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Friday, March 27, 2009

Is America's Health Care Really That Bad? NOT YET !!!

 Here's a little "fun fact," when Barack Obama talks about how his health plan, is designed to give coverage to 47 Million uninsured Americans, he is including the 12 Million illegal immigrants in his estimates. More than 25% of the uninsured are in the United States illegally. Here's another one, many of the remaining people are either young and feel they don't need health care or are only uninsured for a short time, not for an entire year.

As the saying goes, "put that in your pipe and smoke it." On second hand you better not smoke anything, because even if you don't get sick from smoking or from the increased tax burden from supporting twelve million people who have entered the United States illegally, you may get sick from the lack of coverage you will get. Because Obama-care will add such a large quantity of people to the heath care system, doctors will have to choose who gets what care. So your family member who needs that treatment might have to forgo a lifesaving procedure because it was given to someone who broke the law to come here.

Here's something else that the liberals won't tell you.... most Americans are happy with the health care system, and they should be, mortality rates are lower and survival rates are higher in the US than in countries with socialized medicine:

How U.S. Health Care Really Stacks Up

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY


Manipulative filmmaker Michael Moore says "we have the worst health care in the Western world" and has offered up Cuba as a paradigm for the U.S. to follow.

Former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, who was nearly named the administration's health and human services secretary, says the "flaws in our health care system are pervasive and corrosive."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential candidate, called the current health care market "predatory capitalism." Some Democrats go so far as to say the system is racist.

The kindest thing most Democrats will say about health care in the U.S. is that it's broken. Their talking points to back up the claim revolve around costs, America's low position (37th) in World Health Organization rankings and the number of uninsured.

The last is a useless measure, since only a small portion of the uninsured are chronically without coverage. So are the WHO rankings, which can't be trusted because of disparities in how countries compile statistics, demographic and cultural differences, and the WHO's leftist bias.

Which leaves us with the issue of costs.

Yes, with $2.5 trillion expected to be spent this year, health care in the U.S. is more expensive than in any other country, including Great Britain and Canada, whose nationalized, universal care systems are held up as models .

But what we spend isn't thrown down a rathole. The National Center for Policy Analysis has published a study, "10 Surprising Facts About American Health Care," that shows how Americans get something for the extra dollars they lay out. To wit:

• "Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers." Breast cancer mortality: 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in the United Kingdom than in the U.S. Prostate cancer mortality: 604% higher in the U.K., 457% higher in Norway. Colo-rectal cancer mortality: 40% higher among Britons.

• "Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians." Rates for breast cancer (9%), prostate cancer (184%) and colon cancer among men (10%) are higher than in the U.S.

• "Americans have better access to treatment of chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries." Roughly 56% of Americans who could benefit are taking statin drugs. Only 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of Germans, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians who could benefit receive them.

• "Americans have better access to preventive cancer screenings than Canadians." Nine of 10 middle-aged American women have had a mammogram; 72% of Canadian women have. Almost every American woman (96%) has had a pap smear; fewer than 90% of Canadian women have. Roughly 54% of American men have had a prostate cancer test; fewer than one in six Canadian men have. Almost a third of Americans (30%) have had a colonoscopy; only 5% of Canadians have had the procedure.

• "Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians." Nearly 12% of U.S. seniors with below-median incomes self-report being in "excellent" health, while 5.8% of Canadian seniors say the same thing.

• "Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom." Canadians and Britons wait about twice as long, sometimes more than a year, to see a specialist, have elective surgery or get radiation treatment.

• "People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed." More than seven in 10 Germans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Britons say their health systems need either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."

• "Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians." More than half (51.3%) of Americans are very satisfied with their health care services, while 41.5% of Canadians hold the same view of their system.

• "Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K." There are 34 CT scanners per million Americans. There are 12 per million in Canada and eight per million in Britain. The U.S. has nearly 27 MRI machines per million. Britain and Canada have 6 per million.

• "Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations." The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed nation; the most important recent medical innovations were developed here.

Can the nationalized, universal systems in Britain, Canada or anywhere else improve on this? No, but we can ruin our health care by following the policies of countries where medical treatment is far below the American standard.

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