"BEST" health care you say?

[high fly]

We have heard those opposed to national health care state that we have the best health care system in the world.
All their pundits, from Shawn Manatee, to Limpbough, Ingraham, etc. make this assertion, so I figured this would be a good place for conservatives to put links to studies showing us to lead the world in any aspect of health care quality.

Why, I'm sure they got all kinds-a stuff from Newsmax, Weakly Standard, Drudge, etc. that will show us what the "Main Stream Drive-By Left-Wing Media" refuses to tell us.

Stand back and give-em room................

[Bulldogcakes]

The Golden Age of Medical Innovation (http://www.american.com/archive/2007/march-april-magazine-contents/the-golden-age-of-medical-innovation)

Too many to list.

Now post the mile long list of Canadian Medical innovations. I'm waiting.

[Fezticle98]

The Golden Age of Medical Innovation (http://www.american.com/archive/2007/march-april-magazine-contents/the-golden-age-of-medical-innovation)

Too many to list.

Now post the mile long list of Canadian Medical innovations. I'm waiting.

From the article:

John Calfee shows that innovation in drugs and medical devices in the U.S. is rampant. New treatments are fighting breast cancer, macular degeneration, rheumatoid arthritis, and many more diseases. Why the success?

Great. Too bad the 40 million uninsured can't afford these great drugs and medical devices. Profit motivates these medical inventions, but it also motivates cuts in healthcare and penny pinching by HMOs.

[furie]

how many heath care reform threads do we need? seriously, isn't this the third one started this month?

[scottinnj]

Fourth, if you include the tangent we all went off into on the "Drudge shows his bias..." thread.

[scottinnj]

From the article:

John Calfee shows that innovation in drugs and medical devices in the U.S. is rampant. New treatments are fighting breast cancer, macular degeneration, rheumatoid arthritis, and many more diseases. Why the success?

Great. Too bad the 40 million uninsured can't afford these great drugs and medical devices. Profit motivates these medical inventions, but it also motivates cuts in healthcare and penny pinching by HMOs.

I think Bulldogcakes was responding to the notion that we somehow are lacking in healthcare innovations and breakthroughs as opposed to socialized countries.
As for the delivery system that gets that great healthcare to all of us, I see your point too.

[scottinnj]

Why, I'm sure they got all kinds-a stuff from Newsmax, Weakly Standard, Drudge, etc. that will show us what the "Main Stream Drive-By Left-Wing Media" refuses to tell us.

Stand back and give-em room................

You make the assertion that all these media outlets are lying to you, so they must be automatically deleted from the debate.
Dude, some of your stuff in this board is great, I'm right with you. But the unwavering attitude and willingness to smear and shout down you accuse us of you do about 50% of the time in here.

Ratchet it down a bit, and let's talk! If not, join this group (http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupProfile&groupID=100416545&categoryID=16&Mytoken=50184070-4D41-48BF-8DDF19A5F821469A89309175) and name call all you want-that's all they want to hear over there.

[high fly]

From the article:

John Calfee shows that innovation in drugs and medical devices in the U.S. is rampant. New treatments are fighting breast cancer, macular degeneration, rheumatoid arthritis, and many more diseases. Why the success?

Great. Too bad the 40 million uninsured can't afford these great drugs and medical devices. Profit motivates these medical inventions, but it also motivates cuts in healthcare and penny pinching by HMOs.


I believe I saw where the U.S. Census Bureau put the number at 45 million, or 15% of our population.
Maybe that's the sort of "rationing" that the right-wingers of scared of....

[high fly]

The Golden Age of Medical Innovation (http://www.american.com/archive/2007/march-april-magazine-contents/the-golden-age-of-medical-innovation)

Too many to list.

Now post the mile long list of Canadian Medical innovations. I'm waiting.

I have no doubt that Americans make many innovations and discoveries in medicine.
If that was the subject, this would be a fine link.

Bulldog, the subject is quality of health care, specifically in what area of health care are we number 1?

I don't care about Canada, this is about America having the best health care in the world and I want to see that assertion supported.


Try again.

Remember.

Health care quality. America. Number one.

[high fly]

You make the assertion that all these media outlets are lying to you, so they must be automatically deleted from the debate.

Nawwwwww, man, I'm just trying to have some fun as well as demonstrate my generous nature by even requesting the ol' right-wing stand-bys.
I'm looking for anything, ANYTHING that supports the assertion that we have the best quality health care in the world.
I used to believe the same thing, then I saw the infant mortality rates, the longevity figures and then the stat that something like 100,000 Americans die because of medical mistakes each year.

