U.S. Private Health Care System – The Worst in the World...EXCEPT For ALL Others....

Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:

US: 93%
UK: 15%
Canada: 43%

Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month of referral:

US: 77%
UK: 40%
Canada: 43%

Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:

US: 65%
UK: 46%
Canada: 42%

Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:

US: 90%
UK: 15%
Canada: 43%

“The majority of Americans still believe Health Care needs reforming...”  (a Liberal)

Yes, Conservatives want REAL Health Care REFORM – reform that reins in the COSTS!

I saw an article on cancer survival rates that put the USA's 5-year survival rates on early detected cancers at over 90% and Europe's and Canada's at under 85%.

The other thing I find endlessly amusing is how so many naive Leftists still think, "there's no mandate forcing you to buy health insurance in this Bill."

YES there IS!

And the fine is up to 2.5% of your income by 2016!
 
Yes, and businesses can opt out of paying health insurance premiums by simply paying a $2,000/year fee per employee to the government!

Let's see, a $2K/year fee to the feds against $15K to $25K per year in health insurance premiums per worker???....Hmmmm....Looks like an easy decision, "No employer-driven health-care for YOU."

THAT, by the way, is the "trigger" for the public option."

And again, I've said for a VERY long time, a "universal public option" CAN be made workable, IF (1) we roll Medicare and Medicaid into it, (2) bulk up the enforcement arm and ratchet up the penalties for fraud and abuse and (3) strictly RATION and RESTRICT that public option (by offering a max of 4 to 6 visits per year AND up to a max of, say, $10K/year in treatments), so long as available "gap insurance" is there for those willing and able to pay the premiums from private insurers.

That way, "the least productive people are rationed and restricted" and businesses and municipalities will be freed from the burden of providing BILLIONS of $$$ in free healthcare, making them much more profitable and competitive and thus making the American worker much more competi8tive in the global labor market!

The ONLY problem with America's current health care delivery system is COST, and that's because we simply GIVE too much costly and advanced health care away to too many people who don't pay any premiums for it.

That's the problem we must solve.

H/T to Skunkfeathers for some GREAT stats

Who Said “Government Managed Health Cares Works Best???”

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Is it possible?

Can it be?

Is there a reason to believe that perhaps government managed health care or “socialized medicine” DOES work better, at least in some instances, than America’s current market-based one?

And if it indeed does, wouldn’t that prove that all of the arguments against the command economy are hollow – that socialism, or the State-run/“Command Economy” can work and actually be superior to the market-based one?

Well, if government-run health care COULD be shown to be more effective than America’s market-based system that would certainly seem to be a HUGE argument in favor of the Command Economy and against the market-based one.

So how would we best measure how one form of healthcare outperforms the other?

Well, how about bottom-line results? That would seem to be the easiest, most clear basis on which to compare the various healthcare delivery systems.

A “better system” should always offer better results for its consumers, in this case patients.

Let’s take survival rates for one of the persistent scourges of the modern age- cancer.

Well, it turns out that the overall five-year survival rate for all types of cancer for men in America is 66.3 percent, and 62.9 percent for women, the BEST outcome in the world.

Hmmm, well I’m still not convinced. What about survival rates for specific kinds of cancer?

Despite the fact, that due to better early screening than in the rest of the world, American men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than their counterparts in other countries, they are less likely to die from the disease. Fewer than 20 percent of American men with prostate cancer will die from it, against 57 percent of British men and nearly half of French and German men. Even in Canada, prostate cancer kills a quarter of men diagnosed with the disease.

And the reason Canada’s death rate is so much less than that of Europeans can probably be found in this fact; seven out of 10 Canadian provinces report sending prostate-cancer patients to the United States for radiation treatment.

The results for other kinds of cancer aren’t much different. Only 30 percent of U.S. citizens diagnosed with colon cancer die from that disease, compared to fully 74 percent in Britain, 62 percent in New Zealand, 58 percent in France, 57 percent in Germany, 53 percent in Australia and 36 percent in Canada.

And less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it's 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 per- cent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.

The reason for this, at least according to Michael Tanner (Director of Health & Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute) is that “the one common characteristic of all national health-care systems is that they ration care.

“Sometimes they ration it explicitly, denying certain types of treatment altogether. More often, they ration more indirectly - imposing global budgets or other cost constraints that limit the availability of high-tech medical equipment or imposing long waits on patients seeking treatment.

“In the United States, there are no such government-set limits, meaning that the most advanced treatment options are far more available. This translates directly into saved lives.”

But Tanner sees the advantages of America’s market-based healthcare system going far beyond merely the absence of rationed care. As he notes, “With no price controls, (market-based) U.S. medicine provides the incentives that lead to innovative breakthroughs in new drugs and other medical technologies. U.S. companies have developed half of all the major new medicines introduced worldwide over the last 20 years.

“In fact, Americans played a key role in 80 percent of the most important medical advances of the last 30 years. Eighteen of the last 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine either are U.S. citizens or work here.”

OK, so “socialized medicine” or government-run healthcare doesn’t work better...it’s still “free,” so you can’t beat the price!

Oh wait a minute! It’s NOT “free.” In fact Wisconsin’s proposed State-run healthcare system shows how incredibly expensive poorer healthcare really is!

SEE: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09102007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/cancer_societys_deadly_medicin.htm

A BAD Idea Whose Time Has Come???

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Universal Health Care, the new name for Socialized Medicine has become THE campaign theme for 2008.

Big business has long been behind it because it takes one of the major expenses FROM business and foists it ONTO the backs of ordinary taxpayers.

Currently slightly over 85% of Americans have health care insurance through their jobs, while about 15% do not.

So the natural question is, why shouldn't those in that 85% pay a little more in order to make sure everyone is covered?

But do we want the same people who run Motor Vehicles, the Post Office, the IRS and the VA hospital system (think Walter Reed) running our health care?

First, ANYTHING that will reduce the costs of doing business will help American industry and that is certainly a prime concern. Still, since about the middle of the last century, Canada and most of Western Europe have moved toward "socialized medicine," and they've been struggling, without much success, to live up to the promise of providing "free health insurance and quality health care for all."

Canada's and England's systems are wracked with rationing and restrictions on visits. In Canada, the average wait between a referral and a doctor's visit across the 12 specialtes, in the ten Provinces is almost 18 weeks!

20% of kidney dialysis centers in Europe and an astounding 50% in England don't accept people 65 years and older. In Ontario, a pateint can wait as long as sixteen months for an MRI scan.

What's more, many of the early adherants of socialized medicine have since backed away from it. Starting in 1989 England began introducing "market-based reforms into its health care system. Sweden introduced "managed competition" into its health care system in the early 1990s and New Zealand began offering its citizens tax incentives to purchase private insurance as an attempt to end its forty year stint with socialized medicine and Chile likewise has turned to giving its citizens financial incentives to move from its government run health care system to private insurers.

The problem today is that the die may already be cast. Big business wants out. In fact, all of American business wants out of funding health care, so whether it works well or not (and judging form the reults around the world the answer is not), we're probably going to see some form of government managed, or "Universal Health Care," with provisions for those willing and able to pay premiums for private insurance.

Ultimately we'll see some form of two-tiered system, with those able to pay for private insurance able to avoid the rationing and long waits that those fully dependent upon the government run program will have to deal with.