My friend just sent this LTTE re: Natasha Richardson and Canadian health care

[proud2BlibKansan]

A California friend who is at the outfall end of the right wing noise machine sewer sends me Cory Franklin's tendentious accumulation of hypothetical rubbish in today's Trib that intends to question the merits of the Canadian health care system over that of the U.S.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0325natashamar25,0,3093948.story

The comparison is simply silly.

Natasha Richardson refused medical attention. Although skiing on the bunny slopes, she was engaged in a risky activity that has killed many U.S. residents from Congressman Sonny Bono to Robert Kennedy's son Michael a week later. ABC producer John McWethy died that same year and the heir apparent to the Spanish throne died on Colorado's slopes.

It is simply impossible to have CT scanners and other prodigiously expensive equipment everywhere it might be needed, or we'd have EMT's following around mouth breathing, drunken Hell's Angels who wear "do rags" instead of helmets.

To indict the Canadian health care system because Richardson was unwilling to accept assistance is ludicrous. Here's a far better statistic that one might use for a comparison.

That's right. New Caledonia, Cuba, South Korea, Slovenia, Singapore and 28 other nations have lower infant mortality rates (figures are for total birth deaths and deaths of children under five). Canada's infant mortality rate is 31% better than ours. Survival through age 5 is 32% higher, north of the border, in that hotbed of socialism. Iceland with national health insurance, has an infant mortality and survival through 5 rate 100% better than ours!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate_(2005)

163 United States 6.3 7.8
164 New Caledonia 6.1 8.7
165 Cyprus 5.9 6.9
166 Brunei 5.5 6.7
167 Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey) 5.2 6.2
168 Cuba 5.1 6.5
169 New Zealand 5.0 6.4
170 Portugal 5.0 6.6
171 Italy 5.0 6.1
172 Ireland 4.9 6.2
173 Canada 4.8 5.9
174 United Kingdom 4.8 6.0
175 Slovenia 4.8 6.4
176 Israel 4.7 5.7
177 Netherlands 4.7 5.9
178 Luxembourg 4.5 6.6
179 Australia 4.4 5.6
180 Austria 4.4 5.4
181 Denmark 4.4 5.8
182 Germany 4.3 5.4
183 Spain 4.2 5.3
184 France 4.2 5.2
185 Belgium 4.2 5.3
186 Korea, South 4.1 4.8
187 Switzerland 4.1 5.1
188 Czech Republic 3.8 4.8
189 Finland 3.7 4.7
190 Hong Kong 3.7 4.7
191 Norway 3.3 4.4
192 Sweden 3.2 4.0
193 Japan 3.2 4.2
194 Singapore 3.0 4.1
195 Iceland 2.9 3.9

Canada and Iceland spend slightly more than half as much on health care as does the U.S., per capita, $2,998, $3,169 and $5,711, respectively.
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfmhttp://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm

This isn't rocket science. Our health care stinks and we're paying about twice as much for it as nations that have far better health care.

For the Trib to publish Dr. Franklin's nonsense is simply shameful. A good measure of how absurd it is, would be to examine how enthusiastically the extreme right wing blogosphere and NY Post has picked up on it. You are giving credibility to information that is about as worthy of belief as is Linda Black's horoscope column in the Trib.

Sincerely,

[Critters2]

1. I saw that in the Trib, and nearly replied, but was so angry

I didn't think I could write coherently.

My first thought was that it's hard to believe a physician in WILMETTE, IL is really concerned about everyone having access to healthcare, even those far from trauma centers.

I've served on committees trying to bring doctors to two rural communities. We did everything we could to attract them. One town had a grant from the USDA, so could offer a decent salary even before patient fees. But we just could not coax doctors to rural Illinois or Iowa. I shudder to think what it's like in Kansas or Wyoming or Alaska.

Yet, this asswipe in probably the wealthy city in Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, has the balls to act concerned about whether people in far-flung resorts can get to trauma centers. What does he care? He's got his. His purpose in life was to get wealthy, and I'll bet he's achieved it.

See what I mean? Too angry to be coherent.

[Wapsie B]

2. I just wonder how the rest of the world copes with healthcare for all.

Give me Canada's healthcare system any day. The way some people in this country have bought into the propaganda by big insurance here is asinine. Healthcare rationing, limitations on who you can see for an illness exist already in this supposedly wondrous system. It's organized crime here.

[pnwmom]

3. This has nothing to do with national health care vs. private.

It's about a breakdown in care, which could happen under either system.

Several other provinces DO have medical helicopters available to fly injured patients from remote areas to trauma centers. It's just a problem -- and possibly a serious problem -- in Quebec and the other provinces that don't. And the head of trauma services for all the hospitals in Montreal has been lobbying for just such a service.

