Greedy Trial Lawyer
Some Rational Talk About Health Care In The U.S.
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
Reading the headline can be a shocker: Cuba Has Better Medical Care Than the U.S. But, reading the article at The Huffington Post probably confirms what most of us have come to know or, at least, to suspect, about the inefficiencies of the American health care industry.
Statistics don't lie.Figures from the World Health Organization clearly show that The United States lags behind 36 other countries in overall health system performance ranging from infant mortality, to adult mortality, to life expectancy.
20 countries in Europe and four countries in Asia have a better life expectancy than the U.S. If you are a male between the ages of 15 and 59, your chances of dying are higher in the U.S. (140 per thousand) than in Canada, 95, Costa Rica 127, Chile 134, and Cuba, 138.
The U.S. Health system looks especially dysfunctional when you consider how much money we spend per capita on healthcare -- $6,000 plus per year, twice as much as any other country -- and how little we get for it.
Canada spends $2,163 and boasts a life expectancy of 79.8 years, two and a half years longer than the US. Their infant mortality rate per thousand is also better than ours, as is their adult mortality rate.
One grand irony, Cuba whose economy has been bankrupt for the last decade -- food shortages, drug shortages, chronic unemployment, etc. -- and which annually spends a miserly $185 per person on health care, has better infant and adult mortality rates than the US, and has a life expectancy nearly equal to ours.
The long-term answer is obvious. Adopt a single-payer system like Canada's. Not socialized medicine. Doctors would remain private. By cutting out the bureaucracy, needless lawsuits, and curbing greed, the US could save 50% of the monies now being squandered, more than enough to cover the 50 million uninsured, according to a General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office report.
Ironically, we already have a successful single-payer healthcare program. Medicare, which covers people over 65, has an administrative and overhead cost of just 2%. Compare this low figure with the $399 billion spent on administrative middleman services in the free-market sector of health care last year.
There is much more to the article and in the numerous comments. Needless lawsuits is a subject for another day.
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