Friday, August 14, 2009

THE World Health Organization (WHO) country-by-country comparison of health statistics — that show, for example, Cuba with a better infant mortality rate than the U.S. — can be challenged on a variety of grounds, and of course are. But Consumer Reports is a different beast. So a quotation from its Health blog:

Enter the concept of "amenable mortality." Invented years ago in the United States and used worldwide by researchers ever since, it’s basically a body count of people who die for want of "timely and effective health care." A higher rate is bad, because it means the country’s health care system is falling down on its one and only job, which is to keep people healthy and do the best job possible of treating them if they get sick.

So where does the United States stand among 19 countries assessed by the "amenable mortality" measurement? As of 2002-2003, dead last. (France and Japan are first and second.) Be sure to go to the link with the summary — or just click here.

This is the kind of data we should be discussing in the health care reform debate. Right? Nah. We Americans know we have the best health care system in the world. To understand how we know that, check out Gail Collins, referenced below.

THE 300-plus comments to Gail Collins' recent column about guns at town hall meetings are, frankly, more interesting, and instructive, than the column itself, although you can clink on "Back to Article" and read it, too.

OR consider how health care is sometimes dispensed outside our comfortably remote part of the country. Ah, yes, the very best ... .

Thursday, August 13, 2009

PRESIDENT Obama sometimes refers to his late mother, most recently during the health care debate. A friend and former colleague writes about her work as an anthropologist.

STARTING with Jimmy Carter's deregulation of the airlines, we've spent nearly 40 years shipping head-of-household jobs out of this country, so why shouldn't current U.S. grads go to China job-hunting?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

"Detritus," mixed media (shredded paper, spray paint, acrylic paint, plaster of paris), 2009

THE debate over health care/insurance reform is likely to get sillier before it's over, so here's some basic background on the U.S. system from Wikipedia. The U.S. system doesn't come close to being the best in the world — it's the best only if you have the money to pay for it — but it is the most expensive. For a comparison article, read about the French system at Medical News Today, an independent outfit in Britain.

No health care system can be perfect. My wife and I experienced the French system during a month in Paris in 1997. Went to a pharmacist, saw a private doctor on the Boulevard St. Germain, took a bus to a hospital in the near suburbs. Good service, and health issue resolved. But there different economic incentives. In Europe, the incentive is to work to keep people well because that is what reduces the cost. Here the incentive is to avoid preventive care because treating sick people is where the profit is. So I guess it all depends on your perspective.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

WHEN I lived in Tokyo in the early 1960s, there were any number of U.S. business people there awaiting the day when they could have access to the Chinese market. Richard Nixon eventually gave us that access and now we're all in hock to China's government-run "market" economy, a kind of state capitalism. But in this story is one good reason to never, ever buy anything made in China. No, the free market does not make you free.

Meanwhile, author and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich tells us that, more and more, it is a crime in America to be poor.

Speaking of things that probably originated in China:

"rankaku triptych" (eggshell inlay in encasutic) 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

OPPONENTS of nationl health insurance reform claim Massachusetts is going broke with its universal care system. Not so, says the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation:

Despite a public perception that the state's landmark health care reform law has turned out to be unaffordable, a new analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation finds that the cost to taxpayers of achieving near universal coverage has been relatively modest and well within initial projections of how much the state would have to spend to implement reform, in part because many of the newly insured have enrolled in employer-sponsored plans at no public expense.

Click on the link above to get the full report in a pdf file. I doubt you will hear much about this analysis in our "mainstream" media.

MEANWHILE, there's always somebody out there ready to make a buck off the ill and elderly. It's the all-American way, of course.