Does that puncture any myths? They continue to say:AllHealth.Org wrote:The U.S. spends more than other countries on health care, both in absolute dollars and in the share of total economic activity. Health spending per capita in the U.S. was over $4,600 in 2000, more than twice the average of about $2,000 for the other industrial nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Health spending in the U.S. was 13 percent of gross domestic product, compared with Switzerland (10.7%), Germany (10.6%), Canada (9.1%), Japan (7.8%), and the United Kingdom (7.3%). Although many might equate high expenditures with excellent medical treatment, the health of the average American, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, is below the average of other major industrialized nations. This is due to a variety of factors, including diet, physical activity levels, births to teenager mothers and deaths from violence.
Naturally, they try to spin the data to make it seem as if people in other countries are constantly on waiting lists for medical care, evoking imagery of Russian bread lines (and of course, they ignore the fact that people who have extra health insurance or lots of money can still have these elective or non-governmentally covered procedures even under one of these oppressive "global" systems).Most of these nations have universal health care systems controlled through "global" (national) budgets. These budgets place an overall limit on spending, and all the players within the system-hospitals, doctors, and patients-must live within those limits. For patients, this may mean long waits for certain services, or policies that prevent anyone over a certain age from receiving expensive treatments, such as coronary bypass surgery or a hip replacement. In the U.S., there are no formal limits on who may get care. Elderly patients have elective surgeries that would be denied to them in other countries. This affects health care spending as well.
This is the second retreat for people still clinging to the myth of the American health care system's superiority; they pull their heads PARTWAY out of the sand and admit that the American health care system is overpriced and underperforming, but they pretend that its poor record is somehow mitigated by the flexibility of the free-market option, even though that option exists in other countries as well, as a SUPPLEMENT to the underlying government system (see "black/white fallacy").
I know this will sound strange to those of you who live in America, but in many countries, you do NOT see telethons to raise money for some sick child who needs surgery. That is an American oddity, necessitated by a health-care system with the worst value for money in the world. If I lived in the US, I'd be pissed off at this situation, more so when you discover what kind of money for-profit hospitals are bilking out of the system and out of their patients. I honestly don't understand why you guys aren't pissed off about it.
