Originally posted by jdub297
reply to post by intrepid

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1 article = 1 'protestation'. I hear no outcry. I see the CMA president. I see the incoming CMA president.You lose.jw

37th? According to WHO in 2000(and many ATS members)?

40 million "can't afford?" How about the tens of millions who CHOOSE not to buy insurance or are covered under other programs?

Come up with something other than grandstanding and gladhanding.

Deny ignorance.

jw

The WHO ranking has very little to do with the quality of health care. Of several variables, only life expectancy is used as a measure of health care quality. But this is a bad measure of overall health care quality and does not correlate exactly with health care spending. This is due to the fact that there are multiple other variables other than health care that directly impact life expectancy.

The WHO report acknowledges that other variables like obesity, HIV rates, higher tobacco use, higher risk factors for coronary artery disease (including obesity), and homicides in the US compared to other industrialized countries combine to decrease the life expectancy for Americans.

The generally poor life style choices of Americans are more likely to have a causative effect on health care spending than the other way around. I.e. more health care spending is needed to take care of the conditions like heart disease that result from our poor health habits. This is more logical than to assume that high health care spending has anything to do with rates of obesity or smoking.

Of the other criteria, the one that correlates the closest with health care spending is responsiveness. This is because this measure is very closely tied to the availability of health care resources and countries that spend a lot on health care have plenty of resources. The US ranks #1 in responsiveness. The US ranks only #54-55 in something the WHO calls the “fairness of financial contribution” which is the liberal way of saying “it’s only fair that your health care is paid for by someone else”.

Even though the US is #1 in health care responsiveness (i.e., shorter wait times, greater access, more innovation, etc) this one measure is overshadowed by the fact that the WHO believes that equal health care distribution and financing has just as much if not more weight in its rankings.

The number of uninsured comes from 2007 Census Bureau estimates.

Some 40 percent of the uninsured are between the ages of 19 and 29. Many of these young people don't buy insurance because they are healthy and don't want to. Young adults, ages 19 to 29, have the highest uninsured rate (30 percent) of any age group. (Most are healthy and do not believe they need insurance - students are frequently covered while enrolled in school and do not generally buy insurance plans of their own.)

A few million of the "uninsured" are likely enrolled in Medicaid but tell the Census that they are uninsured because they don't have private insurance — the so-called Medicaid undercount.

Also, almost one in five of the uninsured are not citizens of the United States.

Another challenge is getting people who are already eligible for existing federal health plans like Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program to sign up. Of the estimated 46 million uninsured people living in the United States, about one-quarter of them are eligible for these programs but not enrolled.

"46 million uninsured:" A Look Behind the Number