Don't Give Me Your Opinion, Give me Facts

I just heard another conversation this a.m. on the radio about the current status of the health care bills in Congress (House and Senate versions), and more than once I heard the people who were talking interject the "of course we have the best system in the world" line in their conversation as if it were a twitch or a tick. It reminded me of how in some conversational styles, people interject "God bless her soul.." almost as a punctuation mark when mentioning the name of a deceased relative or good friend.

But as I have found myself saying repeatedly to my "Contemporary Social Problems" class this semester, and several others, "Don't give me unsubstantiated opinions. Give me the facts."

In fact, one of the commentators slipped in a little qualifier as he used the obligatory "of course we have the best system" tick; "It might be the most expensive, but it is the best..." he said. OK! So now we are opening up one of the cracks in the facade to see what is actually behind our ideological front.

How in fact does anyone come to the conclusion that the health care system in the US is "the best" in the world? I don't ask this as a rhetorical question simply to make the reverse argument that it isn't the best. I actually am trying to understand what are the factors (ah! the "outcomes"!) that make it "the best" in comparison to any others?

We rank, for example, around 33 in infant mortality rate; it is estimated that nearly 42,000 people each year die due to lack of health care; personal bankruptcies in the US are largely due to medical costs, and the majority of these are related to people who actually have health insurance. We are in a system where the simple outpatient care (single visit treatment) for kidney stones costs $16,000-- who knows a comparable figure for delivering a child, vs. delivering a kidney stone?! Thirty to forty million people in the US are not able to get health insurance; many who have it can't have their treatments covered since the insurance industry deems their cases "pre-existing conditions." A single prescription (1 month supply) of medication for someone on chemotherapy can run upwards of $10,000. Many many prescriptions turn out to be more dangerous than the illness they treat and are suddenly pulled from the market after months (if not years) of being touted as wonder drugs (which apparently were not sufficiently scrutinized by the chief regulatory agency).

This, I am sure, just scratches the surface of things. Again, to anyone who says "we're number one in health care" ... tell me what are the actual outcomes on which this opinion is based. I'm trying to understand, and to understand how this system should be improved.