Health Care – Quick Note
I won’t be adding much for a day or two, but I want to point you all to a damning report. Damning, that is, of the state of American’s health.
When compared with a large group of other advanced industrialized nations the US performs really badly. Appallingly might be a more apt term. It ranks last in:
- infant mortality and low birth weight
- adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections
- HIV and AIDS
- drug-related deaths
- obesity and diabetes
- heart disease
- chronic lung disease
- disability
This despite spending twice as much as any other country on health care. Clearly we aren’t getting a return on our money. In fact we are pouring down the drain. The facts don’t lie: the American health care system broke down long ago. It just doesn’t deliver the goods. All it does is to enrich the health care industry. It drains our economy. And it doesn’t seem to be able to deliver any credible service.
The state of our health is not all due to our rotten health care system however. Some of it is simply our addiction to violence. We kill each other at an alarming rate. With guns a lot of the time. For the record: 695 people, including plenty of children, have been killed by guns in the US just in the four weeks since the school shooting in Connecticut. Then there’s the death toll from bad driving. Cars and guns. It’s the American way. To die.
The damage is particularly acute for young people. The US only does well comparatively with its very old. Once a person gets to their late 70’s the life expectancy here rockets to the top. Medicare actually works.
Which is why, naturally, the Republicans want to cut back on it. Our government provided health care system is running rings around our very expensive and technologically shiny private system.
Who would ever have thought that?
