U.S. Health Care Is Bad For Your Health (SF Chronicle, via CommonDreams)

[marmar]

Published on Sunday, June 3, 2007 by The San Francisco Chronicle

U.S. Health Care Is Bad For Your Health
by César Chelala

One of the most contentious issues of the U.S. presidential campaign will be how to fix what many agree is a malfunctional health-care system. Adding fuel to the fire is a study published last month detailing the shortcomings of U.S. health care when compared to the systems of other developed countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The study, entitled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care,” released by the Commonwealth Fund in New York, finds that not only is the U.S. health care system the most expensive in the world (double that of the next most costly comparator country, Canada) but comes in dead last in almost any measure of performance.

Although U.S. political leaders are fond of stating that we have the best health-care system in the world, they fail to acknowledge an important caveat: It is the best only for the very rich. For the rest of the population, its deficits far outweigh its advantages.

For the Republican presidential candidates, health care hasn’t become a major issue — yet. The three leading Democratic candidates, however, are outspoken critics of the health-care system and argue for the need to increase coverage to most, if not all, Americans.

This new study not only confirms the findings of previous Commonwealth Fund studies, but also a previous analysis by the World Health Organization in 2000 that found the overall performance of the U.S. health-care system ranked 37th among the countries included in the analysis.

The Commonwealth study compared the United States with Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Although the most notable way in which the United States differs from the other countries is in the absence of universal coverage, the United States is also last on dimensions of access, patient safety, efficiency and equity.

The other five countries considered spend considerably less on health care, both per capita and as a percent of gross domestic product, than the United States. The United States spends $7,000 per person per year on health care, almost double that of Australia, Canada and Germany, each of which achieve better results on health status indicators than the United States. This suggests that the U.S. health-care system can and must do much more with its substantial investment in health. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/03/1628/

[Wilms]

1. I wonder what all the factors are behind the discrepancy.

Greed on the part of Pharma, Insurance Co's, and Hospital chains must be way up on the list.

Use of the ER where people go after pushing-off needed but hard to afford care must rank a bit as well.

Is it our lifestyle, diet, etc?

Are we hypochondriacs, too?

Do other countries employ cheaper alternative modalities which can promote wellness at a lower cost?

[reprobate]

2. All the above, plus the profit motive that drives the entire US health system.

Actually, the US does not have a 'health' system. We have a 'sickness' system. IOW we only see patients AFTER they are in trouble. Other systems have regular checkups that catch problems before they become major cost drivers.

I've seen it estimated that every dollar spent in checkups done at regular intervals returns ten dollars in savings for procedures and drugs that they don't need later.

You'd think that would mean something in an economy based on return on investment. But that's not what drives this economy. Profit on investment IS.

[Wilms]

4. That reminds me.

I was reading about Traditional Chinese Medicine where the author said that at one point in it's history the village doctor was paid only if the population was healthy.

That would probably be pretty unmanageable in this day in age, though.

[bemildred]

3. You cannot simultaneously maximize profit and quality of health care.

We picked profit in this country, and that is what we got.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Factors in high costs and low quality:

1. Insurance companies motivated by corporate profits who dump or price out people who need expensive care.

2. Group practices that are focused solely on profits, such as the one my brother was kicked out of for not referring enough patients for surgery. (He found non-surgical ways to treat them successfully.)

3. People who can't afford regular checkups ignoring health problems until they're so bad that they need the emergency room or their condition has deteriorated so much (cancer, diabetes, congestive heart failure) that they need super expensive treatments for ailments that could have been treated more cheaply if they had been caught earlier.

4. Since doctors earn more money by seeing more patients, profit-oriented practices squeeze doctor visits into 15-minute slots, leading to either superficial care or long waiting periods as patients are backed up. (My Norwegian relative said that doctors in Norway are paid a flat salary, so they have no incentive to pack their schedules or authorize unnecessary treatments.)