Posted on 04/04/2008 10:11:17 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake
Five myths of health care
Fictions don't become facts through repetition.
Keep that in mind next time you hear a politician breathlessly decry the horrors of the American health-care system and then explain how he intends to fix it. Some of the most popular talking points in the health-care debate pass as the gospel truth simply because, well, they're popular — not because they're true.
Below, I debunk the five most prominent health-care myths:
(1) Forty-seven million Americans do not have health insurance.
This figure comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. What most people don't know, however, is that the Bureau counts anyone who went without health insurance during any part of the previous year as "uninsured." So if you weren't covered for just one day in 2007, you're one of the 47 million.
That also includes 10.2 million illegal immigrants, and about 14 million people who are eligible for public health-care programs like Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program but have yet to enroll. And nearly 10 million of the "uninsured" have household incomes of more than $75,000 — so they can probably afford to buy health insurance but choose not to.
(2) Universal health-care coverage can be achieved via "individual mandate."
According to the federal census, nearly two-thirds of the uninsured are aged 18 to 34. This makes sense — healthy people aren't going to pay for expensive insurance they'll never use.
Those who support an "individual mandate" — like Sen. Hillary Clinton and several governors — believe by legally requiring all Americans to buy health insurance the young and the healthy will increase the size of the risk pool and therefore lower premiums for everyone. As a way to enforce an individual mandate, Mrs. Clinton has suggested garnishing wages.
But many states require insurers to charge everyone the same rate. So young people would end up paying far more in premiums than they should — or could — pay. It's patently unfair to force people to purchase insurance they can't afford. Even in Massachusetts, which offers substantial premium subsidies for low-income residents, the government had to exempt a fifth of Bay Staters from the individual mandate because insurance was still so expensive. And, the plan is already $147 million over budget.
The real way to attract young adults into the insurance market is to lower premiums — not to impose draconian sanctions. This can be done by having states reduce costly mandates like coverage of in-vitro fertilization and by allowing people to buy insurance across state lines.
(3) Expensive prescription drugs are a big reason health-care costs increase.
The real price of prescription drugs is actually decreasing. In 2007, inflation rose more than 4 percent, while drug prices increased just 1 percent. So in real terms, drugs were 3 percent cheaper last year than in 2006, on average.
What's more, drug spending is but a small slice of total health-care spending — less than 11 cents out of every health-care dollar goes to prescription meds.
And drugs actually reduce health-care costs in the long-term. Medicare, for instance, saves $2.06 for every additional dollar it spends on pharmaceutical drugs, according to a paper recently published by the National Bureau for Economic Research. Prescription drugs often obviate the need for expensive surgeries and hospital stays.
(4) Drug importation will save patients a fortune.
At most, according to the Congressional Budget Office, foreign drug importation would save Americans 1 percent over the next decade.
Brand-name drugs are cheaper in foreign countries because their governments impose price controls. Drug-makers can only afford to sell pills at cut-rate, controlled prices in Europe and Canada because Americans pay full price.
If American politicians allow foreign drugs to enter the U.S. market, they'll in effect import price controls too. Such action will not only create practical problems, like shortages but also deny firms the return on investment necessary to plunge into the next round of research and development into new cures.
It takes nearly $1 billion to bring a new drug to market. Investors are willing to make such a risky investment because the rewards of developing a cure for Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, AIDS or diabetes are considerable. If the profit motive vanishes, the miracle cures for which America's drug industry is responsible would vanish.
(5) The state-run health-care systems in Canada and Europe are better and cheaper than America's.
People who make this claim usually note that life expectancy is higher in Canada and Europe. But life expectancy is influenced by a number of variables aside from the quality of a country's health-care system — like diet, genetics, exercise, smoking, pollution and even marital status.
A study published last year in the British medical journal the Lancet suggests America is much better at treating cancer than Europe or Canada. Researchers found Americans have a better survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers. An American man has nearly a 20 percent better chance of living for five years after being diagnosed with cancer than his European counterpart.
This study's findings tell us a lot more about the quality of a health-care system than life expectancy rates do, because the relationship between treatment and outcomes is tighter, clearer and more direct.
