Let's Meet the Health Care Challenge

"Why is it that we spend more than $6,000 per person per year for health care in this country and still have close to 47 million people with no coverage, while Canadians spend about half of what we spend, yet have longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, and all their people have equal care available to them?”

This is one of the questions submitted to AARP for AARP’s two presidential forums. The question was sent in by Dan Kanoza a retired industrial engineer. The question is the same one many of us in this country are asking. Unfortunately there’s still a lot of us who are satisfied with our health insurance and our health care to ask the question. It won’t stay that way forever. The rising cost of health care ergo the rising cost of insurance is changing the state of insurance coverage every day and it’s not for the better. We’re getting less and it’s costing us more.

At the rate employers are dropping insurance coverage, raising the cost of coverage, and reducing options, in a decade we will have one third of our population without insurance, one third underinsured, and the last third asking why the other two thirds are complaining. We’re all afraid of the Canadian health care system because of the horror stories we’ve heard but Dan Kanoza is right. Canadians do spend about half of what we spend, have longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, and all their people have equal care.

The horror stories of long waits for treatment are the result of a shortage of medical staff and under funding. The shortage of medical professionals is the result of a study performed in Canada in the early 90’s demonstrating a reduction in the need for medical services in the next decade in Canada. Rather than allow the system to find its own level the Canadian government reduced the number of slots available in their medical schools. This has affected all the medical professions in Canada. The Canadian government has also been unwilling to tax their population enough to meet their needs. Even small increases aren’t possible because politicians are afraid to be honest.

Granted there are problems in Canada but the problems aren’t as bad as we’ve heard. The truth is there are too many in this country that have a self interest to maintain the status quo. There is so much misinformation being distributed about other health care systems and what would happen if we made significant changes to our system that the average person is afraid to even suggest there’s a problem. We have the talent to make changes. We have the ability to make our system better but we have to be willing to do it.

We spend too much. Tomorrow I’ll talk about the rising costs of medical care. We have shorter life expectancies and higher infant mortality rates. How could that be? Simple, almost 20% of our population has no health insurance and another 20% are underinsured so they don’t go to the doctor or hospital when they should. I have had a less than optimal insurance plan and I have heart disease. I’ve had two heart attacks and bypass surgery.

A year after the bypass surgery I started having indigestion after exercising. For three days I questioned whether to go to the hospital. I wasn’t feeling the severe pains I felt from a heart attack but I was concerned. Finally I decided to go to the hospital. I waited because I knew it would cost a lot of money to meet my deductible. Just walking into the emergency room was going to cost me a $100. The doctor found two of the bypasses blocked. The bypassed arteries were less blocked than when I had the surgery thanks to my diet. What I didn’t know was that veins behave differently and can block within days after bypass surgery. I needed a stent in one of the bypassed arteries.

How many people wait too long?

I think we’ve waited long enough!