By Charles S. Nicoll
The Sept. 9 letter by Darryl Smith and the Sept. 23 letter by Randy Ridgel are full of misinformation regarding nationalized health care systems (NHCS) in other countries. This fact was addressed somewhat by Ron Jones in his column in the Record-Bee on Sept. 23 and more thoroughly by Katy Sweeny in her column published on Sept. 16. It would seem that Darryl and Randy have accepted as the truth the constant stream of disinformation (i.e., lies) emanating from our health insurance industry and other industries that do not want our so called care system to be changed.
Randy, Darryl and others have claimed that we have the best health care system in the world. That may be true for the wealthy, but it is not true for most of our citizens. It has been shown that the our health care costs about 50 percent more than the cost of health care in most of the countries that have nationalized health care. But our system is not nearly as effective as those in countries with a NHCS. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked various countries for the quality of their health care system. France was rated as No. 1 and the United States was rated as No. 37. An excellent accounting of how the quality of our health care compares with those that have NHCSs can be found in the movie “SiCKO” by Michael Moore. In addition, Charmaine Noronha recently published an excellent analysis of the national health care system in Canada. (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/06/MN9M19G1IM.DTL&type=printable) She reports that a recent Harris-Decima poll showed that a large majority of Canadian citizens approve of their health care system and they believe that theirs is superior to ours.
Darryl and others claim that in countries with NHCSs the citizens are plagued by long delays in receiving treatments or even outright denials of receiving health care. Such assertions are incorrect. In all countries with NHCSs patients who are in serious need of health care receive it promptly. The ones who are subject to delays in treatment are those who have minor ailments, such as acne or dandruff.
Randy claims that proponents of national health care for the United States believe that in our country doctors perform unnecessary operations just to make more money. That is a blatant distortion of the facts. It has been widely reported that doctors frequently request that patients be given health tests that are unnecessary, or only marginally needed. The doctors do that to shield themselves from frivolous lawsuits. This practice is a major reason for our health care system being so much more expensive than the NHCSs in other countries.
Charles S. Nicoll
Lucerne
