Earlier this month, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby told FOX News' Chris Wallace that President Obama was going to ruin France's health care system. In an interview, Shelby said that Obama's health care reform ideas were the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known."While he would seem to be talking about the US health care system, the facts don't really back him up. According to a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) study (the most recent available), "France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan." The US "spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance." So Shelby has to be talking about top-ranked France, because the US health care system is a rip-off.
In fact, the US system goes out of its way to deny care. "[Insurance companies] confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors," Wendell Potter, a former Cigna senior executive, testified at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday. "They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment... dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line."
So much for our ranking as the "best health care system the world has ever known." For the record, 37th in the world doesn't qualify as "best." That ranking doesn't even make us Miss Congeniality. It just makes us "one of the health care systems the world has known." Not the best, not the worst, just unspectacular and nothing to brag about. It's not gruel, it's not filet mignon, it's just a bologna sandwich. Pretending it's the pinnacle of human endeavor doesn't really help much and no one's really buying it -- even if you throw in chips and a pickle... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
