A Little Research

For a bit of a change I'm going to revisit a topic I covered earlier in the week. Usually I don't stop by the same topic that often, but this angers me so much I need to write on it. The topic is, predictably, American healthcare.

The thing that I don't understand is that when I've been to America, I've not met anyone who I've talked with who felt that the current system was a good one. I've not seen any evidence that there is a groundswell of support for the status quo. This is all down to rhetoric and scary words such as 'socialised'. There's no discussion on whether the healthcare system should be improved. So why is the debat enot about that?

Touching again on the statistics I posted up on Wednesday, the US spends more money, per head, on the healthcare system than anywhere else in the world. Yet it ranks only 37th for the quality of healthcare, and what's more astounding is if you showed Americans the list of countries above them. Oman. United Arab Emirates. Cyprus. Colombia. Costa Rica. Dominica. Morroco. Greece. Iceland. Singapore. Andorra. And yes, even the much-maligned 'socialised' United Kingdom. Topping the list are those ultimate favourites of the right, France.

This study was carried out in 2000, so is bound to be changed a little since then. However, it doesn't do anything but emphasise that the American system is not performing as it should. But why? Ironically, one of the suggested reasons is because of too much bureaucracy. As this is a charge levied at the NHS at the moment as part of this debate, it's not but a little ironic that the American levels of bureaucracy in healthcare are 50% above average. For more background, have a look at the WHO report, which goes into this in more detail.

Now, let's change tack and talk about people who oppose this. Besides those with a vested interest, those convinced by the rhetoric, and discounting the bigger government argument for a minute here, there is a number who are very much on the side of the 'why me? I'm healthy' line. I've done a little research today and found out the following; dates for statistics vary but the point is fairly illustrative.

414,295 residential fires occured in 2007 in the United States of America. Latest figures (2006) indicate approximately 125 million houses in the US; translating to a 0.3% chance of a residential fire - which is naturally going to be biased as well. There are no direct statistics for the residential damage cost of fires, but a proportional $35,300 will suffice to demonstrate the point.

Now, back to healthcare. Of a population of 303 million (2008), 25.1 million have a heart condition (2007); making this about 8%. The statistics consider that 11%, based on only adults, but I am happy with 8%. Statistics on the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and medical premiums for a year alone run to $21,900 (2007 - taken from the American Heart Association). Note that won't account for the run-on cost on future years, as you would expect would be a cost liability. Estimations including loss of earnings on one site I saw topped $1 million.

So this is the point of this exercise in figures. My bet is that those people who are convinced they are healthy, they won't be the ones affected by any healthcare scare - they will have fire insurance. At a chance of 0.3%, you will take out insurance on the basis of a risk of a $35,000 cost. So all these people, those that aren't the ones who'll get ill, wouldn't think anything giving them better access to healthcare (8-10% risk, costs running into the hundreds of thousands - and that's heart disease alone) should probably think again.

Of course, you can reduce the chance of suffering from those diseases by keeping yourself in good fitness. But you can reduce the chance of a residential fire. And you'll still have fire insurance. Just in case.

Food for thought.

I'm fairly confident I'll be revisiting this topic.