from a column titled ‘Trouble Don’t Last Always’ which focuses on problems with the rollout of the affordable care act.
I am going to quote some statistics he took from Health Costs: How the U.S. Compares With Other Countries, which appeared at PBS in October of 2012, as well as one additional paragraph of text. Before quoting from the report, Blow notes
Right now, we spend more than any other country on health care and still don’t have the best health outcomes.
And then he offers these statistics:
• There are fewer physicians per person than in most other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
• The number of hospital beds in the U.S. was 2.6 per 1,000 population in 2009, lower than the O.E.C.D. average of 3.4 beds.
• Life expectancy at birth increased by almost nine years between 1960 and 2010, but that’s less than the increase of over 15 years in Japan and over 11 years on average in O.E.C.D. countries.
Ponder those facts for a moment. Then realize that what makes it worse is the unequal distribution of physicians and hospital beds. I live in the DC metro area, with several medical schools and thus a number of large teaching hospitals and of highly qualified physicians. In part of rural America hospital beds are few, specialized units are rare, and far too often the only way they get physicians is to import them - from other countries, or by offering a special stipend and housing to encourage medical personal to locate in the more remote areas of this country.
I will offer one more paragraph from this strong column, which I urge you to read in its entirety.
Fixing our health care system is not only right from a budget and policy perspective; it’s morally right. No one should be turned down for health coverage because of pre-existing conditions. No one should have to live in fear of going broke from getting sick. No one should have to use emergency rooms as his or her only option. As Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
The Affordable Care Act was intendend to address that injustice and inequality. It has a long way to go. But what existed before, and what continues to exist, is unacceptable. ACA is a necessary but insufficient first step.
Peace.