The following guest post is by Michael Joyner, MD, a medical researcher at the Mayo Clinic. These views are his own. You can follow him on Twitter @DrMJoyner.
It’s an election year, which means that candidates, political parties, and interest groups are shopping their plans for how to fix our health care system in the news media. For example a group in Colorado says it wants to replace the state’s Obamacare plan with a universal single payer health care system that would cover everyone. House Speaker Paul Ryan has offered a “Republican plan” that has been rated as both “flimsy” by the Washington Post and “better than good” by Forbes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Hillary Clinton has talked about Medicare for 50-somethings. The Trump plan seems to be in flux, but some attempts have been made to project its financial impact compared with proposals made by Clinton. There are also persistent reports about shorter life expectancy in the U.S., and what that says about our health care system.
All of this means that the politics of health care and health care “reform” are never ending.
Facts about health care spending
However, to paraphrase the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” So here are some facts that seem to get lost in the political posturing and news reports about health care in our country.
When I try to pull the big picture ideas from points 1-4 above together, it seems to me that there are more than enough resources to get the vast majority of people a reasonable package of health care coverage. There are numerous approaches used in other rich countries and not every rich country has a single-payer system. Most have a mix of public and private systems, and most countries have figured out a way to get almost everyone covered. In the U.S., by contrast, about 11% of the population is still uninsured.
One other caveat is that life expectancy in America is shorter compared to other countries, and we are an outlier when it comes to “life expectancy” per unit of money spent.
However, even if someone waves a magic wand and gets all Americans covered with high-quality health insurance tomorrow, don’t expect the life expectancy curve to get fixed anytime soon. It is estimated that at least 50% of the U.S. life expectancy gap is due to gun violence, accidents, and drug overdoses–things that can’t be fixed simply by getting everyone health insurance.
Universal health care is within reach, but isn’t a panacea
My bottom line is that plenty of resources are devoted to health care in the United States. Getting everyone covered isn’t a matter of resources; it’s a matter of using those resources more effectively.
Similarly, health care coverage isn’t the only thing keeping us from catching up to other nations with respect to health care outcomes. Gun violence, addiction and other issues will continue to set us back regardless of our how good our health insurance is.
Michael Joyner has done preclinical technical consulting for GSK, Amgen, Boston Scientific, Edwards, and Nonin on issues related to physiological monitoring, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He is on the board of Xcede, a startup focused on tissue sealants. As a clinical anesthesiologist he prescribes no drugs or products related to his consulting. You can follow him on twitter @DrMJoyner.
Comments (1)
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Liz Tily
July 6, 2016 at 11:53 amI’m frustrated with the billions spent on healthcare for diseases that are 100% preventable. Example, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. I feel like prevention is so underrated. The meat and dairy industry are so powerful and there’s so much money in processed food that the power of healing through healthy eating is never mentioned by government. A whole foods plant based diet could save our system. Why doesn’t anyone care?
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like