This alone is a reason to switch.

It’s easy to find papers with national comparisons of health outcomes, most of which are based on OECD data. These data are based on ICD-10 codings and are consistent across nations (none of this “the US counts stillborns” obfuscation). The US is actually younger than countries like the UK, with exactly the same rates of alcohol abuse and smoking, and similar rates of obesity. So why is it that it spends more than twice what Australians spend, to get higher infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies? If you do a search you’ll find that the main difference in costs in America is jazzy machinery and a much higher nurse-to-patient ratio.

(I had all the links to papers from the journal Health Affairs, and the OECD, with which to back these claims, but I can’t get them working).

Is this in response to my query for your cite to insured US vs. other countries studies? It doesn’t seem to study that, but maybe you were using it to make an independent point?

Beyond anectdote and surmise, we have to rely on comparative studies. Certainly this is a difficult thing to do well, and I’m quite prepared to believe that the existing information is not as good as we might like. On the other hand, every single study I know of with any sort of weight, says the US isn’t getting much bang for it’s buck, relatively speaking. The evidence really is overwhelmingly supportive of that position. The only literature I’ve seen that contradicts it (and a fair bit that supports it, but there is plenty left over) is fatally flawed. So one could argue that the whole body of literature is hopeless, but that’s a pretty strong statement to make and would require some pretty strong support, which I’ve never seen so much of a whiff of. Of course, I’m no expert in the field and I’m quite prepared to believe that there is information I’m unaware of, but I’m hardly going to take someones word for it in the face of so much contrary evidence.

I’m certainly not going to take anyones claims about Canadian vs. US without a lot of support, because from everything I’ve seen on both sides of the border, the Canadians have a better system, both in terms of actual standard of care for the people in the country, and in my impression that the things that are broken in that system are more easily fixable than what is broken here.

Middle America, 98% white, 214 million people, average income $24,640 (i.e. above average), health insurance coverage ~85%

I don’t see what this study has to do with your claim that people with poor insurance do better than most Europeans with socialised healthcare. For example (looking at Murray et al 2005 – Eight Americas: New Perspectives on U.S. Health Disparities), ‘Middle America’ does better than 5/7 (worse than ‘Asians’ and ‘White low-income rural Northland’) on life expectancy, and has values of 75(M) and 80(F) which is similar to Canada, France and the UK, which rather undermines your thesis, non?

“Insurance companies look like they have a lot of exclusions because they have to be specific about them. But your average health insurance policies don’t exclude noticeably more treatments than would actually be unavailable in your average universal health care system.”

Obviously I have no concrete data on this topic, but nor do you. So, as far as I’m aware, many US policies will not cover you for prexisting conditions so you must keep them up-to-date or lose coverage or do not cover you for things like psychiatric care – both of these contrast very poorly with European healthcare.

“No organization that has done serious cross-national comparisons rates US health care as the best in the world (and I’m not talking just coverage, I’m talking for people who HAVE insurance).”

This is actually something I’ve been looking for. Could you point to the organizations and reports that have done serious cross-national comparisons between people with coverage in the US and other countries?

“Is it clear that a treatment recommended by patient’s doctors would’ve been denied under any of the alternate systems? I doubt it.”

What does this even mean? Do you honestly believe that most (and frankly I’d be surprised to see ‘any’) universal systems allow unfettered procedures—up to and including major organ transplants? And remember the man in Sicko died only a few months later. Putting him on a 6 month waiting list would have had exactly the same effect as denying coverage.

Below was written in 2003, …where is GM today

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE3D7173CF936A25754C0A9659C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=print

The New York Times:
July 15, 2003

The absence of a national health system in the United States means that the Big Three take on social responsibilities that the governments in Japan and Germany bear. Gary Lapidus, a Goldman, Sachs analyst, referred in his recent report to the Big Three as ‘’H.M.O.’s with wheels’’ that only happen to make cars. G.M. alone provides medical coverage to nearly half a percent of the United States population, when dependents are included.

And although Toyota and Honda assemble in the United States most of the cars they sell here, their plants are much newer, their work forces younger and their retirees number in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands that depend on the Big Three. They are also not unionized, except in joint ventures with the Big Three.

While the out-of-pocket health costs of auto workers have not risen in years, many American workers have seen quite the opposite, and even white-collar Big Three employees can pay several hundred dollars a month in premiums and other out-of-pocket expenses. Auto union members enrolled in H.M.O.’s and P.P.O.’s generally pay $10 or less for prescriptions or visits to the doctor. Everything else is covered.

As a result, many analysts think that the domestic auto industry is in a bind similar to the one that crippled the domestic steel industry. Both feature shrinking companies burdened with health and pension obligations to armies of retirees, as well as labor contracts originating in a time of much less global competition.

Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University health care economist, calls the Big Three ‘’a social insurance system that sells cars to finance itself.’’

‘’It’s insane to think that a company embedded in a fierce global competition can function as a social insurance system,’’ he said. ‘’It is a crazy, anachronistic idea. It’s an idea that worked in the 60’s, but lost its validity beginning in the 70’s when the car market became global.’‘

And that’s the way it should be.

Moore cashing in. Asking some pertinant questions. Critisizing without offering concrete and do-able solutions. Not presenting the full evidence. Getting people riled.

Two hours of Moore with popcorn and coke. Isn’t that the only and perfect venue for him?