Why did you assume that I meant "prisons and prosecutions" when I said "justice", and why did you assume I was limiting my scope to the US?
Since you were so vague I had to assume something. Seems to me that looking at the operation of prisons and the "cost effectiveness" of bringing folks to "justice" during the prosecution phase is reasonable. If you want to be more specific as to what you really mean by the cost effectiveness of "justice", no one is stopping you. The ball is in your court, so to speak. And I don't see why the cost effectiveness of any government institution outside the US is really relevant to this discussion since we need to know whether the US government can actually do something in a cost effective manner because it's the US government that will be running the health care in this country, not Kenya.
And why did you ignore the part of my post that talked about profit motives and perverse incentives?
I didn't. Some of the links I cited actually do talk about profit. But why do you assume profit motive is a bad thing? As to "perverse incentives", again, you are much too vague. Hard to debate a shadow or ghost.
Are you completely ignorant of history?
You throw out a link and expect us to figure out what you mean. What point are you trying to make with the "Homestead Strike"? Do you think this "hodgepodge" of facts about the "Homestead Strike" clarifies your meaning of the cost effectiveness of "justice"? Believe me, it doesn't. And do you really think an example from the 1890's is relevant to addressing the question of whether government is more effective than private enterprise TODAY? Surely you can come up with something a little more ... current.
Your link is also worthless -- a hodgepodge of quotes does not equal evidence. Show me the numbers.
Did you actually look at the link I cited concerning prisons? Apparently not. Apparently you don't believe the UPI when they state:
Privately run prisons produce results equal to or better than publicly run correctional institutions and at a lower cost, according to a recent study from a Los Angeles think tank.
Did you not see the paragraph that states:
In their analysis, Segal and Moore examined 28 government and institutional studies comparing public and private facilities and found that 22 of the private prisons demonstrated significant cost savings. Overall, the researchers estimated cost savings at between five and 15 percent over comparable public institutions.
Those are numbers. Just numbers that you don't like ... that show your claim was wrong ... at least as far as the running of prisons is concerned. And the cost of running prisons is not insignificant. Look at this:
http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2007/04/or_prison_costs.html
Prison costs shackling Oregon
April 22, 2007
Oregon is on the verge of a milestone: In the next two years, the state will spend tens of millions more tax money to lock up prison inmates than it does to educate students at community colleges and state universities.
... snip ...
Oregon taxpayers now spend roughly the same money to incarcerate 13,401 inmates as they do to educate 438,000 university and community college students. But spending on prisons is growing at a faster rate than education and other state services.
In fact, the cost of running prisons is a substantial part of the overall justice system cost. According to this:
http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/jeeus03.txt ,
in 2003 the United States spent a record $185 billion
for police protection, corrections, and judicial and
legal activities. ... snip ...
Between 1982 and 2003, per capita expenditure, including
Federal, State, and local governments across justice
functions, increased from $158 to $638, over 300%.
During the same time period:
* Correction expenditures increased 423%, from $40 to
$209 per U.S. resident.
* Judicial and legal expenditures increased 321%, from
$34 to $143.
* Police protection expenditures increased 241%, from
$84 to $286.
Now if you do the math, the correction expenditures are nearly a third of all "justice" costs (if you include police costs in that). But since you broke out police as a separate category of cost effectiveness, one could say that corrections costs are 60% of the justice costs. You like those numbers?
And on the subject of prisons, I leave you with this (because it has even more "numbers"):
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=6504
Prison Privatization: A Growing National Trend
April 26, 2004
Prison systems and their management represent the virtual “undiscovered country” of privatization in Michigan. The state has less than 1 percent of its prisoners under private management. Yet two studies released in 2003 show that states can save money by privatizing prisons and thereby slow the rate of growth in prison costs.
From Tennessee to New Mexico, states have been contracting with private, for-profit businesses to manage their prison populations. No state has privatized the management of its entire correctional system, but New Mexico comes closest, with as much as 45 percent of its prisoners housed under private management.
