Thoughts on Health Care #1

What irritates me most about American health care is the amount of statistics that are often unjustly downplayed by the national media. Facts such as “1/3 of all deaths are attributed to infectious disease” and “life expectancy in the United States has increased from 47 to 77.8 since 1900” are both upsetting examples of how even a technological superpower like the United States can be so unequivocally behind countries that are less complacent in their superiority (The US ranks 45th in life expectancy).

We’re constantly fed words and images portraying America as being the greatest place on Earth yet this country’s true prominence should really be measured by its ability to recognize weakness and, in turn, discover ways to rectify the crisis before it spirals out of control.

People think that Michael Moore is nothing but a shameless self-promoter who profits from the very institutions he condemns, but when he put forth the notion that “America has the best health care in the world until you get sick,” he may have been onto something.

Another element I find particularly illuminating is the idea that Malaria had been all but eliminated by 1965, because it’s one of the most treacherous diseases in the world today. With over 400 million people infected each year, I can’t help but wonder how exactly the medical community deemed it to no longer be an international threat.

It seems that political pandering has a lot to do with the way society views certain diseases, because while cases such as SARS and the so-called Swine Flu are paraded ad nauseum in the public eye, Malaria is simply accepted as a part of life allowed to persist unabated.

Policy makers have the ability to control how certain stories are covered, so I would like to believe that the obligation to truth would overtake everything else, but rarely do things ever play out in such uncontroversial fashion.

I’ve long been fascinated about health care in America and I have an eerie feeling that the more I learn, the less likely it is that I’ll be enamored by what I’m finding out.