Saturday, October 3, 2009
Health Care Around the World
T.R. Reid is a journalist who recently traveled the world learning about other country's health care systems. He wrote a book about it, but his findings are also distilled in this article. Reading it just makes me crazy, because it shows that we have no excuse for having our crappy system.
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9 comments:
You mean our crappy system that has produced the bulk of innovation in healthcare, cured more diseases, corrected more defects, and led to better quality of life for humanity than any other system.
Oh ya... I forgot. Its not free so it sucks...
"Cost controls stifle innovation.
False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.
Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)"
oh whoops, it seems other countries have made progress in health care as well, and they do it in more cost efficient ways.
it's not our innovation and technology that sucks, it's our delivery system. educate yourself. read the article.
Next time you get hurt, book a flight to Japan... A plane ticket plus a Japaneese MRI would be about 1/2 the price.
Yet the planes are not packed.
Hmmmm. wonder why...
And people stream across the Canadian border to pay for American healthcare when their system provides the same procedures (oh, well 15 months or more later) for free.
Hmmmm. wonder why...
Educate myself? Right back at cha!
ok soooo i argue, or i should say the article argues, that japan's health care system produces the same results (or maybe better) as our does, but much more inexpensively, and your response is-- well then why aren't people flying to japan to get mri's then? seriously?
a. i think it's obvious why no one goes to japan to get routine medical procedures.
b. your statement has nothing to do with japan having a more efficient system than ours.
as for the army of canadians coming here for health care, this article http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/19?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=snow&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1 seems to have found that it's just not true-- but the data does come from the 90's, so there's that. but still, i would love to see data showing what procedures, exactly, canadians are flocking here for. i would also like to know what sort of incomes these canadians make and how they are affording said procedures. rich people get great health care here; i wouldn't be surprised if rich canadians skipped the line there and came here as well.
My point about Canada is THE LINE. We have no line here. Why would we want one? I don't. I love my healthcare. I love my insurance. And I don't want the government screwing it up. And if/when they get there hands on it there will be a line, you can count on that. And the rich will still not have to wait in it... But I will.
once again, read the article, that was the whole reason i posted this. the point isn't to say we should become canada or single-payer. the point is to say that the world provides an array of examples and possibilities we can learn from in our own pursuit of reform. and as for the lines, the article addresses those as well--
"As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for non-emergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries. In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment."
and by the way, my employer, spectrum health, owns an insurance company-- priority health. so it's not really in my best interest that our country becomes single payer.
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