Myths of universal healthcare explained: part two

To be honest, everyone, I’m as sick of the healthcare debate as anyone, so I wasn’t planning to write this series. However, instead of focusing on trying to find healthcare reform that would actually work, the debate for the most part has been centered on the myths of universal healthcare. President Obama was so concerned about “disinformation” that he appointed a Disinformation Czar, even though most of the disinformation has been spread by the White House. In an attempt to combat that disinformation, here is part two of my series on the myths of universal healthcare.

Myth: The United States, despite our wealth of resources, has fallen to number 37 when ranking the healthcare systems around the world.

You hear this “fact” a lot, including in Michael Moore’s medical drama, Sicko. What is important here is where this number comes from. It is the findings of the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations. If you don’t think that the UN, and thus the WHO, is biased toward socialism and is against free-market capitalism, then you haven’t paid much attention to the UN. The anti-American sentiment of the UN has been well-documented, but what interests me about the WHO’s studies and subsequent rankings of countries’ healthcare systems is that, by their own admission, their findings were hampered by “insufficient attention to research.” If hard numbers weren’t available, the data was “developed through a variety of techniques.” One such technique is what I like to call “making it up.”

The statistics used in WHO reports are also useless because there is no standardization of the data collection. For example, the US has a dismal infant mortality rate compared to European countries. However, in our country every baby that has a heartbeat is considered a living thing and is counted in the statistics. In Europe, however, it is not considered a live birth unless the infant is a certain size.

The WHO is a supporter of socialized healthcare, so their reports and their findings, not surprisingly, tend to favor socialized healthcare. The rankings are based on “developed” data and other subjective techniques. For example, one category in which the US does poorly (54th place) is “fairness.” Well, sure, that’s highly subjective, but who doesn’t want healthcare to be fair? The WHO vaguely defines fairness as “the smallest feasible difference among individuals and groups.” So obviously, this category would not favor a capitalist system where someone with more money can afford to pay for experimental treatment.

Look at it this way. A healthcare system that allows some people to receive expensive and experimental treatment would not score as well in that category as a system that does not allow anyone to receive that treatment. According to the WHO, it is more fair for no one to receive experimental treatment than for it to be given to some people who are willing to pay for it.

Still don’t believe that the WHO is biased in favor of socialized healthcare? In their report, the same report that is quoted by Michael Moore, NPR, NBC and every other outlet clamoring for Obamacare, the WHO says that there are two qualities necessary for a healthcare system to be fair. First, it requires that “the healthy subsidize the sick.” Fine, that’s what health insurance is. Everybody pays an insurance company hoping they remain healthy enough to not need the money. Meanwhile, people who are sick use the money paid in by others to reduce their costs. The other quality that is necessary for fairness, according to the WHO, is that “the rich subsidize the poor.” Well, folks, that’s socialism.

Not only that, but when compiling numbers for the rankings, the WHO placed 65% of the weight of their study on equality. Remember that “equality” is a buzz word often used in place of socialism. In other words, the WHO does not consider a healthcare system to be legitimate and fair if it is not a socialized healthcare system, and people actually look at the WHO report as if it is an unbiased critique of global healthcare systems.

Myth: The Brits have it figured out. We should follow the UK healthcare model.

The UK had a head start on us on the march toward socialism, so it is a good idea to look at how things are run over there. So how is their healthcare? It’s about as efficient as the offense in one of their soccer matches. Emergency rooms have gotten so backed up with patients that the government had to mandate that the hospitals see patients admitted to the ER within four hours. In order to meet this requirement, it has become common practice for ambulances to wait outside the hospital for hours before letting the patient into the emergency room, since that four-hour time limit doesn’t start until they walk through the hospital doors.

In an effort to provide incentive for the hospitals to actually treat patients, the government offers $1000 for each patient admitted. As a result, patients are admitted that do not need to be so the hospital can collect the money, which results in a longer wait time for those who actually do need to be admitted.

