Women and children hurt worst.
For now...but if Obama gets elected....
““The U.S. system is dysfunctional beyond repair and we need universal health care!””
Well the administration of our health care system is quite convoluted...but our actual care is best in the world.
Socialized medicine kills cancer patients.
Must be because our health care system is so much worse than say, Cuba, Canada or England.
I’m a 2 year 4 month lung cancer survivor. Knock on wood. And I thank God for our health care system.
Well, God and The Ohio State University Cancer Hospital.
The five year survival rate means very little. The USA has the very best diagnostic technology which enables hospitals to treat them longer before they die. The mortality rate from breast cancer is almost a flat line from 1930. The net benefit from breast cancer treatment approaches zero.
Part of the reason for the US’s poor rankings in overall healthcare system stems from two factors:
1) the amount of hours we work relative to other nations (and hence stress we experience over a lifetime)
2) our nation’s obesity rate.
Both of these variables lead to myocardial infarctions, strokes, and diabetes. And diabetes leads to all sorts of complications, including MIs and strokes.
Our black population is especially prone to diabetes and strokes. Really, our large minority populations skew the statistics in these stories. Hispanics are very, very, very prone to diabetes. And as for our uninsured, over 40% of them are illegal aliens.
We have a lot of problems, but our healthcare deliverty system is not nearly as bad as these “surveys” let on.
As an aside, when they say on Canada has a smaller percentage of patients with labs on their f/u with their physician, I’d also like to see the average length of time between these appointments.
Since the subject is cancer survival, here’s a little pick me up for fans of Patrick Swayze.
Swayze:”I’m A Miracle, Dude”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article1449762.ece
must be all us americans going to canada and france for their healthcare and coming back cured!
In a decentralized system like ours, each patient is a profit center. Provide good service you get more patients into your hospital relative to your competitors.
In a universal system, each patient is just a cost center. No one’s revenues are increased by successful treatment. In a perverse way, your costs are lowered by death. What thinking person would think the benefits of such a system outweighs its costs?
That doesn't mean that our health care isn't the best in the world. It means that those who have a lot of money, and are able to afford expensive procedures that might not have a great success rate have that option here in the United States.
We don't have socialized health care where the government is doing cost/benefit analysis with our lives. We get to do out own cost/benefit analysis if we have the money to afford the procedures, or at least health insurance that covers such procedures.
Our health care system doesn't provide equal health benefits to everyone in the country. However, new procedures, medicines, and equipment would never become available to most, if it was not first made available to those who are able to pay for it.
We pay on average higher health care costs, because we are willing to pay for new medical advances before they become commonly used, and their development costs have been mostly paid off.
The medical industry often recoups it's investment mainly in the US market, and then the rest of the world benefits as the costs decrease once much of the initial development costs have been paid off.
Socialized medicine won't suddenly make it cheaper to bring new medical advances to market, most likely it will do the opposite.
If the US goes to socialized medicine, advances will slow. We won't see as great of savings as we expect, and the costs will go up for others that take advantage of the fact that we are currently basically subsidizing the health care costs of everyone else.
If everyone gets the same level of treatment, and they are saying it will save money, doesn't that make it pretty obvious that some are obviously going to be getting worse treatment? It means that people are not only going to have even more of the money they have earned taken away to help others who have not earned it, but that they will be at greater risk of suffering serious harm or premature death as a result.
Something for BO to CHANGE.
bump
The Commonwealth Fund has an agenda. I wonder what the founders of Standard Oil Company would think about how their money is being used to further socialism. It is ironic that the original Big Oil is where the Commonwealth Fund got its funding so many years ago.