american health care

American Health Care

As always we have headlines in our (right wing) newspapers urging

Canada to privatize our health care system, to move toward the

American model.

Courtesy of Dave Pollard, a timely warning:

* The leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is unpaid

medical bills

* The death rate for Americans without health insurance is 25%

higher than for those that have it

* Americans spend 2.5 times what the rest of the Western world pays

per capita for health care

* The US has one of the lowest doctor/patient ratios in the West

* Americans visit doctors and get admitted to hospital less often

than people in most countries in the West

* Americans are among the least satisfied with their health care

system

* US life expectancy is significantly lower than the average of

Western nations, while childhood immunization rates are lower and

infant mortality is higher

* Americans spend over three times as much per capita on healthcare

paperwork and administration as Canadians

* Despite the high cost, the US is almost alone in the West in not

having universal health care, and 45 million Americans have no

health insurance at all

Pollard links to a Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker that has

more. For my part, all I want to say here is that we must stay very