John McCain could use a healthcare fact-checker

[marmar]

from ThinkProgress:



McCain Doesn’t Know That Other Countries’ Gov’t-Run Systems Are More Efficient Than U.S.

Today, President Obama spoke before the American Medical Association about the immediate need for far-reaching health care reform. He insisted that one of the options presented to Americans “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.”

On CNN earlier today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rejected the public option as “a non-starter.” He admitted that the current “competition” between “1,300 health insurance companies in America today” is not successfully driving down costs — but insisted that a government plan could never be more cost efficient:

MCCAIN: Look, if we have a government option, then sooner or later it will dramatically increase the cost, it will crowd out private health insurance. And if you’re doing it in the name of competition, we have 1,300 health insurance companies in America today. They’re competing but they’re not getting the kinds of health care costs under control that is necessary.

CNN: Yeah. Do you think that is absolutely necessarily so? That if you have a competing government system, that invariably what will happen is that you will drive some of the private health insurers out of the business?

MCCAIN: I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Over time you’ll drive them all out, and the idea that somehow the government can administer health care in a more efficient fashion than the private sector I think flies in the face of examples of other countries that have done so.

Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/15/mccain-efficient-health-care/


McCain is simply wrong. The United States ranked last in terms of efficiency among five other nations with universal health care, according to a Common Wealth study. In fact, the purely government-run Great Britain ranked first:

Compared with five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom — the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.

Efficiency: On indicators of efficiency, the U.S. ranks last among the six countries, with the U.K. and New Zealand ranking first and second, respectively. The U.S. has poor performance on measures of national health expenditures and administrative costs as well as on measures of the use of information technology and multidisciplinary teams. Also, of sicker respondents who visited the emergency room, those in Germany and New Zealand are less likely to have done so for a condition that could have been treated by a regular doctor, had one been available.

One needn’t even look abroad: The government-run Veterans Administration health care system is the most effective health care system available, not just on results but on cost efficiency as well:

Or consider this measure of the VA’s medical efficiency. Veterans enrolled in its health care system are as a group far older, sicker, poorer, and more prone to mental illness, homelessness, and substance abuse than the population as a whole. … Yet the VA’s average expenditure per patient in 2004 was $5,562, including prescription drug and longer-term care benefits that have long been available to VA patients. By comparison, Americans as a whole, including children and those who never saw a doctor during the year, consumed an average $6,260 in health care dollars in 2004.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/15/mccain-efficient-health-care/

[sandnsea]

1. The VA is underfunded

I don't know why anybody would use the VA as a comparison to health care in any sense. Most people don't go to the VA if they can avoid it because it's a notorious clusterfuck in every sense. The VA generally proves the point of the anti-government health care people.

Perhaps if the VA were properly funded, to the tune of $6260 per person or more, they wouldn't have people dying in parking lots and on waiting lists while paperwork is being transferred.

[Cleita]

Isn't the VA government run health care and not government payer for health

care like what we are pushing for? Although I have to say a friend of mine who eventually died of cancer, got excellent care at the VA once he was able to be admitted to a program. I do know a lot of the old men who relied on the VA for their health care had to wait in line all the time for to see a doctor and get a prescription for whatever chronic condition that they had that ailed them. It was pretty hard on them to have to cue up all the time.

[sandnsea]

3. It shouldn't be used as a comparison

for both reasons. I think people just don't hear what the real message they're sending sometimes.

[Cleita]

2. No post.n/t

[JDPriestly]

4. My husband loves the VA and pays extra to go there even though

he has other health insurance. He likes the doctors there. He has been in the system since he was very young.

[sandnsea]

5. WWII vets, Korean war, Vietnam

All the vets I know use it because they have to, not because it's their preference. But I knew when I posted that people would come along and argue the point, even if they're the exact same ones who throw hissyfits, rightfully so, about Walter Reed and getting more funding to the VA.

[JDPriestly]

6. It depends on the VA hospital. Here in L.A., they are pretty good.

I think that VA hospitals are teaching hospitals. I know that they have interns and residents. That means they have recent graduates from medical school supporting the staff doctors. That's a good thing.