“Americans Sicker Than English” declared the bold headline regarding a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) two weeks ago.
“U.S. Newborn Survival Rate Ranks Low” read the headline about a study from the U.S. based Save The Children Foundation (STCF) last week.
Infant mortality in the U.S. ranked 32nd out of 33 “modern nations” according to the news article. That is if you consider Latvia among “modern nations” – otherwise the U.S. was tied for last in a dead heat with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia.
The U.S. is similarly ranked when it comes to longevity.
The NIH/JAMA study researchers expected to find a difference in health based upon spending. Instead it found that the poorest of the English had better health than the richest of Americans.
Americans have more than twice the diabetes of the English and almost twice the cancer. Heart disease, strokes and high blood pressure also were higher in Americans no matter what the income or education disparity.
The study noted American health care spending per person as double that of English health care spending.
American health care spending accounts for half of all health care spending in the world according to Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a Seattle emergency room physician and professor at the University of Washington on a radio program just this past weekend
Yet the STCF newborn survival study put forth that part of the reason for poor U.S. rankings was due to “income health care disparities”. Are they trying to say that the higher the spending for newborn care the greater the death rate will be?
The Hans Christian Andersen tale of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ from almost 200 years ago told of tailors who sold a very expensive material (that was rather immaterial) to an emperor who wanted the very best clothes of all.
The “cloth” was said to have a special characteristic that made it invisible to those either stupid or unfit for their position.
The advisors to the emperor regaled the wonders of the “cloth” as they did not want to be considered either stupid or unfit for their positions. Therefore the emperor went right along with it as well as his subjects.
Finally a little boy cried out that the emperor was naked!
The “health care” system in this nation is rather a “sick care” system. It has been tailored by tales of regalia spun by the aristocracy of BIG government, BIG pharma and BIG media – an unholy trinity acting together as one for their own vested interests decidedly against the very best interests of all the rest of us.
Dare to question the current health/sick care system and you are likely to be met by the mocking question, “Where is YOUR medical degree?”
Sadly, many fall for this line as though their MD were rather an MDeity that they dare not challenge.
My personal wake up call came as a very young man in the 1970s when I discovered very similar newborn and health care statistics at that time while preparing for the birth of our first child as those now found in these new reports.
Raised as a conservative, traditional American with an understanding of American superiority in everything meant that this information to me was no less than stunning. We ended up having a home birth much to the dismay of all our relatives.
Home births have dramatically better statistical outcomes for both mother and child than hospital births – and yes, they are much, MUCH less expensive.
The current medical system reigns supreme as emperor of the U.S. health/sick care system. Yet that emperor is “naked as a jay bird”. The neglecting of truth by that system at least approaches that of a criminal nature that would liken it to a jailbird. Perhaps the death penalty is in order for the medical sick care system?
Are you awake with your eyes wide open yet?
