Here’s some facts about America’s healthcare that you won’t hear the President mention Wednesday. (From Scott Atlas, MD, of the Hoover Institute.)
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:
- Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
- Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
- More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
- Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”[5]
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long – sometimes more than a year – to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]
Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”[9]
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]
Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.
Tags: healthcareRelated posts
Jim Durbin of 24thstate.com summarizes one year of Tea Party activism. Moving and beautiful. How did we do so much in just one year? Congratulations. Thank you, Jim. I’ve embedded the video on all pages, but this deserves more.
Enjoy.
Related posts
Precinct Project at work taking GOP back from the timid.
via Tea Party’s ‘precinct project’ sparks GOP races.
No tags for this post.Related posts
Happy Birthday, Tea Party: St. Louis supporters celebrate one year
Posted using ShareThis
No tags for this post.Related posts
Here are the National Park rules for First Amendment demonstrations on the Arch grounds. Please read and comply on Saturday. These rules apply to all groups who use the grounds in order to express views under the First Amendment. They are not special rules for the Tea Party only. Please pay particular attention to items 1. and 5.
Item 1 pretty much limits us to megaphones as a means of voice amplification. We wish we could use a sound system, but we can’t. Having the speakers on the sidewalk at the BOTTOM of the steps, though, should help trap the sound.
Item 5 says no sticks or poles for signs or banners.
1. Any loud speaker being used must be so adjusted as to accommodate only those people in the immediate area. All audio enhancement equipment should be portable and battery-powered as there is no power available on park grounds. NO GENERATORS ARE ALLOWED ON PARK GROUNDS.
2. The selling of merchandise or commercial advertising is prohibited.
3. No temporary structures shall be erected. Nothing may be attached to park property (fences, trees, trash receptacles, etc.)
4. If any printed matter is distributed as part of your activity, the printed matter must be directly related to your event and must not contain any commercial advertising. Printed matter will be limited to message-bearing textual printed material such as books, pamphlets, magazines, and leaflets whose primary purpose is the advocacy, definition or explanation of a group’s or individual’s political, religious, scientific or moral beliefs.
5. Signs and banners must not be attached to sticks or poles. This provision is not intended to restrict the use of portable signs or banners as an expression of First Amendment rights. Banners or signs which are hand-carried are allowed; however, they may not be obscene or indecent in nature, and must not pose a danger to anyone else in the area.
6. Participants are to avoid language which infers an official connection with the National Park Service and its activities.
7. The area will be left in the same condition as found and all litter placed in the provided containers. Any park property damaged by, or as a result of the permit holder, will be replaced or repaired at the cost of the permit holder.
8. The permit is only for use of the specific area and time period designated on the permit. Issuance of the permit does not guarantee exclusive use of an area. The area for which the permit is issued will remain open to the public during the park’s visiting hours. Permit activities must not interfere with park visitors or programs.
9. The use of any device or prop that utilizes smoke or open flame is prohibited.
10. The National Park Service reserves the right to immediately revoke the permit at any time should this become necessary in the interest of public safety, public health, and general welfare.
11. The United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, will in no way be held responsible in the event of any personal injury, and/or loss of, or damage to, personal property during, or occurring from, the use of the area.
12. The permittee and all participants are required to comply with all applicable Federal, state, and local laws, ordinances, regulations, codes, permit requirements and conditions, as well as park regulations contained in Title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The permit may be terminated upon breach of any of the conditions or at the discretion of the Superintendent. The permittee and all participants will comply with any instructions from the designated official representative of this office and similar instructions of the St. Louis City Police Department.
13. Good order and proper decorum shall be maintained by those persons conducting and participating in the activity and the group will leave the area at the conclusion time stated on the permit. It is prohibited for persons engaged in activities covered under the permit to obstruct or impede pedestrians or vehicles, or harass park visitors or misrepresent their purpose. Permittee must agree to maintain public access in the area (do not block entire sidewalks/steps/door entrances, etc, with people or equipment).
14. The provisions of 36 CFR Chapter 1 Section 2.51 is the authority used for administering permits for Public Assemblies. A copy of this regulation is available upon request.
15. Failure to comply with the provisions of the permit will result in its immediate revocation. Specific individuals failing to comply with the provisions herein will be prohibited from future participation in their activities at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
Hope to see you there on Saturday at 1:30 p.m.
Tags: Gateway Arch, National Park Service, Tea PartyRelated posts
Keith Olbermann, like most liberals, calls Tea Partiers “white racists” as easily as New Yorker’s call this winter cold.
Well, the good folks at the diverse Dallas Tea Party decided to compare their own racial and ethnic diversity with MSNBC’s. Guess who won?
Tags: dallas tea party, keith olbermannRelated posts
Last week, I assumed that the Tea Party of Nevada was not a creation of small government conservatives but of Harry Reid and his Democrat dirty tricksters. Well, it’s beginning to look a lot like fraud. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Ashjian is expected to file March 1 to run against U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican challenger in the November general election. But Ashjian has remained quiet about his campaign, giving cryptic e-mail interviews and hardly returning phone calls.
Barry Levinson, a lawyer, registered Democrat and secretary of the Tea Party of Nevada, said he "represents the candidate" and wants to help his longtime friend get elected
New political parties on the right would only increase the Democrat majority in both houses of Congress. The idea of forming a Tea Party Party appeals to egomaniacs and leftists bent on using the movement to destroy the movement.
