Best Health Care In the World

You often hear that the United States has the best health care system in the world. Anyone that uses the system realizes that claim is pretty shaky at best. With the exception of the Veterans Administration, which is very efficient and has an enviable record of cost containment, the US health care delivery system is costly and comparatively unsuccessful when you look at mortality rates and other measures of success.

Some critics blame the high cost of insurance because of the litigious nature of the society in general. Others say that Americans have too much access to health care and over use the system. Some will blame the Insurance Companies for elevating transaction costs by bouncing back claims in the hope that the providers will quit trying to collect. In addition, there are claims that delivery is uneven, with some areas having plenty of doctors nurses, hospitals and clinics and others having none.

I suspect that these claims and others are true. This morning I heard a doctor commenting on NPR that ER clinics all over the country are overburdened and unable to handle any kind of a terrorist attack. Terrorists being the "new bad guys" about whom we can justify anything, may draw attention to this weakness in our health delivery system. However the real problem with the overload in the ER is that the ER has become the regional triage center for hospitals. If you don't have health insurance, if the doctor doesn't want to come to your home or see you in his office, if you are victim of an accident or if you are a visitor to a community, there is no option other than the ER. ER care is some of the most expensive care we can provide and yet there it is, the only option for millions of potential patients.

This I know first hand about health care. It isn't the best in the world. We don't have too many doctors, nurses and medical practitioners. Transaction costs and middle man insertion into the system is not improving health care delivery nor is it lowering the cost.

The big question of building a national consensus invloves a basic question. As a society, do we believe that heath care is business that should function in the free market system, in other words, available to those who can afford it? Or, is health care a human right that society should provide to everyone that needs it?