Advocates for overhauling American medicine try to bamboozle the public into believing that other countries offer better care at a lower cost. On Meet the Press in August 2009, Tom Daschle, designated by President Obama to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, said that Americans were spending too much and getting poor quality care. “The World Health Organization listed us 37th, just below Costa Rica and above Slovenia,” said Daschle, arguing for an immediate overhaul. Daschle was referring to a report issued in 2000 by the World Health Organization.
That WHO ranking – 37 – became a compelling statistic in the national debate. It was cited on NPR’s Morning Edition on Aug. 18, 2009 . A St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial on Sept. 4, 2009, cited it as proof that action was needed. The St. Petersburg Times used it to rebut Sen. John McCain’s claim the U.S. has the best health care in the world.
Then, on April 22, 2010, just a month after Obama’s law was signed, the truth came out about the number 37. Dr. Philip Musgrove, editor in chief of the WHO Report 2000, announced in The New England Journal of Medicine that it was “long past time for this zombie number to disappear from circulation.” He called the ranking “meaningless.” “This is not simply a problem of incomplete, inaccurate, or noncomparable data; there are also sound reasons to mistrust the conceptual framework behind the estimates. . . .”
Well said, Dr. Cosgrove, although a bit tardy. The WHO deemed the U.S. No. 1 for “responsiveness to the needs of patients.” But the U.S. was demoted to 37th for “overall performance,” because the WHO report gave far more credit overall to countries where government finances all health care, calling it fairer than a market system.
Also influential was a bag-of-tricks report from The Commonwealth Fund, an organization that favors government-run health care and tailors its research conclusions to support that view. During the Senate debate over health reform, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)
THE WORLD HEALTH SHAM RANKING SYSTEM
How is the U.S. ranked 37th in overall health performance, behind countries such as Oman, Morocco, Malta, and Andorra?
12.5% RESPONSIVENESS TO PATIENTS- The U.S. ranks No. 1 in this category
25% HEALTH LEVEL - Disability adjusted life expectancy: affected by homicide rate, diet, tobacco use, etc.
25% HEALTH DISTRIBUTION - Variability of life expectancy: reflects behavior, incidence of violent crime in population subgroups, as well as disparities in medical care.
25% FINANCIAL FAIRNESS - Reflects the percentage of health care spending shouldered by the government.
12.5% RESPONSIVENESS DISTRIBUTION - Variability of health care experiences within a country.
The World Health Report 2000, World Health Organization
pointed to a large blue chart showing the United States in last place in health performance. "All of these countries have much lower costs than we do,” he said, “and they have higher quality outcomes than ours.”
Conrad was duped by a Commonwealth report published in Health Affairs in 2008 that puts the U.S. in 19th place due to diseases that are curable if treated soon enough.
Yet most of these deaths are caused by heart disease and circulatory diseases. The United States has a high incidence because for 50 years, Americans were the heaviest smokers and now are among the most obese. Bad behavior, not bad medicine, is to blame. Our health care system treats these diseases very effectively.
As the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded, “It seems inaccurate to attribute . . . high death rates from these causes to a poorly performing medical system.”
Plus, while the Commonwealth researchers claimed to consider curable diseases of all sorts, they conspicuously omitted malignant prostate cancer – where U.S. care is stunningly successful. An American man diagnosed with it has a 99.3 percent chance of surviving it – far higher than in any Western European country. It’s not a death sentence here, but in Scotland, only 71 percent survive, and in Germany, only 85 percent.
Conrad also trotted out another “proreform” statistic, pointing to a “shorter [U.S.] life expectancy compared with other industrialized countries.” Again, demographers are quite clear on this: The causes of reduced U.S. life expectancy are our higher rates of auto fatalities and violent crime, plus half a century of excessive smoking – not bad medicine.
Setting the record straight, the National Bureau of Economic Research cautions that “the low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely to be a result of a poor functioning health care system.”
The best measure of any nation’s medical care is how likely you are to survive a serious illness and resume your previous active life - style. Cancer survival rates are unambiguous evidence of American achievement. Yet during the debate over health care reform, even National Breast Cancer Awareness Month was misused to promote the White House’s agenda. If cancer runs in your family, this political propaganda could be dangerous to your health.
First Lady Michelle Obama stood with breast cancer survivors at a White House ceremony on Oct. 22, 2009 , and claimed that American health care is “a system that only adds to the fear and stress that already comes with the disease.”
The truth is, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. has a 90 percent chance of surviving it. In Europe, a woman’s chance of survival is below 80 percent on average.These statistics, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, reflect the experiences of all women, not just those with insurance.
According to the bureau’s research, women fare better in the U.S. because breast cancer is diagnosed earlier and treated more aggressively. Death rates from breast cancer have declined faster in the U.S. than anywhere else.
In the American system, there is a premium on the development of new detection methods and therapies. In other countries, government health programs delay adopting innovations in order to keep treatment costs down.
President Obama’s Nobel Prize captured headlines in October 2009. But if breast cancer is a worry for you, three other Nobel Prizes awarded that month are more important. Scientists working in the U.S. took the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their research on how cancer cells continue to divide and duplicate far longer than healthy cells. Their research may hold the key to stopping the relentless growth of cancer.
Only one of these three Nobel scientists, Dr. Carol Greider, was born in the United States. The others were born in countries with government-run health care but chose to relocate to the U.S. to pursue their careers in medicine. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn emigrated from Australia to the U.S. in the 1970s because, she told The New York Times, this country as “notably attractive” as a place to do research. Dr. Jack Szostak came from London.
The unrivaled pace of medical discovery in the U.S. is largely responsible for higher cancer survival rates here, according to the research bureau. Innovation is also responsible for about two-thirds of the annual increase in American health care spending, according to presidential adviser Blumenthal, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine in March 2001. Blumenthal and other advocates of ObamaCare want to slow down the adoption of new technologies. But no one battling cancer wants to settle for what oncologists had to offer a decade ago, and 10 years from now, no one will want to settle for 2010 treatments. The pace of innovation does add to costs, but it also gives families reason to hope.
Since 1950, the U.S. has won more Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology than the rest of the world combined. If someone in your family is dealing with an illness still considered incurable, this is the nation of hope. Highest cancer survival rates and fastest development of cures – compelling reasons why this is the fight of our lifetime.
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