US Healthcare leadership—an oxymoron (part 5)
by Miki SaxonThe difficulty of getting an appointment to see your doctor (wait time) is the bogyman thrown up to defeat universal healthcare, but the statistics don’t back that up. According a Business Week article citing a study by the Commonwealth Fund,“If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston…a knee injury… the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days.”… only 40% of U.S. doctors have arrangements for after-hours care, vs. 75% in the rest of the industrialized world… 51% of sick Americans surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close.”
In the Washington Monthly Kevin Drum cites the BW article and also mentions that “…the numbers are inflated because we don’t count the people who can’t get nonemergency surgery [such as hip replacements] because they’re uninsured…,” while the comments left by readers put real stories to the statistics.
Not all physicians are against a universal health program, which is smart since many Americans of more modest means are traveling in order to off-shore their healthcare needs—surgical and otherwise.
“Gary Hulmes, a furniture store manager from Florida who went to New Delhi to have spinal surgery done and paid a total of $9,000 including airfare, a five-day hospital stay, and a total stay of three weeks in India (with some sightseeing thrown in). If performed in a US hospital, the same procedure would have cost $36,000 – 50,000.”
In Europe healthcare is measured, evaluated and reported publicly by Health Consumer Powerhouse Euro Health Consumer Index 2007.
The report makes for interesting reading.
“All the 27 EU members are of course included in this year’s index as well as Switzerland and Norway.”
‘The 2007 Index is, just like in 2006, built up as a “pentathlon”, with indicators grouped in five sub-disciplines. After having had to surrender to the “lack of statistics syndrome”, and after scrutiny by our expert panels, 27 indicators survived into the EHCI 2007.
The indicator areas for the EHCI 2007 thus became:
Sub-discipline Number of indicators
- Patient rights and information 9
- Waiting time for treatment 5
- Outcomes 5
- “Generosity” 4
- Pharmaceuticals 4″
Dr. David J. Brailer is point man on the Administration’s “…effort to remake the $1.9 trillion U.S. health-care business by using information technology to save money and lives…Paying for the network will be the first major hurdle. Many cash-strapped hospitals and small-practice doctors have no interest in footing the bill for a medical Internet. One key reason is the mismatch between costs and savings: While health-care providers bear the cost of tech investments, Medicare and private insurers reap almost all the savings.”
Then, of course, there are all those cute, educational consumer ads for drugs to help things along.
Of course, any discussion of healthcare wold be incomplete without some reference to the insurance industry. An industry, to my mind, far more committed to executive compensation and investor profits than service to its policy holders. Rather than add to the thousands of commentary already out there, I thought I’d leave you with a visual that, to me, says it all.
So what comes first?
Finding a way to pay for healthcare or knowing what we’re paying for?
Would the money being spent on pork and corporate subsidies be better spent on healthcare for all Americans?
If not, should the companies that currently pay no, or little, tax be the focus as opposed to small business?
What do you think should/can be done to fix this mess?
Your comments—priceless
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February 19th, 2008 at 1:46 am
It is difficult to argue that universal healthcare is a good thing. You could argue that it is too expensive though.
The way you will fund healthcare however will profundly shape society as the german, scandinavian, french and canadian example show. It can be for better or for depending on your vision.
So aguing for or against healthcare without without considering how it is implemented and what the consequences of this implementation are is at least misleading. In this Mitt Romney had a practical experience to show, Mrs Clinton gives ideas that she failed to advance when her husband was president and the other candidates agree (or don’t disagree) in principle without commiting on the implementation.
Also to give you an idea of the difficulties ahead: in France universal healthcare was introduced about 10 years ago. Since then, people who cannot afford a better insurance have found it difficult to get an appointment with a doctor or a dentist because the payments are too long to come from the administration…
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:20 am
Hi Denis it’s Miki. Sorry for the delay, I’ve been trying to respond since you posted, but I’ve been blocked on this one post (technology is weird:)
I understand that finding a valid way to pay for healthcare is a major stumbling block, the bureaucracy that could happen would be daunting and the entrenched industries fighting against it are formidable. But most Americans wait now and for those of us with NO insurance anything is better than nothing. Those with some flavor of Medicade or state insurance are held back because if they earn too much they lose their coverage; and there are thousands more who stay at their current employer only because of their insurance, which saps productivity.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, the most creative efforts in healthcare are the new schemes to make money off those who have little to no insurance and the marketers who find creative new ways to sell drugs we probably don’t need.
C’mon, this country should be able to do better than that.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Given the time it took the american people to realize universal healthcare is a good think, it is probably wise to spend some time creating a relatively good solution… unless there is an urgency now that did not exist four or eight years ago ;)
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Denis, We both know it ain’t gonna happen. The last thing that either politicians or the involved industries care about are the American people. But it sure make for good rhetoric during election time.
At least I’m eight years closer to medicare (assuming that it still exists when I get there and that I’m dead before it ends:))
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Reminds me of a Simpson’s episode with german backpackers enumerating the problems with america: no metric system and no universal healthcare were on the list and it was concluded with the exclamation: “what is this, the times of Charlemagne ?” ;)
On the other hand I can understand that many prefer to let natural selection (oops intelligent design >:) ) play rather than pay for universal healthcare :p
February 24th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Denis, while I’m not a Simpson watcher, I would have thought it was more the time of the Crusades.
Gotcha, it’s survival of the richest, right?