That's so wrong on multiple levels. In the first place the quality of health care delivered to an individual depends primarily on  that individual's getting the health care.

The first thing you're going to be asked when you call a physician's office for an appointment or a hospital/free standing clinic, or set up surgery or a procedure or treatment in a hospital or medical facility after your name and DOB is your insurance--that is the a pre-requisite to getting the quality care that so many praise as if to say we aren't #1 in overall quality care is Unamerican.

And if you dig into medicine, a surprising number of procedures, treatments, and meds come from off the shores of the US and are developed/invented in other countries.

That's in no way to be construed that the US doesn't have overall high quality care available and high standards for insuring it if there are the funds to pay for it.  Right now, and you can see this although I don't agree with everything he says, in the weekly columns by Zeke Emanuel, former advisor to the  President,  (brother to Rahm and Ari) in the NYT.

The Two Big Questions on Health Care
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ezekiel-j-emanuel/

Share the Wealth
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/share-the-wealth/

I have known thousands of patients who "understand the need for [medical care]" who can't afford insurance for it over the years. I also have known several  physicians who know the indications for colonoscopy and have Porsche insurance who through their  own ignorance won't get the  colonoscopy--some childhood fear of having something in their ass perhaps? This includes male and female physicians as well as 50% of lay people for whom the procedure is as important as any they would get from cradle to grave.

If you have two metastatic breast cancer drugs, and we do now, for the 20% of women with breast cancer whose tumors are Her2 positive, Herceptin, and the new drug, Perjeta (meant to be used in combo with Herceptin),  made by Genetech, and they cost $187,500 a year for the patient, the quality of them that can keep the patient alive does that patient little good if they can't take them.  We have the drugs, and routinely insurance companies have been dropping the women who need them although the  nurses in the oncology unit in one of our better and larger hospitals tell me that when the ACA passed in 2010, insurance companies began covering their patients.

The ACA has within it's more than 4 pages, like lol the Republican plan's farce, many parts that will cut out duplication of medical care, offer incentives for lower hospital acquired infections, and offer incentives to improve treatments and develop best possible treatment protocols, like HHS already posts on the web, as does the medical literature.

Having very good doctors at Overlook in New Jersey, or M.D. Anderson in Texas, or Piedmont,   St. Joe (now predominantly owned by Emory in the coming consolidation of smaller hospitals into larger health systems that will happen all over the US) or Emory in Atlanta who can deliver high quality care does nothing to help patients who can't afford it and aren't insured.

GOP governors threaten to cut patients in their states off from any chronic care, no matter what the quality if they don't accept Medicaid expansion funds, as the NYT article I posted yesterday outlines. That'd be this one:

Court’s Ruling May Blunt Reach of the Health Lawhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/business/genentech-wins-approval-for-new-breast-cancer-drug.html

It was camouflaged among the barage of epithets Dr. Georgia Gamblypoo, the renowed physician medical researcher, and high quality clinician was hurling at an "idiot."  That's the great equalizer of the web. It allows people to call anyone names with no consequences while posting nothing of educational value  or on topic on a political board, whatsoever or even on point to a political view, while decrying that a given poster doesn't criticize his chosen party enough without having read the posts.  That's a lot like TER saying that reviews on providers have to be "neutral" or else the reviewer is an "idiot." LOL to the 128th power.

Who says GaGamblypoo doesn't have PMS or possibly a CNS disease causing its rage? Or more realistically an enormous ego that keeps grandiosely saying what a swell guy it is in multiple posts attacking other people with no basis under than the dynamic of hatred?

Also what the  GOP here doesn't point out or doesn't understand is that the ACA will save hundreds of billions in Medicare costs in the next several years.

From the author of the book Jonathan Oberlander, author of “The Political Life of Medicare” and a professor of social medicine and health policy and management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill


The ABC’s of the Health Care Law and Its Future
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/health/policy/the-abcs-of-the-health-care-law-and-its-future.html

"The A.C.A.’s capacity to produce reliable cost containment has been exaggerated. Its Medicare savings are significant — it will save an estimated $500 billion in the next decade by slowing payments to hospitals and private insurance plans that contract with Medicare. Outside of Medicare, the cost containment is less impressive."

Cite for the quote and my claim:Jonathan Oberlander, author of “The Political Life of Medicare” and a professor of social medicine and health policy and management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill





-- Modified on 7/26/2012 6:39:03 AM

-- Modified on 7/26/2012 7:16:32 AM

The extremely high quality and standards set by physicians and healthcare experts in America is not related to whether or not individuals choose to buy it or are able to afford it.

Simple as that.  

You look for a fight even when one doesn't exist.  What's the matter?  You don't have any big brothers or sisters to fight with at home????

They know most of these young people with no insurance will never be able to pay for their care.  
They are not going to get paid, may as well get some good PR from it.

patrons for emergency medical conditions. So they had to provide this limited treatment – or obtain the patient’s consent for a transfer-  regardless of whether the patient could pay or had insurance.

         But they still could bill the patient and try to collect post treatment even if the patient was indigent. And if the patient needs follow up care for non-emergency conditions, there is no obligation to provide that treatment for free.

       So it will be intresting to see if they actually agree to provide the follow up care for free for PR reasons.