As someone who has been without health coverage for over 4 years, I'm pretty aware that access to our health care system sucks. I'm all for using garlic to try and knock out systemic or localized infections, liberal usage of a neti pot to knock out sinus infections, but sometimes having access to a modern health care system would be a good thing.
Here's an interesting statistic I wasn't familiar with...The World Health Organization ranks the United States health care system as 37th in the world. 37th!!! Another interesting stat is that Morocco came in 8 ahead of us, Morocco ranked 29th. Morocco....you know, that not-so-large country on the northern portion of Africa, Morocco? Yeah, them.
This low ranking of health care in America is almost funny if I think about it long enough. For starters, on one level we are some of the luckiest people on earth. We have, for the most part, clean water, decent sanitation, proper electricity to ensure food supplies don't spoil. We don't have many people actually starving to death here, nor do we have millions dying of malaria and the like. And yet, if you just look around at us, we are terribly unhealthy in other ways.
For starters, we're fat. And not just a few of us with love handles either. We are an obsese nation. Off the top of my head I think I've read that fully 20% of our population is obese, 40-50% overweight but not quite obese yet. We're so obese as a people that even the right-wing press is trying to use it as a wedge issue to keep voters from identifying and thus voting for Obama. (The ad copy reads, "He's skinny! American's are fat! He's not really one of us!)
According to the bastion of liberalism, the CIA, the US is 47th in world rankings in life expectancy. 47th! Jordan, Guam, the Cayman Islands and even Bosnia have better life expectancy rates than does the all powerful leader of the world, the US. We have high rates of diabetes and heart disease, hypertension and high cholesterol. We have high levels of smoking, drinking, overeating, and stress, and that's the good news.
So what's really killing us? For starters, we can't ignore that our lifestyle and diet are doing a good job in putting Americans in the ground earlier than those Guamanians and Jordanians. A health care system is hopefully the last resort to keeping oneself healthy, common sense dictates that it's important for individuals to eat properly, get off the couch more than 7 times a week, not smoke like a Chinese coal burning powerplant and learn not to walk around in life like an angry WWF wrestler snarling at their opponent.
But even if you do take care of yourself, there are circumstances in life which occur where you WILL need medical intervention. There are times in one's life that the herbal remedies just don't cut it. And to that comes this little tidbit....as much as you might think insurance companies and their coverage sucks (which it often does), as it stands now, nearly 47 million Americans are completely without health insurance at all. That's 1 out of 6 people living here in America. And the numbers are increasing as companies pull back on offering insurance, as the economy worsens and jobs are lost, as insurance premiums rise and people can no longer afford it.
Did I forget to mention that the WHO ranks our health care system behind that of Morocco?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Morocco. They have, after all, given the world, couscous. And really good hash. And the concept of bazaar is pretty damn good too, lots of us have fond memories and experiences at flea-markets. But come on now. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at PPP in the US is $41,529. Second in the world. The GDP PPP in Morocco is $4,660, which is 80th in the world. So, you're telling me that a nation whose main exports are phosphates and good hashish, manages to rank higher than the United States in health care systems? Can someone tell me if they see something wrong with this picture?
Part of what astounds me is that this isn't big news. That instead of reporting about the latest gossip from Hollywood, the latest gaffe by Obama, somehow the fact that we've got worse health care statistics than Jordan, Guam and Morocco hasn't managed to break into the "Breaking Headline News" cycle.
Here's my other deep thought. We are just a few days away from the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics. Soon American flags will wave, the Stars Spangled Banner play, and millions upon millions of Americans will become misty eyed at the thought that an athlete from the US beat the snot out of Jordanian arm wrestler or what not.
If the US health care system was instead a sporting event, you could bet it would get some critical coverage. Mobs of angry bar patrons would be throwing objects at the TV. Commentators would offer sobering analysis of how embarrassing the situation is and what could be done to remedy it.
To put it into perspective, if our health care system were a basketball team it would be the Knicks. If it were a racecar, it would be a Yugo. If it were a team in an Olympic event, it would be a Jamaican bobsled team. Professional basketball, baseball, football,hockey and even soccer coaches get ridden out of town and fired for performances worse than our health care system and yet we in these United States go about our daily lives as if a failing performance is okay.
Does anyone else see a problem with this performance?