Opponents of universal care often cite awful stories of Canadians and Brits hurt, killed, or dead of neglect or bad care. And there’s no doubt that people in Canada and Britain are the victims of poor medical care.
There is certainly some truth to the stories of bad Canadian and British medicine. It is also true that raising this issue doesn’t help make the case against universal health insurance.
News flash – American patients often suffer pain, injury, or death from bad medicine. Here are a few examples. California hospitals recently disclosed hundreds of medical errors, “including wrong-organ surgeries, administration of incorrect drugs and neglect of serious medical conditions. This is a small percentage when weighed against the 4 million hospital admissions that occur in California each year, but still serious…” (quote from FierceHealthcare citation).
In Pennsylvania, wrong-site surgeries happen often – very often.
Nationally, between 48,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year due to medical errors. More people are killed by bad medicine than die in auto accidents or succumb to breast cancer.
A report on medical errors in the US blamed the system. Our system, one that does not offer universal coverage. According to the Institute of Medicine‘s 2000 report; “most of the medical errors are systems related and not attributable to individual negligence or misconduct. The key to reducing medical errors is to focus on improving the systems of delivering care and not to blame individuals. Health care professionals are simply human and, like everyone else, they make mistakes. But research has shown that system improvements can reduce the error rates and improve the quality of health care.”
(I’d note that the IOM is a universally respected, highly regarded organization, unlike the agenda-driven think tanks typically cited by opponents of universal coverage).
Let’s not forget the people without health insurance who die as a result of poor access to health care – late diagnosis of cancer, poor preventive care, and untreated hypertension, cardiovascular disease, asthma and diabetes.
And in the “did they even think about this before they wrote it” category comes this gem from biggovhealth.com; “Since 1997, the U.S. has made further improvements to the quality and accessibility of our health care, including the creation of Medicare Part D.”
Uhh, folks, Part D is a government-run drug program that has resulted in many seniors getting access to pharmaceuticals, thereby potentially improving their health. Kind of like what universal coverage aims to do.
Contrasting the IOM’s estimate that there are 18,000 excess deaths in America among uninsured adults to the anecdotal examples of poor care in Canada and Britain provides a much clearer picture of the ‘dangers’ of universal medicine. A picture of kids getting health screens, diabetics getting insulin, asthmatics receiving education and primary care, expectant mothers getting pre-natal care, and high-risk women getting mammograms.
Now that’s a scary world.
Insight, analysis & opinion from Joe Paduda