Citta: Health reform myths exposed

According to the World Health Organization, Mr. Obama was correct: In its highly influential World Health Report, America scores well below the vast majority of Western European countries — and even below the likes of Morocco and Costa Rica in one index. This report is frequently cited by Democratic reformers wanting to replace the U.S. market system with something a little more Continental. But an examination of the two indices in the WHO report tells us more about the ideology of the authors than the quality of American health care.

Michael Moore made great sport in his movie Sicko of pointing out that the WHO ranked the United States a lowly 37th in the world, considerably below top-10 France and Canada (although the United States is 15th in the other index). But, much like Mr. Moore himself, the rankings are far from impartial.

The most obvious bias is that 62.5 percent of their weighting concerns not quality of service but equality. In other words, the rankings are less concerned with the ability of a health system to make sick people better than with the political consideration of achieving equal access and state-controlled funding.

One of the five factors in the calculations is “Financial Fairness.” This favors systems that charge richer people a higher rate of health tax, irrespective of how much, or little, health service they use. Colombia comes out on top. This measure has nothing to do with the quality of health care, yet it counts for a quarter of the weighting.

The WHO claims that its rankings are a tool for comparing different means of financing health-care systems, yet this tool inherently favors taxpayer-funded systems and gives the rankings a bias that renders comparison pointless. As a result of this bias, the United States languishes in lowly 54th place on “Financial Fairness,” largely explaining its poor overall position.

The rankings include measures for “health level” and “responsiveness.” “Health level” is their way of saying life expectancy, while “responsiveness” refers to a survey based on “respect for persons” and elements such as speed of service, convenience and choice — yet even in these cases half the overall weighting is determined by considerations of equality. Thus, a country with a poor level of “responsiveness” throughout the population will score higher than a country with a good level in some parts and an excellent level in others.

The “health level” reliance on life expectancy is also dubious, as it is influenced by factors unrelated to health care, such as tobacco consumption, diet and so on. That some Americans are obese and smoke surely affects their health but has little to do with the health-care system per se — yet these factors again drag the U.S. down in the ranking.

Americans generally believe that whatever the other problems with the U.S. health-care system, its standards of care are high. In the details of the rankings there is evidence to support this: The “responsiveness” measurement, without the equality weighting, shows the United States as number one in the world — but this performance measure only makes up one-eighth of the ranking, dwarfed by the measures of equality and state funding.

Also left off are typical measures of health-care standards such as disease-specific five-year survival rates. With these, U.S. health care comes off somewhat better. In 2007, British medical journal The Lancet published research showing the United States to be the best in the world for cancer-survival rates, with Britain’s state-controlled “single-payer” National Health Service disturbingly far behind. It showed that a man under the United Kingdom’s tottering 60-year-old NHS has an 18 percent lower chance of surviving cancer than a man under the U.S. system.

Of course, this does not mean the U.S. health system is perfect. There is near-consensus on the need to address increasing costs, waste and the fact that too many Americans still lack insurance. But decision-makers and voters must beware ideological arguments and rankings that falsely depict idyllic socialist health systems. They do not exist.

Glen Whitman is an associate professor of economics at California State University.

Don't know? It's not because it does not exist, it's because the MSM(Main Stream Media) could care less, and so could the Obama administration. It seems to me that all he is doing is trying to streamroll his ideological and non-sustainable program through as fast as possible.

But ask Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona if the GOP is just trying to make Obama fail, he responds "that's just a political ad." In a short interview this morning on NPR, he was clear, calm, and sensible. Please, may sense prevail, because

* Health care in America is still better than elsewhere in the world, not on the verge of catastrophe (like all liberal issues which are trumped up to emergencies)
* The Obama plan will make it WORSE, not better.

I mean, wanna see government run healthcare? Look at Medicare (insolvent), Veterans Care (poor), Native American Care (poor), and Social Security (insolvent). They can't even run the "Cash for Clunkers" program well.