Since many believe what I once did, this is their opportunity to present support for their assertion.
Hopefully, when they do their own searches and keep coming up with the same dismal results the rest of us have, they will realize something is dreadfully wrong in this country. I don't believe we have the best health care in the world and I am pissed off that though we spend far more than other countries, we get less quality care and don't cover 15% of our fellow citizens.
My opinion aside, the subject here is how and where it can be shown that we have the best health care system in the world.



Dude, some of your stuff in this board is great, I'm right with you. But the unwavering attitude and willingness to smear and shout down you accuse us of you do about 50% of the time in here.

Ratchet it down a bit, and let's talk! If not, join this group (http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupProfile&groupID=100416545&categoryID=16&Mytoken=50184070-4D41-48BF-8DDF19A5F821469A89309175) and name call all you want-that's all they want to hear over there.

Thanks for the kind words.
I pretty much post what I think, though I like to sprinkle in a few bon mots to spice it up.
I don't recall accusing anyone of shouting me down, nor do I recall being accused of doing so.
I don't recall accusing anyone of smearing me, nor do I recall anyone accusing me of smearing them.
Of course there are many posts I miss, since I can't be here as often as I'd like.

Anyone who feels I have smeared them or shouted them down is welcome top let me know by pm.

[scottinnj]

Gotcha! Now let me ask you something. Are you mainly interested in a government run and financed health care delivery system, or some sort of socialized health care with private insurance somewhere in the mix?

[Recyclerz]

At the risk of upsetting my fellow traveler High Fly, I'm afraid I'm going to re-derail his thread with a discussion about the complicated situation of the pharmaceutical industry, which tends to get mischaracterized in discussions about what to do about the healthcare crisis in the US. Full disclosure to make it easier to attack my ideas: 1. I'm half a commie;
2. I draw a nice paycheck from a global Big Pharma company.

I think we have to start the discussion with the basic facts: pharmaceuticals are a global business. Both parts of that phrase have to be crunched to get the full flavor of where we, as US healthcare consumers, are. First the business part: Pharma is a risky business. A company usually has to drop tens of millions of dollars turning an idea (chemical compound or biologic process) into a product that both treats or cures a disease and doesn't have bad side effects (or perceived bad side effects) with no guarantee that the product will make it to market or be successful (ie. make its investment back plus enough to support a 15-20% profit margin). Plus, the patent only lasts for a finite time so they have to cash in while they can. OK, you say, it's a basic tenet of business - high risk, high reward. These potential big Lotto hits are what keeps American business always hustling and coming up with great new stuff. True, but only partly so.

All the Big Pharma companies are global entities, regardless of where their headquarters are located. The products, once they are approved, are marketed globally once the individual national regulators give them the OK and in virtually all cases are exactly the same chemical or biologic product. So why do we (the US) pay more than everybody else? By nationalizing (to greater or lesser extents) their health care the other industrialized countries have given themselves negotiating leverage with the global companies. The Companies don't like it because it reduces their return on investment but, because the markets are so big, they take a much lower profit margin to keep the business. The only major country that hasn't taken advantage of its size/power/leverage to reduce the costs of these medicines for its citizens is the US. I suspect this is partly due to our ideology and partly due to lots of lobbying down in DC. This has led to the distorted economics of the industry wherein the vast majority of the profits of Big Pharma are made in the US and are then re-invested globally to benefit everybody in the world that can afford to buy the stuff.

OK, say my pinko buddies, why should the US consumer get screwed? Let's use the same techniques as the other industrialized countries and get our people reasonably priced medicines. Again true, but not the whole story. At this point in time if the US were to put the pressure on pharma companies to cut their margins I believe there really would be a significant drop in $ going into healthcare research because the economics of the industry would change - high risk - mediocre rewards. The only way to rationalize the economics would be to convince the other rich countries to pay more for their medicines. Anybody wanna make a bet on that happening?

A further complicating factor is India. They have a lot of good engineers and scientists and much weaker intellectual property laws than Europe or North America. As such, there are a lot of "generic" drugs being sold globally out of India competing with branded drugs that the companies thought were protected by patents.

So what's the solution? I dunno, I'm not that smart. Go ask East Side Dave.

[high fly]

Gotcha! Now let me ask you something. Are you mainly interested in a government run and financed health care delivery system, or some sort of socialized health care with private insurance somewhere in the mix?

I am open to all posibilities and have not settled on one system.
One thing seems pretty obvious, and that is that many other countries have systems that provide health care as good or better than ours, at lower cost and every citizen is covered.
To improve, nothing new seems to be required.
We could do a lot better by just copying other countries.

