Medical Care
I feel like i’ve lived through a particularly challenging Ionescu play for the past several weeks. I’ve been through “major surgery” (hip replacement), stayed several days in the hospital thereafter, and then got wheeled into the “rehab section” where i was given therapy to rebuild my hip and leg muscles. That will continue for quite a while, it seems. The surgery’s pretty easy, and invariably effective. It’s the therapy that is most challenging.
But I digress (probably some of the happy pills remain lurking in my bloodstream). While I was soldiering on, my radio was giving me reports of the big fight over “health care,” with the president and his phalanxes telling the American people that our health care system is “in crisis,” and we’d better fix it until it’s tooo late. And I kept asking myself, “but how can anyone possibly believe this”? Certainly no one who has had a serious problem.
When I checked in to the hospital, I got a document that basically said “welcome! we’re going to give you the best care possible, and if you are unhappy with it, here is how to complain so that we can make it better for you. and by the way, in the event you can’t pay for it, not to worry. you’re covered. nobody gets rejected here, let alone thrown out, because of inability to pay.”
In fact it’s even better than that. The hospital is a good hospital, probably not a great hospital (not in a class with, say, the Cleveland or Mayo Clinics, for example, or Cedars Sinai or Mass General or the incredible center in Houston), but that’s in fact only the start. Once discharged, they continue to help you. So, for the past couple of weeks, a registered nurse has come to the house twice weekly to draw blood and take my “vitals,” and a therapist–a really good therapist, by the way–comes three times a week to give me new exercises and monitor my progress.
You really can’t ask for better treatment. What a great system! What a country! And those who can’t pay for it are covered…so where is the crisis?
Not that there aren’t problems. I made some suggestions to the doctors and nurses, in fact. But a crisis it ain’t. It looks to me like a system that needs tweaking, especially concerning the role of the attack dog lawyers. It really doesn’t look at all like a system that has to be scrapped and redesigned from scratch. And that’s the picture from the inside, not some abstract analysis.
If you want an example of something that should be razed to the ground and built from ground zero, take the Intelligence Community. Please. But leave us the basic elements of our health care system.
Which is what most people seem to think. And they’re right.
Michael, I am taking the liberty of sending this to Conrad Black, who is a temporary resident of Florida thanks to the zeal of special persecutor (whoops, Freudian slip there, special prosecutor) Fitzgerald. For he has thoughts as to the health care system in the United States, and how it needs tweaks in certain areas. Mind you, it is good to see people from other countries come to the United States for treatment.
But, the reverse is also taking place, and they are not being treated on an emergency basis. I suspect it has to deal with those areas that need changing.
Michael,
First, I wish you continued and swift progress.
This week, the German weekly Die Zeit had two articles on American health care and another on the Gates distraction to the health care debate. One of the former was a report on a visit of a RAM (Remote Area Medical) dental clinic visit to Pikesville Kentucky. It talked about people who couldn’t afford dental care, who had lost or given up their insurance coverage, or who had high co-pays they couldn’t afford.
The second article was by Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interests which portrays a national health care program as the answer to all problems and uses a story about a 12-year-old boy in DC who died because his infected tooth was not treated. According to Heilbrunn, conservatives are standing in the way of inevitable human progress. I doubt that Heilbrunn read the article in this week’s Spiegel about a woman who did not get a C-section and delivered a child that had suffered severe oxygen deprivation and died a few days later. The Spiegel article went on to discuss malpractice payments. I don’t know where they want to go with that.
This is rather typical of discussions about the US in the German press: The US is backwards, conservatives are unfeeling, and the answer to all difficult problems is more government. Heilbrunn does not, of course, mention that there are serious discussions about who determines courses of treatment and potential rationing when the budget is overstretched. Nor does he discuss the costs of our deformed malpractice system. He presents a superficial treatice on American health care to make America look bad and to embarrass and discredit conservatives in the world press. Of course, many of the bon pensants spending sabbaticals in Berlin will be unable to discuss the topic in any depth and will tuck their tail between their legs, say mea culpa, and return to the US vowing never again to suffer such humiliation. They will not observed the recurring discussions in Germany about rising health costs nor the regular complaints from doctors about working hours, bureaucracy, and pay. They will be unable to look at the strengths and weaknesses of many national medical systems to find answers to American problems that also consider things like poplation density (a Mayo Clinic in every pot, anyone?) and the advantages of some of our evolved systems. They reduce a complex problem to a moral decision and ignore the fine print of thousand-page bills. Haven’t they heard about the people who didn’t read the fine print on their ARMs or those who trusted Bernie Madoff?
