Andrew Sullivan has been on a multi-day tear about health care reform in the United States, as compared with Great Britain.
As a British ex-pat, Sullivan of course has something that many Americans don't have -- direct experience of the British healthcare system (as well as grave health concerns). But his ire toward NHC in Great Britian seems to be based on his own personal experience, rather than any analysis of the issues (and, let's face it, his own conservative ideological pre-disposition against government programs just on general principle).
Fortunately, Sullivan has posted several replies to his posts by those with more knowledge and sense than he has, and also provides a link to Ezra Klein's blog, which provides some much needed objective data:
But it's not. In concert with Andrew's thesis, Britain does indeed have a high rate of amenable deaths. Just not higher than ours. in 2002-2003, Britain suffered 102.81 amenable deaths per 100,000 citizens. America suffered 109.65. This doesn't totally eviscerate Andrew's assertion of cultural difference. It may be that Brits believe they should endure that many preventable deaths while Americans don't believe that but have such a bad health care system that they nevertheless beat out the Brits. But either way, the difference between the American and British health care systems is not that we are enjoying timely and lifesaving interventions while they are forgoing them.
It's unclear how Sullivan would respond to this. On the one hand, his conservative ideology presumes that government programs produce worse outcomes than private programs in the aggregate -- a presumption at odds with the data of most national healthcare systems as compared with the U.S. But on the other hand, his ideological commitment to private versus government solutions could lead him to conclude that the American system is preferable regardless of outcomes.
As for me though, ideology is irrelevant. We want a healthcare system that produces better outcomes, and that could be provided by almost any existing national health care system but our own.
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