A 2003 study by the New Mexico-based Rio Grande Foundation showed that New Mexico spent $9,600 less per prisoner in 2001 than did states with no prison privatization. The state saved more than $50 million in 2001 over the previous year, by contracting out for management of less than half its prison system.
In 1998, Tennessee almost signed a deal to outsource its entire prison system, and officials there estimate the move could have saved as much as 22 percent of that state’s entire correctional system budget. ... snip ...
In addition, a study published by Vanderbilt University researchers in August, 2003 showed that states using privately owned and/or run prisons saw their daily cost of housing prisoners grow almost 9 percent slower than states not using the privatization option.
... snip ...
Michigan does have experience with prison privatization. In 1999, it contracted with the Wackenhut Corporation (now Geo Group, Inc.) to build, own and operate a youth correctional facility in Baldwin, which is located in Lake County. According to Frank Elo, warden of the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, a conservative estimate of the savings resulting from the contract with Geo Group comes to 20 to 22 percent a year compared to what it would cost the state to run the prison.
Looks to me like Game, Set, Match, where "justice" costs are concerned. Unless you want to be more specific about what you meant by "justice" (and assuming "justice" doesn't include running a correctional system).
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Nor can you honestly believe that Medicare, Medicaid and other government run portions of the health care system are efficient and cost effective. Here's an article (
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/22/...e-sector-care/ ) on how government-run health care costs are rising faster than private sector care.
Again with the US centric viewpoint.
Again, why should we care about how efficient completely DIFFERENT government systems and cultures are at running health care systems? Unless you think that Obama is going to change our government system and culture into something that looks like theirs so what you suggest will work? Are you and the other defenders of socialized medicine suggesting that's Obama's agenda? Because he's sure lied to Americans about his agenda, if that's the case.
First, the article you link to appears to be very selective in its analysis of data -- something I expect from the Heritage Foundation.
You are wrong. The Heritage Foundation didn't do the analysis of the data. Didn't you actually read the article? They merely reported an analysis done by a group called the Pacific Research Institute. And here's what one of the authors of that study reported in Investor's Business Daily about the study and it's conclusions (which by the way is totally consistent with what the Heritage Foundation reported):
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=480067
Public Option To Cut Health Costs? Medicare's Record Says Dream On
By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
06/19/2009
... snip ...
A new study I've completed, published by the Pacific Research Institute, takes all health-care spending in the United States and subtracts the costs of the two flagship government-run programs, Medicare and Medicaid. It then takes that remaining spending and compares its cost increases over time with Medicare's cost increases over time.
The results are clear: Since 1970 — even without the prescription drug benefit — Medicare's costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.
Mr Anderson even provides this nice chart for you to look at:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/PhotoPopup.aspx?id=480066 . Now where in that study were they "very selective" in their analysis of the data? Time to be a little more specific ... if you can.
Second, virtually every other developed Western democracy has universal health case in one form or another, and they end up paying about half what we do on a per-capita basis for better overall outcomes.
Another unsupported claim, and you are comparing apples and oranges to draw a conclusion that is simply not warranted.
First, you haven't shown that in those other countries, government-run health care has reduced cost over private health care in those countries. That would be more of an apples and apples comparison. One fact that makes me suspicious that's not the case is the movement in recent years in many of those countries to re-privatize portions of their health care system. For example, the recently elected head of the Canadian Medical Association runs one of the largest private hospitals in Canada. And he is planning to open several more. I read that in 1996 he had 30 doctors on staff. Now he has about 120 doctors on staff. And the provincial state care system sent them over 1000 patients for operations they simply couldn't do. Why would they do that if things were so wonderful under socialized medicine?
Could it have something to do with wait times?
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html
government researchers have provided the best data on the doctor shortage, noting, for example, that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12 percent of that province’s population) can’t find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.
A Commonwealth Fund study (Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International update on the comparative performance of American health care, May 15, 2007) found that 24% of Canadians waited 4 or more hours in the emergency room, versus just 12% in the US. And 57% waited 4 or more weeks to see a specialist, versus only 23% in the US.
