OPINIONS: 'Sick Around the World'
Journal editor Zach Mitcham discusses a recent documentary regarding health care systems around the globe.
Frontline correspondent T.R. Reid recently traveled to five countries to examine their health care systems and compare them to ours. It seems like a simple journalistic assignment that any responsible national news outlet would jump on. Who has a better health care system and how can we learn from them?
But flip through the channels and you’ll see that most TV news outlets are still too hung up on an angry, ego-driven preacher and how one of his congregants is somehow responsible for his troublesome talk.
Whatever. Keep jabbering on. But I have bills to pay. And they’re getting much bigger. Our health care system is fundamentally flawed. Millions are uninsured and millions more middle class citizens may be priced out of coverage as insurance premiums and medical costs skyrocket. It’s truly scary. It seems that even a decent job and a commitment to hard work aren’t enough to protect many from the prospect of medical bankruptcy should they get that awful diagnosis from the doctor or fall in some truly bad way. Out of a job, out of luck.
At least the PBS series Frontline offers a refreshing juxtaposition to the talking head nonsense that poses as actual news. Instead of having a right-leaning and left-leaning pundit bark at each other over what’s wrong with the Rev. Wright, they sent a reporter around the world to look at other nations and see what they’re doing to keep people from facing financial ruin due to their health.
Though I can’t sum it all up here, you can find more information on the program by T.R. Reid called “Sick Around the World,” including a transcript at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
Reid, who is working on a book about health care around the globe, visited Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland. While an estimated 700,000 people go broke each year in this country due to medical bills, no one in the countries he visited is doomed to that fate, thanks to the systems in place.
Watching that documentary was encouraging. The health care system in this country can be turned around. At least it has been done elsewhere.
“Some people say it’s politically impossible to fix our health care system,” said Reid. “And, in fact, the last time we tried it in 1994, the result was disastrous failure. But that same year in Switzerland, a country famous for huge insurance companies and drug companies, they did take on health care reform and changed the system. Today they have universal coverage with high quality.”
The Swiss reform passed by a narrow margin in a referendum. It angered conservatives. It outraged insurance and drug companies. It required that everybody buy insurance. And, in return, it promised a comprehensive package of medical care for all.
“After that, insurance companies could not cherry pick the young and healthy to avoid the old and the sick,” said Reid. And they were not allowed to make a profit on basic care, although they could profit from supplemental policies.”
Reid noted that Swiss health insurance companies now have an average administrative cost of five percent, compared to roughly 22 percent among American insurance companies.
It’s noteworthy that Americans accept the universal right to an education and the universal right to legal protection in the event that you’re accused of a crime. However, we don’t accept that everyone has a right to health care. Some like to point out the the drug-using, irresponsible folks as reason enough to avoid universal coverage. However, in that same dismissive wave of the hand they ignore the tragedies of hard-working folks hit with horrible afflictions, the poor family with a child suffering from leukemia.
“It is a profound need for people to be sure that if they are struck by destiny, by a stroke of destiny, they can have a good health care system,” said Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, who was originally unenthusiastic about his country’s reform but is a supporter today.
Of course, somebody is going to get hurt financially if we reform health care and provide universal coverage. Doctors, drug companies and insurance companies may find less in their pockets. But doing nothing will leave more and more people crippled financially, including an increasing number of middle class folks who aim to be fiscally responsible.
As one Taiwanese doctor who helped reform his nation’s health care system pointed out in the documentary, America has a health care market, not a system.
We need a system.
And we need to avoid all the election-year distractions that take our eyes off the things that really need our focus: health care reform, the war, the economy.
I feel ashamed for those national news organizations who let us down with that incessant, opinionated chatter, instead of civic-minded journalism that addresses matters of real consequence to us all.
Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County Journal.
But flip through the channels and you’ll see that most TV news outlets are still too hung up on an angry, ego-driven preacher and how one of his congregants is somehow responsible for his troublesome talk.
Whatever. Keep jabbering on. But I have bills to pay. And they’re getting much bigger. Our health care system is fundamentally flawed. Millions are uninsured and millions more middle class citizens may be priced out of coverage as insurance premiums and medical costs skyrocket. It’s truly scary. It seems that even a decent job and a commitment to hard work aren’t enough to protect many from the prospect of medical bankruptcy should they get that awful diagnosis from the doctor or fall in some truly bad way. Out of a job, out of luck.
At least the PBS series Frontline offers a refreshing juxtaposition to the talking head nonsense that poses as actual news. Instead of having a right-leaning and left-leaning pundit bark at each other over what’s wrong with the Rev. Wright, they sent a reporter around the world to look at other nations and see what they’re doing to keep people from facing financial ruin due to their health.
Though I can’t sum it all up here, you can find more information on the program by T.R. Reid called “Sick Around the World,” including a transcript at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
Reid, who is working on a book about health care around the globe, visited Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland. While an estimated 700,000 people go broke each year in this country due to medical bills, no one in the countries he visited is doomed to that fate, thanks to the systems in place.
Watching that documentary was encouraging. The health care system in this country can be turned around. At least it has been done elsewhere.
“Some people say it’s politically impossible to fix our health care system,” said Reid. “And, in fact, the last time we tried it in 1994, the result was disastrous failure. But that same year in Switzerland, a country famous for huge insurance companies and drug companies, they did take on health care reform and changed the system. Today they have universal coverage with high quality.”
The Swiss reform passed by a narrow margin in a referendum. It angered conservatives. It outraged insurance and drug companies. It required that everybody buy insurance. And, in return, it promised a comprehensive package of medical care for all.
“After that, insurance companies could not cherry pick the young and healthy to avoid the old and the sick,” said Reid. And they were not allowed to make a profit on basic care, although they could profit from supplemental policies.”
Reid noted that Swiss health insurance companies now have an average administrative cost of five percent, compared to roughly 22 percent among American insurance companies.
It’s noteworthy that Americans accept the universal right to an education and the universal right to legal protection in the event that you’re accused of a crime. However, we don’t accept that everyone has a right to health care. Some like to point out the the drug-using, irresponsible folks as reason enough to avoid universal coverage. However, in that same dismissive wave of the hand they ignore the tragedies of hard-working folks hit with horrible afflictions, the poor family with a child suffering from leukemia.
“It is a profound need for people to be sure that if they are struck by destiny, by a stroke of destiny, they can have a good health care system,” said Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, who was originally unenthusiastic about his country’s reform but is a supporter today.
Of course, somebody is going to get hurt financially if we reform health care and provide universal coverage. Doctors, drug companies and insurance companies may find less in their pockets. But doing nothing will leave more and more people crippled financially, including an increasing number of middle class folks who aim to be fiscally responsible.
As one Taiwanese doctor who helped reform his nation’s health care system pointed out in the documentary, America has a health care market, not a system.
We need a system.
And we need to avoid all the election-year distractions that take our eyes off the things that really need our focus: health care reform, the war, the economy.
I feel ashamed for those national news organizations who let us down with that incessant, opinionated chatter, instead of civic-minded journalism that addresses matters of real consequence to us all.
Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County Journal.
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