Health Care in the U.S.

We as a nation are not spending too little on health care, we are spending too much! Indeed, we rank first among all nations in health care spending, but that money isn't being spent to improve our well being. It is being diverted to satisfy corporate greed!

According to a study published in the July 26, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the United States ranks dead last among industrialized nations in a number of key health indicators. Included among them are infant mortality, infant birth weight and neonatal fatality. Worse, according to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 24th in terms of healthy life expectancy. But most disturbing is the apparent cause of our poor health performance: the health care system itself.

A study of inadequacies in American hospitals conducted by the prestigious Institute of Medicine yielded some chilling statistics. Among other things it found that each year:

  • Adverse reactions to medications kill 108,000 people
  • Unnecessary surgery kills 7,000 people
  • Hospital medication errors kill 12,000 people
  • Other hospital errors kill 20,000 people
  • Hospital-contracted infections kill 80,000 people
Now, mind you, the drug-related deaths are not from overdoses, or misuse of prescription drugs; they represent individuals taking prescription drugs under a doctor's supervision and in accordance with the manufacturer's protocols. All together this means that some 227,000 people die each year from deficiencies in hospitals and prescription drugs! To put the figure in perspective, that's 4.3 times as many as died during the entire ten years of the Vietnam War!

Again, to put the problem in perspective, that means that the risk a patient has of dying as a consequence of simply being admitted to a hospital in the United States is:

  • Twice that of dying from lung disease
  • Three and a half times that of dying from diabetes
  • Five and a half times that of dying from an automobile accident
  • Almost seven times that of dying from a firearm
But even that's not the whole story. In the era of HMOs, most patients are not hospitalized. Rather they are treated on an outpatient basis. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, between 4% and 18% of outpatients experience adverse effects following their visit! JAMA estimates that these result in:
  • 116 million extra physician visits
  • 77 million extra written prescriptions
  • 17 million emergency room visits
  • 8 million extra short-term hospitalizations
  • 3 million extra long-term hospitalizations
  • 199,000 additional deaths
These additional deaths, taken together with the deadly adverse effects of in-hospital stays and prescription drugs, mean that overall the U.S. health care system is the direct cause of 426,000 needless deaths each year! That's more than the combined total from strokes, kidney disease, diabetes and chronic lung disease! Only cancer and heart disease claim more victims.

The cost of these needless deaths and hospitalizations is staggering. It comes to fully $77 billion annually! But there's a more fundamental reason for being alarmed about the failings of America's health care system than just its more obvious deficiencies. The simple fact is that it is not meeting its most basic requirement: keeping Americans healthy.

Today 125 million Americans suffer from one or more chronic diseases. That's roughly 45% of our population. In the year 2000, treating chronic diseases added $510 billion to U.S. health care costs. By the year 2020 that figure is expected to nearly double to $1.07 trillion! How can we claim to have the world's best health care and still have almost half of our people suffering from chronic illnesses? What is going on? Why, when the United States spends more than any other nation on health care, aren't we getting what we are paying for?

We have put our faith and trust in the institutions responsible for providing and overseeing health care in our nation. We have put our faith and trust in the government to ensure that these institutions behaved properly. We have put our faith and trust in the "experts" who, we were sure, knew more than we did. What we did not understand was that our faith and trust has been misplaced. We do now.

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