“Sicko” — Did Michael Moore Get It Right?
A Comparison of Emergency Rooms on Two Continents
December 2007 By Denny Hatch
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In the News
I Am Not a Health ReformCambridge, Mass. — The “mandate model” for reform rests on impeccable political logic: avoid challenging insurance firms’ stranglehold on health care. But it is economic nonsense. The reliance on private insurers makes universal coverage unaffordable. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic presidential hopefuls sidestep an inconvenient truth: only a single-payer system of national health care can save what we estimate is the $350 billion wasted annually on medical bureaucracy and redirect those funds to expanded coverage. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama tout cost savings through computerization and improved care management, but Congressional Budget Office studies have found no evidence for these claims.
—David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, professors of medicine at Harvard and the co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program, The New York Times Op-Ed, December 15, 2007
Three weeks ago, an American woman executive in her early sixties—let’s call her Joyce—needed to see a doctor fairly late at night in the little town of Füssen, Germany. My wife, Peggy, and I went with her to the emergency room of the local hospital.
It turned out that earlier in the year, Joyce had the very same symptoms during a business trip to the Midwest and went to the emergency room of one of the biggest hospitals in Omaha.
The comparison of how Joyce was treated in these two health care facilities for exactly the same illness is eye-opening.
Kurcafe Hotel, Füssen, December 2, 2007
It was around 10:00 p.m. Peggy and I were just draining the last drink of the evening and about to head upstairs when our friend Joyce came down the stairs. Joyce had gone up to her room soon after dinner, presumably to get a good night’s sleep before the World Curling Federation meeting the next morning. Now she was fully dressed, wearing an overcoat and looking pained and confused.
Peggy sprang up and asked if everything was okay. It wasn’t. Joyce was in severe discomfort with symptoms of cystitis—the same bladder infection that struck her in Omaha seven months earlier. She wanted to see a doctor.
Peggy popped into the kitchen and found an assistant manager of the hotel, who spoke no English. Peggy said, “hospital,” and the woman came out to the front desk, opened a small map of the town and circled the hospital. “Walk, five minutes,” she said. “Drive, two minutes.”
We grabbed our coats and escorted Joyce along Sebastianstrasse. Being a Sunday night, the streets were dark and empty. We came upon a very big traffic sign entirely in German. A small Red Cross toward the bottom indicated we were headed in the right direction. Additional signs with red crosses led us to a very dark doorway with a small light over the bell, which Joyce pushed.
From the loudspeaker came a male voice speaking German. “I need to see a doctor,” Joyce said.
“OK,” was the response. Moments later, a young technician in scrubs—probably in his early 30s—opened the door, held it as we entered and led us to the clean, well-lit emergency room. It was large with a hospital bed in the middle, completely made up with white linens. “Bladder infection,” Joyce said. “Urinary infection.”
Takeaway Points to Consider:
* The kid brother of a friend of mine was a bright guy, but a whiner. He was not happy in his job and told me that he could make twice as much money going on his own as a consultant. When I suggested that he go for it, he shook his head and said that he would lose his benefits. I suggested that if he was doubling his income, he could buy benefits. He stayed on the job until he was fired the following year and wound up with no job and no benefits.* One of the great tragedies of American society is the health care morass. Congress—in thrall to the big money from big pharma, the insurance industry and trial lawyers (who flourish in the world of medical malpractice)—is incapable of action, certainly in my lifetime and very likely yours. All the talk about health care reform in the current presidential campaign is hot air.
* I am no expert on insurance, but for what it’s worth, when Peggy and I were running our business out of our house in Stamford, Conn., we bought high-deductible health insurance. I figured that if I broke my leg, I would pay. If I broke my back, the insurance company would pay the bulk of it. As someone pointed out, automobile insurance does not cover brake jobs and tune-ups.
* In the hotel world, the full retail cost—the amount charged for a room that you will find on the notice on the back of the door—is called the “rack rate.” This is what you pay if you walk in off the street with no reservation. People with no health insurance are charged the rack rate for medical services in order to make up for the poor who get medical care they cannot afford and who, by law, cannot be turned away.
* If the Himmelstein-Woolhandler statistic (see “In the News” or link below) is correct—that $350 billion is being “wasted annually on medical bureaucracy”—then we have a market-driven health care system that clearly favors profit over the patient and should be changed.
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition:
“I am not a health reform,” Himmelstein & Woolhandler, New York Times Op-Edhttp://tinyurl.com/3xnev6
Emergency Room Health Care Costs
http://tinyurl.com/2ehgcg
Central Intelligence Agency: “The World Factbook”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook
World Infant Mortality Rate (deaths per 1,000 live births)
http://tinyurl.com/24s4d7
World Life Expectancy Rate (at Birth)
http://tinyurl.com/yrq7l8
World Death Rate (Deaths per 1,000 population)
http://tinyurl.com/35yaat
A Spectacular e-Christmas Card from London Direct Marketing Whiz, Drayton Bird (with sound). To turn pages, click on the bottom right or bottom left of the book.
http://www.draytonbird.net/xmas/xmas.html
Season’s Greetings from Jacquie Lawson
http://tinyurl.com/yroba4
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