What about dental care? Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the UK is not known for having dental hygiene as good as ours. Close to half of the dentists in the country will not accept patients using government healthcare. The government then decided to modify their dental coverage, since it was so hated. As a result, 58% said that the government’s changes made things worse and 84% said it was still as hard as ever to find a dentist.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about people in the UK being on the waiting list for a medical procedure for a few years. Luckily, the government knew they had to do something about it and set a mandate that people who need surgery would be operated on within 6 short months. Oh, is that all? That’s not so long. Not surprisingly, shortening the wait time for some led to a longer wait time for others. Once the government mandate was passed, wait times in general increased by 20%. Some types of surgery got a lot worse, like orthopedic surgery, which increased by 143%.

If you still think the UK has a good healthcare system, I guess you haven’t heard of NICE. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or the Orwellian title NICE for short, is the government agency responsible for rationing healthcare. Put simply, they assign a value to each human life and if a medical procedure, treatment or drug costs more than that value, they do not approve of the treatment.

Myth: America’s low life expectancy, when compared to the rest of the world, is proof that we have a bad healthcare system.

At first glance, life expectancy seems like a good way to measure a healthcare system’s effectiveness. After all, if people in one country are living longer, then it must be because they’re healthier. And if they’re healthier, then it must be because their healthcare system is better.

Unfortunately, this method of ranking healthcare is no more accurate than the WHO report. Not everyone who dies does so as the result of a disease, and many of those who do die from a disease that could not have been cured with preventive care. One reason for our low life expectancy is our country’s extremely high homicide rate. We also have 3 times as many people die, per capita, in car wrecks as in the Netherlands, for example. These are deaths that have nothing to do with a person’s physical health.

As for the infant mortality rate, there are two things that severely skew those numbers. One thing is that, regardless of socioeconomic status, black people have much higher infant mortality rates than whites and Hispanics. No one knows why this is, but it’s safe to say that the fact is a contributing factor to our mortality rate being higher than, say, Sweden. The other thing skewing the numbers is how the numbers are tabulated. In the United States, a baby is considered alive if it has a heartbeat. That seems like a pretty good measure of life to me, but other countries have different standards for whether or not a baby is alive. Austria and Germany only count a baby as being alive if it’s at least 1 pound, and in much of Europe it has to be at least 12 inches long to be a live birth. In France, it’s not a live birth if the baby was in gestation for fewer than 26 weeks.

So it seems that the infant mortality rate in European countries is lower than here because in Europe there are a whole lot of dead babies that were never counted as being alive. If those European countries counted their live births the same was as us and had the same cultural diversity, I think you’d find the numbers are drastically different.

Myth: President Obama doesn’t actually want a single-payer system. He doesn’t want the government to run the whole system.

This is one of those myths that would be hard to refute in the days of old. But that was before the days of compact camcorders and YouTube. If asked now, Obama says that he doesn’t want a single-payer system and that Obamacare is simply about offering more choices for the people. However, back before he was president, Obama often talked openly about his desire for the government to run the industry, saying that if he were to design “a system from scratch” he would “set up a single-payer system. “He warned his constituents that, unfortunately, people won’t accept a single-payer system right away, so something like a public option must be used as a transition toward that goal.

Myth: Those evil insurance companies are making a killing by price gouging at the expense of the insured.

This is a myth that people are quick to believe because, let’s face it, people don’t like insurance companies anyway. The truth, however, bears little resemblance to this myth. A recent study of profit margins by industry found that health insurance plans rank 86th with a meager 3.5% profit margin. In case you’re wondering, the hospitals aren’t gouging you either. They rank 77th with a 3.6% profit margin. Interestingly, though, education is the 19th most profitable industry, with an 11.7% profit margin. For some reason, though, you don’t hear liberals whining about all of the money being funneled into the Department of Education. Maybe it has something to do with all of that money the teachers unions donate to the Democratic party.