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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (105837)	3/10/2009 12:28:36 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541777

But, that said--should a medical system be judged by how it deals with mostly outlier life threatening situations, or by how it deals with the great majority of its citizens the great majority of the time, measured statistically by criteria such as life expectancy, incidence of disease, infant mortality, and other general "wellness" indicators? Especially w/r/t cost? First let me say that I dont think that the advantages to the US system just apply to "extreme" situations. I used the word "life threatening" and I think that term is more applicable. There are a wide variety of these types of situations that are fairly common. For example, there are more than 500,000 cardiac bypass surgeries each year. I would want the best care in the world for such a surgery. I think the US provides that. and of course, beyond the care comes the access. Here we do it by price and access to insurance. You find waiting lists elsewhere. There were waiting lists for cardiac bypass surgeries in the UK up until 2003. Luckily, they decided to spend more and they managed to end that....but if you needed such a surgery in 2000, you had to hope that your heart managed to hold out until your turn came. I think the drawbacks to our current system are obvious. Coverage and cost being the two primary problems, but I also think that the strengths of our system need to be highlighted. There are going to be tradeoffs to any sort of attempt at a national health care system and those need to be acknowledged and discussed. Basically, would you be willing to see a dropoff in care for those with insurance in order to see care more widely available? Slacker