The New York Times had a good editorial this weekend detailing the many metrics and categories in which our health care system underperforms those of other developed countries. It's not new stuff for anyone who's been reading this site for awhile, but it's nice to see the data getting the play it deserves. I'm particularly pleased that the Times took on satisfaction ratings, as you often hear that Americans are the happiest with their system, and that's simply not true:
Patient satisfaction. Despite the declarations of their political leaders, many Americans hold surprisingly negative views of their health care system. Polls in Europe and North America seven to nine years ago found that only 40 percent of Americans were satisfied with the nation's health care system, placing us 14th out of 17 countries. In recent Commonwealth Fund surveys of five countries, American attitudes stand out as the most negative, with a third of the adults surveyed calling for rebuilding the entire system, compared with only 13 percent who feel that way in Britain and 14 percent in Canada.
What surprised me, though, is that the editorial has no entry for "Cost." The most damning fact about the American health care system is not its lower quality, its 45 million uninsured, or its piss-poor mortality rates. It's that all these failings come in context of a price tag that's double what anyone else pays. Hilary Clinton, in her defense of universal health care, also ignored the cost factor, focusing instead on the uninsured and mortality rates. But the cost issue is the most intuitive and hard-to-rebut claim within the reformer's rhetorical arsenal. We pay much more, and get slightly less, than all other developed countries -- and that's simply the reality of it. Let the Republicans and the corporations argue that Americans should pay out the nose for a uniquely bad deal. Let them try.
