In what is alas ultimately somewhat less than a "man bites dog" report, the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, is coming out with a report today that says what we have known all along: The U.S. Healthcare System is NOT the best in the world.
On the one hand, this is sort of good news, insofar as it provides some pushback from "their" side to the fantasy continued to be pushed by some Republicans (and alas some Democrats) that the United States is "the best in the world" and the usual "USA #1" jingoistic claptrap.
On the other hand their "solution" is for more of the same.
follow me over below the fold...
Healthcare in the U.S., the Business Roundtable agrees:
costs too much and delivers too little, a business group says in a report to be released Thursday.
and
America's health care system has become a liability in a global economy.
Americans spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.
In a different twist, the report took those costs and factored benefits into the equation.
It compares statistics on life expectancy, death rates and even cholesterol readings and blood pressures. The health measures are factored together with costs into a 100-point "value" scale. That hasn't been done before, the authors said.
The results are not encouraging.
The United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S.
The cost-benefit disparity is even wider — 46 points — when the U.S. is compared with emerging competitors: China, Brazil and India.
But be wary when more pullquotes are from for-profit insurance company executives:
"What's important is that we measure and compare actual value — not just how much we spend on health care, but the performance we get back in return," said H. Edward Hanway, CEO of the insurance company Cigna. "That's what this study does, and the results are quite eye-opening."
on the one hand:
Higher U.S. spending funnels away resources that could be invested elsewhere in the economy, but fails to deliver a healthier work force, the report said.
and
...as more American companies face global competition, the "value gap" is being felt by more CEOs — and their hard pressed workers.
on the other hand:
One thing the report does not do is endorse the same solution that countries like Canada have adopted: a government-run health care system.
The CEOs of the Business Roundtable believe health care for U.S. workers and their families should stay in private hands, with a government-funded safety net for low-income people.
So there we have it:
They say: "Our current way of doing things is much worse and does not work... let's have more of the same."
We say: There is a better way.
Update 2:
For those who can't see images below, try this slideshow version at photobucket.
Update:
I am going to do full diary on this issue. But since the Business Roundtable brought it up(government-funded safety net for low-income people) and I elaborated on it in comments (dump the poor and sick on public system: so private for profit insurance companies can be guaranteed a profit. Public option's problem is that if we don't have everybody paying a little bit in (i.e. universal pool via taxes), then it winds up costing public more, with profits going to the insurance companies. Their skim and dump with Medicare Advantage is just the latest example of how the system really works.), and since we are being told that some form of keep the private insurance companies in place supplemented by some kind of public option is the best that we are allowed to fight for, I did want to show some of the problems with what happens when you have private insurance "competing" with public option in the real world. That essentially is what the whole Medicare HMO/Advantage experiment has been. Here is how it really works (powerpoints from peer review studies and inspector general report):
I'll be doing a full diary on this soon.