Sally C. Pipes is president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Research Institute and author of "Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health-Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer."
1. A NHS can and does deny care and postpone care. Much worse than our current system.
2. You can't sue the government. No matter what goes wrong in your medical care, no one is held accountable.
3. Be prepared to spend your whole day at the Surgery (local clinic). No appointments just like a walk-in clinic.
4. No cutting edge medicine. You have to accept the limitations of what the Gov’t will reimburse.
National health care sounds good and caring but beware, it has a really dark underbelly.
so do the proponents of it
Great post. Thanks.
Just another step on the road to the workers' paradise...
Being unconstitutional is hardly a speed bump for the nanny staters; it's for our own good doncha know. FWIW, the disease appears to be spreading to some of our very own Pubbies.
de nada ;^)
I think if the public ever came to Germany or the UK...and examined the healthcare program that is running...there would be a bit of disenchantment over the results.
Here in Germany...the hospitals, doctors, nurses and drug companies are all set to a certain amount of profit. None are happy about the current effect. If you walk into a German hospital...you will notice that most patients sit in a room where there are five or six beds. Private room are for private insurance folks.....who pay more and get more service. The drug companies have various things rigged up so that they end up with more money...but they are under constant investigation with these various schemes. Nurse and doctors are leaving Germany in pretty good numbers...tired of the non-existent pay increases and the dim future of social heathcare.
myth number 6:
Enrolling and spending somebody else’s money on a health care plan has more effect on individual health than a persons own eating and exercise habits which can be done for free.
“Average Life Span” is not an accurate way to compare American health care to Canada and Europe. America has more auto deaths, more murders, and more non-white residents. When non-violent white deaths in the USA are compared to non-violent white deaths elsewhere, American lifespans are always the same or better.
The Democrat party can only survive by having large portions of the electorate uninformed misinformed. For example, if you do a Goebbel search for this article, which has been around for over a week, it was picked up by very few media outlets. Only one of which that could be marginally included within the MSM - The Washington Times.
Needless to say, our Troops are still kicking a$$ in all theaters of the war on the mohammedans and, thankfully, my Blue Cross Blue Shield still only costs me 90 bucks a month (Yeah, I know my true cost). I mentioned that we have the finest health care in the world, probably the universe for that matter, and that she spends more buying her lunch and coffee but doesn't feel that is too much.
They haven't announced phase II. If you don't eat right and give up your various vices -- no health care for you friend.
“If you don’t eat right and give up your various vices — no health care for you friend. “
Yep, that is what this is all about, they want to control every aspect of our life, including our bodies, what we eat, what we think what we say, how we labor, and our carbon we exhale, they want to raise our kids, and tell us how to have sex.
The human race is in a debate between evolving from a mammal based individuals to something equivalent to an ant colony. Liberals are just a bunch of insect lovers who want humans to be no different, like worker bees who have to eat and work and have sex according to master plan . What we need to stop liberals are some of those insect strips, or unleash a few anteaters at their conventions.
It's worse than that... worker bees are females and don't get to have sex at all.
Only drones, who are male, get to have sex with the queen, who is nothing but a breeder who never had the job of worker bee. She's been raised to be a breeder by being given special food in the larval stage. Once the drone has sex with the queen he's pretty much useless and disposable.
Well said.
The human race I think is in a debate that is related to the Bill Bill Gates' style confidence (on another thread) that as China prospers, the world prospers and the U.S. will be reduced in importance commensurate with its percentage of the population, and everything will be just great. What an idiot. Has he thought at all about the history of our civilizations?
We're in a debate about the smartest, best educated, best disciplined, most humane minorities forming alliances and taking point by force if necessary on the path to human thriving, or degenerating to majorities of anarchy, ignorance, cruelty, slavery, and brutal control. At its core it is a moral and even religious issue. It's been happening for centuries and it's going to keep happening no matter who we elect president.
One thing poisonous to America now is poor education, which makes a population gullible enough to buy into the health care myth, global warming, the "recession," and socialism, and lull them into not remembering the joy and greatness in full freedom of Americans during our first two centuries.
bookmark for later.
The solutions are actually pretty simple, as this article shows. The only problem with the solutions is that they don't promote statism.
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