The Undeniable Facts on Universal Healthcare
August 26, 2009 2 Comments
The past month has witnessed intense, sometimes rabid, debate surrounding President Obama’s healthcare plan. Much of the discourse on both sides has been marked by emotion, fear, and banal rhetoric. It is time Americans consider the facts on universal care.
Fortunately for us, universal care has been tested for decades in countries similar to our own. We need not debate the hypothetical or theoretical about what might happen—our counterparts in Britain, Canada, and Europe serve as examples of what will happen:
Access
Access to quality care in countries with socialized medicine is markedly worse than in the United States. According to Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University’s Medical Center, Canadian and British patients wait twice as long as U.S. patients to see a specialist, have elective surgery (knee or hip replacements), or get radiation treatment for can
cer. Many of these patients must wait for over a year, sitting on long, backlogged lists to receive government care.
According to economist Thomas Sowell, 27% of people who require surgery in Canada, and 38% in Britain, must wait four months or more to be treated. By contrast, only 5% of Americans must wait that long. Additionally, the incidence of colon cancer is 25% higher in Canada, a result of the fact that patients must wait an average of four months simply to receive a routine colonoscopy. A recent report from the Fraser Institute in Canada also shows that Canadian patients wait an average of ten weeks to receive an MRI, just to discover what is wrong with them. As Mr. Sowell points out, that is an exceptionally long time for a suffering patient to wait.
With regard to certain specialty services, the statistics are similarly disconcerting. The U.K., for example, offers a public-option dentistry plan for all of its citizens. The British National Health Service recently reported that 20% of patients were unable to get a basic dental checkup in the last two years due to rationing quotas.
Cost
The total cost per patient is believed by most experts to be about 40% less in the U.K. and Canada than in the United States. This is to be expected, as U.S. care is of much higher quality technologically and pharmaceutically. Consider, for example, that there are more than four times as many MRIs per capita in the United States than in Britain or Canada. The cost calculation also does not account for President Obama’s proposed initial outlay of over $1.3 trillion to fund the program.
More importantly, however, the majority of the cost savings come through rationing, as government chooses the most cost-effective, rather than the highest quality treatment for its citizens. In Canada, 44% percent of the drugs approved by Canadian health authorities are not allowed by the healthcare system due to their high cost. The mortality rate for Canadians with colon cancer is 10% higher than in the United States, in large part due to the fact that the top two chemotherapy medicines used in the U.S. to treat the disease are not available in Canada. Why? Because they have been deemed “too expensive” (RCP – Rationing Healthcare).
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently ruled against the use of Lapatinib, Stutent, and Aricept because they were not seen as “cost effective.” Despite outrage from doctors in the U.K. over the importance of the drugs, Peter Littlejohns, NICE’s clinical and public health director, stated that “there is a limited pot of money” which might be better spent elsewhere. This is just one in a long string of examples surrounding rationing by cost.
As Thomas Sowell poignantly noted, monetary costs may be lower “in countries with government-run medical systems—if you count only the money cost, and not the time the patients have to endure the ailments that require surgery, or the fact that some conditions become worse, or even fatal, while waiting.”
Survival Rates
The impact of limited access and government rationing is decreased quality of care. Mr. Atlas reports that breast cancer mortality is 88% higher and prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in the U.K. than in the U.S. In Canada, the total cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the United States.
Satisfaction
The majority of Americans are happy with the care they currently receive, while the vast majority of people in countries with universal programs are dissatisfied. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding” (Health Affairs Journal). That number is the exact opposite for Americans. According to the Wall Street Journal and Rasmussen Reports, 74% of voters rate the quality of care they now receive as good or excellent. Perhaps this is why, as a McKinsey Co. study reports, 40% of all medical travelers come to the United States for medical treatment.
The bottom line is that we need not look far for examples of universal healthcare’s failure. The statistics are telling, and Americans deserve to be made aware of what they are facing.
-Matt Benchener from TruPolitics.net
I understand that Canada, UK and other European nations have very few people enrolled in private healthcare (roughly %10 I think). If the public option was put in place in the US, the percent of people in private healthcare would certainly be much higher (as you say, many people are happy with their coverage). Would that have an affect on these statistics? Most of the people using the public option in the US will be benefiting becuase they didn’t have insurance or were struggling to afford it. Everybody else that is happy with private will be getting the same coverage. They may be paying increased taxes but they will probably be getting lower costs from the insurance. Am I missing something in my logic?
Good intelligent yet understandable article. Thank you.