If this candidacy is a Democrat front, Harry Reid may become the next Democrat Senator to decide to spend more time with family.
Tags: Ashjian, Barry Levinson, Nevada, Tea Party of NevadaRelated posts
Andrew Breitbart has the courage to call out “despicable human being[s]” by name.
At about the 6:00 point, Andrew begins reading from a New York Times story by a piece of detritus named Kate Zernike. (Do you think Kate’s parents realize they raised a little girl to become a horrible, hateful liar?)
It’s about time. It’s about time that the ordinary people call out the filthy liars in the media by name. It’s about time the decent people describe the depths of the sin in which the Kate Zernike’s of the world wallow.
Zernike wrote a piece that opens with the assertion that CPAC hopes to win over young voters by reviving racial stereotypes. Does Zernike offer any evidence to support this assertion? Of course not. No need. Her readers will have their talking point in the first paragraph, so there is no point in defending it. Do you really think Neanderthals like Bill Maher read beyond the sound bites?
Enjoy this speech by America’s chief crusader against the filth that inhabits America’s news rooms. And keep and eye on Breitbart: he’ll someday be known as the savior of American journalism.
Tags: andrew breitbart, big media, kate zenikeRelated posts
Change does not come easily for many of us. As a rule, the more conservative a person is, the more difficult it is to accept change. Although this idea of not being too quick to change should generally be embraced, the rejection of all things new should not be a blanket policy.
Technology is a field that continues to see improvements almost daily, and there is likely no end to this trend in sight. And while many have tried to stay away from this technology, it has actually proven quite useful to the conservative cause.
What I have recently found to be true is that the new social media actually has much in common with the activism of the patriots of early America. Allow me to explain:
For some reason, United States citizens have bought in to the idea that our involvement with the political process should not intersect with that of our social lives. At some point in the history of our nation, political correctness and the fear of offending those who may disagree kept Americans from revealing their conservative principles to those with whom they daily interacted. The end result of this was a complete lack of involvement in the political process.
This has not always been the American way. In the days of the country’s founding, many, if not most, Americans were active at the very least with local government. Consider this from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America of 1835:
…the political activity that pervades the United States must be seen in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side, and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion around you; here the people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon the building of a church; there the election of a representative is going on; a little farther, the delegates of a district are hastening to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements; in another place, the laborers of a village quit their plows to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of declaring their disapprobation of the conduct of the government…”
So what does this have to do with social media? Facebook and Twitter are the two most popular forms of social networking. If you have not yet delved into these new technologies, you are most likely at least familiar with them. Although they have stark differences in features, they are essentially the same in that they were created to be a way of networking with classmates, friends, family members and anyone else who may be somehow involved in our lives. We can share what is on our mind, post photos of our children or look up long-lost high school friends with whom we lost contact years or even decades ago. The social power of this technology is obvious.
What has happened with the recent Patriot Uprising has taken social networking by storm, however. Those who before had only posted videos of their family began sharing educational articles and videos that had inspired them to greater involvement.
There are so many informational articles written every single day that it is simply impossible for us to find them all. This is where social media comes into play. I may subscribe to a blog (articles written by a particular source) that my acquaintance across the street or across the country has never heard of. Because we are “friends” on Facebook, the moment I post a link to this great column I just read, he or she has instant access to it, along with all of my other Facebook friends or Twitter followers. This, of course, works both ways.
Both Twitter and Facebook have as their primary features ways for us to tell the world exactly what we are doing or what is on our mind at any given time. One minute we can share the first words just spoken by our child, and the next we can post our comments about the local candidate that we met the previous evening. Both of these updates will appear to all of our friends whether we attend church with them or we met them the week prior at a political rally.
The potential is endless, not only because of the huge audience of people with whom we can directly or indirectly share information, but because of the ease with which we can express ourselves. My hope is that the greatest result of this social media wave will be an increased awareness and activism of Americans not only while logged in to their computers, but in their everyday lives as well. Our involvement should not be limited to when we are sitting behind a desk, but online activism is a great way to get started.
Government awareness and concern should not be the priority only of a select few. America is a government “of the people.” The more people who are involved with this, the better off we will be. Whether you choose to use social media as an avenue to express yourself and educate your neighbor or not is up to you, of course. The important thing is that we are all doing our part.
I hope to publish more in depth “how-to” articles on this subject in the future, but the purpose of this blog is to show how social media has combined our personal and political lives in an amazing way that would thrill America’s founders.
In July 2009, Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, sent a letter to the Fed asking it to approve the fast acquisition of two banks owned in large part major contributors to the Menendez campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal. This kind of intervention is considered grossly inappropriate and appears to be a form of influence peddling.
William Black, a federal bank regulator during the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago, and like Mr. Menendez a Democrat, called the senator’s letter "grotesquely inappropriate," given his ties to the two directors. Mr. Black, now a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said the letter crossed an unofficial line by asking regulators to approve an application instead of simply asking that it be given consideration.
The problem here, as with the entire banking crisis, is not the result of too little government meddling, but of too much. For years, Congress has treated the banking system like its own play toy. The solution to this crisis is smaller government, not larger. This reduction in the government’s control of banking should begin with the privatization of Fannie and Freddie. And November’s election is the time to make that happen.
Tags: bank failures, banking, congress, corruption, Robert Menendez
Follow me on Twitter