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Saturday 29 August 2009

It is, I guess, politically correct, widely believed, that to say that American health care is the best in the world. It’s not. There’s a much more complicated story there. For some kinds of care my colleague Brent James calls it rescue care. Yes, we’re the best in the world. If you need very complex cardiac surgery or very advanced chemotherapy for your cancer or some audacious intervention with organ transplantation, you’re pretty lucky to be in America. You’ll get it faster and you’ll probably get it better than in at least most other countries. Rescue care we’re great. But most health care isn’t that. Most health care is getting people with diabetes through their illness over years or controlling the pain of someone with arthritis or just answering a question for someone who is worried or preventing them from getting into trouble in the first place. And on those scores: Chronic disease care, community-based care, primary care, preventive care. No no, we’re no where near the best. And it’s reflected in our outcomes. We’re something like the… We’re not the best health care system in the world in infant mortality rates. We’re like number 23. There is an index that is used in rating health care systems, which is the rate of mortality that could have been prevented by health care. There are at least a dozen countries with lower rates of preventable mortalities than the United States and not one of those countries spends 60 percent of what we do on health care. Dr. Donald Berwick

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  1. jenniferforever reblogged this from robot-heart-politics
  2. squashed reblogged this from jeffmiller and added:
    The Trunk: Asking...government policies actually created the problem, 2) the policies
  3. jeffmiller reblogged this from squashed and added:
    Squashed’s logic seems to be (1) there isn’t enough competition, so (2) we need a government plan to compete against the...
  4. squashed reblogged this from meckz and added:
    meckz|net= Frequently yes—which is why I assume you’ll join me in supporting...public...
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  7. squashed reblogged this from meckz and added:
    meckz|net: True. Do you really think private business...shown a propensity toward...
  8. meckz reblogged this from robot-heart-politics and added:
    And that is why I still follow you blog even though we disagree - you disagree with me on principaled points and logical...
  9. meckz reblogged this from robot-heart-politics and added:
    I agree with you… But I think that a free market can address this better than complete government control. I do not...
  10. meckz reblogged this from robot-heart-politics and added:
    I hear this all the time - that we are the best in the world. I do not support a single payer system, but I DO support...
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