The LuLac Edition #2126, July 15th, 2012
HEALTH CARE, NOT SCARE CARE
My good friend Joe Valenti of Pittston Politics decided to take the path of least resistance today in his otherwise brilliant on line reports. Valenti more than any of us has broken news stories regarding local politicos in the region. He also is a pain in the collective rear ends of the Pittston and Wyoming Area School boards. But today he put on his report an e mail about how American health care will be affected by the Affordable Health Care Act. In short the e mails that were passed to him show the difference among countries who have government run health care programs. There are comparisons of how long individuals might have to wait for procedures. At short glance, it is scary because it looks like the Affordable Health Care Act will delay procedures for the number of people on a program. Here was an example:
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
This was a report from Investor’s Daily. It would seem to indicate that we have better health care than nations who have national health care. It would also indicate that if we went down that path our health care would suffer. My question is how?
How will our health care suffer when there are 30 million more people on the books paying?
How will our health care suffer when 30 million more people are using medical services and insurance companies are paying premiums?
How will our health care be less diminished when we tax the deadbeats who won’t buy health insurance and put that money back into deficit reduction?
When this comparison is made it bothers me. We are not Canada who is content to be one of the colonies. We are not England who we broke away from in order to shape our own destiny. We are America. A country that used to be up to challenges of technology and innovation. How can a nation that landed men on the moon and brought them back safely not be able to figure out a health care plan where the majority of Americans are covered? Nowhere in this dubious data that was presented where there reasons why people in other countries had to wait for procedures. This country is more compassionate to its “less thans” than any country in the world. A lot of times we are too generous to a fault and allow our good nature to be taken advantage of. (As a compassionate liberal I also believe in accountability and tracking just what people getting welfare spend their money on). But we will not allow people to die or wait forever to have care. It is not our way. It is not our business model. We do things different here and this latest e mail making the rounds is just an example of the scare tactics being used.
WE ARE NOT FRANCE EITHER
This week on the radio I heard a story about a problem in France regarding a high animal mortality rate. Seems that when the French go on their vacations and leave their homes, they also leave their pets. When they come back, Fifi and Pierre are usually dead from starvation, malnutrition and thirst. In France, it’s just the way things are. In America, we want to string up people who are cruel to animals. We do things here a little differently than the rest of the world. If we don’t let our dogs rot in the summer, do serious people actually think we’d allow a health care system to exist that would harm our citizens?
posted by David Yonki @ 5:33 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
There is only one reason why The Affordable Care Act has not been embraced by the people in the United States. The anti Obama Republicans and their right wing cronies have done a remarkable job spreading unsubstantiated and even false information about the Act and the American public has bought into it. The misinformation posted in Pittston Politics as described in your article is a prime example of this.
One can find no information on the United Nations International Health Organization. It is not a part of the United Nations. There is no such entity. The Investors Business Daily,that is cited as publishing this story, is a right wing paper that has been a vocal critic of health care reform so it is no surprise that they are against the health care act. What is surprising is that a search of the papers archives has not found this article or the information cited!
Lets remove the politics and look at the this so called information. First of all comparing The Affordable Care Act with health care systems in England and Canada is a ruse. Both those countries have a single payer system,the Affordable Care Act is a universal payer system. In reality the health insurance industry stands to make a fortune with this act. Next, the article uses unsubstantiated statistics to validate its point. The following statistical information can be validated by a simple google search. The World Health Organization is the arm of the United Nations that studies world health care. The WHO in its most recent study ranks the U.S. 37th in health care, below both England and Canada. The U.S. spends more per capita gross national product on health care than any other nation in the world, yet we rank below most industrialized nations.
Commonwealth Fund, a non political health organization, in a study it commissioned in 2011 on the U.S. Health System found the following. In 2010 there were 81 million uninsured or underinsured people in the U.S. while in 2003 there were 61 million uninsured or underinsured. Those numbers should be decreasing not increasing. Of the 16 most industrialized nations in the world the U.S. ranks last on mortality amenable to health care. Health care that if received early enough would save lives. The study suggested that at least 91000 fewer people would die each year in the U.S. if it matched the lead countries.
Finally, if you look at infant mortality rates,a great indicator of a nations health care, you will find that we rank 34th in the world, below both England and Canada.
Am I suggesting that our health care system is bad? No. What I am suggesting is that we should be working TOGETHER, both Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives and even right wingers and left wingers, to make our health care system the best in the world instead of trying to use health care and demonizing The Affordable Care Act with half truths and misinformation to win an election.
Mr. Yonki:
I applaud your defense of the Health Care Act and I am glad you have the gifts to articulate the truth and debunk the lies being told by otherwise good people.
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