truthful politics

The World Salaries Group compared general physician salaries in different countries. The net monthly income in the U.S. for a general physician was $8,189, in Taiwan, $5,388, in the U.K. $4,874, and in Japan, $4,685.

To read the entire article, click on General Physician Salaries – International Comparison.

According to Robert J. Cihak, MD, and Merrill Matthews, Jr., PhD mentioned the following:

• “A recent flu epidemic in Toronto expanded the waiting times to see a family physician to five to six weeks.”
• “In Canada, 121 patients waiting for heart bypass surgery were removed from the waiting list because their condition had worsened to the point that they could no longer survive the surgery.”

To read the entire article, click on Health Care Quality: Would It Survive a Single-Payer System?.

Pat Boone of Newsmax.com in December of 2007 mentioned “the Canadian Supreme Court…ruled in June 2005 that their health system was so bad it actually violates Canadians’ basic human rights! And 12 percent of Canadian physicians and 4 percent of nurses believe they’ve had patients die due to healthcare waiting lines!”

To read the entire article, click on Universal Healthcare Is Unhealthy.

Forest Opine mentioned “Vancouver’s Richmond hospital had 40% of patients waiting for three months or more even at its most efficient, for elective surgery.”

To read the entire article, click on Just Say No to Universal Health Care, Yes to HSAs.

The American College of Physicians mentioned a report from The Commonwealth Fund. “The report noted that insured patients in the United States have rapid access to specialized care. Overall, Germany ranked first on access.”

To read the entire article, click on Achieving a High-Performance Health Care System with Universal Access: What the United States Can Learn from Other Countries.

Click on the chart below to see an enlarged, clearer chart.

Click on the chart below to see an enlarged, clearer chart.

Click on the chart below to see an enlarged, clearer chart.

Click on the chart below to see an enlarged, clearer chart.

In the July/August 2007 issue of Health Affairs, a comparison of waiting times was performed in countries with universal health care:

• Australia: median national waiting time for all patients admitted for surgery from waiting lists was 29 days in 2004-05, up from 27 days in 2000-01
• Canada: median self-reported waiting times were about four weeks for a specialist visit, three weeks for a selected non-emergency diagnostic test, and four weeks for nonemergency surgery
• England: number waiting more than 6 months for inpatient treatment fell from about 265,000 in March 2000 to about 12,000 in November 2005 and number waiting more than 13 weeks for outpatient treatment fell from about 390,000 in March 2000 to about 40,000 in September 2005
• New Zealand: number waiting over 6 months for a specialist assessment fell from about 45,000 in 2000 to about 24,000 in 2005 and number waiting over 6 months for treatment fell from about 30,000 in 2000 to about 6,000 in 2005
• Wales: number of outpatients waiting over 6 months fell from 83,878 patients in October 2002 to 68,845 patients in March 2004 and number of outpatients waiting over 18 months fell from 16,641 in October 2002 to 6,204 in March 2004 and number of inpatients waiting over 18 months fell from 5,964 in September 2003 to 1,401 in March 2004

To view additional charts and details, click on The Commonwealth Fund.

Full citation for the Health Affairs article:
Sharon Willcox, Mary Seddon, Stephen Dunn, Rhiannon Tudor Edwards, Jim Pearse, and Jack V. Tu
Measuring And Reducing Waiting Times: A Cross-National Comparison Of Strategies
Health Affairs, July/August 2007; 26(4): 1078-1087.

To read the entire article, click on Measuring And Reducing Waiting Times: A Cross-National Comparison Of Strategies.

T.R. Reid of National Public Radio mentioned the following:

• “Taiwan has the lowest administrative costs in world: less than 2 percent.”
• “No one goes bankrupt because of medical bills.”

The entire article may be found by clicking on Taiwan Takes Fast Track to Universal Health Care.

Sabrina Shankman of ProPublica in October 2009 listed the current U.S. health care public options:

• Tricare
• Veteran Health Administration
• Indian Health Service
• Healthcare Group of Arizona
• Medicare
• Medicaid.

To read the entire article, click on Grading the Public Options That Already Exist.

Dr. Sara R. Collins in November of 2007 mentioned the following in her testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives:

• “With their high premiums and underwriting, individual insurance plans which cover just 6 percent of the under-65 population have proven to be an inadequate substitute for employer group coverage.”
• “More than two-thirds (67%) of adults under age 65 who do not have health insurance are in families where at least one member works full time.”
• “In 2005, 53 percent of people with incomes less than $20,000, and 41 percent of people in households with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000, reported a time when they were uninsured in the prior year.”
• “More than 13 million young adults ages 19 to 29 are uninsured, the fastest growing age group among the uninsured population.”
• “Sixty-two percent of working-age Hispanics and 33 percent of African Americans were uninsured for some time during 2005, compared with 20 percent of whites in the same age group.”
• “Medical debt forces families to make stark tradeoffs. For example, 40 percent of uninsured adults with medical bill problems were unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat, or rent, and nearly 50 percent had used all their savings to pay their bills.”
• “The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 avoidable deaths occur each year in the U.S. as a direct result of individuals being uninsured”
• “people without health insurance collectively lose between $65 billion and $130 billion a year in lost productivity and earnings”

To read the entire testimony, click on Congressional Testimony–Widening Gaps in Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: The Need for Universal Coverage. To see how the U.S. Health Care System ranks against other countries, click on U.S. Health Care Ranking Compared to Other Countries.