Just today there was a report of a little girl who had Natasha's same injury, but with a different outcome. She didn't develop any symptoms for 48 hours after her injury. But when the local hospital did the CT scan, they were able to helicopter her out to the trauma center in 6 minutes -- saying that the 30 minute drive might be too long. If the trauma hospital in Montreal had had a helicopter, Natasha could have been flown there in 15 minutes. We'll never know whether that could have changed her outcome.

But, to emphasize this again, this isn't about universal, national health care vs. the hodge-podge we have. This is about something that should be fixed in Quebec's particular system -- and anywhere else in Canada OR the U.S. that still needs good access to trauma care.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. Leave it to the right wing to spin it to fit their agenda

[zbdent]

5. gotta stop the arterial aging in the upper levels of the social strata ...

here ... inject some cytoglobin ...

[pacalo]

6. What does your friend have against a better health care system for herself & her family?

Or does she already have a good insurance policy & wants to prevent others who desperately need it to continue going without?

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Read the letter again

You are totally off the mark.

[pacalo]

10. Oops -- I see that.

Thank you for pointing it out so tactfully & gracefully.

[OneBlueDotBama]

8. Montreal has one of the finest Neurological hospitals ....

on the planet. The hospital in Ste. Agathe is not well equipped to handle much of anything, then again there are enough private choppers sitting over at Le Circuit if Miss. Richardson was in need of one. Quebec ambulance drivers are just that, drivers as to this day I don't think they can administer an aspirin. It was just one of those things that happens, it's sad, but she could have fallen on a side walk 100 feet from the best hospital in the world and if she sought not to treat her injury, the outcome would have been the same.

[gratuitous]

9. A very good letter and full of easily grasped facts

Which means it will totally sail over the heads of the people faulting the health care system for Richardson's death.

The bare facts (minor fall, adult woman shaken up but feels okay declines trip to hospital, dies a couple of days later from unsuspected closed head injury) seem to indicate that the fault-finders are advocating that everyone be whisked off for a full medical examination for every bump, trip or fall. Is that the way we should be reading it? That fully grown adults aren't capable of making their own decisions about whether or not they feel all right?

In this particular instance, obviously, cost was not a concern for the victim. Natasha Richardson could have afforded any reasonable expense. Are we going to require the same comprehensive medical attention not only for Tony-Award winning actresses but also for poor, uneducated women in the projects with three children before they're out of their teens?

[whyisme]

11. Comparing Infant Mortality Rates

The problem with comparing infant mortality stats is that you're not always comparing apples to apples. Different countries report and define "mortality" differently. In the US when a baby is born at 1 lb we go to extraordinary lengths to save its live, while in other countries such a birth would simply be reported as still born and thus not be counted as infant mortality stats.

I've heard this argument before and I found many articles explaining this better than I can, including using the op's source of Wikipedia. Here's a snippet of one:

"Therefore, the quality of a country's documentation of perinatal mortality can matter greatly to the accuracy of its infant mortality statistics. This point is reinforced by the demographer Ansley Coale, who finds dubiously high ratios of reported stillbirths to infant deaths in Hong Kong and Japan in the first 24 hours after birth, a pattern that is consistent with the high recorded sex ratios at birth in those countries and suggests not only that many female infants who die in the first 24 hours are misreported as stillbirths rather than infant deaths but also that those countries do not follow WHO recommendations for the reporting of live births and infant deaths.<10>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality

"Dr. Bernadine Healy pointed out last year in U.S. News & World Report, "It's shaky ground to compare U.S. infant mortality with reports from other countries. The U.S. counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths." So U.S. infant mortality figures are inflated precisely because of the heroic efforts of U.S. doctors to save the lives of more infants."

http://media.www.thebluebanner.net/media/storage/paper1302/news/2008/12/04/Editorial/Infant.Mortality.Rate.Needs.Definition.Overhaul-3568039.shtml


So, while are many fair arguments for socialized medicine, I don't like to see this one used.

On the Natasha Richardson experience - She had a head injury - it's sad that she was "allowed" to make the decision. My brother coincidentally had the same type injury from a blow to the head a week prior. He was admitted to the hospital but checked himself out against medical advice. I had the same problem there - how could they let someone with a head injury make such a decision?

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Welcome to DU

:hi:

[daleo]

13. Do you really think Canadians don't try to keep premature babies alive

just as hard as Americans do?

[Hello_Kitty]

14. Okay, what about life expectancy then? The U.S. is lower than several countries.

Including, I believe, Cuba. And we make some pretty herculean efforts to keep people alive here so you can't really argue that point.