According to a Bloomberg poll of over 2,000 adults:
60% would be willing to repeal tax cuts in order to fund healthcare for all.
53% think a single-payer system is the best solution
Yay! A majority! In a Democracy! Oh - wow! We should see results now, right?
Right?!
But, alas, the candidates and lawmakers remains asleep on the laps of luxury purchased in part by the corporate giants of the insurance industry. Every one has ignored the prickly little details of representation and presented plans that keep their bedfellows in the dollars meant to provide for healthcare.
*sigh*
Here are some great editorial articles from good sources...that will be completely ignored by our so-called leadership in order to preserve a status quo serving only the few.
San Francisco Chronicle
July 10, 2007
What country endures such long waits for medical care that even one of its top insurers has admitted that care is "not timely" and people "initially diagnosed with cancer are waiting over a month, which is intolerable?"
If you guessed Canada, guess again. The answer is the United States.
Scrambling for a response to the popular reaction to Michael Moore's "SiCKO" and a renewed groundswell for a publicly financed, guaranteed single-payer health care solution, such as SB840, the big insurers and their defenders have pounced on Canada, pulling out all of their old tales of people waiting years in soup kitchen-type lines for medical care.
But, here's the dirty little secret that they won't tell you. Waiting times in the United States are as bad as or worse than Canada. And, unlike the United States, in Canada no one is denied needed medical care, referrals or diagnostic tests due to cost, pre-existing conditions or because it wasn't pre-approved. U.S. waiting times are the elephant in the room few critics care to address.
But, listen to what the chief medical officer of Aetna had to say in March. Speaking to the Aetna Investor's Conference 2007, Troy Brennan let these pearls drop:
The U.S. "health care system is not timely." Recent statistics from the Institution of Healthcare Improvement document "that people are waiting an average of about 70 days to see a provider."
"In many circumstances, people initially diagnosed with cancer are waiting over a month, which is intolerable."
In his former stint as an administrator and head of a physicians' organization, he spent much of his time trying "to find appointments for people with doctors."
Brennan's comments went unreported in the major media. But some reports are now beginning to break through, spurred by the debate "SiCKO" has spawned.
Business Week reported (www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007) that "as several surveys and numerous anecdotes show, waiting times in the United States are often as bad or worse as those in other industrialized nations -- despite the fact that the United States spends considerably more per capita on health care than any other country."
A Commonwealth Fund study of six highly industrialized countries (www.commonwealthfund.org), the United States and five nations with national health systems (Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) found waiting times were worse in the United States than in all the other countries except Canada .
There's something else you probably don't hear about Canada. Substantial progress is being made. Most of the wait-time problems derive from funding cuts by conservative national or provincial governments, or from the siphoning off of resources by private providers. But precisely because the Canadian system is publicly administered, Canadians are able to force their elected officials to fix problems, or get voted out of office. Throughout Canada, there are multiple pilot programs that have succeeded in slashing wait times. Canada's latest statistics show that median wait times for elective surgery in Canada is now three weeks -- that's less time than Aetna's chief medical officer says Americans typically wait after being diagnosed with cancer.
Canada also has no waits for emergency surgeries. It also doesn't have 44 million people who are uninsured because everyone has a national health-care card guaranteeing health care from any doctor or hospital they choose. And it doesn't burden those with insurance with rising deductibles or co-pays. A study reported by Health Affairs, a policy journal, for example, found that out-of-pocket costs to U.S. consumers jumped 76 percent this year over last year alone.
Canada also surpasses the United States in a broad array of health barometers, including life expectancy, infant mortality rates, adult mortality rates, deaths due to HIV/AIDS, mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases and years of life lost to injuries and diseases, according to data from the World Health Organization and the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development.
No wonder some people are so afraid we'll learn the real comparative story about Canada's system -- and our own.
Deborah Burger, R.N.
Bryant Quinn
We Can Afford Universal health CareNewsweek
July 30, 2007
Prepare to be terrorized, shocked, scared out of your wits. No, not by jihadists or Dementors (you do read "Harry Potter," right?), but by the evil threat of ... universal health insurance! The more the presidential candidates talk it up, the wilder the warnings against it. Cover everyone? Wreck America? Do you know what care would cost?
Here are some of their canards, and my replies:
Universal coverage costs too much. No—what costs too much is the system we have now. In 2005, the United States spent 15.3 percent of gross domestic product on health care for only some of us. France spent 10.7 percent and covered everyone. The French comparison is good because its system works very much like Medicare-for-all. The other European countries, all with universal coverage, spent less than France. Why are U.S. costs off the charts? Partly because we don't bargain with providers for a universal price. Partly because of the money that health insurers spend on marketing and screening people in or out. Medicare's overhead is just 1.5 percent, compared with 13 to 16 percent in the private sector. John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a health-care consultant, says that the health insurers' overhead came to $120 billion last year, of which $40 billion was profit. By comparison, it would cost $54 billion to cover all the uninsured. Eeeek, your taxes would go up! Maybe not, if Sheils is right. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office have testified that the United States could insure everyone for the money we're spending now. But even if taxes did rise, you might still come out ahead. That's because your Medicare plan would probably cost less than the medical bills and premiums you're paying now.
We get world-class care; don't tamper with it. On average, we don't. International surveys put France in first place. On almost all measures of health care and mortality, we lag behind Canada and Europe. Many individuals do indeed get superior care, but so do people in single-payer countries, and at lower cost.
They have long waiting times. No advanced country has waiting periods for emergency surgery or procedures that are urgently needed. The United States has shorter waits than Canada and England for elective surgery. Still, queues are developing here, at the doctor's door. In a study of five developed countries, the Commonwealth Fund looked at how many sick adults had to wait six days or more for an appointment. By this measure, only Canada's record was worse than ours. But waits depend on how well a system is funded, not with the fact that it's single-payer. Many countries that cover everyone, including France, Belgium, Germany and Japan, report no issue with waits at all.
There's no problem; people get care even if they're uninsured. They don't. They get emergency treatment but little else. As a group, the uninsured are sicker, suffer more from chronic disease and rarely get rehabilitation after an injury or surgery. They also die sooner, knowing that, with insurance, they might have lived.
Right now, Congress is trying to bring 3.3 million uninsured children into the State Children's Health Insurance Program. President George W. Bush says he'll veto the expansion as "the wrong path for our nation." He objects to "government-run health care" (like Medicare?) and says that SCHIP "deprives Americans of ... choice" (like the choice to go uninsured?). Buzzwords like "government run" are supposed to summon up monsters like "socialized medicine" that apparently still lurk under our beds. If these terror tactics work, prepare for another 46 million uninsured.
You express some dismay that the world's most powerful economy does not
produce the world's best medical care. But if a nation makes the economy its
ultimate bottom line, and if that economy is unabashedly skewed to favor the
wealthiest top percent, it should hardly be surprising that its health care
system is calibrated to function in precisely the same fashion.
--Joel Brence, M.D.Aspen, Colo., Aug. 12, 2007
