What?

A revolting development this is?

Not likely …

Thank you, Dan, for telling it like it really is.

Edward R. Murrow would be pleased. As would Walter Cronkite.

I look forward to the time when you might say, “Good night, and good news, tomorrow …”

That will be the day.

DW

You liberals and your fact! Corporations need our healthcare dollars more for their profit than our actual healthcare. For-Profit is the corporate goal. (good for widgets, bad for healthcare)

, I am chipping away at the 378 page study from which your conclusions were drawn. The study is an omnibus of many papers each having many ideas to consider. It is interesting to see what topics and theories are chosen by which media or newspaper. The NYTimes chose the violence, drugs and STDs for their leading theory of how to make sense of the data. Their graphic/table is depressing, showing high mortality for younger folks. My favorite theories are the impact of the Crash in 2008, the inequality of incomes within our society, the minimal social safety net we offer the unemployed and the disabled, and the effects of corporate predation upon the ‘disposable Americans’.

Another point which should get more notice is the role inequality plays. It’s not just access to healthcare but inequality leads to less trustful societies and stress.

Conservatives are by definition a drag on human progress.

And all those electronic medical records that were going to save SOOO much money and make everything run MUUUCH more smoothly? Not so much. Color me, as someone who just retired from working in medical offices for 35+ years, completely and utterly unsurprised.

the American healthcare system is one of the worst in the developed world.

System? We have a healthcare system?

We’re the only country that doesn’t care what we (or Monsanto) puts in our mouths.

“RAND’s 2005 report was paid for by a group of companies, including General Electric and Cerner Corporation, that have profited by developing and selling electronic records systems to hospitals and physician practices.” – from your link. Thanks, Marion. I share your lack of surprise.

That line you cite elicited a cynical snort from me.

I believe the correct term is medical “austerity”.

Need to make cuts to balance the budget.*

*Note: Trillions to Wall St bailouts not included.

Robamneycare enshrines into federal law the shittiness of the US health care system. So don’t expect the humiliating race for last place that we’re locked in with Albania to change any time before Robamneycare is ripped out and replaced.

Yes cuts to Main Street access to any helpful health care but free taxpayer dollars for corp health care welfare. Racing to the bottom.

I’m thinking the ‘elites’ of Europe are figuring out how to use a financial ‘crisis’ to screw their publics out of uiversal health care. I have read, for example, that David Cameron’s government has its claws and jaws on the national health service. Greeks are sickening and dying for lack of access to health care. The Germans are preaching austerity and practicing it, too, by shipping their elderly to eastern Europe and Asia.

We could be in a real scrap when it comes to a race to the bottom. There’s thugs everywhere.

Cataloging the fact that someone waited to go to the ER and now needs to be admitted because he lacks affordable insurance that would have meant a doctor’s vist earlier doesn’t actually save money? Who knew.

My daughter’s wisdom teeth are impacted. They won’t even cover the cost of sedation. They’d rather wait until the damn things get infected then even pay a penny even though in the interim she could end up with ear, nose and throat problems that’ll cost them money since the darn things are close to those areas.

Besides you have to have actual standards for records to benefit people much.

In the priority medical center near our home you used to always be seen by MDs. Now you are always seen by a nurse practitioner or physician assistant. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants have their needed place but it is a definite downgrading of service (done for purely cost reasons not reflected in patient bills) to have initial diagnoses done by them instead of MDs.

The observable signs of deteriorating health and lifestyle choices have been obvious to me, so I’m not surprised at this report. Obamacare notwithstanding, I suspect this will continue to get worse in the coming years because negative outcomes are delayed, sometimes by decades (as in the case of cancer and heart disease). The “fallout” from the Great Recession will be severe. I also notice a lot of young people are smoking, which bodes ill for their life expectancy — even though I fully understand their cynicism/pessimism about not expecting to have a decent life, given the onslaught of corporate fascism and the destruction of the environment.

To be absolutely clear about this. The report states that this situation will continue to get worse. Life expectancy in peer countries will continue rise. It will at best stagnate in the USA. It may even fall.

On another note. Why am I not surprised this article only got 18 comments (including this one)? It’s a slight improvement on the “crickets” that greet Kevin Gostzolas articles on US torture and international illegality, but still…a reflection of priorities?

By the way, know which institution — as of 2005, anyway — provided the best overall medical care in the US? Better than any for-profit hospital chain?

The Veterans Administration.

Seriously.

Who do you think receives higher-quality health care. Medicare patients who are free to pick their own doctors and specialists? Or aging veterans stuck in those presumably filthy VA hospitals with their antiquated equipment, uncaring administrators, and incompetent staff? An answer came in 2003, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be “significantly better.”

Here’s another curious fact. The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a study that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care.

It gets stranger. Pushed by large employers who are eager to know what they are buying when they purchase health care for their employees, an outfit called the National Committee for Quality Assurance today ranks health-care plans on 17 different performance measures. These include how well the plans manage high blood pressure or how precisely they adhere to standard protocols of evidence-based medicine such as prescribing beta blockers for patients recovering from a heart attack. Winning NCQA’s seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. And who do you suppose this year’s winner is: Johns Hopkins? Mayo Clinic? Massachusetts General? Nope. In every single category, the VHA system outperforms the highest rated non-VHA hospitals.

Not convinced? Consider what vets themselves think. Sure, it’s not hard to find vets who complain about difficulties in establishing eligibility. Many are outraged that the Bush administration has decided to deny previously promised health-care benefits to veterans who don’t have service-related illnesses or who can’t meet a strict means test. Yet these grievances are about access to the system, not about the quality of care received by those who get in. Veterans groups tenaciously defend the VHA and applaud its turnaround. “The quality of care is outstanding,” says Peter Gayton, deputy director for veterans affairs and rehabilitation at the American Legion. In the latest independent survey, 81 percent of VHA hospital patients express satisfaction with the care they receive, compared to 77 percent of Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Outside experts agree that the VHA has become an industry leader in its safety and quality measures. Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement and one of the nation’s top health-care quality experts, praises the VHA’s information technology as “spectacular.” The venerable Institute of Medicine notes that the VHA’s “integrated health information system, including its framework for using performance measures to improve quality, is considered one of the best in the nation.”