New York Times Editorial On Healthcare
This editorial lists how the US ranks almost last in every healthcare category:
For those of you too lazy to read it, here are some of the highlights:
* All other major industrialized nations provide universal health coverage, and most of them have comprehensive benefit packages with no cost-sharing by the patients. The United States, to its shame, has some 45 million people without health insurance and many more millions who have poor coverage.
* The United States ranks dead last on almost all measures of equity because we have the greatest disparity in the quality of care given to richer and poorer citizens. Americans with below-average incomes are much less likely than their counterparts in other industrialized nations to see a doctor when sick, to fill prescriptions or to get needed tests and follow-up care.
* We have known for years that America has a high infant mortality rate, so it is no surprise that we rank last among 23 nations by that yardstick. But the problem is much broader. We rank near the bottom in healthy life expectancy at age 60, and 15th among 19 countries in deaths from a wide range of illnesses that would not have been fatal if treated with timely and effective care.
Link
For those of you too lazy to read it, here are some of the highlights:
* All other major industrialized nations provide universal health coverage, and most of them have comprehensive benefit packages with no cost-sharing by the patients. The United States, to its shame, has some 45 million people without health insurance and many more millions who have poor coverage.
* The United States ranks dead last on almost all measures of equity because we have the greatest disparity in the quality of care given to richer and poorer citizens. Americans with below-average incomes are much less likely than their counterparts in other industrialized nations to see a doctor when sick, to fill prescriptions or to get needed tests and follow-up care.
* We have known for years that America has a high infant mortality rate, so it is no surprise that we rank last among 23 nations by that yardstick. But the problem is much broader. We rank near the bottom in healthy life expectancy at age 60, and 15th among 19 countries in deaths from a wide range of illnesses that would not have been fatal if treated with timely and effective care.
Link
Labels: healthcare; poverty issues
posted by torporindy at 8/14/2007
8 Comments:
So we know all of this, great - why are so many Americans afraid to make any change to the miserable mess of a system curently in place?
Universal health care coverage is utterly despicable.
As the eminent 20th-century Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand proved, the individual is an end in himself, and has no obligation to provide for another.
Universal health care is nothing more than abject slavery.
Why should those who have produced nothing of value nonetheless be entitled to the fruits of another's labor?
So, Kurt, if I accidentally set your home afire, will Ayn Rand come over and put it out?
"eminent 20th-century...philisopher" my ass.
I defy you to refute a single word she ever said or wrote.
And she might, if the price was right (and she were still alive).
Refute? Why bother when I can go out on any street corner and ask the first ten people I see the following question: Would you like to see all taxation disappear if you have to give up your police, fire, and EMT services in exchange? I think it's safe to say that I would get very few takers.
Libertarianism is a fine philosophy until you apply it to real people. And that is why Ayn Rand is a fool.
It doesn't matter how many people want it. No majority is sufficient to trump the rights of the individual.
I'm not going to debate the "finer points" of Ayn Rand's philosophy with you. But before I end this conversation, I do have a question for you: If your individual rights are so precious to you, then why not go live in the Amazon rain forest or the Gobi desert and be done with civilization altogether?
No libertarian I've ever asked has given me a satisfactory answer, but maybe you'll be the first!
I hate to pile on poor Kurt, but he really ought to read this. Pretty much nails each political philosophy to the wall. Yes, including Liberalism (to which I enthusiastically subscribe).
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