Waiting Times

Ezra Klein, that dreamy young health care wonk, has an excellent bit on the primary bugaboo thrown at US taxpayers about universal health care coverage. Waiting times! WAITING TIMES!! He quotes a recent study:

A Commonwealth Fund study of six highly industrialized countries, the U.S., and five nations with national health systems, Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, found waiting times were worse in the U.S. than in all the other countries except Canada. And, most of the Canadian data so widely reported by the U.S. media is out of date, and misleading, according to PNHP and CNA/NNOC.

In Canada, there are no waits for emergency surgeries, and the median time for non-emergency elective surgery has been dropping as a result of public pressure and increased funding so that it is now equal to or better than the U.S. in most areas, the organizations say. Statistics Canada's latest figures show that median wait times for elective surgery in Canada is now three weeks.

"There are significant differences between the U.S. and Canada, too," said Burger. "In Canada, no one is denied care because of cost, because their treatment or test was not 'pre-approved' or because they have a pre-existing condition."

He links to several articles and studies honing in on the same thing. This is one of the neatest tricks private health care providers have pulled off in the US. They have fooled people into thinking that just because they have insurance coverage, they are covered.

Usually, the vast number of uninsured in America are used as the moral baton with which to beat the system into a shape resembling every other industrialized nation in the world. This is wrong, because although it is morally laudale it does not tap into the deep, dark heart of the American psyche: "You are being hard done by. You are being ripped off." The universal receptor on the cells of the American body.

Focusing, relentlessly, on how you are not getting the service you think you're getting for the money you're spending is the way to move universal health care forward.

We may discuss some other transmission ideas concerning this issue, as another recent post of Ezra's raised seom questions, but I've got casting calls to make. More later, but in the meantime you could do worse than going to Ezra's joint and reading his health care posts and following the links to his health care articles.