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Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose.
Hoover Institution ^ | July 2009 | Scott W. Atlas.

Posted on 08/01/2009 7:43:29 PM PDT by ceoinva

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.

(Excerpt) Read more at hoover.org ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: care; health; healthcare; hooverinstitution

1 posted on 08/01/2009 7:43:29 PM PDT by ceoinva
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To: ceoinva

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.

3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, are taking them. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons, and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:

Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).

Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.

More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).

Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).
5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”

6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”

8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).

9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.

10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.

Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.


2 posted on 08/01/2009 7:49:51 PM PDT by ceoinva (l)
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To: ceoinva
This is my answer to Obama care


3 posted on 08/01/2009 7:52:40 PM PDT by al baby (Hi Mom ;))
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To: al baby

Here is a copy of the ObamaCare health plan. You better read it because you will be forced to live with it!

July 31, 2009
,
Here is an overview of the ObamaCare health care bill (HR 3200) which Congress is about to force every citizen to live under, except members of Congress.

Members of Congress will be exempt from being forced into this plan. They will have their own. The liberals, Democrats and some Republicans - while forcing you to join the plan - refuse to include themselves. Members of Congress will have a better plan which gives them freedom you will be denied.
You can read an updated and revised overview of HR 3200 compiled by Liberty Counsel.
Or, go to the full text of HR 3200 and read directly from the government website what this bill does!
Your Senators and Representative will soon be home for the August recess of Congress. Get a car load of friends and go meet with your Senators and Representative. Find out where he or she is holding Townhall meetings. Go to those meetings and ask for some answers! Some of them may try to avoid discussing ObamaCare. Don’t let them!
Find your Senators and Representative local offices here.
Take Action!
• E-mail your Senators and Representative,asking for a schedule of their Townhall meeting during the month of August. Once you get the information, get a carload of friends and attend the Townhall meeting.
• If your Senators or Representative is not holding Townhall meeting, ask why not.(We have been told that many of those favoring ObamaCare aren’t holding meeting because they don’t want to answer questions about ObamaCare.) Then ask for an appointment at his or her district office nearest you.


4 posted on 08/01/2009 7:54:15 PM PDT by Ev Reeman
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To: Ev Reeman

We will be forced to die by it imho


5 posted on 08/01/2009 7:56:04 PM PDT by al baby (Hi Mom ;))
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To: ceoinva

The problem with our current healthcare is that we pay our way, the elderly paid their way and the illegals and welfare rats are robbing the other two thirds of the system to destruction.

I know the solution, heck my elementry school age grand daughters know the solution. Support legal immigration (NOT SHAMNESTY) and go after criminal illegals and the trash that employ’s them ! Seize their assets just like the WOD weenies do with drug runners......Here is 10% of yer assets to get started in yer old country and the other 90% goes for paying back the services you robbed !

Then put the alphabet agencies on the welfare fraud and watch it recover in weeks ! Criminals living in say Chicago, DC, MD, VA area or the 4 corners region of the SW etc steal from 4 or more states in a day .

We have a great health system already as you stated here........stop the criminals from stealing from it and it will come back !


6 posted on 08/01/2009 8:01:31 PM PDT by Squantos (Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet)
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To: al baby

LOL!!


7 posted on 08/01/2009 8:03:33 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (Pray for, and support our troops(heroes) !! And vote out the RINO's!!)
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To: Squantos

There is an abundance of fraud, waste and abuse in the already run government healthcare system known as Medicare. When government runs the healthcare system and is in complete control of it, watch for the costs to skyrocket bankrupting the country even more than it already is as well as for the waste fraud abuse bureaucracy and corruption to multiply exponentially.


8 posted on 08/01/2009 8:13:18 PM PDT by Ev Reeman
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To: ceoinva

Thanks for spreading this information. It needs to be shared far and wide!


9 posted on 08/01/2009 8:21:28 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: al baby

Obamacare is euthanasia for the elderly and the young. Obamacare will tax you more and ration healthcare!


10 posted on 08/01/2009 8:25:37 PM PDT by Doctor Don
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To: Doctor Don

And abortion for the unborn.


11 posted on 08/01/2009 8:29:07 PM PDT by Ev Reeman
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To: Ev Reeman

Heres the link to ObamaCare HR 3200. PDF ALERT! Its 1018 pages long.
http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf


12 posted on 08/01/2009 9:13:59 PM PDT by Delacon ("The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H. L. Mencken)
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To: Doctor Don
I have heard a lot of jokes that ObamaCare is Obama's solution to the Social Security (Baby Boomer) crisis. ObamaCare Jokes Obama Jokes
13 posted on 08/01/2009 9:18:48 PM PDT by tbw2 (Freeper sci-fi - "Humanity's Edge" - on amazon.com)
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To: Doctor Don

Well no S#it


14 posted on 08/01/2009 9:48:22 PM PDT by al baby (Hi Mom ;))
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To: ceoinva

for later


15 posted on 08/01/2009 9:52:44 PM PDT by malia
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To: long hard slogger; FormerACLUmember; Harrius Magnus; hocndoc; parousia; Hydroshock; skippermd; ...


Socialized Medicine aka Universal Health Care PING LIST

FReepmail me if you want to be added to or removed from this ping list.

**This is a high volume ping list! (sign of the times)**


16 posted on 08/02/2009 5:47:30 PM PDT by socialismisinsidious ( The socialist income tax system turns US citizens into beggars or quitters!)
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To: ceoinva

Bump for later reading


17 posted on 08/02/2009 9:15:30 PM PDT by SuziQ
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