WHO's Who

I'm talking about the World Health Organization not that section of your high school year book. OK, so I'm on my soap box again and this time it's about health care.

Talk to most Americans and you'll hear some common thoughts.... 1) Health care systems managed by the government is Socialism. 2) The US has far superior doctors and the best wait times. 3) You receive poor heath care and service in countries like Canada and France - where the services are free. 4) The insured are tired of paying taxes that fund medicare and other social services - OK, so I'm not touching that one today... that's for another post.

I disagree. This year, for the first time ever, WHO asses ed the health care systems of all the countries in the world. This study was based on five criteria: 1) overall level of population health; 2) health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; 3) overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); 4)distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); 5) and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

Top 20
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland

Where did the US rank? 37th place.

I, for one, have no first hand knowledge of Singapore or Luxembourg. Let's talk about what's closest to home. What we may know more about - like Canada. Most Americans have been lead to believe that the Canadian health care system (and the other 72% percent of the top ten) may be free but you have to wait for hours to see a doctor, weeks to have surgery, etc. What did WHO find? The 10 nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. OK, so there goes that argument.

Speak with anyone in my husband's family, who are all Canadian, and you'll not hear anything akin to what we Americans perceive to be true of the Canadian health care system. My husband's experiences with US doctors and services are no different than what he experienced back home.

So how do we fix it? How does the greatest, strongest country in the world move up from #37? I'm not sure, but I think we can all agree that changes are needed. Prepaid medical accounts maybe? None of us cares how much our doctors and surgeons charge because a third party (our insurance company) is paying. If we were all paying out of pocket, I bet we'd be paying more attention to the $25 aspirin and $800 ambulance fees. One thing's for sure, we have created a monster - doctors and pharmaceutical companies charge what they want because the insurance companies will pay - they just jack our premiums up and up and up. And so long as these industry giants are funding political parties, I think it'll be a long time coming before we see any changes (or maybe just until 2008! Go DEMS!)

So, that's my rant for the day. Before you focus your attention only on your tax dollars paying for the uninsured - maybe spend some time thinking about why it is that we live in a society where we have folks that can't afford said insurance.