Say No To Socialized Medicine in America
Bumper stickers with the message "Abortion is Not Health Care" have started appearing around the country. They could also say infanticide and euthanasia are not health care.Our first child, Therese Marie, was born on September 29th the Feast of the Archangels. While in the hospital I met the mother of a child born prematurely and who had to be treated in the neo-natal intensive care unit. That baby was fortunate to arrive in the USA and not Great Britain. Sarah Capewell's boy Jayden came prematurely at 21 weeks and 5 days of pregnancy in an English hospital. Had Jayden been born 48 hours later he would have been eligible for intensive care treatment. Instead, following their medical guidelines, the British National Health Service staff allowed him to gasp for breath for two hours before dying in his mother's arms.Welcome to socialized medicine.
My wife and I saw some of the problems with the US health care system firsthand through the delivery and neo-natal care of our daughter. The fear of lawsuits leads directly to costly defensive medicine, including the ordering of unnecessary medical tests. At times it seems like the whole health care system is oriented towards the convenience of medical staff rather than the best interests of the patients. Costs are indeed very high. On the other hand, we had no fear that the very best trained personnel and technology were ready and willing to care for the patients. For example, the USA has 27 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, very effective tools for accurate diagnosis, per million Americans. The figure for both Canada and Great Britain is 6 per million inhabitants. One could go on about the things that America's flawed system provides that are simply not available under socialized medical regimes, but the end results of both systems when compared are clear for all to see. Overall cancer survival rates after 5 years for American men are 66% and 63% for women. In Europe they are 47% for men and 56% for women.
"Health Care Reform should be about saving lives NOT destroying them" is the slogan of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' campaign to oppose vigorously the current health care legislation before the US Congress. Abortion providers stand to receive millions of our taxpayer dollars for their deadly work if the bills are not properly amended. The right of medical practitioners to decline to perform immoral procedures because of conscientious objection is not protected in the current drafts. Bureaucrats will be giving the gravely ill and elderly voluntary "end of life counseling" and others will decide who gets life-saving treatments and who won't, as we see already in Britain.The legislation as it currently stands in the almost 2,000-page House bill is totally unacceptable from a pro-life perspective. Please join us in taking action to inform our political representatives of how you feel about the health care bills that will be voted on in the next few days (click here). We must act and pray, asking for Divine deliverance from this impending disaster.
© 2009 - Human Life International
2 comments:
Overall cancer survival rates after 5 years for American men are 66% and 63% for women. In Europe they are 47% for men and 56% for women.
Interesting discussion here
I would add the following:
The SEER study from 2002 demonstrates a persisting disparity among population subsets.
Excerpt:
--
Results: Survival rates improved between 1988 to 1997 for virtually all racial or ethnic groups. However, racial or ethnic differences in RRs (relative risks) of cancer death persisted
after controlling for age for all cancers combined and for age and stage for specific cancer sites
(P.01). African American, American Indian and Alaskan native, and Hawaiian native patients tended to have higher RRs of cancer death than the other groups. American Indians and Alaskan natives generally exhibited the highest RRs of cancer death, except for volorectal cancer in males.
---
Native Americans are of particular interest. They have a tandem health care system which is neither adequately funded nor staffed. Since wages for health care professionals within their system cannot compete, the staffing shortfall is even greater. To attempt to compensate, their has been an increasing use of technological outsourcing including telemedicine. It is also widely believed that there are numerous other factors affecting access to care in this population.
In the wider view, inadequate compensation for care greatly affects access for un/underinsured populations across the board.
* Providers refusing Medicare/Medicaid population
* Failure of Social Security Disability system
* Managed care is perhaps the greatest general factor cited by physicians.
--
A study from the Department of Health Services from 1998 -
Managed Care: Physician's attitude linked to practice setting
excerpt:
--
CONCLUSIONS: Most primary care providers expressed negative attitudes toward managed care. Though the majority saw no effect of managed care on health outcomes, the belief that managed care has a negative effect on quality of care was prevalent. Affiliation with a staff-model HMO was associated with more positive opinions of managed care.
IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY, DELIVERY OR PRACTICE: Primary care physicians with multiple managed care affiliations believe that managed care is intruding on the practice of medicine, while those in a traditional HMO have more positive attitudes toward managed care. In each group, attitudes are more likely reinforced by prevailing contextual factors such as organizational culture and mass media. To physicians, quality of care apparently encompasses more than patient health outcomes; patient satisfaction, physician autonomy, and the process of care may be given greater weight than outcomes. Incorporating the importance of health outcomes into that notion would contribute to a more well-rounded idea of quality.
--
I will write some thoughts a bit later on policy.
Thank you for the material added here. It is quite detailed and will take a little time to digest.
Post a Comment