2aguy
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- Jul 19, 2014
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-First what struck me about this list is how highly specific it was. Why use lower cancer rates as your data point in one case but use common cancers when talking about Europeans? Why compare one data point to Canadians other data points to just the UK? Still, other data point to all developed countries? Why use self-reporting as a data point at all? They call it cherry picking data. And using those kinds of tactics anybody can substantiate any point it so chooses. In fact, every single "fact" except the last falls into that category of highly specific little tidbits of data.-So we now have. Belgium is less diverse. Belgium has less population. Belgium doesn't develop as much medical hardware.
Of course when I ask why any of it explains the massive difference between relative healthcare cost the explanations become fussy if provided at all. As to this last one. This is how development works. A company develops a medicine. After which they are granted the exclusive rights to SELL (as in for profit) that medicine. It works the same for me as for you. So I don't see how it helps your argument at all.
- I also find it increasingly funny how different people provide different excuses to explain the difference but fail to state the obvious. For-profit healthcare has as it's the end goal, providing profit. Government run healthcare has as its goal, providing care. This means that your system tries to take as much money out of the healthcare system as they feel they can get away with. Mine, however, is publicly funded and politicians do well to give the best care possible for the least amount of money if they want to get reelected.
Cute try, a feeble effort to diminish the importance of developing new medical procedures, technology, and drugs. Without a profit motive, why would a government spend billions of dollars only to have nothing to show?
10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care
Brief Analyses | Health
No. 649
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
by Scott Atlas
Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America's health care system should be considered.
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] 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 U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."[5]
- Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
- Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
- More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
- Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]
Fact No. 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."[9]
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]
Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.
10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care
-As to the last bit. Again doesn't help your case at all. Since once your innovation is developed it still has to be paid for by those wanting to use it. This enriches your country and therefore can not be a reason for the costs being higher.
-Want to throw facts at me go right ahead. I applaud it. But if you use as your source something that is a known conservative think tank. And try to cherry pick data. I WILL notice.
-Fact. All developed countries have significantly cheaper health care.
Fact for most of those developed countries life expectancy is comparable, if not higher.
What does it say when you pay at least 40 percent more for that result?
The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency
Current health expenditure (% of GDP) | Data
Please note my sources.
The costs are higher because of the developmental cost outlays before you make one penny from the miracle device or drug......and for all the ones you finally get to market, dozens or more don't, which means millions of dollars lost.....if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
Too many people fail to realize the costs involved in medical innovation and miracle drugs....
The Cost Of Developing Drugs Is Insane. That Paper That Says Otherwise Is Insanely Bad
A primer: The amount spent to develop any individual drug depends mostly on what it costs to conduct studies to prove it is safe and effective and secure regulatory approval. That can range from $10 million to $2 billion, depending on what the drug is for. But what really drives up costs is the fact that 90% of medicines that start being tested in people don’t reach the market because they are unsafe or ineffective. The $2.7 billion figure includes the cost not only of these failures, but also of not putting the money spent on them into something that would give a more reliable return.
And Britain pays for the end result, not the costs of research, development and initial failure...