This Just In: The Percentages! (Again)

Wow! Here we go with another report. Two of them, even! The mountain of evidence that our health care system is fractured, costly, error prone, and generally not functioning just grew a bit higher. More reports have come to light this week. First, the survey entitled "Public Views on U.S. Health Care System Organization: A Call for New Directions," which questioned 1,004 adults about their views of and experience with the American health care system.

Once again, we find that the issues are so obvious you can almost predict what will be said.

• 9 out of 10 want Presidential reforms to improve the quality of health care, ensure that all Americans have affordable care, and reduce the number of uninsured.
• 8 out of 10 support efforts to improve health care performance, access, quality and cost.
• 1 out of 3 said their doctors performed unnecessary procedures or ordered duplicate tests.
• 47 percent said their health care was poorly coordinated.
• 9 out of 10 consider it important that they have one place or one doctor responsible for their primary care and coordination of all their care.
• 9 out of 10 wanted easier access to their medical records.
• Nearly 3 out of 4 (73%) had trouble getting access to health care providers outside the hours of 9am-5pm, M-F without going to an emergency room.
• 26% of adults with health insurance had trouble getting same or next day appointments with providers when ill.
  
• 39% of adults with health insurance had trouble reaching their provider on the phone when needed.

All in all, 82% of Americans believe that the health care system is broken and in need complete restructuring and/or change on a fundamental level. Hopefully this will make an impact during the run for the White House. The vast majority of Americans want Health Care Reform Now!.

Questionable Claims in the Health Care Debate

On Monday, October 29th, Presidential hopeful and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani debuted a new campaign advertisement centering on health care. Using his own experience battling cancer as the basis of the ad, he drew an unfavorable comparison between American health care and its government run counterpart in the United Kingdom. It was this comparison and the questionable statistics it contained that began to draw fire, as John Whitesides, a political correspondent for Reuters reports:

Giuliani, who has suffered prostate cancer, has taken criticism from British and U.S. health officials for saying in a radio ad this week the U.S. survival rate for the disease was 82 percent while the survival rate under Britain's "socialized medicine" was 44 percent.

Health officials in both countries say the most recent statistics show five-year survival rates for prostate cancer are 99 percent in the United States and 74 percent under Britain's National Health Service.

Giuliani told reporters he was using statistics from 2000 and said "those statistics have changed slightly today" -- but he did not back away from the broader comparison.

This thirty percent variance has raised eyebrows both at home and abroad. The British reaction reported in this same Reuters article is hardly surprising in light of difference.

British Health Secretary Alan Johnson said on Thursday Giuliani's figures were wrong and complained about his attacks on Britain's National Health Service.

"The British NHS should not become a political football in American presidential politics," Johnson told The Times newspaper in London.

Cancer survival rate statistics depend on the number of cancers that are detected and when they are reported, and therefore may not necessarily reflect how well a health-care system performs at preventing cancer deaths overall.

The Times said roughly the same proportion of men -- 25 out of 100,000 -- died of prostate cancer in the United States and Britain each year.

John J. Thyng, Jr., The State Director of New Hampshire for Health Care, attacks the ads in his blog on the Huffington Post:

As early as the day the ad was released -- Monday, October 29th -- ABC News reporter Rick Klein reported that "the data Giuliani cites comes from a single study published eight years ago" and "is contradicted by official data from the British government."

As reporters asked more questions, the Giuliani campaign refused to admit their mistake.

When we issued a call for the ad to be taken down, his campaign still refused.

But we're not backing down. The next time Mayor Giuliani is in town we intend to deliver the message that we expect the campaigns to present strong, accurate statistics when making the case for how they will ensure access to quality, affordable health care for every American.

Health Care Voters will be there to call on him to remove the ad, and to remind him that 67,000 people intend to vote for a Health Care President - one who presents real facts, and doesn't use falsehoods to deflect attention from the lack of any personal ideas about how to fix the health care crisis.

Further analysis of this story is easily found on the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and Salon.Com websites.

SOURCE: "Giuliani Takes Another Shot at British Health Care" 11/02/07
SOURCE: "Rudy Needs to Pull His Dishonest Health Care Ad Now" 11/02/07
photo courtesy of Traveler54, used under this Creative Commons licence

Taking The Pulse: A Political Check Up

It has become an axiom that health care in the United States needs a drastic overhaul, hence this blog (among many others) and its companion, George C. Halvorson's book, Health Care Reform Now!. According to surveys, health care reform is one issue that unites the vast majority of Americans regardless of ideology. How to implement that needed reform remains a major point of contention .

As we end this week on the Health Care Reform Now! blog, it occurs to me that our readers might appreciate some resources for comparing the various politicians and Presidential candidates on the issue of our health care system.

First of all, the New York Times offers up their "Presidential Candidates on Health Care" page where all the candidates are presented with both their proposal to expand coverage and how they intend to pay for it. Very nicely laid out and accessible, the content here is presented in the candidate's own words with links back to the debates and news articles from which they were drawn.

Farhana Hossain, a New York Times blogger, sums up the page nicely in its introduction:

Presidential candidates in both parties are promising to overhaul the nation's health care system and cover more - if not all - of the nation's uninsured. In 2005, 44.8 million people - 15.3 percent of the population - were without health insurance, according to estimates released by the Census Bureau in March. The leading Democrats are competing among themselves over who has the better plan to control costs and approach universal coverage. The Republicans, for the most part, are promising to expand coverage without increasing the role of the federal government, and reduce cost through tax incentives. Most of the candidates have not presented a detailed outline of their health care plans, but here is what they have said so far.

Another useful page for comparing our leaders on the subject is located at On The Issues, a site that attempts to track "every political leader on every issue." Their Health Care page contains a wealth of information delivered in simple bullet pointed lists. What makes this a very different resource from the New York Times page is the fact that it does not solely focus on Presidential hopefuls, instead trying to track the position and records of everyone currently in office.

To give a brief example, let us look at a name that has been far from the spotlight recently, Newt Gingrich. Here is the text of his entry on the Health Care page:

Newt Gingrich on Health Care

Former Republican Representative (GA-6) and Speaker of the House

Click here for 6 full quotes by Newt Gingrich OR click here for Newt Gingrich on other issues.

• Medicare opt-in to private health savings accounts. (Dec 2006)


• Focus 21st Century Intelligent Health System on individuals. (Dec 2006)


• Market competition yields more health choice at lower prices. (Dec 2006)


• Save dollars and save lives--so transform urgently. (Sep 2003)


• Focus on prevention; would save $14B with diabetes. (Jul 1998)


• Ongoing battle against liberals nationalizing healthcare. (Jul 1998)

The modern voter has a plethora of new tools available with which to inform him/herself, aggregate information pages like these being a terrific example. With a subject as important as health care reform, having all the data can be crucial to making a correct decision.

SOURCE: "The Presidential Candidates on Health Care" ONGOING UPDATES
SOURCE: "Health Care" ONGOING UPDATES
photo courtesy of b-may on Flickr, used under its Creative Commons license