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U.S. Health Care

 
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 2:00 pm    Post subject: U.S. Health Care Reply with quote

The U.S. has the highest quality health care in the world. It produces "luxury goods" that even Americans can't afford. Perhaps, standards should be lowered for general practitioners to increase the quantity of MDs (the WHO, which rated U.S. health care below Cuba, although it ranked the U.S. #1 in two categories, i.e. capital and labor, e.g. hospitals, medical equipment, doctors, nurses, etc., stated there are fewer U.S. physicians per capita than in Europe). U.S. MDs tend to become specialists rather than general practitioners. Many foreigners cannot meet U.S. standards to practice medicine in the U.S.

I doubt this will be another remarkable cyclical bull market, similar to 2002-07. It looks like a bear market rally. It could be a double-dip recession, i.e. W-bottom over the next two or three years. The Fed will have the impossible task of preempting inflation and sustaining growth.

Also, in reply to another comment, U.S. manufacturing is the opposite of "hollowed-out." U.S. manufacturers shifted into higher quality "core" goods with market power. The U.S. made up in value what it lost in volume, while many export-led economies had to make up in volume what they lost in value.

A related comment from someone:

Dr. T said...

The WHO healthcare rankings are worse than useless: they are outright lies. The WHO relies upon self-reporting from each nation. Does anyone believe that Cuba or China provide truthful data?

The WHO rankings also overemphasize "coverage" (where the US ranks very low since we have many uninsured people who have to pay at the time of service -- gasp!).

The reason we have fewer MDs per capita than Europe is that our mostly self-employed doctors work 60-80 hours per week while government-employed European doctors work 35 hours per week. This is another worthless comparison that the WHO uses to slam the US.

The WHO also ranks the US low for neonatal deaths because we have the strictest reporting standards of any country in the world. If a 30-week-gestational-age premie dies after a week in the NICU, we call that a neonatal death. Most of Europe calls that the equivalent of a stillbirth: they pretend the premature baby wasn't born alive.

I could go on, but I think the point is made that we should ignore WHO healthcare ratings.
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