[whiteperil] Sean: Health

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Posted by Sean:
Health
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1184491818.shtml


   Last week I got a rare [1]critical link. Very exciting--there are few
   things I like better than a good argument! And there are few better
   argument-starters than health care. His post is thoughtful and full of
   good points. I still don't think he's persuasive on his main point,
   though:

     The health care system in Japan does have it's problems, just like
     all systems. But on a whole it's superior to the States. And that's
     based on my anecdotes from living and experiencing the health care
     here in both countries over a period of many years.

   Well, all right, but plenty of us have anecdotes. There was the
   dentist here who gave me a root canal (over four visits, of course)
   and left a live nerve fiber dangling there. It made its presence known
   with a vengeance a few months later.
   There was the doctor I visited about a sore throat, explaining that
   I'd already tried aspirin, it wasn't working, and I couldn't afford to
   have my throat feeling raw for a presentation at the office the next
   day. He gave me powdered Tylenol and Chinese herbs.
   There was the dermatologist at a major research hospital who looked at
   my skin condition and declared she'd never seen anything like it. The
   next dermatologist I went to (Japanese but trained in the Netherlands)
   listened to my story and said, "Huh? This is one of the most common
   conditions any dermatologist sees!"
   There was my friend who came back from a trip to Thailand with a major
   fever and a wacked-out white cell count. The doctors told her she
   might have leukemia. Maybe. Almost certainly. Uh, more tests, maybe? A
   week later, she suddenly started feeling fine. Oops. Guess it was just
   one of those infections you sometimes get when you visit Southeast
   Asia. Our bad, said the hospital.
   I'm not saying that I've proved that National Health is awful. I don't
   believe that at all. It's just that we can fling anecdotes back and
   forth like ping-pong balls without making generalizable points that
   should drive public policy. My teeth aren't any less instructive than
   JST's.
   He seems to think that Americans should be dissatisfied with our
   health care system because WHO wants us to be. But there are
   compromises to be made. The Japanese system guarantees familiarity and
   stability at the cost of innovation and flexibility. It also, in
   putting lots of power in the hands of government bureaucrats, creates
   an incentive system for bribery and back-scratching. I doubt
   Americans, even those who have had bad experiences themselves, would
   think that trade-off was a good one. I'm no lover of insurance
   companies or HMOs, but I'm not convinced that getting Washington
   involved in managing the system would increase the overall saintliness
   of the enterprise, while driving costs down and without impeding the
   implementation of new treatments.

References

   1. http://blogs.havill.com/jst/2007/07/08/healthcare-us-vs-jp