I guess in Spidey's world, the U.S. is doing just fine with health care. And I guess he's right in some sense in that the U.S. has some of the most advanced medical care in the world.
So, why then is the U.S. lagging well behind most other industrialized nations in infant mortality rates? The U.S. is ranked 29th......thank goodness there's Poland and Slovakia! At least we're doing better than they are....oh, my bad. We're tied with them in infant mortality rates. But we're doing better than Chile and Russia!! Even so, we're doing much worse than countries like Cuba, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and all the major nations of the world (incl. Norway, Germany, Britian, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Holland, Australia, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Japan, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, and Ireland.)
(Statistics are from 2004, the latest year of worldwide infant mortality rates available.....)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07stat.html
There is a major problem with our health care system. And that is it's being run by companies trying to make a profit from delivering health care payments to providers. When you have that scenario, you have costs that skyrocket. And that's seen in the over 47 million uninsured people in this country who cannot afford health insurance. Sure, some included in that number are illegal aliens who wouldn't buy any in the first place, but the overwhelming majority of those are U.S. citizens who simply cannot afford the upwards of $300/mo to buy single person coverage out of pocket. It's simply unaffordable.
Now why is it so darned expensive to get health insurance if you're paying for it yourself.....or even via work? Simply put, the huge numbers of uninsured and their health care costs are being transferred to the insured, so essentially we all are already paying for everyone's health care, it's just the "tax" is being hidden in your insurance premiums. The uninsured do seek out health care when seriously ill.....they simply avoid MD's offices and urgent care facilities as their choice of care givers because of insurance/payment requirements. And they avoid seeking care for minor problems, at least what seem to be minor initially. But when the minor problem eventually escalates to a major health problem, the choice the uninsured population is left with for care is the emergency room at the local hospital, the absolute most expensive route to obtain care.
And since ER's are expressly forbidden to refuse to see anyone who comes in the door seeking care, everyone gets seen no matter the ability to pay. Well, in truth, this applies only to facilities that accept Federal dollars/payments for things like Medicare/Medicaid, but once a medical facility accepts payments from those entities, they fall under the Federal law requiring them to see anyone, payments be damned.
So, the hospital absorbs the costs of these non-paying patients. And while it's true that some hospitals do receive payments from local government entities to help defray the cost of indigent care, the vast majority of their cost is shifted to those with insurance. Why else would a box of Kleenex cost $10 or the other horrendous charges for seemingly innocuous items like IV tubing, IV solutions, cotton balls, Chux, etc.? It's just cost shifting and we all pay for it.
And remember, these costs are only what the hospital is shifting. Physicians are having to do the same thing. MD's are typically not directly employed by hospitals but are independent contractors working in hospitals, although some may be employed by the hospital, specifically those staffing the ER. But again, the vast majority of physicians are independent contractors with hospital privileges, meaning they bring in the paying customers, or patients, and by doing that, allow the hospital to generate some cash flow. That's why you get a hospital bill from a stay and then get separate bills from a radiologist (if you had any radiological services performed and had the results read) or from the surgeon or your attending physician.
And even having health insurance is no panacea for the average patient, unfortunately. In a new study published by the American Journal of Medicine, it was found in a random survey of over 2300 bankrupty filings during the first half of 2007, using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters (75%) had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.
Sources:
http://www.examiner.com/x-1575...ue-to-healthcare-costs
http://www.pnhp.org/new_bankru...dy/Bankruptcy-2009.pdf
Now I know that the conservative Fraser Institute came up with differing conclusions in a study earlier this year, but what was skewed about that "review" of bankruptcy filings was that the Fraser Institute only looked at court filings and records and used only that to determine if the person(s) filing for bankruptcy had medical reasons for filing. Now this is where it gets really intriguing?and may go some distance toward explaining the Fraser study findings. According to the Journal study, other studies have been overlooking bankruptcies related to medical costs and jobs lost to illness because of the way the studies were designed.
Other studies on bankruptcy were problematic because they were based solely on court records. Even though they showed that rates of medical bankruptcy were substantial, these court-based studies often understated medical bankruptcies. Why? Many medical debts were not recognizable on court records.
Many medical debts were disguised as credit card debt or mortgages. Most medical debtors charged health care they couldn?t afford to credit cards or they mortgaged their homes to pay for medical bills. In addition, debts due to hospitalization or doctor visits?which were turned over to collection agencies?were not usually recognizable on court records.
Another set of weirdness in the Fraser study was the fact that the "study" claimed the Canadian and American health care access and conditions were essentially the same and yet are vastly different. Strange, that. In fact, Fraser claimed in their findings on Page 2 of the study that, "Drug insurance is structured almost identically, so exposure to drug costs is similar in both countries.", which is utter bullshit as we know drug costs in Canada are much lower than in the U.S.
Fraser's study also found that, "Access to medical care for people who experience long-term unemployment, disability from illness, and chronic low-income status is practically the same in both countries, being facilitated by non-profit, publicly funded community health centers (NACHC, 2009) and public programs like Medicaid in the US, and government-run systems in Canada." And we know that is utter crap, too, as the problem in the U.S. is just the fact that the unemployed and low-income populations in the U.S. typically have no insurance nor access to medical care outside of the aforementioned ER visits, but I guess that's just the non-profit publicly funded community health care centers the Fraser study is referring to.
In other words, the Fraser paper seems to contradict itself: the whole point of the argument relies on the idea that the Canadian health-care system is so other, so foreign, so different from the U.S. system.
But, I guess this all flies out the door to the irrational that still cling to the notion that our health care system is infallible and has nothing needing to be changed about it at all. I just wonder what the tune being sung would be if/when the people singing the tired "Nothing wrong here, why change?" song get hit with a $10,000 set of bills from a $100,000 acute care and rehab costs from suffering a stroke? Or have to start begging for handouts because their precious health insurance won't pay for a bone marrow transplant to cure adult onset leukemia, a treatment that'll run in six figures easily.