I am far from knowledgeable about health care, but one thing I have read in many different places is that survival rates for many diseases are higher in America than in western countries with socialized health care systems. And I recall this very question being debated during the Republican primary.
This comes to mind because of a post (h/t Andrew Sullivan) from noted health care scholar Ezra Klein (that’s a joke, kids) in which Klein says something very silly:
In 2006, adjusted for purchasing power, the United Kingdom spent $2,760 per person on health care. America spent $6,714. It’s a difference of almost $4,000 per person, spread across the population. That’s $4,000 that can go into wages, or schools, or defense, or luxury, or mortgage-backed securities. And there’s no evidence that Britain’s aggregate outcomes are noticeable [sic] worse.
Bollocks, as they say in Britain. During the Republican primary, when Rudy Giuliani invoked America’s better-than-European cancer survival rates, one Ezra Klein, noted health care scholar, contested the claim (along with several others). Giuliani campaign adviser and actual health care policy scholar David Gratzer replied:
Americans do better when diagnosed with cancer than their European counterparts do. Since the publication of my City Journal essay, the prestigious journal Lancet Oncology has released a landmark study on cancer survival rates. Its findings:
* The American five-year survival rate for prostate cancer is 99 percent, the European average is 78 percent, and the Scottish and Welsh rate is close to 71 percent. (English data were incomplete.)
* For the 16 different types of cancer examined in the study, American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent, compared with only 47 percent for European men. Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.
* American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared with 56 percent for European women. For women, only five European countries have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.
These data, recently released, are now the best available. They too confirm Giuliani’s point: he was fortunate to be treated here.
But this controversy really isn’t about health care. It’s about the need for people who support the dramatic expansion of government to minimize, obfuscate, or render illusory the trade-offs inherent in such expansion.
Pete, are you now telling us that you’re openminded about a dedicated Socialist?;and he’s never come clean on Ayers or Wright.
how exactly does a pundit inflict damage on a country?
OK, David Brooks’ magnanimity shows less far mindedness than cowardice. For those who don’t know it yet socialism fails. It’s evil and is responsible for more deaths in the 20th century than any other intangible entity on earth. So I ask you. Why do you hope socialism succeeds?
It’s kind of you to take Packer et al so seriously, Mr. Wehner, but you needn’t. They’re like the high school quarterback’s girlfriend, who cries when her Boy Pal gets a week’s worth of non-abjectly-laudatory press.
None of us is under any obligation to give Obama’s POLICIES “a chance.” We already know they will fail, because they always do, whenever and wherever they are tried. Unfortunately, we have cultivated a citizenry that is abysmally, even epically, ignorant, and has no idea that (a) government ALREADY determines how much your health care will cost; what you are seeing out there is government regulation and mandates at work, not “the market”; and (b) government spending as “stimulus” has never stimulated an economy to rebound from recession or depression.
There is nothing unfair at all about pointing these things out.
“3,” It’s evil and is responsible for more deaths in the 20th century than any other intangible entity on earth.”
I assume that you are including Western Europe in the loop.(Very Evil Swedes) Also, you must feel awful that we have to beg China(Evil Communists) to help us prop up our declining free market. Maybe we should be purer and tell China to go f–k their evil self;and refuse their satanic lucre.
But J.E. Dyer, you may not know this because it hasn’t, you know, been like well publicized or anthing but David Brooks went to the University of Chicago and Obama went to Columbia and Harvard Law and Michele went to Princeton and Harvard Law (and you know, even Caroline Kennedy went to Colubia Law school, you know) Greg Craig went to like Yale Law School or something and they are like relly well educated and stuff. Even if the “citzenry … is abysmally, even epically, ignorant (you may know what these words mean but most of us like dont know, you know) they know enough to get us out this like mess because David Brooks has told us how smart they are.
I have a horse-manure brownie recipe that I’d like Peter Wehner to sample. But I don’t want him to turn them down based just on the recipe. I don’t want him to take just one bite and decide they’re no good. I want Peter Wehner to eat a whole plate of my horse-manure brownies … every day for six months. That’s what he says is a fair trial, so he should enjoy it. In the name of fairness, it’s “the decent thing”.
“Given the amount of wrongheadedness and damage pundits like these have inflicted on the country in its recent history, the decent thing for them to have done is say nothing for at least six months.”
Maybe this is qualified by it’s context, but it’s a quite astounding — and ironic — bit of censorship. What happened to all the champions of the First Amendment and the right – nay, necessity — of the press to criticize the government?
And wasn’t it just yesterday when Bush was Bush-Hitler because some thought his efforts to protect the nation against an imminent and dangerous national threat caused his policies to trench on the Fourth Amendment. Yet now the left is all for throwing the First Amendment under the bus for the sake of meeting a different national crises.
