It does not take a high school Valedictorian to point out Charlie Martin has a problem. First of all, he fails to address the question of whether Insurance companies are a fiscally prudent and effective way to deliver quality health care. Second, the depth of his ignorance about health care can be found in his riff about the 75 year old granddad and the 25 year old Elmo. Granddad is for the greater part covered by Medicare, government single pay for the elderly. Elmo is not supporting gramps, but may actually be partially supported by Granddad. Let’s examine quality and effectiveness of health care delivery.
There are a variety of metrics that are used to compare health care delivery (infant mortality, life expectancy, etc) between countries. No matter how you slice it, dice it, or spin it, the US ranks near or at the bottom of these measured metrics, while per capita medical expense are the highest. Let’s simplify: Think widgets.
If US Heath Care is a factory, the widget it delivers cost more, is a defective product (as measured by health outcomes), has a large proportion of dissatisfied customers and its distribution system a fails to reach a significant portion of the population…
A reasonable manager, faced with a failing factory, would study successful factories. In this case, European systems with better widget outcomes and a distribution system that reaches all the population. Now then, the European widget factories differ, one from the other, but they have one thing in common: At the base of the widget, single pay, government sponsored program.
And thus, the argument is who should provide health care. Should it be Insurance and Health Care Corporations whose sole interest is profit, or the government, whose interest is the health and well being of its people. A few links for the inquiring mind:
An argument for single pay system (click on pdf file, left column):
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/93/1/102
Are Insurance Companies acting in your best interest?
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/impressive_coverage_at_the_la.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18mon1.html?em&ex=1203483600&en=9cabea39bba83519&ei=5087%0A
Does Medicare improve Health outcomes (pdf file right hand column)?
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/24/2886
Care to wonder around the European widget factories? Try Sweden, that horrible socialized medicine country?
http://www.euro.who.int/observatory/ctryinfo/ctryinfo
