I submit, that the fiction that US health care is inferior is just that. A myth.
World Health Organization stats. US by the numbers, according to WHO. Turns out the US is not the Dark Side of the Moon:
Table 1: Kids <5, % underweight by age. 1.3%. The US is as successful as any country.
Table 2: Mortality rate <5. US, at a probability of 8% per 1000, is behind Canada and Cuba in the Americas. And seriously, Cuba? Sorry, I simply can't accept any serious data out of that totalitarian fiction machine. And US trails Europe with countries in the 4% to 8% range.
Why is that? Turns out that the Americas have high mortality rates amoung Native Americans and African. WTF? Native Indians have single payer! It's called IHS, Indian Health Services, provided by treaty from the Feds. Trouble is that many of the reservations are so remote and geographically difficult to reach. So when we turn the US health system on its head to reach the holy grail of single payer, how on earth will that remedy the <5 Native Indian statistic? Answer: it won't.
How about the statistical difference between white and African mortality rate. It could be an ethic trend, the weathering hypothesis.
As a possible explanation for racial variation in maternal age patterns of births and birth outcomes, the "weathering hypothesis" is proposed: namely, that the health of African-American women may begin to deteriorate in early adulthood as a physical consequence of cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage.
My guess is that with any complicated system, there are many causes: prenatal care, and ethnomedical issues to name but two. But to assume that Single Payer will somehow address this likely complicated situation is either naive or else those Single Payer folks are so slap-dash smart that it'll solve the problem and I can't possibly understand how. The Single payer works in mysterious ways.
Table 3. Measles immunization. American 93%. Most of the developed world, 99%. I just can't get excited about this statistics.There are after all, extremely low mortality rates in US from measles. Also, how would Single Payer make things better? Measle shots are cheap or free and still there are 7% who don't get them for their kids. In that 7% is probably are the nutjobs who think that the shot will cause autism. Single payer a solution here? I don't think so.
Table 4. Maternal mortality rate. US, 11 per 100,000. Behind Canada's 7 per 100,000 in the Americas, and once again, trailing Europe. Why is that? I have no idea; it could have something to do with the fact that American mothers are older and therefore bear somewhat greater risk. But comparing US to say France, 11 v. 8 per 100,000 the numbers aren't so different and certainly you can't affirmatively demonstrate that Single Payer made that difference of 3 per 100,000.
Moving on, Table 5. Births attended by skilled health personnel. US = 99%. Enough said.
Table 6. Contraceptive prevalence. Again, enough said, US is high on the list, measured against all the world.
Table 7. Adolescent fertility rate. Holy sweet Lolita! 41%! You telling me that Single Payer will have any affect on this? Bullshit.
Table 8. Anenatal care. No US data.
Table 9. No US Data.
Table 10. HIV. US is pretty high here. Treatment for HIV is state of the world in the US, and long term retro-virals are pretty much free. But, once again, how could Single Payer improve on this?
BTW, where would the world's HIV folks be if the US company hadn't invented retro virals? 6 feet down is my guess. Pretty decent US system to encourage that innovation.
Table 11 & 12 & 13. No US data.
Table 14. Malaria mortality. Yeah right. Moving on.
Table 15 & 16. No US data.
Table 17. Tuberculosis treatment success DOTS. Kinda lousy at 64%. Numbers are all over the board here; Sweden is for example 63%. The trouble with DOTS (directly observed treatment) is that in the US, it's kinda difficult to treat someone, and observe them, if they don't want to be treated and observed. Once again, Single Payer solves this? Please explain how.
Table 18. Good drinking water and Table 19, sanitation US = 99% and 100% respectively. Moving on.
Flip down to chart (not table) number 4. Access to health coverage, immunizations to 90+% to all kids <1. Pretty frickin' damn impressive.
Now, when all these statistics get poured into the political filter, we suck compared to all those great European countries because i) we spend more as percent of GDP and that's true. We do. However, remember that a full 20% of GOVERNMENT spending is healthcare. (compare to France at 16.7. All this at Chart #7) and ii) some lack access.
And access is the rub. Because there are Americans with no insurance, this single statistic trumps all the other WHO stats to create the claim that US health is inferior. My question is this: would the Single Payer harpies prefer i) a health system that has good outcomes 90% of the time (just to pick a number) and insures 80% of the population or would it prefer a health system that has good outcomes 80% of the time (again, to pick a smaller number) but, like the Indian Health Service provides 100% insurance coverage?
In my book, skimming the WHO data, the US shapes up well. My only gripe; it's expensive. It's expensive because we want the best; doctors want the most; companies want to profit and sell their snazzy stuff and the US provides the world with snazzy stuff.
