Monday, August 13, 2007

Flash - US Healthcare is not the best in the world


In fact our system of health care ranks pretty low. Is that just Michael Moore and people who contacted him saying this? No, it's The New York Times.
Seven years ago, the World Health Organization made the first major effort to rank the health systems of 191 nations. France and Italy took the top two spots; the United States was a dismal 37th. More recently, the highly regarded Commonwealth Fund has pioneered in comparing the United States with other advanced nations through surveys of patients and doctors and analysis of other data. Its latest report, issued in May, ranked the United States last or next-to-last compared with five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — on most measures of performance, including quality of care and access to it. Other comparative studies also put the United States in a relatively bad light.
What can you do? Email Congress. P.S. - let Canadians tell you about those Canadian waiting times.
Watching SiCKO, Malke felt "just really embarrassed." When her mother-in-law in India got lung cancer, treatment to full recovery cost less than $800. She wonders why the richest nation on earth does not do as well.

"When I worked at Humana, people would get angry and say, 'Something has to be done, something has to change.' And I'd think, 'Are you going to do anything? Are you angry enough?'"

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