from the KFF: kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/8505-the-coverage-gap-uninsured-poor-adults1.pdf very good read.
If you throw everyone in the same market, you can expect for the proliferation of concierge healthcare. Elite doctors will provide care for those willing to pay cash. The rest will sit in long lines in county health clinics waiting months on an MRI while their cancer eats them away. Prohibition was well intentioned. Unfortunately, market forces always take over.
by who and by what metric is the NHS ranked higher than ours? I am a not so wealthy guy who doesn't even have health insurance currently and I do NOT want England's healthcare. basic surgery means waiting for months. Their healthcare stinks from what I can tell.
Andorra is ranked higher too. Of course, it only has 85,000 citizens and unemployment is 2%. The WHO rankings are nothing more than diversions from the discussion. If healthcare is so much better in other countries, why do world leaders and wealthy foreign entertainers come to the medical center in Houston for heart or cancer care?
WHO rankngs are widely available. Bloomberg also has a ranking: 14. UK 46. USA www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-efficient-health-care-countries
Here is a PBS summary of the OECD report: www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/10/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries.html this information is very widely available. This a major reason we all wanted some sort of healthcare reform. I simply fail to see the dire situations you are describing in other developed countries that offer some sort of single payer plan. They are generally able to provide higher overall quality of care at much less cost than what the USA is spending. Problem with our system now is access to care and cost. overall quality is an issue but I think that if we expand access that overall quality will improve. How much it improves is something we will have to wait and see and that also depends on how much we are able to expand access. With so many red states not expanding Medicaid and not offering any alternative on the state level this will negatively inpact the goal to increase access.
What were the criteria used in the WHO report? Why do you feel those criteria are relevant? If there were more weight on criteria such as if you are diagnosed with x disease what are the best places to cure that disease the US would fare much better. Instead more weight was given to criteria such as equality of care. The rankings are all dependent on what the ranking organization values. Regardless, politicians in the US when they passed the law, argued that it would not affect various valued criteria which it most certainly does. Politicians argued and I on this board argued against, the ability of Obamacare to cover all people and lower the cost of healthcare for all people. Specifically, I stated that without attacking cost drivers that covering more people would cost more money. The main argument against my point was that cost drivers such as administrative costs and reimbursement to doctors and higher rates of diagnostic testing were being addressed. On the other hand, I argued that in most cases higher rates of diagnosis would actually increase costs, more equality in treatment would increase costs, administrative costs would continue and expand with an increase in government intervention, and reimbursement to physicians was not a cost driver and would not change as significantly as predicted. Oh well, I guess we had to pass it to see what was in it. Or we had to pass it to see if politicians were right and I was wrong, And now we have to fix the problems and throw more money into it because all programs have some bumps along the way. Do you see the fallacy in these arguments?
As you know, I already know the criteria and I've already stated why I think the report was useless except as a political tool. I bet you could even parse their data and come up with a different ranking. Each criteria on its own ma or may not be of importance. Pick the criteria and pick the weighting of each criteria and voila, you have a new ranking. You can make the US seem as good or bad as you like. Let's use medical training, hospital amenities, in-patient comfort, medical advanced procedures, medical research, and outcomes based on stage of diagnosis and you would have a totally new ranking.
hornpharm, are there any rankings that are just purely on medical care? I find it interesting that in the Bloomberg ratings on efficiency Switzerland and the US cost per capita are so much higher than anyone else on the list but are still on the list. One thing we will never know is how much those costs are responsible for medical innovation. I had an interesting conversation with a cousin who lives in Maryland right outside of DC. She is the very typical northeastern liberal (47 years of living in the northeast has over taken her 21 years of living in Texas). Her thoughts were very eye opening 1) ACA doesn't go far enough in her mind we need a single payer system, 2) the ultimate goal is equal treatment for everyone and 3) conceirge services would be against the law as money shouldn't be able to get you better health care. I'll give her that in theory this would be great but in reality it hasn't worked and won't work.
I mentioned equality of care as one of the poor criteria choices used by the World Health Organization. Quality of care was also poorly chosen as it was determined by life expectancy which has more to do with lifestyle and genetics rather than hospital-based treatment. I don't have much desire to get into it as I argued with you and groverat ad infinitum. So I have linked 2 separate articles on the problems with the WHO report. Tell me where you disagree with them and I'll be glad to discuss them with you. The Link The Link
