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The Spectacle Blog
Writes commentator Deroy Murdock:
Imagine that your two best friends are British and Canadian tobacco addicts. The Brit battles lung cancer. The Canadian endures emphysema and wheezes as he walks around with clanging oxygen canisters. You probably would not think: "Maybe I should pick up smoking."
The fact that America is even considering government medicine is equally wacky. The state guides health care for our two closest allies: Great Britain and Canada. Like us, these are prosperous, industrial, Anglophone democracies. Nevertheless, compared to America, they suffer higher death rates for diseases, their patients experience severe pain, and they ration medical services.
Look what you're missing in the U.K.:
* Breast cancer kills 25 percent of its American victims. In Great Britain, the Vatican of single-payer medicine, breast cancer extinguishes 46 percent of its targets.
* Prostate cancer is fatal to 19 percent of its American patients. The National Center for Policy Analysis reports that it kills 57 percent of Britons it strikes.
* Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show that the U.K.'s 2005 heart-attack fatality rate was 19.5 percent higher than America's. This may correspond to angioplasties, which were only 21.3 percent as common there as here.
* The U.K.'s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) just announced plans to cut its 60,000 annual steroid injections for severe back-pain sufferers to just 3,000. This should save the government 33 million pounds (about $55 million). "The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients," Dr. Jonathan Richardson of Bradford Hospitals Trust told London's Daily Telegraph. "It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate."
* "Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets," Daniel Martin wrote last year in London's Daily Mail. "Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour [party] pledge. The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 911 calls. Doctors warned last night that the practice of ‘patient-stacking' was putting patients' health at risk."
Shouldn't "reform" make us better off?
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More Blog Posts by Doug Bandow
http://spectator.org/blog/2009/08/13/why-we-dont-want-government-ru
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zack| 8.13.09 @ 10:06AM
ask any medicare recipient to give up their medicare.
Solo| 8.13.09 @ 10:40AM
Zack wrote:
"ask any medicare recipient to give up their medicare. "
Non-sequitur.
The issue is not, nor has it ever been, where the money to pay for medical care comes from. The issue is about control of the actual delivery of care.
Once the government bureaucrats are the only payer of medical care, they will have sole control over how that care is administered.
Tim| 8.13.09 @ 11:30AM
I noted this morning that NPR is doing it's bit for the revolution by running hagiographic NHS stories.
Indiana Alex| 8.13.09 @ 12:55PM
Medicare, or cash for clunkers are actually great examples of what would happen with Obamacare.
The costs would greatly exceed the estimates, as the government always underestimates the demand of being able to purchase something with someone elses money.
Richard Baker| 8.13.09 @ 9:09PM
You know that government run enterprise has a track record? Dismal and destructive but a record nonetheless. Tell me, again, which activity should they be given next?
Andrew| 8.14.09 @ 12:56PM
I'm sorry to be blunt but this is total nonsense.
The average American spends more than 2.8 times as much as the average Briton on healthcare. Yet despite this, said average American gets poorer healthcare provision and dies younger.
Yes, that's right, there's a longer average life span in the UK than in the US – this is true even on the CIA World factbook which puts the US higher up the world rankings than most other sources. And the UK is ranked 18th in the world for its standard or healthcare by the World Health Organization. Not that great I'll admit but an awful lot better than the US which comes in 37th!
America is great country with a truly awful health system.
And the cost...
US:
Total cost of Medicare and Medicaid: $602bn.
Total US population: 294m.
Number served by Medicare and Medicaid: 94m.
Annual cost of Medicare/Medicaid divided by total US population: $2047
Total annual cost of US healthcare, including private spending, divided by total US population: $7900
UK:
Total cost of NHS: $167bn.
Total UK population: 61m.
Number served by NHS: 61m.
Annual cost of NHS divided by UK population: $2740
Total annual spend on private healthcare in the UK: $569m*
Total annual healthcare spend in UK divided by total UK population: $2750
*People in the UK are free to buy healthcare privately and many can afford
to do so. The fact that this figure is so low, less than $10 per citizen, is
testament to the popularity of the NHS. Even the wealthy rarely bother to go
private in spite of being both free and able to make the choice.
On a final point, Cancer Research UK will provide you with real statistics which show prostate cancer, for example, has NEVER killed 57% of those it has effected in the UK. I'm not sure it would get that high even if nothing was done.
I admire America in many ways. But it is a mystery to the rest of the World why Americans put up with being bilked over healthcare when all the get in return is a second class service and an early grave.
You could spend half the money and do so much better.
Arbon| 8.16.09 @ 12:48AM
Andrew,
government provided healthcare is not a better system.
The reasons are:
1. I don not wan't the government to control or have any access to my health.
2. I do not want someone else unless voluntarily to pay for my health. Healthcare is not a right. A right has no cost, and especially does not cost someone else.
3. Government ron healcare infringes on the rights of others. It costs money to run health care. Where does that money come from if you cant afford it. It comes from others. They do not have an obligation to take care of you, that is yours alone. They should not have to pay for your afflictions. Especially if the affliction was caused by your own doing.
So that Sir is why government run health care is not better. I admit that things can be done to improve the system we have, the best thing though would be less government involvement not more!
Enzo1990| 9.9.09 @ 6:36AM
You can cherry pick stats from any country and make it look bad -- for example, the average lifespan in the UK is longer than in the US. This is not a debate about healthcare providers, but about how it gets paid for and who has access to it. In the US, healthcare costs are the main reason for personal bankruptsy... costs here are the highest in the world, but access is limited and we suffer needlessly for it. I've lived in Europe, and although you won't like to hear it, the systems there were as good or better, and available to everyone.