Get well “faster please”. We desperately require your expert analysis of and suggested solutions to the current liberal crap tornado. Lee, Houston (home of the best health care center anywhere)
One measure of a persons intelligence is by how much they agree with you. Michael, you are a VERY intelligent fellow.
Good luck with your new hip.
From an article titled, “10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care”. from the National Center for Policy Analysis.
In summery:
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K.
Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed.
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations
And I would add that the proportion of dissatisfied customers is in the area of 85%. Not all that surprising really to anyone paying attention. Given these, we need to ram through an unread fundamental change to our economy immediatly because …?
Michael, the United States is the higher leader in biotechnology and new pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. The United States is the largest spender in scope of research and development than its nearest competitor “Europe”.
The United states spends more on health care than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where the health care system in the United States consider the best system in the world.
David W. Lincoln:
“Mind you, it is good to see people from other countries come to the United States for treatment.”
Yes, most of the tyranny leaders and wealthy moslems from the Middle East come to the United States for treatment, and though they scorn the US values and the Americans life.
Jassem Othman, Syrian.
My mother, quite old, just had a cardiac arterial blockage resolved in two hours using modern technical methods. Without even needing stitches afterward!
Technology developed through great expense and years of practice and test in expensive advanced clinics.
She’ll be home after a 4 day stay in hospital.
Life saved, ho hum … next case please.
This is nothing short of miraculous.
But Red Hussein will end all that if we let him.
Screw the lying bastard!
I sure hope you are back on your feet soon. We are all lucky to live in the best country in the world. It’s a tribute to our system that we all live so long so well. I’m afraid we are all in for a change; and that’s when the hoping starts.
In my opinion the conservative movement constantly misses the point when confronted by the liberals. When they posit climate change we rebut with science. When they propose unheard of spending we respond with economic arguments. When they sail a wrecking ball at our health care system we grumble at the rush.
The predicted crisis’ out of the past have never materialized but the liberals keep a constant parade of new ones coming as fast the old ones dissipate. I doubt they even believe in them themselves. If so, they have strange ways of exhibiting those beliefs.
The point is the political urgency. The point is that the People should be frenzied enough, fearful enough, to demand their own subjugation.
The wrecking ball is aimed at individualism and the liberals mean to reduce that to ashes. The new man, shackled to the mule of collectivism, is to be built on those ashes.
A little claification on the “And I would add that the proportion of dissatisfied customers is in the area of 85%” remark. That is 85% of Europeans are generally dissatisfied with their health care. Lost the link but I just read it this morning.
Re: #5: ‘“10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care”. from the National Center for Policy Analysis.’
Actually, according to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37th in health care quality, behind Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia. But here’s a not so surprising fact about the National Center for Policy Analysis: it’s a think tank largely financed by the insurance industry to fight gov’t intrusion onto its turf.
11. biblio44: “according to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37th in health care quality, behind Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia”
Costa Rica is supposed to be a pretty nice country, but I have no doubt whatsoever as to which country I would rather obtain health care in, and by a large margin. I guess that I’ve been brainwashed by the insurance industry.
What hospital and where are you. I have been going crazy trying to get care here in California and will go anywhere if the Doctors would help me to be able to walk well again, and go back to work, and have a normal life. I cannot even get seen for more than 10 minutes with an appointment. At the last appointment I was told my spine is messed up and they will send me to a neurologist. I told the doctor they have been trying to do that for over a year. The Dr. had no time to talk to me. This is not the 1st doctor to do this to me.
i’m in washington dc. but have you been to cedars sinai in LA?
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