Politics Wed -- The Issues: Healthcare

HEALTH CARE IN THE U.S (FROM WIKIPEDIA)

The U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations that do not offer access to healthcare.

84% of Americans have health insurance.

59% receive that insurance through their employer.

9% purchase health insurance directly.

27% are covered by government resources.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, since 2001, premiums have risen 78% while wages have risen 19% and inflation has risen 17%.

Certain publicly-funded health care programs help to provide for the elderly, disabled, children, veterans, and the poor, and federal law ensures public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay. U.S. government programs accounted for over 45% of health care expenditures, making the U.S. government the largest insurer in the nation.

HEALTH CARE POLICY TYPES (FROM WIKIPEDIA)

Health care can be financed in combinations of four basic ways. Provision can be public or private. Finance can be public or private.

A. Public Provision / Private Finance -- example: Private insurers can buy services from publicly owned hospitals
B. Public Provision / Public Finance -- example: health can be provided by publicly financed staff in publicly financed hospitals
C. Private Provision / Private Finance – example: A private hospital which is financed by private health insurance schemes is an example of private finance and provision
D. Private Provision / Public Finance -- example: A self-employed doctor working for the National Health Service is an example of private provision with public finance

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

Definition (FROM WIKIPEDIA): Universal health care refers to government programs intended to ensure that all citizens, and sometimes permanent residents, of a governmental region have access to most types of health care. Patients may pay for some portion of their care directly, but most care is subsidized by taxpayers and/or by compulsory health insurance.

The major argument surrounding this issue: The level of health care provided will suffer if we have a Universal Health Care system.

“The United States is famously the world leader in medical innovation--in part, it would seem, because we spend like a drunken sailor when it comes to medical care. Today, we devote 16 percent of our gross domestic product to health care, by far the largest proportion of any country in the world. (The highest spending country in Europe, Switzerland, devotes just 12 percent.) That huge, largely uncontrolled spending translates into large profits for health care companies, offering an incentive for them to do research and development ... While the United States is a world leader in cancer care, other countries, such as France, Sweden, and Switzerland, boast overall survival rates that are nearly comparable. For some variants--such as cervical cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and two common forms of leukemia--the U.S. survival rate, although good, lags behind at least some other countries. You may also have heard critics complain that universal health care inevitably leads to long lines for treatments, as it sometimes has in Britain and Canada. Again, the facts just don't back that up. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, France and Germany don't have chronic waiting lines. … None of which is to say a universal coverage system couldn't have a chilling effect on innovation while severely pinching access to medical care … All it would take was a system that had both a rigid budget and very low funding. The British have such a system, or something approximating it. Even after some recent spending increases, they still devote just 9 percent of the gross domestic product to health care, less than many European nations and a little more than half of what the United States spends. And that shows up in the availability of cutting-edge care. Relative to other highly developed countries, Britain is one of the last to get the latest cancer drugs to its patients. And that probably helps explain why British cancer survival rates generally lag, too.” (FROM The New Republic – PERSONAL NOTE: This article is very good at presenting both side of the issue if you want to read on about it.)

U.S. ranks 23rd in infant mortality, 20th in life expectancy for women, 21st for life expectancy for men, 67th in immunizations (behind Botswana). (FROM Connecticut Coalition for Universal Health Care – PERSONAL NOTE: This site is obviously slanted and I didn’t double check these figures)

This is all I had time to come up with but it’s good to digest at least the figures at the beginning and make your own assessment. I really wanted to break it down further and explore Medicaid/Medicare, perscription drugs and cost to employers. Perhaps I will revisit this one after the primaries once we've covered more of the other issues. I highly recommend the article from the The New Republic site as I didn't find it very biased (even though the entire site is deemed biased by some).

Here are some other good links:

http://www.familiesusa.org/issues/uninsured/coverage/ (has articles on local legislation in regard to health care)

http://www.nchc.org/ (has survey on health care issues – doesn’t show results or how you compare to others, it just informational for them)

http://www.kff.org/ (has a lot of information the multiple health care topics)


SOAPBOX AREA!

It seems to me that the Universal Health Care option isn't really the "end-all-be-all" solution. But what IS the solution!! I like the idea that the TNR article presents -- "Ultimately, whether innovation would continue to thrive under universal health care depends entirely on what kind of system we create and how well we run it." Can our bureaucratic, red-tape laden government run such a system?