Shift in national priorities keeps us poor and sick

"In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero." - T.R. Reid

What has hurt us most is our failure to spend tax dollars directly on the welfare of the people who pay them, and those who are to poor to pay. The Eisenhower years were a sharp contrast to today. It was a time when the reforms of FDR continued to bring forth tangible results and we enjoyed a Peace Dividend, in spite of our expenditures in Korea, which were minor compared to our continuous and escalating wars ever since.

Our failure to properly address health care continues to be an albatross around the neck of most US citizens. We still have a confused patchwork of policy that favors corporations managing health care for profit, in sharp contrast to other countries in the world. T. R. Reid has made it his full time job to de-bunk our myths about health care. In a succinct article for the Washington Post, he explodes some of the myths we have come to believe.

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage….
In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.
This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.
Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.
Given our remarkable medical assets — the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research — the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.
T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care"

Reid's book hit the shelves more than 2 years ago, a few days after the article above, and our situation has not changed. Things will continue to get worse, not better until we push together for the change we desperately need.