Health care: another point of view

DRINKING BACCHUS - 1623 - GUIDO RENI
GEMÄLDEGALERIE, DRESDEN 

from www.baroque.us/ 

One person out of ten in the USA suffers from addiction to alcohol or some kind of illicit drug abuse. Alcoholics die in general twenty years before their time (it is what scientists call “premature death”). This evaluation of addiction does not even take into account the smokers: over 400,000 people die every year from a cause related to tobacco. Another look at this is to say that half of the heavy smokers are dead by age 60.

What does that costs to society? Smoking deaths in the USA: about 92 to 137 billions/year, alcohol related deaths about 176 billions, other drugs 115 billions. 

Gee! That would be about 400 billions or half of the federal health care budget saved per year if. Only IF is difficult to imagine and harder to achieve. 

So half of what we pay covers one person out of ten. 

Journalists of the month Connolly-Murray

- Doctor, I do have health insurance, but it does not work when I am sick.

This is the first time in months that I think I learned something useful about health care in
8 Questions about health-care reform: Update
Reporting by Ceci Connolly and Shailagh Murray
Here is the link

There is a lot of work behind this paper and the authors make very clear for us what is going on.
Great Job!

Two cents on health care

As soon as people hear my foreign accent, they ask me about health care in Europe. Is it true that you can wait a whole year for an operation? Is it true that public health care is horrible?
No, it is not true.
All these rumors come from people paid by insurance companies or by extreme right people who have so much political passion that they have become anti-Americans (look at the way they applauded when we did not get the Olympic games!)
I lived 30 years in France and one year in various British Isles and many years in Belgium. The most I ever waited for an operation was about 6 weeks. And then I was treated competently. The most I paid for an operation was about 300 dollars.
Is medicine in Europe perfect? Of course not. For instance, if you are a fifty years old woman, it is hard to find a doctor who would not answer your complaints with: "it must be menopause, do not worry about it"
When I was fifty and in trouble is the only time I really wished I had an interesting prostate. But I am sure it does not happen here, in the paradise of private medicine.