In a 2003 survey (
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001977834_cihak13.html ), when hospital administrators were asked "for the average waiting time for biopsy of a possible breast cancer in a 50-year-old woman, 21 percent of administrators of Canadian hospitals said more than three weeks; only 1 percent of American hospital administrators gave the same answer." And "fifty percent of the Canadian hospital administrators said the average waiting time for a 65-year-old man who requires a routine hip replacement was more than six months; in contrast, not one American hospital administrator reported waiting periods that long. Eighty-six percent of American hospital administrators said the average waiting time was shorter than three weeks; only 3 percent of Canadian hospital administrators said their patients have this brief a wait."
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html[/url]
Rick Baker helps people, and sometimes even saves lives. He describes a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion—he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren’t usually seen in the disorder—the man requested an MRI. The government told him that the wait would be four and a half months. So he went to Baker, who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours—and who, after the test discovered a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks.
Baker isn’t a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He’s a medical broker, one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the inadequacies of Canada’s government care. Canadians pay him to set up surgical procedures, diagnostic tests, and specialist consultations, privately and quickly.
... snip ...
Some of the services that Baker brokers almost certainly contravene Canadian law, but governments are loath to stop him. “What I am doing could be construed as civil disobedience,” he says. “There comes a time when people need to lead the government.”
Baker isn’t alone: other private-sector health options are blossoming across Canada, and the government is increasingly turning a blind eye to them, too, despite their often uncertain legal status. Private clinics are opening at a rate of about one a week. ... snip ... Testifying to the changing nature of Canadian health care, Baker observes that securing prompt care used to mean a trip south. These days, he says, he’s able to get 80 percent of his clients care in Canada, via the private sector.
And lest you think I'm just picking on Canada, note this:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html
Nor were the problems I identified unique to Canada—they characterized all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave—when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity—15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available.
... snip ...
And if we measure a health-care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50 percent; the European rate is just 35 percent. Esophageal carcinoma: 12 percent in the United States, 6 percent in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2 percent here, yet 61.7 percent in France and down to 44.3 percent in England—a striking variation.
... snip ...
This privatizing trend is reaching Europe, too. Britain’s government-run health care dates back to the 1940s. Yet the Labour Party—which originally created the National Health Service and used to bristle at the suggestion of private medicine, dismissing it as “Americanization”—now openly favors privatization. Sir William Wells, a senior British health official, recently said: “The big trouble with a state monopoly is that it builds in massive inefficiencies and inward-looking culture.” Last year, the private sector provided about 5 percent of Britain’s nonemergency procedures; Labour aims to triple that percentage by 2008. The Labour government also works to voucherize certain surgeries, offering patients a choice of four providers, at least one private. And in a recent move, the government will contract out some primary care services, perhaps to American firms such as UnitedHealth Group and Kaiser Permanente.
Sweden’s government, after the completion of the latest round of privatizations, will be contracting out some 80 percent of Stockholm’s primary care and 40 percent of its total health services, including one of the city’s largest hospitals. Since the fall of Communism, Slovakia has looked to liberalize its state-run system, introducing co-payments and privatizations. And modest market reforms have begun in Germany: increasing co-pays, enhancing insurance competition, and turning state enterprises over to the private sector (within a decade, only a minority of German hospitals will remain under state control).
Second, those other countries do not face the same problems we do.
Other countries do not have nearly as serious an illegal immigration problem. Illegal immigrants comprise somewhere between 2.6 and 6.6% of the US population. That's ten times the number in France, as a percentage of population. It's 2.5 to 6 times the number of illegals, as a percent of population, in Germany. And the cost of treating those millions of illegal aliens impact our overall health care costs in substantial ways.