Look Peter, we know how the game is played. You throw in the occasional sentence in hopes that it will makes you appear reasonable and balanced. That doesn’t change the fact that your venom is dripping on your keyboard. If you think that’s not apparent in your writing — your elation when you perceive that Obama might have stumbled — your eagerness for him to fail — you are kidding yourself. Just know that you aren’t fooling anyone else.
Certainly, I’ve never seen you criticize any of the other Contentions bloggers, no matter how dishonest their attacks on Obama. Your side is very fond of the guilt by association argument (AyersRezkoWrightBlago). Well, if you aren’t an Obama hater, why do you hang out with them?
Certainly, your associations with crackpots are more substantial than Obama’s were.
maybe the left should just dismiss every bit of criticism by calling it Obama Derangement Syndrom…
It’s not like Rush openly said he hoped Obama failed? Not Obama as a human – he never said that Obama’s heart – for example should fail – just all his policies. or it’s not like Cheney – barely containing his glee, insisted that we’ll be seeing a new 9/11 (of course, if – unlike Bush, Obama pays ANY attention to intelligence…)
While it may not be true, there’s a definite impression (and to be fair, Pete Wehner aside) that the right wing is hoping for failure…
If the Obamatons think Wehner is some kind of hard core, ultramomtane right-winger, they are obviously ineducable and irreconcilable and there’s nothing left to do but kill all of them. And their parents.
“how exactly does a pundit inflict damage on a country?”
That’s an excellent question, rabbi.
#10, you BELIEVE that the Right wants Obama to fail. Read Rush’s entire comment and you will see what he said. Also, read Rush’s WSJ piece on the stimulus bill to see what he proposed. But of course, you guys on the Left only see and hear and read what you want to see and hear and read so I am pretty sure you will read this as a criticism of Obama.
I’m a moderate, but not an Obama supporter. When he promised to “spread the wealth around”, he lost me. We don’t just have a political difference; he’s on the side of evil. I hope and pray that he will see the light and become a patriotic American, but as long as he is a socialist I will hope and pray for his failure in every socialist maneuver he attempts. I’ve seen socialism, and I know better.
“The New Yorker” itself is an interesting slice of Americana. Who is it designed to reach? Leaf through it and note the advertisers. Go down the table of contents. Read Packer or Hertzberg or Surowiecki. Maybe even David Remnick, if he has something in that issue. At one time, there were many adjectives that could be applied to “The New Yorker”. Intellectual, urbane, sophisticated, thought-provoking. Not any more. Now the adjective is “irrelevant”.
Point of clarification: it’s not a question of WANTING Obama to fail. It’s a question of KNOWING that his policies already have a record of failure, have been analyzed for their errors repeatedly over the last century, and CANNOT succeed.
It doesn’t matter whether we “want” Obama to fail. His policies, as unfolded so far, WILL fail — in what he invites us to expect of them — no matter what we want.
Peter, the Agitprop Media don’t want you to shut up, they want you to begin every piece about Obama with some praise and good wishes for his success. Hoping you don’t fall for it….
I thought criticizing the president was patriotic?
#5…yes, China is responsible for millions of deaths under communism. But so were the USSR, Cambodia, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba half the countries in Africa and South America… Sweden and other European countries may be social-democratic, but they haven’t made it all the way to complete tyranny yet. Still, there are people suffering who cannot get medical care in a timely manner or who do not qualify because of age or other circumstances. Sweden is NOT a utopia…I have lived there and have friends there. They never can get ahead no matter how hard they work. There is no incentive to create or build. And don’t forget, their entire banking system is collapsing…it is like the walking dead.
#19
Do you know what the #1 US export has been the last nine years in $ volume? CDOs. They have poisoned the world banking system including our own. So can we clean up our own mess and take responsibility for our role in this world recession,before we worry about the poor victims of Swedish Socialism.?
RCAR, lets not forget Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, both socialist systems. The CDO’s were the result of another socialist dogma, that the government should ensure everyone can buy a home. SO what is your beef? The comment regarding socialism was extremely accurate and I guess if you want you could pare the communists into their own group if you choose, but they come from the same branch.
#21
Sorry JEM, the CDOs came from a mistaken economic theory that all risk could be removed from our economic sytem by spreading that risk throughout the financial universe. The risk specialists from Wall street designed these products. The regulators gave the green light. This created exponentially more risk. Without securitization,it would have cost $200 Billion to solve the foreclosure mess.
Actually, RCAR, without securitization — but assuming the federal government was still requiring the same amount of high-risk loans to be made — what would have happened was much higher interest rates, even for the people with good credit. One way or another, the lenders have to recoup the costs of the bad loans.
You probably think that would have been a good thing. It would not have been. High interest rates are, like every other economic consequence, hardest on the poor. They inhibit home ownership and business formation.
It was always inevitable that everyone would have to bear the cost of the bad loans left-wing political activists got Congress and the federal agencies to force lenders to make. We could have paid then, now, or later — but we’re gonna pay.