Socialized medicine
A useful data point in the largely fact-free argument between Libertarians and everyone else: private-only health care doesn't work, in the sense that it delivers substantially lower levels of public health....the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high.
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Historically, one of the cruelest aspects of unequal income distribution is that poor people not only experience material want all their lives, they also suffer more illness and die younger. But in Canada there is no association between income inequality and mortality rates-none whatsoever... What makes this study so interesting is that Canada used to have statistics that mirrored those in the United States. In 1970, U.S. and Canadian mortality rates calculated along income lines were virtually identical. But 1970 also marked the introduction of Medicare in Canada -- universal, singlepayer coverage. The simple explanation for how Canadians have all become equally healthy, regardless of income, most likely lies in the fact that they have a publicly funded, single-payer health system and the control group, the United States, does not.
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In the United States, infant mortality rates are 7.1 per 1,000, the highest in the industrialized world -- much higher than some of the poorer states in India, for example [emphasis added], which have public health systems in place, at least for mothers and infants. Among the inner-city poor in the United States, more than 8 percent of mothers receive no prenatal care at all before giving birth.
What's particularly fascinating is that this seems to be true even within the US:One recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal compares mortality rates in private forprofit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States. Research on 38 million adult patients in 26,000 U.S. hospitals revealed that death rates in for-profit hospitals are signifi cantly higher than in nonprofit hospitals: for-profit patients have a 2 percent higher chance of dying in the hospital or within 30 days of discharge. The increased death rates were clearly linked to "the corners that for-profit hospitals must cut in order to achieve a profit margin for investors, as well as to pay high salaries for administrators."
I shall reflect on this as a way of buoying up my spirits next time I have to spend five hours in A&E...
Edit: this reminds me - everyone go and visit LimeProject.org and buy a calendar if you haven't already. yourhermione, who is USian, has Hodgkin's lymphoma and her insurance doesn't cover the drugs that are keeping her alive. They're down to less than 100 calendars now, and for everyone who buys one they have donors giving an extra $50.
...
Historically, one of the cruelest aspects of unequal income distribution is that poor people not only experience material want all their lives, they also suffer more illness and die younger. But in Canada there is no association between income inequality and mortality rates-none whatsoever... What makes this study so interesting is that Canada used to have statistics that mirrored those in the United States. In 1970, U.S. and Canadian mortality rates calculated along income lines were virtually identical. But 1970 also marked the introduction of Medicare in Canada -- universal, singlepayer coverage. The simple explanation for how Canadians have all become equally healthy, regardless of income, most likely lies in the fact that they have a publicly funded, single-payer health system and the control group, the United States, does not.
...
In the United States, infant mortality rates are 7.1 per 1,000, the highest in the industrialized world -- much higher than some of the poorer states in India, for example [emphasis added], which have public health systems in place, at least for mothers and infants. Among the inner-city poor in the United States, more than 8 percent of mothers receive no prenatal care at all before giving birth.
What's particularly fascinating is that this seems to be true even within the US:One recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal compares mortality rates in private forprofit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States. Research on 38 million adult patients in 26,000 U.S. hospitals revealed that death rates in for-profit hospitals are signifi cantly higher than in nonprofit hospitals: for-profit patients have a 2 percent higher chance of dying in the hospital or within 30 days of discharge. The increased death rates were clearly linked to "the corners that for-profit hospitals must cut in order to achieve a profit margin for investors, as well as to pay high salaries for administrators."
I shall reflect on this as a way of buoying up my spirits next time I have to spend five hours in A&E...
Edit: this reminds me - everyone go and visit LimeProject.org and buy a calendar if you haven't already. yourhermione, who is USian, has Hodgkin's lymphoma and her insurance doesn't cover the drugs that are keeping her alive. They're down to less than 100 calendars now, and for everyone who buys one they have donors giving an extra $50.