Our system also has to deal with more low birth weight children (caused by drugs and higher smoking rates), more obese people, and a much older (on average) population than many of those other countries you allude to in your claim. The accident and homicide rates in other western countries are less. Apples and oranges. These factors affect the statistics that you folks often use to claim those other countries provide better health care ... like life expectancy. Let me demonstrate with some numbers and sources:
For example, life expectancy statistics include fatal accidents (like those in car accidents). In 2005, 4,990 people died in traffic related accidents in France (
http://www.thisfrenchlife.com/thisfrenchlife/2006/01/number_of_road_.html ). In a population of about 60 million. In 2005, the population of the US was 296 million, five times as much. But the number of traffic related fatalities was almost 43,000, 8.6 times as high as France.
Life expectancy statistics also include homicides. The murder rate in the US (
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita ) is around 43 per million people. The rate in France is 17 per million. The rate in Canada is 15 per million. You see? Apples and oranges.
Birth weight dramatically impacts infant mortality. The percent of low birth weight infants in France in 2004-2005 was 6.85 according to
http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/indicator.jsp?&indicatorid=4 . The same source says the statistic for the United States is 8.1% (almost 20% higher). But the causes for this are varied and mostly have nothing to do with the adequacy of the health care system.
Here, maybe this will help you understand:
http://www.governing.com/articles/0901healthmyths.htm
January 2009
... snip ...
In the U.S., life expectancy is determined 40 percent by lifestyle (such as smoking and overeating), 30 percent by genetics and 20 percent by public health interventions (such as immunizations and seatbelts), and only 10 percent of life expectancy is attributed to medical care. Medical care is defined as what patients receive in health practitioners' offices and hospitals, such as coronary bypass surgery. Mortality after coronary bypass surgery is a medical care index, not a health index.
Some of the major determinants of health care are social: gross domestic product, socioeconomic status, level of education and occupation. In the United States, there are highly significant disparities in health care related to race, ethnicity, education, socioeconomic status and living in either rural or inner-city areas. For example, the life expectancy at birth for an African American man is six years less than for a white man. African Americans are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to develop cancer, and 30 percent are more likely to die from it. Inequalities in income and education underlie many of the disparities in health and are related: The death rate for people with 12 years or less of education is more than two and a half times the rate for persons with 13 or more years of education, and lower income and education levels are associated with higher levels of violent crime and more deaths due to firearms, motor vehicle accidents and substance abuse. Higher incomes permit increased access to medical care and allow people to afford better housing and live in safer neighborhoods. All the medical care in the world will not change the fact that the life expectancy for an African-American man in Harlem is lower than the life expectancy in Bangladesh.
Again from
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_canadian_healthcare.html:
Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall, or a car accident. Such factors aren’t academic—homicide rates in the United States are much higher than in other countries (eight times higher than in France, for instance). In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don’t die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country.
Third, other countries have more uniform cultures and different governance systems, and those things affect the efficacy of health care and the resulting statistics, too. Our system has to deal with being literally balkanized. We have dozens of languages spoken and printed on our ballots. By law those folks have to be dealt with in their native tongue. Our legal system affects our costs in many ways that other countries do not experience. We are primarily a nation of immigrants and those immigrants often bring their problems to us. Problems which affect our health care system ... how it can be run and the cost of running it. Do you know that most of the babies born in certain hospitals in Los Angeles are born to illegals? For free.
I recently had a discussion with someone from the Netherlands. The US, unlike the Dutch, automatically make these cute little babies citizens ... and their parents are then anchored to the US by those babies. And we have to provide health care for them. You think that has no costs? You think other countries have comparable costs? Do other countries make the children of illegal immigrants citizens?
I learned that the Netherlands government is very different from ours, organized around a process called the poldermodel. We really couldn't duplicate their health care system and it's results without duplicating that process. But that process took 100's of years to become what it now is in the Netherlands. We simply couldn't duplicate it without changing our culture, the way we see each other, the way we settle disputes. And that simply isn't going to happen overnight just by socializing medicine or declaring the government the insurance provider.
