If he said it once he said it a million times. Obama claimed the US health care system is broken.
Stepping up his push to enact legislation to reform the nation’s health-care system, President Obama today declared, “The status quo is broken,” and he warned that the current system could eventually collapse if nothing is done to control spiraling costs.
With Congress poised to debate sweeping health-care legislation in the coming weeks, Obama warned that if “we do nothing, everyone’s health care will be put in jeopardy.”
Speaking in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said that the fast-rising cost of health care is placing an unsustainable burden on personal budgets, small businesses and the federal government.
“Within a decade we’ll spend one dollar out of every five we earn on health care — and we’ll keep getting less for our money,” he said. “That’s why fixing what’s wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve; it’s a necessity we cannot postpone any longer.”
Obama said that health-care reform can address rising costs by reining in profiteering by health insurers and providers, stoking competition in the industry, and creating a mechanism for building on the models of efficient care that exist around the country.
Let’s remind our liberal colleagues what Barack Obama is bent on destroying. Let’s remind them what a “broken” system has accomplished:
Overall cancer:
•American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to 56 percent for European women. [See Figure I.] U.S. Cancer Care Is Number One. fig1
•American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent — compared to only 47 percent for European men.
•Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.
•For women, only three European countries (Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland) have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.
Specific cancers:
•Of cancers that affect primarily men, the survival rate among Americans for bladder cancer is 15 percentage points higher than the European average; for prostate cancer, it is 28 percentage points higher. 2
•Of cancers that affect women only, the survival rate among Americans for uterine cancer is about 5 percentage points higher than the European average; for breast cancer, it is 14 percentage points higher.
•The United States has survival rates of 90 percent or higher for five cancers (skin melanoma, breast, prostate, thyroid and testicular), but there is only one cancer for which the European survival rate reaches 90 percent (testicular).
Canada is better? Not
•For women, the average survival rate for all cancers is 61 percent in the United States, compared to 58 percent in Canada.
•For men, the average survival rate for all cancers is 57 percent in the United States, compared to 53 percent in Canada.
Early diagnosis?
•In the United States, 85 percent of women aged 25 to 64 years have regular PAP smears, compared with 58 percent in Great Britain.
•The same is true for mammograms; in the United States, 84 percent of women aged 50 to 64 years get them regularly — a higher percentage than in Australia, Canada or New Zealand, and far higher than the 63 percent of British women.
Access to the best and newest drugs?
•Cancer patients have the most access to 67 new drugs in France, the United States, Switzerland and Austria.
•Erlotinib, a new lung cancer therapy, was 10 times more likely to be prescribed for a patient in the United States than in Europe.
Health care itself is not the problem. Health care costs are what they because people are using the system, demanding care and demanding the best care and the system is providing it. The problem is and was always entitlements.
The United States has the best health care system on the face of the Earth. This is what “profiteering providers” have created. This is what Barack Obama is destroying.
But he’ll always have the best.
When your child is lying on that gurney heading to the OR for a life saving procedure, do you argue about how much the surgeon is making?
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Obama: “Within a decade we’ll spend one dollar out of every five we earn on health care — and we’ll
keepnot be gettingless for oura piece of that money,” he said. “That’s why fixing what’s wrong with our health care system is no longer a luxury we hope to achieve; it’s a necessity we cannot postpone any longer.” (Fixed based on what Obama meant as opposed to what he said.)On a personal note about cancer survival rates among American women….
There are high numbers of suicides around cancer, but they are not reported as such.
In the two cases of cancer in females in my family both ended in the suicide of the woman.
In the 1st case the woman waited until it was too late to even bother with treatment, although she KNEW she had cancer.
In the second case a cancer was the ”last straw,” in a string of debilitating problems including stokes and diabetes.
That woman used a sugar OD to put herself in a coma and die.
OTOH, in UK I have read about the long waiting lists to see one’s oncology specialist after initial diagnoses.
As a result tranquilizers are commonly prescribed for people with cancer while they wait until it is too late for a great outcome.
Obama wants to put off seeing the oncologist completely, telling us that we’re ”better off just taking the pills.”
That can’t lead to better outcomes.
Thank you, Dr. John, for pointing these instances of US healthcare being better than socialist medical systems. I am sure you are as tired as I am of listening to know-nothing leftist blowhards spew the UN propaganda of how “horrible” US medical care is compared to the skewed stats designed to make socialist systems (falsely) look better.
I might also point out that in the US, doctors have to periodically re-certify in their selected specialty, whereas in Europe once one is certified, they are certified for life. I was shocked to learn this when attending a neonatology board recertification course this past year, when a neonatologist from Norway told me she was glad we had to recertify in the US…because it gave her a chance to come to the US to take these courses so she could try to keep up with advances in the field, as doctors are not required in Europe to recertify once they earn certification the first time.
@Pete:
Pete
I really despise it when this idiot demeans the medical profession and with such condescension. One thing people absolutely want from us is the motivation to be the best. The health care system was not and is not broken. I don’t know how it can wreck the economy when all these plans are paid for now.
It’s going to cost less when people encounter the same expensive afflictions but someone else pays the bill?
Liberals don’t believe in God but they do believe in unicorns.
@Pete: @DrJohn:
What the fools don’t know is that Obamascare will do nothing to help an already stressed system. It doesn’t lower medical costs, make getting an appointment any easier or faster (actually it will make that problem worse), put doctors in rural areas of the nation where there are none, reduce the costs of medical testing, increase availability of medical care, or relieve the stress on emergency rooms. As time goes on, all those problems will only get worse. And then what?
Doctors will be fleeing the U.S. to places like Costa Rica, waiting times for appointments to a GP, specialty care, lab work and radiology will become a nightmare. Seeing a nurse practioner will become the norm, not the exception, when you visit a doctor’s office, or a licensed physician’s assistant, neither of which has the training required of a M.D. or D.O.. Of course, the AMA will deny all this. Perhaps that is why their numbers are cratering. I know of no doctor that now belongs to the AMA.
I don’t envy those of you in the medical field. Soon, you are going to be required to make a choice; continue to practice at great cost to you, or go another direction. I have a friend who is a doctor and his son is also a doctor. My friend was wanting to retire and hand his practice over to the son. The son said “No way with Obamascare” and has chosen to go into teaching and research instead. So a really good oncologist is now out of the grasp of patients who need him.
A sign of things to come.
@retire05: This is all on purpose!
This graph just scratches the surface of America’s medical superiority. However, we must remind ourselves that the goal of Obamacare really has nothing to do with providing health insurance to Americans. The goal is to take over the economy and further diminish our individual civil liberties.
I am wondering when….it seems it is only a matter of time… we are going to hear that this ‘version’ of Ofraudcare will not work and the Government, of course leaving it’s citizens without ‘further’ ‘choice’ (as if we had any to begin with)….and ‘telling us’ that the only ‘route’ to go in the future will be to go to the Single Payer System….TAKEOVER!!
SECOND COMMENT HERE, I WAS CUT AT THE END OF THE FIRST ONE,
I HAVE SEEN SIMILARS DECISIONS FROM HITLER STORY YESTERDAY,
his rise to power and his actions after power collapse his over heat brain waves
which made him order his loyals who took his many speechs for truth and followed him to a totalitarian
control to be killing his own people, and WENT TO TRY THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD,
WHICH HE LOST AND COMMIT SUICIDE,
MANY LEADER FELL LIKE IT, BECAUSE THEY LACK THE INNER STRENGTH AND WISDOM AND ABILITY, TO CONTINUE,