NBC: The Waiting Game
- From: "Calvin Jones & the 13th Apostle" <O_Mary_Dont_You_Weep@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:42:07 -0400
Another Krugman piece. He's right. Where is Bush's "Compassionate
Conservativism"? If the Democrats knew how to exploit it, they could
relegate the Republicans to the dustbin of history. He has all sorts of
money for the war, and none for 4 1/2 million uninsured American kids?
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/opinion/16krugman.html
The Waiting Game
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 16, 2007
Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. "I
mean, people have access to health care in America," he said last week.
"After all, you just go to an emergency room."
This is what you might call callousness with consequences. The White House
has announced that Mr. Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend
health insurance, and with it such essentials as regular checkups and
preventive medical care, to an estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured
children. After all, it's not as if those kids really need insurance - they
can just go to emergency rooms, right?
O.K., it's not news that Mr. Bush has no empathy for people less fortunate
than himself. But his willful ignorance here is part of a larger picture: by
and large, opponents of universal health care paint a glowing portrait of
the American system that bears as little resemblance to reality as the scare
stories they tell about health care in France, Britain, and Canada.
The claim that the uninsured can get all the care they need in emergency
rooms is just the beginning. Beyond that is the myth that Americans who are
lucky enough to have insurance never face long waits for medical care.
Actually, the persistence of that myth puzzles me. I can understand how
people like Mr. Bush or Fred Thompson, who declared recently that "the
poorest Americans are getting far better service" than Canadians or the
British, can wave away the desperation of uninsured Americans, who are often
poor and voiceless. But how can they get away with pretending that insured
Americans always get prompt care, when most of us can testify otherwise?
A recent article in Business Week put it bluntly: "In reality, both data and
anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or
longer than patients living with universal health-care systems."
A cross-national survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund found that
America ranks near the bottom among advanced countries in terms of how hard
it is to get medical attention on short notice (although Canada was slightly
worse), and that America is the worst place in the advanced world if you
need care after hours or on a weekend.
We look better when it comes to seeing a specialist or receiving elective
surgery. But Germany outperforms us even on those measures - and I suspect
that France, which wasn't included in the study, matches Germany's
performance.
Besides, not all medical delays are created equal. In Canada and Britain,
delays are caused by doctors trying to devote limited medical resources to
the most urgent cases. In the United States, they're often caused by
insurance companies trying to save money.
This can lead to ordeals like the one recently described by Mark Kleiman, a
professor at U.C.L.A., who nearly died of cancer because his insurer kept
delaying approval for a necessary biopsy. "It was only later," writes Mr.
Kleiman on his blog, "that I discovered why the insurance company was
stalling; I had an option, which I didn't know I had, to avoid all the
approvals by going to 'Tier II,' which would have meant higher co-payments."
He adds, "I don't know how many people my insurance company waited to death
that year, but I'm certain the number wasn't zero."
To be fair, Mr. Kleiman is only surmising that his insurance company risked
his life in an attempt to get him to pay more of his treatment costs. But
there's no question that some Americans who seemingly have good insurance
nonetheless die because insurers are trying to hold down their "medical
losses" - the industry term for actually having to pay for care.
On the other hand, it's true that Americans get hip replacements faster than
Canadians. But there's a funny thing about that example, which is used
constantly as an argument for the superiority of private health insurance
over a government-run system: the large majority of hip replacements in the
United States are paid for by, um, Medicare.
That's right: the hip-replacement gap is actually a comparison of two
government health insurance systems. American Medicare has shorter waits
than Canadian Medicare (yes, that's what they call their system) because it
has more lavish funding - end of story. The alleged virtues of private
insurance have nothing to do with it.
The bottom line is that the opponents of universal health care appear to
have run out of honest arguments. All they have left are fantasies: horror
fiction about health care in other countries, and fairy tales about health
care here in America.
.
- Prev by Date: Re: To Any Non US Fans
- Next by Date: Re: nbc Don't bring 'em home, send 'em to Afghanistan nbc
- Previous by thread: Hi Hi Hi.....ARE YOU Searching for Happiness ?
- Next by thread: NBC - Pres. Clinton Still Leading Pres. Bush 8 1/2 to 6
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