Here's another example of what I mean from my conversations with the poster from the Netherlands.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=66&c=nl&l=en indicates that US death rate per 1000 has been around 8.1 the last few years and stable. The death rate in the Netherlands per 1000 has steadily climbed from 8.66 in 2003 to 8.71 now. Could that be due to their health care system? Due to, for example, wait times to be treated or decisions not to treat the more elderly? Thirty percent (or more) of US health costs are spent in the final year of life. Do the Dutch devote as much resources to such people? Do these other countries you compare us to? Maybe not. If not, then in order for us to match the health care performance of other countries, perhaps we are going to have to withhold treatment to 90 year olds. In which case, you are talking about a change in culture, not just in the form of our health care insurance provider. At least you and democrats need to be honest with the American public about what you are asking Americans to do.
Fourth, I think you are simply wrong in claiming these other western nation's overall health outcome is better. I've already mentioned the error in merely looking at statistics like "life expectancy" which many of you do. You have to delve deeper.
For example, you probably think that France provides better health care than us. But not only is their life expectancy statistic based on other factors than ours (that have nothing to do with the quality of health care), we find examples like the following.
In 2003 temperatures in France were 104 degrees over a week long period. And 15,000 people died as a result of inadequacies in the health care system, according to the French Parliment (
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2003-09-25-france-heat_x.htm ). In 1980, the US midwest (with an area and population larger than that of France) saw temperatures that were over 100 degrees for more than two weeks. Memphis saw temperatures of 108 degrees F. Dallas/Fort Worth (and area with a population that's more than 10% that of France's) recorded temperatures above 100 degrees for 42 days in a row. At times the temperature reached 113 degrees. It saw 29 days where the record high temperature was broken or tied. And the net result? Across the US 1,700 people died. A tenth the number in France. A sign our health care system is better.
How about dental care? What has socialized medicine brought to England but more bad teeth?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...3839/Bad-teeth---the-new-British-disease.html
31 December 2008
Bad teeth - - the new British disease
... snip ...
A survey by Mori for the Citizens Advice Bureau this week found that seven and a half million Britons have failed to gain access to an NHS dentist in the past two years. In one quarter of the country, no NHS dentists are allowing new patients to join their lists. And despite government targets that every child should have his teeth seen by an expert every year, more than one in three children never see an NHS dentist.
... snip ...
There is, of course, the option to go private, but with more and more former NHS patients forced to pay, dentists' charges are now the most expensive in Europe.
How about this case from Canada where a woman could have been saved had the same accident occurred in the US.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0325natashamar25,0,3093948.story
Could actress Natasha Richardson's tragic death have been prevented if her skiing accident had occurred in America rather than Canada?
This is a legitimate question because of how Canadian and American medical care differ. Canadian health care de-emphasizes widespread dissemination of technology like CT scanners and quick access to specialists like neurosurgeons.
... snip ...
Richardson died of an epidural hematoma, a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive. Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many American resorts, yes.
And what about cardiac patients? If things are so wonderful in a socialized Mecca like Canada, why are people coming to the US for treatment?
http://blog.acton.org/archives/2220-Will-Socialized-Health-Care-in-the-US-Kill-Canadians.html
March 3, 2008
... snip ...
More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.
... snip ...
At least 188 neurosurgery patients and 421 emergency cardiac patients have been sent to the United States from Ontario since the 2003-2004 fiscal year to Feb. 21 this year.
Canada can't even handle it's own births:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/08/canadas_universal_health_care.html
August 17, 2007
... snip ...
Canada welcomes the birth of the newest set of quadruplets born to proud Canadian parents. Karen and J.P. Jepp. However, the Jepp quads will be eligible to run for the presidency of the United States when they reach the age of 35, having been born in Benefis Hospital in Great Falls, Montana, 325 miles from their home in Calgary, capital of the Canadian oil industry.
The precious gift of American citizenship comes to the Jepp Quads because there were no hospital facilities anywhere in Canada able to handle 4 neonatal intensive care babies. Not in Calgary, a city of over a million people, the wealthiest in Canada, or anywhere else in Canada. *Local officials looked.
However, Great Falls, a city of well under one hundred thousand people, apparently had no problem with unusual demand for such facilities.
