An especially interesting question since we do compare favorably with other wealthy countries in such areas as life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.
http://dailyhowler.com/
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2009
Someone’s on a spaceship with Ifill: Sung to the tune of, “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”
At first, the analysts jumped for joy. They’ve always loved Kevin Drum’s work—though he sometimes makes them tear their hair. And yesterday, Kevin said he would answer their question! Just click here:
DRUM (10/8/09): [DAILY HOWLER analysts] want to know why the media isn't a wee bit more interested in why the United States pays far more per person for medical care than other rich countries. Here's the rough answer:
Huzzah! Kevin was going to answer their question! Why do the media keep avoiding the world’s most remarkable state of affairs? Kevin was going to let us know “why the media isn’t more interested!”
But then, elation turned to despair! Kevin’s answer had nothing to do with the question he himself had just posed:
DRUM (continuing directly):
* We pay our doctors about 50% more than most comparable countries.
* We pay more than twice as much for prescription drugs, despite the fact that we use less of them than most other countries.
* Administration costs are about 7x what most countries pay.
* We perform about 50% more diagnostic procedures than other countries and we pay as much as 5x more per procedure.
While the analysts love Kevin’s work, this is why he drives them mad. Do you see a single word that answers our actual question? Here’s our question: Why does the press corps keep refusing to discuss or explain our mammoth over-spending? Kevin said he would answer that question. Then, he answered something else. It’s not that what he said was wrong. It just didn’t speak to the question.
Might we go over this problem again, speaking extremely slowly?
The United States spends two to three times as much as comparable nations on health care. As any rational person can see, these OECD data—everyone cites them—define an astonishing state of affairs:
Total spending on health care, per person, 2007
United States: $7290
France: $3601
Germany: $3588
United Kingdom: $2992
Italy: $2686
Spain: $2671
Japan: $2581 (2006)
We spend two to three times what those nations spend—and get equal or lesser health outcomes. And yet, the press corps never discusses this astonishing state of affairs!
Go ahead. Try to find a single world in Kevin’s post which explains the press corps’ disinterest.
Might we state what is blindingly obvious? Progressive impulses in this society are killed by the press corps’ silence. Most voters have little awareness of this massive over-spending. It’s hard for people to get angry about something that’s never discussed in the press. Let’s make it so simple that “career liberals” can follow: When Gwen Ifill refuses to discuss this astonishing state of affairs, she protects the corporate/big money interests which live off this vast over-spending.
She protects the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies. And she keeps her viewers clueless.
Kevin presents an interesting outline of our over-spending. If the New York Times or the Washington Post did a week of front-page reports about this astounding situation, they could certainly work from his outline. But they show no sign of wanting to do that. We have asked—and asked; and asked again—why they show no interest.
OK! Enough with the subtle:
Presumably, the mainstream press is avoiding this topic because it seeks to serve the large corporate interests involved in that over-spending. (To offer an earlier example of the same conduct: That’s why the pundits corps savaged Candidate Gore in 2000 when he opposed Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.) Or maybe explanation is more innocent: Maybe the mainstream press corps’ dull sensibilities don’t allow them to see a problem with that massive over-spending on health care.
But then, Kevin seems to share that sensibility. We pay as much as five times more per procedure, he says—and that is where his analysis rests. He fails to see the obvious question:
Why the f*ck do we do that? Why the f*ck are American citizens getting looted that way?
These blindingly obvious questions never arise in the mainstream press—or in the career liberal world, for that matter. In its silence, the mainstream press thus keeps the lid on progressive sentiment. The average American might even be angry if he/she understood the fact that he spends five times as much for procedures as other people do. But Gwen Ifill isn’t going to tell Americans that. And the outrage that lurks inside that factoid doesn’t seem to move Kevin either.
Why? Why do we spend twice as much for drugs? Why do we spend five times more for procedures? In a rational world, this remarkable state of affairs would lead to strings of front-page reports.
But you don’t live in a rational world. You live in the United States, a society which is owned by corporate interests—unlike the other societies in those OECD data.
That ownership is enabled by the dulled sensibilities found in the mainstream and career liberal worlds. Or are the Ifills knowingly in the bag to Washington’s big money interests? They seemed to play that role in the Clinton/Gore years—an era which has been disappeared.
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