Comments on: America’s healthcare act schizophrenia

By: Bear

Bear — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:07:41 +0000

Not to be picky, but is schizophrenic really the correct term to use to describe this? :/

By: Jeff Wennberg

Jeff Wennberg — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:52:40 +0000

Once again the myth of poor US life expectancy gets repeated in support of socialized medicine. The statistic is grossly misleading and produced by a study that punishes any country without soup to nuts socialized medicine. First, the statistics include deaths resulting from automobile accidents and violent crime, both of which the US has in excess but neither of which are a reflection on the quality of health care. If we remove these two causes of death from the statistics the US moves from #19 to #1 in life expectancy in the industrialized world. This makes sense when you also consider nearly 50,000 Canadians sought treatment outside their socialized system – the vast majority coming to the US. If the US has such horrible services and embarrassing results, why do so many foreigners flock here for treatment?

The infant mortality statistics (thankfully not repeated here) are equally misleading.

As for universal health care, I agree that the US can and should achieve it. But please look to models like Switzerland and not the single payers of which there are 3 – Canada, Cuba and North Korea. Surely we can do better than that. And please let’s use real facts upon which to base our policy debate.

By: John-Manuel Andriote

John-Manuel Andriote — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 04:17:19 +0000

To add another point to your excellent summary of why universal health care coverage for every American is the only effective solution for our health care schizophrenia…We need to decouple health insurance from employment. It makes no sense for people to have access to semi-affordable health insurance only through employers’ group plans (or individual plans that are usually quite expensive). As soon as someone gets too sick to work, there goes his or her insurance–and the downward economic and medical spiral toward disaster begins. Medicare for all paid for through taxes–think of all the money you save from deductibles and co-pays!–and if you want supplemental coverage, you can pay out of pocket for it. But no American should ever face financial ruin, or untimely death, because of a medical crisis. It really is a crazy system we have.