As Don Surber points out, the United States functions as Canada's back-up medical system, enabling it to run with less investment in facilities. America's evil, heartless private medical care system saved the day. In any capital-intensive field, whether it be electric power generation or medicine, gearing up for peak demand costs a lot of money.
... snip ...
Having the government pay means having other people pay your medical bills, and that leads to endless demand, which leads to rationing, which leads to insufficient capacity to handle peak demands, like, say, the birth of quadruplets.
And what happens if the US health care system becomes just like Canada's? We will experience the same sorts of inefficiencies, quality and supply problems that they have, and more Canadians will die as a result, because the safety net that currently exists in the United States will be gone. Here's another article that points out that obvious fact:
Canada's vaunted socialized medical system depends on America for more than peak capacity back-up, of course. When was the last time you heard about a new drug being developed by a Canadian pharmaceutical company? Under the price control system in Canada it makes no sense to develop drugs there. Canada lets the United States bear the major burden of drug development (and so does the rest of the world). Our high drug prices and federal research subsidize the world's medical R&D.
Do you know that:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
... snip ...
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. 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.
... snip ...
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."
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. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
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.
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).
... snip ...
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country. 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. 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. [See the table.]
And I can go on and on and on.
In June of 2008, the Toronto Star reported (
http://www.thestar.com/article/445835 ) that over 4 MILLION Canadians (12 and older) have no family doctor. That's about 15% of the population (12 and older). Why is the Brain and Spine Clinic in Buffalo serving about 10 border-crossing Canadians a week? According to
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/does-canadian-health-care-really-stack.html , a recent study comparing the two countries found that in six out of eight medical conditions investigated, Americans have higher treatment ratios. Americans also do better when it comes to preventative procedures such as PAP smears, mammograms and PSA tests. In the US 88.6% of women ages 40 to 69 have had a mammogram. In Canada only 72.3%. In the same age group, 54% of American men have been tested for prostate cancer. Only 16.4% of Canadians have received this test. Both men and women in America receive testing for colorectal cancer six times as often as their Canadian counterparts.
American outcomes appear superior after hip fracture repair and cataract surgery (in fact, the hip replacement center of Canada in Ohio -- at the Cleveland Clinic, where 10 percent of its international patients are Canadians). Just 62.5% of Canadians from ages 20 to 64 said their health was very good or excellent compared to 67.5% for Americans in the same age group. For those over 65, it was 38% for Canadians and 40% for Americans. American doctors have more training than Canadian doctors (according to one source, 50% of all Canadian doctors are general practitioners compared to only 10% in the US).
The better access we have to more highly trained doctors (expressed in much shorter wait times and not having to leave the country to find a specialist), better access to high tech diagnostic equipment (we have 5 times the number of MRIs and 3 times the number of CT scanners, per capita), and better access to preventive tests is of course going to translate into higher costs for us. But those also translate into better care. You simply are not justified in claiming the health care systems of countries with socialized medicine provide better outcomes. Or that they are less expensive for the same outcome.
We can have a system with costs like the Canadians, but don't think there won't be consequences in terms of care. Don't think the quality of our health care won't go DOWN if we do that. And don't think that the quality of health care in the rest of the world won't go DOWN if we do that either. We are a backup system for many other countries. And when it comes to drugs ...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/other/interviews/taurel.html
June 19, 2003
... snip ...
Thirty years ago, because of the quality of its pharmaceutical scientists, France was number two in pharmaceutical innovation in the world. Today, after 30 years of price controls, it is number nine. ... snip ... More than 60 percent of new drugs are invented and developed in the United States. ... snip ... We've seen that, again, not only in France, but in Japan, in Italy, in Spain, in Canada. Really, most of the pharmaceutical innovation is now concentrated in the United States. More than 60 percent of new drugs are invented and developed in the United States.
Those facts translate into cheaper health care in other countries. Because they get benefits their citizens do not pay for.