The minority whip sounds sane. Obama's plan is insane, just like a real Joker might promote. Healthcare Should Be Right, Not Just Quick.

I mentioned a couple of Conservative plans earlier you don't seem to have read them

Tom Coburn has a plan:

Our current health care costs are largely driven by government regulations that prevent competition between doctors and insurance companies as well as price fixing for the failing Medicare and Medicaid programs. If people could buy insurance ala carte, and across state lines, the market competition would change the landscape entirely. As it is, federal and state law prohibit both things. Medicare and Medicaid also underpay doctors, which deflates a bit just how bloated and failing they are, and also drives up private insurance costs (because SHOCK, the doctors pass on those costs...).

With Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and the Indian Reservations health care systems all failing financially and/or in service, I have no confidence that the fed can control healthcare for the whole nation. Heck, for that matter they couldn't forecast Cash for Clunkers properly by several orders of magnitude (1 week actual vs. 4 months predicted).

Combine that with disengenuous statements by our President (telling the lady at the AARP meeting that no one was talking about cutting services from Medicaid when he had just a month previously talked about cutting $300B from Medicaid; videod statements about using "public option" as a trojan horse for single payer, favoring single payer personally, and then saying that he's not making any attempt at single payer; deriding Bush for trying to push through legislation without deliberation and then trying to push through legislation without deliberation; instructing followers to get in the face of their neighbors on the health care issue then complaining about rude tactics by opponents; putting out the word to get after "false grassroots" opponents and then sending out a mass email to all supporters to form grass roots support) and even people who favor socialized medicine and single payer systems should have a bad taste about THIS process.

Bobby Jindal has some good ideas:

No they don't they get the best private plans that are marketable available. You've been listening to to many of Obama's lies as in:

"I HAVE GREAT HEALTH INSURANCE AND SO DOES CONGRESS."

Those are the words of President Obama. Just how great is the health plan Congress is on? Why do they refuse to take part in their new plan for the country? There must be certain advantages that make it hard to give up. Well, let's take a look.

Among the advantages: a choice between 10 health care plans that provide access to a national network of doctors, including numerous HMOs that serve each member's state. (In comparison, 85% of private companies offering health coverage to their employees only offer one type of plan, usually the least expensive, with an option for individual or family coverage.) They also receive special treatment at Washington's federal medical facilities and, for a additional monthly fee, they have access to their own pharmacy and doctors, nurses and medical technicians in the medical office conveniently located between the House and Senate chambers. Other advantages in their coverage are: no exclusions for pre-existing conditions and no waiting periods. As soon as you are hired or begin work you're covered.

What else can we add? How about $20 dollar co-pay on office visits, $10 generic drug prescriptions, and immunizations are free. Also if they do use Walter Reed or The Naval Hospital for treatment, much of that is taxpayer subsidized. The cost? The cost for a family plan is a little over $1000 a month, of course taxpayers pay about $700 of that so their total cost for family coverage is around $300 a month. That's less than a new car payment even with the “cash for clunkers” incentive.

The plan is such a nice deal that it's offered to the estimated 8.5 million federal workers and their families. To the American taxpayer the price tag is around 15 billion yearly. Now it's easy to understand why Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman don't want to include themselves in any public plan they cook up for the rest of us. As a matter of fact, the Federal Plan is exempt from any reform. I love how these people look after the public interest while protecting their own.

So what's the conservative plan, then, for providing healthcare to those who can't afford it? To those who can't be insured because of existing conditions? Please, by all means, show me how conservatives are actually interested in providing healthcare to those who don't have the money for it.

"The so called health reform initiative will place one sixth of our economy in the hands of the federal government specifically one Barack Obama."

It's amazing to have conservatives object to being portrayed as loons by Citta and then, at the same time, conservatives post here and prove them right. Only a deeply disturbed individual, or some kind of moron, would believe that it's the President's responsibility to oversee the health care system.

Is that how you idiots believe it works in the UK? Every medical decision has to go through the Queen?