I am utterly amazed at what great misperceptions Americans have about our "health care" system. I hear over and over again how America has the best health care on the planet, how we are so lucky to have access to all the technological breakthroughs, how medication saved my life.
But Americans are kidding themselves or they are blind to the facts. The truth is that we have some of the worst health care in the world for an industrialized nation. America is consistently ranked as one of the worst health care systems for efficacy of developed nations by the World Health Organization (#37). We have made no real strides in the prevention or treatment of cancer for over 30 years. Diabetes is not only more prevalent than ever before, but instances of it have increased 30% amongst 30 somethings in the last 10 years alone. For the first time in many many decades, Americans can expect that their children will live shorter life spans than their parents. Add to that the fact that the 3rd leading cause of death in our country is "medical treatment." We're not talking about a person being on the edge of death and making a last ditch effort at life by electing an experimental surgical procedure. We are talking about 80,000 people dying from hospital borne infection, over 100,000 people dying from medications that were prescibed and taken correctly, 10's of thousands of people dying from being given incorrect medications, unnecessary surgeries and or drug overdoses.
Did you know that 1/3 of Americans are classified as obese? What is obese? It is not 10 pounds of belly fat. It's carrying an additional 30% of your normal body weight around in fat. To put that into perspective, at my height (5'10") I would have to weigh 50 pounds more than my highest healthy weight or 70 pounds more than my lowest healthy weight. That's insane. Obesity is a condition of affluence. We eat way more than we need and we eat too much of the wrong foods promoted by an industry that doesn't care about health. Obesity is also the result of over-confidence in the medical system. We see ads for Lipitor and liposuction. We get the message that any problem we might have, a doctor can fix. But this is just WRONG. This perception is wrong and it ignores the even bigger and more important issues of prevention and quality of life.
Whenever I bring up "socialized" or "single payer" or "universal" healthcare I get one of two reactions. The one I like the most is "hell yea!" The one I like the least is "Then we will end up just like Canada." In actuality, being like Canada on this front wouldn't be so bad, but this is not what the speaker is intending to convey by the comment, I'm sure. Did you know that in countries where medical care is considered a right and therefore is socialized or universalized in one way or another--countries like Canada, UK, France, Germany, the Scandanavian countries, New Zealand, and Japan--that their citizens have a longer life expectancy, lower instance of heart disease and diabetes, and significantly better maternal an fetal outcomes? Did you know that they have MORE (not less) access to technologies that can catch disease in its early stages simply because they do not have to get permission from a health insurance company to do so? Did you know that these countries spend about 1/2 of what Americans spend per capita on health care and the system covers everybody regardless of pre-existing conditions and employment? (Think about that the next time you are switching jobs.)
There are downsides to those systems. An 80 year old man or woman who needs a kidney transplant is not likely to get one if there is a younger person in line. And of course you would actually have to sit down and talk to your doctor, something most of us can only remember doing 25 or 30 years ago. That would be a tough adjustment. And then you would also have to do your part. Doctors in socialized systems teach prevention and are rewarded for having healthy patients and for making sick patients healthy. These doctors expect you to be actively trying to get better. Oh yeah, you also wouldn't be able to walk in and get the free pharmaceutical samples (but a doctor wouldn't have much use for them when drugs are covered.)
I wish I could figure out how so many people, especially over the age of 50, got the idea that if we had universal health care we would have to wait in some Soviet bread line for emercency surgery or urgent treatment. This is baffling to me. Even more baffling is how we can think that not being able to have the surgery at all is better. Being denied service because the health insurance company can find a way around paying for it is an unconscionable disregard for human life, but it happens every day.
Preventive care is a joke in the US. We focus endlessly on vaccinations (including one's that are unnecessary or unsafe) and not at all on nutrition. How can we be so far behind in understanding the effects of nutrition on health. We have overwhelming evidence from decades of study into nutrition. Perhaps when the government has to pay the health care bill of it constituency it will consider that what the food industry lobby is really about is profit and not health. Medical schools don't even bother teaching nutrition at all anymore. The few that do offer about 1 hour of nutrition education in total.
As you can see, I lack confidence in our current system. And I believe that if you don't want socialized medicine in the US then we should get rid of Medicare. Every employed person in the US is paying into socialized medicine for senior citizens. Why not just drop it? Why should a man or woman who can't afford insurance for themselves or their young children have to pay to keep old people alive? That sounds callous. And you know what? It is. But if we can't provide medical care for children and our working class (on whose backs this nation is carried) then perhaps we shouldn't cover anyone at all. (Try telling that to the AARP contingent who votes down socialized medicine over and over again.) Maybe the time has come to value human life from birth to old age. What child doesn't deserve health care as much as their grandparents?
Let's recap: cheaper, more access, catches disease at earlier stages, less maternal death, healthier babies, less need for drugs, skinnier/healthier people, low cost presciption drugs, focus on prevention. Yep! Sounds pretty bad to me.