And fifth, you might want to read this before we continue. It makes the point again that we need to compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges. Medical costs are only a portion of a health care system's costs. Other things affect the health of a country's citizens. If we really wanted to compare what two countries' health care systems cost, we'd need to compare not only medical costs but what is spent on things like parks, which enhance health.
http://www.governing.com/articles/0902healthmyths.htm
You Get What You Pay For?
February 2009
... snip ...
In the United States, we know what our medical care costs are, but we haven't a clue what our real health care expenditures are. And the rest of the world doesn't know what it spends on health either.
... snip ...
Generally, what we call "health care costs" is really spending on medical care. Medical care is only part of health care, as it is largely made up of what happens between patients and doctors. The United States indeed spends a lot on medical care. But if we confuse health care and medical care, we might conclude that our medical care system is responsible for an individual's overall health, when medical care is a very small part of the picture.
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These differences between health care and medical care are important when discussing how to overhaul the overall U.S. health system. To calculate health care expenditures, we would need to include widespread social expenses, such as law enforcement to combat violent crime, a portion of prison costs as a deterrent to crime, the cost of city green space construction to permit jogging, a portion of the cost of after-school programs to help deter teen pregnancy, a portion of welfare payments to combat poverty, subsidized housing, and the costs borne by children of the elderly who care for their parents at home, to name a few. Those are rarely included in calculations of what we call "health care costs."
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We spend about 16 percent of our gross domestic product on medical care.
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Canada spends a greater percentage of its GDP on nonmedical but health enhancing "social programs" compared with the United States. And that key difference is not reflected when comparing the statistics on medical expenditures.
Maybe our government is uniquely incompetent at administering a healthcare system, but that does not excuse the huge amounts of wasteage our current hodgepodge of private insurers inflict upon us in the name of profit.
But you haven't proven that government can do any better. And as noted in my first post, in the area of government run schools (the second part of the OP), government has already demonstrated it can't do a better, more cost effective job than the private system. Why do you think it will do better when it comes to running health care? Why do you think that a government that has spent over 10 trillion dollars in the last 45 years to end poverty and racism ... and failed ... will suddenly be able to cure some exaggerated problems with our health care system? I'm back to what I asked you. PROVE that the government (specifically the US government acting within US culture and limitations) can do a better job than private industry in any of those areas you mentioned? I think I've proven you are wrong.
My point was more along of the lines of the nightmare that would be a private military organization whose services were for sale to the highest bidder
Your claim was that government military is more COST EFFECTIVE than private military. Whether it would a nightmare (your unsubstantiated opinion) to have private military organizations providing services instead of a government military is beside the point. They still might be able to do the job they are asked for half of what the US military costs us (given all the interference by congressmen and the waste that results from infighting between the services). And again, the needs in war are different than health care. Apples and oranges.
Originally Posted by BeAChooser
As for police, I again challenge your claim. What proof can you offer that a government-run police organization is less expensive than a private one? I can offer sources like this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_bw...esult&resnum=2
Sorry, I can't be bothered to read the whole book to digest your point. Summarize it, please.
I didn't ask you to read the whole book. I quoted you some "numbers" from the page I linked in the book. Let me quote them again since you obviously just ignored them:
From a purely financial perspective, alternative service providers, such as private security firms, provide certain savings. For example, ... snip ... The private officers were paid $10.00 per hour for the patrol services. Conversely, public police cost 2.79 times as much as private police in 1979. More recent data reveals that it costs at least $100,000 per year per police officer when salary, benefits, and overhead expenses were calculated into the equation (Reynolds, 1994:2)
So we have private security services, and rentacops are cheap. I don't care about that.
Never mind that I just proved your initial claim, that the government can provide cheaper police protection ... wrong.
I have never payed much attention to privatized air traffic control.
Yet, you were so bold as to claim government run air traffic control is cheaper than private run traffic control.
As I said, they were examples pulled off the top of my head.
You stated it as if it were established fact. You just didn't think someone would challenge you on it.
And by the way, you weren't the first on this forum to make that claim about air traffic control. But you may be the first to be challenged regarding it.
