While every year the US spends an estimated trillion dollars (see for example Chalmers
Johnson's Looming crisis at the Pentagon) on the military and
its weaponry, it is considered respectable to object to spending a
trillion dollars in ten years, peanuts by comparison, to fix the
American health care system. What is fiscally or otherwise conservative
about this? How does one ethically justify these priorities?
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
(Martin Luther King)
(This is a link to the executive summary of the report.)
Closing performance gaps would bring real benefits in terms of health, patient experiences, and savings. For example:
Full schedule of town hall events
Rational thought, at last!
Sat Aug 15 20:11:41 EDT 2009
Finally rational thought in the national healthcare debate! If you have problems with rationing,
read Peter Singer in the New York Times Magazine.
Fatal priorities
Sun Aug 16 22:16:07 EDT 2009
The number of people in France who die of preventable causes is 65 per
100,000 per year, while in the USA, with "the best health care system in
the world, is 110 per 100,000. (See here;
or here
for the full report) That is a difference of 45 per 100,000. There are
250,000,000 people in the USA. In other words, the total number of
unnecessary deaths in the USA is 45 (250,000,000/100,000) =112,500 per
year, every year.
Fatal priorities: statistical update
Mon Aug 17 16:18:33 EDT 2009
Overall, the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008, finds that the U.S. is losing ground in providing access to care and has uneven health care quality. The Scorecard also finds broad evidence of inefficient and inequitable care. Average U.S. performance would have to improve by more than 50 percent across multiple indicators to reach benchmark levels of performance.