PrintAugust 2, 2009
Debunking myths about our 'lousy' health care system
The Hoover Institute's Scott Atlas has a list of 10 reasons why our health care system is better than in other countries.
The figures for cancer survivability are astonishing:
1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.
We also do better with treating chronic disease as well as giving more citizens wider access to preventive care, like screenings for some cancers.
Then there's the familiar fact that we spend less time waiting for health care services than elsewhere as well as being generally more satisfied with our own health care:
6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom.Finally, innovation in medicine begins and ends with America:
7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."
Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long-sometimes more than a year-to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.There is no reason for massive reform of a system that delivers such miracles. The problems with covering the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions can be dealt with and not destroy what most people seem satisfied with.
The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.
There really is no comparison - the American health care system is the best, the most modern, and the most efficient in the world.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
