Free Republic

The National Health Service has been praised as the world’s best health-care system by an international panel of experts who said it was superior to those found in countries which spend far more on health. The study, entitled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” also described US healthcare provision as the worst globally. Despite investing the most money in health, the US refuses care to many patients without health insurance and is also the worst at saving the lives of people who fall ill, it found. The Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation produced the report. The fund is respected around the...

As the month of October has rolled on and stories regarding the train wreck that is Obamacare mount, one has to wonder when the President’s media allies will come to the rescue and skew reality on health care reporting. The answer may be … now. The Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) is once again teaming up with a private U.S. foundation known as the Commonwealth Fund. The Fund, a self-described ‘progressive’ organization, is currently led by David Blumenthal, former senior health adviser to the Obama campaign. The group makes little to no secret of their support for...

A private organization that “helped lay the groundwork” for Obamacare is hosting a symposium to “offer specialized education in health care reporting” for mainstream reporters from outlets including Reuters and Money magazine. As reported by Rusty Weiss for FreedomWorks, the Commonwealth Fund is sponsoring a two-day symposium, hosted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) entitled “The Business of Health Care” at Reuters headquarters in New York City. The symposium will “offer specialized education in health care reporting” and “boost knowledge of the Affordable Care Act.” “The goal over two days will be to introduce fellows to...

Mitt Romney’s health care plan wouldn’t just insure fewer people than “Obamacare” —it would make the uninsured problem worse than it would have been if the law had never passed, according to a comparison of the two plans released Tuesday morning. The analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based health care research foundation....

One of the disappointing things about healthcare policy research is that its volume is inversely proportional to its quality. Each year, sheaves of research papers are produced by academics and think-tankers, thick with tables and charts, purporting to argue that 62% of all bankruptcies are due to medical expenses, or that 45,000 people a year die because they don’t have health insurance. These studies are then broadcast uncritically by the press, and repeated as gospel by soundbite-seeking politicians. Unfortunately, the methodologies used in such research are often poor, and in the two examples above, intentionally misleading. (Megan McArdle is one...

Some Congress members and even President Obama have been bamboozled into believing that health care is better in other developed countries than in America. On Nov. 20, for example, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) pointed to a large blue chart showing the United States in last place in health performance. "All of these countries have much lower costs than we do," he said, "and they have higher-quality outcomes than ours." Conrad was duped by a bag-of-tricks report from the Commonwealth Fund (Health Affairs, vol. 27, no. 1, 2008). This put America in 19th place due to our nation's large number of...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - France is tops, and the United States dead last, in providing timely and effective healthcare to its citizens, according to a survey Tuesday of preventable deaths in 19 industrialized countries. The study by the Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February issue of the journal Health Affairs measured developed countries' effectiveness at providing timely and effective healthcare. The study, entitled "Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis," was written by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It looked at death rates in subjects younger than 75 that could have been prevented...