<p>So…to continue Dufay’s chemo story. During my wife’s excellent treatment through our single-payor, government-run, no insurance company health care system, we watched what happened to friends with the same diagnosis in the “world’s best health care system.” The standard of care was to use chemo drugs that have been shown conclusively to result in an 11% greater chance of recurrence, and a 10% higher mortality rate. The regimen my wife used has been used in Europe for 30 years, and isn’t in the least bit experimental, with studies of thousands of people indicating its superiority. But if you try to get it from “the world’s best health care system”, you are in for some rude surprises.</p>
<p>Then there are certain classes of drugs known to cause long-term neuropathic conditions. There are alternatives, with the same degree of efficacy, that have none of those side effects. Needless to say, we now have friends with these long-term effects, who looked at us with great wonder when we told them how easy it was for us to switch. But trying to get them out of “the world’s best health care system”? Better have a good lawyer.</p>
<p>Our doc knew all of this of course. The first question out of his mouth was “which insurance”? He was very pleased with our answer. Others aren’t so lucky.</p>
<p>Now, you would think that the “world’s best health care system” might care that the standard of care they apply would result in significantly higher rates of recurrence, or long-term neuropathic conditions, all of which they might be called upon to treat. Nothing could be further from the truth. By “managing to care less”, their expectation is that, by the time these roll around, they’ll be owned by a different company anyway.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton will get her share from both the old company and the new one.</p>
<p>P.S. I should have added that in “the best health care system in the world”, according to the headline in my newspaper today, in Hackensack, New Jersey, surrounded by my docs per square inch than virtually anywhere in the U.S., women must now book mammograms 5 or 6 months in advance, and that followup tests might take several weeks? or that the number of mammography machines in New Jersey has dropped from 504 to 375 in just three years, and that 2/3rd of training positions go unfulfilled?</p>
<p>In south India, I could get a mammogram in a week; in Canada in two. Glad I don’t live in Hackensack.</p>