Health Care Illusion

Last night PBS had an excellent program on Frontline. The program was called Sick Around The World. You can watch it online, and I highly recommend you do if you give a rats !@# about the subject. A reporter who had lived all over the world compared the American health care system with those of all the other major democracies in the world. The United States ranks number 37 in terms of fairness, quality, and cost. It was just mind boggling to see how countries like England, Germany, Tiawan, Sweden, and Japan take care of their population. They get far better results at a fraction of the costs. The people like the care, and everyone is covered. How anyone could watch the facts presented, and then say we cannot have such a system in this country is beyond my comprehension. Our country has been so dominated by the special interests. In every other country the administrative cost for health care run below six percent, in our country those cost are from 15 to 18 percent. An MRI which cost $1,200 in the United States is $98 in Japan. The real test of a health care system is what percent of the GDP it cost. Again the United States comes out a loser. Our cost is about double on that basis, and we still have many uninsured. The only reason we do not have such good systems as the other countries is because the concept of that level of sharing is more than a lot of right wingers can bear. Of course the Limbaugh gang will not even take a look at it, they will simply dismiss the facts because they are presented on PBS, which we all know is a left wing plot run by elite intellectuals to trick us into doing the right thing. One of the most interesting parts of the program was a discussion with a right winger in Switzerland. Originally he was opposed to an all encompassing system, after it went in place, he became a strong supporter and saw the flaws of the previous system based on selfishness.