Classical Values :: Health Care Mantra

October 27, 2009

Health Care Mantra

Advocates of socializing health care have asked: how can America's relatively free market spend the most money on health care, yet have among the worst outcomes?

The answer is, we don't. The oft-cited WHO rankings don't really measure quality of health care, preferring to judge things like "fairness of financial contribution" and measures like life expectancy (which is more strongly correlated to lifestyle than health care) or infant mortality (other countries use different standards and so generally record more infant deaths as stillbirths than we do, perversely making their numbers better even though they sometimes let marginal infants die).

American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn't even close:

U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average

U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD

Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered

Death panels: now in kids' sizes too! Infants being left to die.

U.S. has more MRIS "it was found that Canada had 4.6 MRI scanners per million population while the U.S. had 19.5 per million"

U.S. has about twice as many MRIs as OECD average

The U.S. gets new drugs 1 year sooner "On average, the FDA approval came 1 year ahead of clearance by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA)."

"Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway."

"The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country"

U.S. performs more operations than any country in the world.

Lower U.S. life expectancy does not argue U.S. has worse health care due to lifestyle factors and differences in how infant mortality is reported

Please feel free to steal, share and cite any or all of these links early and often. If anyone else has links to add, please share in the comments! Don't let them take the best care in the world away from us without a fight!

posted by Dave on 10.27.09 at 07:19 PM

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Comments

Great link roundup!! Thanks Dave.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't our so-called "lower life-expectancy" also factor in things like death by murder and car accidents?

Darleen · October 27, 2009 07:41 PM

Not only that:

If you go to a hospital for an MRI in the US the costs can run up to $2,000.

Get one done at an MRI clinic and it can cost as little as $350.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071112073856AAp7QAP

Why the difference? I haven't looked into it but my guess is that hospitals have a lot more regulations to support.

M. Simon · October 27, 2009 09:23 PM

There are no true comparisons about what you get for your health care dollars. We can and do more than any other country. But that costs money. The statistics that are used to beat us up - infant mortality, life expectancy have a whole lot less to do with the health system and a whole lot more to do with the choices people make.

But when you get down to it, after clean water, flush toilets, and DDT, there has not been much that significantly changes the health of populations.

Lee · October 27, 2009 10:23 PM

My wife just had a total hysterectomy, using a robot. She was out of the hospital the next day! Yes it was expensive, but cheaper than the old surgery way. Our health insurance was great. Paid without a whimper. Yes we do have a high deductible to keep the premiums loser. The entire process from finding the problem to the surgery was about 6 week, maybe less. I just can't see that happening in other countries.

LYNNDH · October 28, 2009 12:05 AM