A healthy bottom line
Jan 6th, 2007 at 11:20 am by Dr. S
[Crossposted at Redsoxville.]Â
Think Progress offers a look at the shitty results of our massive spending on healthcare. Among the lowlights:
health spending per person was at least 24 percent higher than that of Luxembourg (the second highest spending country) and over 90 percent higher than countries considered global competitors.
Americans on average die at a younger age compared to the average age of death of comparable nations. Japan has the highest life expectancy.
The U.S. infant mortality rate is 6.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, while Japan and Sweden have rates below 3.5 deaths per 1,000 live births.
But, on the plus side, Aetna reported that it made $476 million from July to September of 2006, and nearly $1.3 billion for the first nine months of 2006. And that’s while the company was shedding customers.
Aetna’s full-service health care plans had 15.38 million members, up about 730,000 from a year earlier but down about 24,000 from the second quarter. The company cut its 2006 forecast for membership growth to about 650,000, down from the 700,000-750,000 it had projected in July. That July forecast had been reduced from Aetna’s previous expectation of 900,000 to 1 million new members.
That’s very little bang, and a whole lotta bucks.
The US infant mortality rates are about a much uglier situation than you think.
White babies survive about as well as babies from other developed countries. Black babies die so commonly that they pull down the the national overall average to the disgraceful numbers you cited. (Native American babies don’t do so well either.)
Take a look at the CDC’s figures for the D of C: White infant mortality there is 3.7 per 1,000 live births, the lowest in the country.
What’s the worst rate in these United States?
Black infants in the D of C: 17.2 per 1,000 births.
This one statistic says so much and none of it good–about racism, about a two-tiered health delivery system, about people who call themselves “pro-life” but couldn’t care less about these kids . . . .
Let’s look at it another way (the way Republicans and doctors usually do): “See, we’d be fine if it wasn’t for all those colored people pulling down the average.”
However, that’s bullshit. Our infant mortality and morbidity statistics have been matched with similar populations, urban and rural, and our numbers STILL suck in comparison. Why? Probably because we put all our emphasis on expensive obstetric and neonatal technology, while smarter countries put the money in basic prenatal care - nutrition and counseling.
Labor and delivery problems are rarely “a bolt from the blue.” (To quote Williams Obstetrics, 15th Edition.) They’re signaled during the pregnancy by things like anemia, unexplained weight gain, and pelvic measurements.
For instance, Canada has a population similar to ours, with poverty and poor health care among their large native American population - and their statistics are STILL much better than ours, the last time I checked.
I don’t know if it still exists, but they used to have a program in Montreal where any pregnant or nursing woman could walk in and get free food, no paperwork, no questions asked. The results were rather spectacular.
Of course, American doctors like all that interventionist, emergency-oriented technology. Just remember: To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The healthcare and insurance industries are not concerned about delivering care and providing coverage.
Both industries and I do not use that term lightly are driven by profitability. Period.
Both industries blame the trial lawyers for friviolous lawsuits.
What is not disclosed, is the reason the cost to defend these claims is driven by the need to fly in experts.
Why does this happen? Oh because, if Dr. I. Really Suck screws up, none of his local peers will testify against him/her.
If these felons are driven from the profession, we will all be safer.
Why are doctors, who chose this profession, entitled to make so much money?
The doctors that I know have three or four homes and cars.
Why do we as consumers have to pay for their lifestyle?
Let’s not forget the insurance industry. Have you seen the Blue’s office building?
I am not referring to the poor slobs who live in cube city.
I am talking about the executive suite.
They shy away from the alternative insurance products because the brokers and the carriers will not make as much money.
When they do offer coverage to minorities they are rated different. Why? They are less inclined to seek wellness care. A terrible vicious cycle.
Most medical protocols are developed for white men. There are plenty of horror stories where women’s diseases are misdiagnosed because their symptoms are different from the boys.
I could rant for days………
For some reason, the link to the CDC report above didn’t make it. It’s
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5422a1.htm
or you can click the website link at my name.
(Any chance of getting one of those preview thingies in the comments here?)
Everything y’all say is valid, and of course the US healthcare system seriously sucks for everyone.
My point, though, is that, from what I can see, as a middle-class white woman, my access to healthcare is flawed–I can get it, but I can’t pay for it. For African-Americans, while I certainly can’t claim any particular insight here, just going by the CDC’s numbers, a lot of ‘em don’t even have access, let alone the money to pay for it. If you put this situation in a vacuum tube and brought it down to 0 Kelvin, you’d have the platinum-irridium standard for institutionalized racism.
Suppose you were just trying to fix this one thing in this one location: bring the black IMR in the District down to twice the white rate (instead what it is now, more than 4x). Not even equity with whites in DC–just with the rest of the country. Not overhaul the whole health system: just this one outcome, just in DC, just for this population. How many things would you have to change? I can’t even guess.
(A starting place for this one thing might be Congress, since they have so much say over what happens there. All those Republican jackasses yammering about their high regard for the unborn–do they just mean white unborn? Probably.)