Obama’s 5 health care LIES
If you’re trying to follow the health care debate, you know thereare some “truths” which have been repeated so frequently, and with suchvehemence, that they have become gospel. How often have you heard “thecosts are skyrocketing” or “our system is broken” or “Americansoverwhelmingly support reform”?
Here’s a heads-up: Some of these aresimply baloney.
For instance, those pushing reform have described our healthcaresystem as “broken,” thus in desperate need of overhaul. The primaryevidence for this claim is a report issued by the World HealthOrganization in 2000 which ranked the U.S. 37th in overall “healthperformance” despite being number one in spending. (It is noteworthythat the WHO no longer publishes such a ranking — deeming the process”too difficult.”) Betsy McCaughey, in a recent talk before theManhattan Institute, noted that the rankings were heavily weightedtowards social goals, and less towards the effectiveness of medicalcare. In other words, the WHO studied the distribution ofmedical attention, and the fairness in financial contribution, placingas much weight on such issues as on actual performance.
Further, according to Princeton professors Uwe Reinhardt andTsung-mei Chung, the rankings “are not based on the actual valuesachieved by the nation, but on the ratio of the achieved values to thevalues that ought to have been achieved, given the country’seducational attainment and spending.” They point out that the rankings,in effect, were determined by the opinions of those surveyed. In short,this is hardly a scientific assessment.
Even against this bias, the U.S. ranked number one in”responsiveness” — that is in actually delivering care, but gothammered on “fairness of financial contribution.” The country thatscored highest on that metric — Colombia — ranked 82nd onresponsiveness. Would you rather be treated in Colombia or in the U.S.?