs to occur immediately.
The Cato institute ranks the freest economies in the world. The top 5 or10 all have national health care
This is incorrect, and the fact that TatinG’s right wing source nevertheless repeats it makes me distrust all their other “facts.”
They appear to be confusing cancer mortality with cancer survival rates. Those sound like the same thing, but they’re not. Cancer mortality is measured by deaths. Cancer survival is measured by how many people are still alive five years after diagnosis. So if someone is diagnosed earlier, but not treated by any more successful method, they can count as a survivor even though they didn’t survive.
To see the difference, suppose I’m destined to die of breast cancer at age 65 and no treatment is going to work. If I didn’t get any screening, suppose my cancer would be detected when I was 63. I, then, would count against breast cancer survival statistics, because my cancer would be detected, and two years later I’d be in a pine box, not surviving five years after detection.
But suppose I get frequent screenings, and my cancer is detected at age 58. Unfortunately, no treatment works, and I still die at age 65. Now I count as a breast cancer survivor, even though nothing changed-- I survived seven years from diagnosis, but I’m still in a pine box at age 65.The cancer survival statistics will look better, but that’s a mirage: nothing good happened, and I still died. The cancer mortality statistics, on the other hand, will be just the same: I still died at age 65, and cancer mortality measures deaths.
That’s why we need to look at cancer mortality statistics rather than survival rates, and also why we need to be honest.
And here is a nice article, with graphs, about how US cancer mortality stacks up against other countries’ cancer mortality:
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/how-do-we-rate-the-quality-of-the-us-health-care-system-disease-care/
Breast cancer: not as good as Japan, but we’re in second place.
Cervical cancer: middle of the pack
Colon cancer: gold medal to US
Lung cancer: we’re the worst, even though the US has a lower rate of smoking than most of the comparison countries.
Trouble is, lung cancer kills the most people. So overall, US cancer mortality puts us in last place among the comparison countries (the G8, which includes Canada). And while TatinG can’t be expected to know this, the people who wrote the “facts” TatinG cited have no excuse. They are either incompetent, or deliberately lying. In either case, they are untrustworthy and should be ignored.
I’m afraid it is.