BEST IN THE WORLD--AMERICA'S FALSE HEALTH CARE ASSUMPTIONS

I read Nicolas Kristof's column in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html?em) published November 4th 2009, as so often Kristof says it all..and so well.

On Fox News Sunday (June 07, 2009) Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told Chris Wallace that President Barack Obama's proposed health care plan is the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known." Kristof used that quote to begin his report on US health care. The blustering Senator Shelby from Alabama...a true blowhard..who states misthruths and misrepresentations which some would have us continue to believe. That America is truly exceptional...even in the realm of health care. Shelby stated to Wallace: "We have the greatest health care system in the world. ....it saves lives in ways that other countries can only dream of. (Foreigners) sit on waiting lists for months, so why should we squander billions of dollars to mess with a system that is the envy of the world? ...(its) the best health care system the world has ever known.”

But Shelby's bluster has more to do with his financial support from the health insurance companies and less to do with actual facts about American health care delivery. Yes it is true that our techology is one of the best and rakns at the very cutting edge...that technology is available to some---such as for our senators and congressmen..and the wealthy elites, but the value of a health care system is not what it is CAPABLE of performing for an elite minority, but what it actually delivers to a nation's citizenry. So as Kristof's piece so aptly points out--the greatest myth of the health care debate is the...the false confidence most Americans have regarding the US health care system. Americans are NOT the best cared for by any measure.

Kristoff points out that our citizens don't live as long as residents of similar economic circumstances and race as those in other industrialized nations. Thirty developed contries rank above us, while we are tied in that category with such stalwarts in health care as Kuwait and Chile. Regarding infant mortality, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) we rank 37th, while in maternal mortality we are 34th. Krsitof states that "A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland."

Another interesting fact is that "Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take."

Yet another study, cited by Kristof and conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19, developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system in the world” ranked in last place."


Get the picture?


rjk