Everyone from consumers, businesses small and large, and government policy makers is concerned about rising health care costs.
The solution, say many loud voices in the U.S., is a move toward a Canadian or European-style national health care system
But what is life actually like under those more "enlightened" health care systems? This fall the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) has twice brought health care experts from Canada and Europe to Washington, DC to describe their health care systems to Capitol Hill staff, journalists, and other interested parties. Their essays are contained in a just-released Policy Report entitled "The Dangers of Undermining Patient Choice: Lessons from Europe and Canada." And the reality isn't quite as rosy as one might think based on what we have been hearing.
While health care costs are certainly important, isn't the most important measure of a health care system how good of a job it does on, well, health care?
Consider these measures of actual health care outcomes, taken from The Welfare State We're In by James Bartholomew:
- A woman with breast cancer in Britain has a 46 percent chance of dying from it, compared to 25 percent in the U.S.
- A man with prostrate cancer in Britain has a 57 percent chance of dying from it, compared to 19 percent in the U.S.
- Only 40 percent of colon cancer patients in Britain survive past 5 years, compared to 60 percent in the U.S.
One of the main reasons why these systems simply don't deliver superior health care outcomes is that single-payer systems don't encourage continued investment in health care technology. Consider these statistics on health care technology taken from OECD health data:
- Britain has only 6.5 CT scanners per million population, while the U.S. has 13.6
- Britain has only .2 lithotripsy units per million population (for treating kidney stones), compared to 1.5 per million in the U.S.
- Fewer than one-third British heart patients are given beta-blocker drugs, whereas in the U.S. 75 percent are given beta-blockers.
- In 1996 British surgeons performed only 412 heart bypass operations for every million population, compared to 2,255 bypasses per million in the U.S.
Waiting times, almost unheard of in the U.S., are a fact of life in European and Canadian health care systems. In Britain, 36 percent of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery.
In our rush to do something about controlling health care costs, let's not forget that the key to improving the health of our populations is insuring access to cutting-edge health technology like revolutionary pharmaceuticals, medical devices and equipment, and surgical procedures. Any health care system that can't deliver that to U.S. patients is a bad deal.