Back in the early 90s, it was established that health care costs were rising faster than incomes, with no reversal in sight.
It was also recognized that having tens of millions of our fellow citizens without health coverage was also unacceptable.
The Clinton administration offered a plan that would address these issues. The Republicans also had a plan, which they said they would implement once the Clinton proposal was shot down.
Still waiting on that Republican plan.

When it comes to costs, notice how suddenly SOME people get all concerned with where the money is going to come from, meanwhile not a peep out of-em when we spend $500,000,000,000+ in Iraq.
One advantage of having a national system that covers everyone (plus a factor driving our own costs per person upward) is that with more regular examinations and testing, more maladies can be caught in their early stages before more extreme symptoms appear. This way the patient can be treated sooner at less cost.

It pisses me off that so many other countries do better than us.
I love my country, I love my fellow citizens and I believe in my country. We have shown that when we put our minds to it we can do what seems impossible. We just need to get to the place where to not give health coverage to a fellow American is just plain wrong.

I have spent a considerable amount of time in France. They have their good points and bad ones. They are the masters of adding layers of bureaucracy to gum the works up in business, for example.
But they came to the conclusion long ago that they would cover every citizen and give them high-quality care and they did it and do it very well. None of my friends there ever complained about "rationing" and they chose their own doctor. I was living around the corner from the Institut Pasteur just after Rock Hudson came there for AIDS treatment he could not get in America. That an American would have to do that made a strong impression on me. Unless I am mistaken, it was the French who developed the "cocktail" used to treat AIDS patients nowadays, and no longer are they given 10 or fewer years to live.
They cover every citizen and do so for for a lot less money than we do. The quality is as good as can be found anywhere.

We are justifiably proud of the medical research and breakthroughs that take place in America, many of which are listed in Bulldog's post.
But in comparing our health care (or research) to other nations, we must compare to other nations!
Bulldog's post doesn't do that.
Many on the right do not seem aware that while foreigners often come to the US for medical treatment, they also flock to other Western nations for treatment as well.
The first summer in Paris, I was living on rue Plumet above a small internationally-known company that made prostheses and had patients come from around the world.
That doesn't mean that no one went to America for prostheses or that they could not get as good a quality of new leg in the U.S.
We need to understand that other countries conduct great research and make new discoveries just like America does (and will move ahead of us in stem cell research, if they haven't already, the way foreigners have gotten ahead of us in cloning animals).

[Yerdaddy]

Here's China's contribution to quality health care. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071000165_pf.html)

Here's the Bush administration's. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071001422_pf.html)

[A.J.]

Here's China's contribution to quality health care. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071000165_pf.html)

China Executes Former Head of Food, Drug Safety

China's on to something here!

[drjoek]

how many heath care reform threads do we need? seriously, isn't this the third one started this month?

Furie Not to change the subject BUT I got ripped unmercifully for using that same avatar. I'm 100% irish with parents right off the boat but people didn't see the irony in me using it.

[high fly]

The Golden Age of Medical Innovation (http://www.american.com/archive/2007/march-april-magazine-contents/the-golden-age-of-medical-innovation)

Too many to list.


Bulldog, I quickly read the article.
It told of many innovations in medicine, but did not show us as leading the world in quality of health care.
How can an article that does not compare to the rest of the world, compare to the rest of the world?

You answered a question that was not asked.



Here is the question, again.
Please note the part highlighted in bold type.

We have heard those opposed to national health care state that we have the best health care system in the world.
All their pundits, from Shawn Manatee, to Limpbough, Ingraham, etc. make this assertion, so I figured this would be a good place for conservatives to put links to studies showing us to lead the world in any aspect of health care quality.

[furie]

Furie Not to change the subject BUT I got ripped unmercifully for using that same avatar. I'm 100% irish with parents right off the boat but people didn't see the irony in me using it.

who"ripped" you for it and why?
my parents are from ireland too, don't know what that has to do with anything though....

[sailor]

what does it even mean?

[furie]

it's from the venture brothers on adult swim. basiclly it's the venture equivalent of Dormammu just as Dr orpheus is really Dr Strange.

[scottinnj]

China's on to something here!

Yeah, Time to fire up 'ol Sparky!

[high fly]

WAY-WAY-WAY-WAY-WAY-WAITA MINUTE HERE!


WHAT'S THIS "SPARKY" SHIT?



BULLDOG WAS ABOUT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION THAT WAS ASKED INSTEAD OF THE ONE THAT WASN'T!

STAND BACK AND GIVE THE MAN SOME ROOM, HERE!





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