Health Debate: Costs and Benefits

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/august/health_debate_costs.php

"Letter to the Editor
New York Times
August 5, 2009

To the Editor:

Universal coverage and cost control are not conflicting aims.

Canada spends 10 percent of gross domestic product on health care, and everyone is covered. The United States spends 16 percent of G.D.P., but tens of millions lack coverage. The cost difference is almost entirely due to higher administrative costs and higher prices, which are directly related to the economics of a multi-payer system.

The lessons from Canada and other countries are clear. If you focus on cost control, you will fail. If you cover everyone because it’s decent and just, you will also achieve economic sustainability.

America, it’s time to do the right thing and then reap the rich rewards of moral public policy.

Michael M. Rachlis
Toronto, Aug. 2, 2009

The writer, a doctor, is a health policy consultant."


A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare

The caricature of 'socialized medicine' is used by corporate interests to confuse Americans and maintain their bottom lines instead of patients' health.
By Michael M. Rachlis
August 3, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rachlis3-2009aug03,0,538126.story

"Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them...

...On coverage, all Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services. There are no deductibles or co-pays. Most provinces also provide coverage for programs for home care, long-term care, pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment, although there are co-pays.

On the U.S. side, 46 million people have no insurance, millions are underinsured and healthcare bills bankrupt more than 1 million Americans every year...

...American democracy runs on money. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies have the fuel. Analysts see hundreds of billions of premiums wasted on overhead that could fund care for the uninsured. But industry executives and shareholders see bonuses and dividends.

Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same. The U.S. media, legislators and even presidents have claimed that our "socialized" system doesn't let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It's Americans these days who are restricted to "in-plan" doctors..."

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1. Graphs at NY Times link...

U.S. Health Spending Breaks From the Pack

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us-health-spending-breaks-from-the-pack/

"Despite the fact that the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not ensure that all its citizens have health care coverage, the United States spends a (much) higher percentage of its gross domestic product on health care than its peers. It also spends (much) more per person on health care than its peers.

But that hasn’t always been the case.

...

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently released updated historical statistics on health care, showing that health expenditures have risen drastically across the industrialized world.

As demonstrated by the mass of squiggles in the chart above, the United States has generally been at the high end of health care spending. But once upon a time, it was more or less on par with its peers, and at various points even spent less of its G.D.P. on health care than some other countries (namely, Canada, Sweden, Denmark and Germany).

...

Although you could quibble about the exact trajectories, it seems to have been in the late 1970s or early 1980s that America’s health care spending really broke from the pack..."

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2. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Single Payer - Capitol Hill Rally

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=348630&mesg_id=348630

Direct youtube link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZczoapF__g


'...approximately 1 million people will go bankrupt this year due to medically related costs, that is absurd...

...the moral issue is that health care is a right and not a commodity in which people, insurance companies and drug companies, should be making billions of dollars in profits...

...it is totally absurd that in America for every dollar we spend on health care we only get .70 cents of value...

...it is absurd that in the last 30 years, for every one new doctor we have seen come into health care there are 25 new bureaucrats...who tell us why we cannot get the health care we paid for...'

[slipslidingaway]

3. Comparing Single-Payer with the Public Option

http://www.healthcare-now.org/comparing-single-payer-with-the-public-option/

"There has been considerable confusion about the differences between single-payer healthcare, which Healthcare-NOW! supports, and the healthcare reform options, including President Obama’s “public option,” being introduced by the House and Senate.

So we’ve collected the following resources to clarify the difference:

..."

[Time for change]

4. There is a lot that the United States could learn from other countries -- on health care

and a lot of other things too.

Too bad that the elites of our country do everything they can to pound it into our heads that we're the best at everything.