Health Care in Other Countries

I have often said that we don’t need to guess what the impact of certain government policies might be since they have often been implemented in other countries. For example, we don’t have to predict what will happen in states that legalize same-sex marriage because many countries in Europe have already done so.

As Congress begins to consider reform of health care in America, we can likewise learn from other countries. The documentary by Michael Moore made European and Canadian health care look like it was working very well for its citizens. But some current television commercials produced by a patients’ rights group tell a different story.

One ad features prominent health care experts from the UK and Canada talking about long waiting lists and diagnoses that were rendered too late. One of the people featured in the first ad is Dr. Karol Sikora, dean of the Medical School of the University of Buckingham and one of Britain’s leading cancer treatment experts. He talks about what happens to patients when government runs the health care system. “They’ll lose their own choice completely, they’ll basically lose control of their own destiny in the medical system.”

Another expert is Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon in Vancouver, British Columbia who recently served as the President of the Canadian Medical Association. He talks about the long wait lists for health care in Canada. “Patients are languishing and suffering on wait lists, our own Supreme Court of Canada has stated that patients are actually dying as they wait for care in Canada.”

The ad also notes that Congress included in the most recent stimulus package funding for a national health board. As I described in a recent commentary, this board will determine which drug and surgical treatments are effective and which ones are too costly and ineffective. This is essentially the first step toward health care rationing.

Before Congress enacts legislation that will overhaul the American health care system, perhaps it should listen to medical experts in other countries. They are trying to warn us and we should listen to them. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

Pandemics

For years I have been hearing that a major potential threat in the 21st century will be a global pandemic. I have always wanted to research this idea to better understand why futurists believe it is such a threat. The recent swine flu scare gave me a good excuse to understand why scientists fear a runaway pandemic.

Forty years ago the U.S. Surgeon General said, “The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States.” The optimism seemed justified given our success in dealing with 19th century and 20th century infectious diseases. What changed?

An epidemiologist writing in The Wall Street Journal provides an alarming list. First, there is bioterror. The cost of “genetic engineering of viruses is much less complex and far less expensive than sequencing human DNA. Bioterror weapons are cheap and do not need huge labs or government support. They are the poor man’s WMD.”

Second, most pathogenic viruses that affect humans started with animals. This would not only include the recent swine flu but would also include bird flu, SARS, West Nile, Monkey pox, Ebola, and HIV/AIDS.

So why are viruses jumping from animals to humans more frequently? There are two reasons: humans and animals are living closer together and humans are often eating inflected animals. In this modern world, there are fewer barriers between wild animals and humans. There are fewer jungles, rain forests, and wilderness areas.

Poverty in the third world has also driven humans to eat more wild animals. It is estimated that “Africans last year consumed nearly 700 million wild animals” this is approximately two billion kilograms of “bush meat.” The Mekong area (China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia) “is the hotspot for respiratory diseases like SARS or pandemic bird flu.”

It is true that world health organizations are better prepared to deal with a pandemic, but they will have a major challenge on their hands if a global pandemic hits. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

Twitter

Can Twitter make you amoral? OK, that’s a bit of a stretch, but it is the headline of a story about the psychological research into the impact of rapid-fire information. The research was done at the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California. It just appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

What the researchers found was the human beings can sort information very quickly. And they can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of physical pain in others. But other emotions (like admiration and compassion) take much longer to register. In fact, they found that lasting compassion in a relationship to psychological suffering requires a level of persistent, emotional attention.

The researchers used compelling, real-life stories to induce admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain. Brain imaging showed them how long the volunteers need to fully respond to the stories.

So how does that relate to a technology like Twitter? The researchers found that there was a significant emotional cost of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter. One researcher put it this way: “If things are happening too fast, you may not every fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality.”

Actually some of the researchers were less concerned with many forms of digital media or social networks. Instead, they focused on fast-moving television and virtual games. They were especially concerned about the seeming non-stop violence in the media that can lead to indifference.

A few weeks ago, I talked about the impact a Blackberry can have on creativity. This study demonstrated the impact of digital media on emotions and morality. The point of these studies is that media does have an impact. A wise and discerning Christian will consider the impact and limit its negative effects. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

Richer Means Greener

As a country gets richer, does that lead to more pollution or less? Back in the early days of the modern environmental movement there was an equation that many of us learned. At the first Earth Day was learned that I=PAT. The environmental impact (I) was equal to the population (P) multiplied by affluence (A) multiplied by technology (T). In other words, as a country grew in population and affluence and technology, the worse the pollution and environmental impact. So the best way to protect the planet would be to have fewer people, less wealth, and simpler technology.

It was an interesting equation, but it turned out to be wrong as countries got richer. John Tierney points this out in a recent column in The New York Times. He points out that the “IPAT theory may have made intuitive sense, but it didn’t jibe with the data that has been analyzed since that first Earth Day.” Researchers instead found that the graphs of environmental impact with a simple upward-sloping line were wrong. Instead, it turns out that the line flattens out and then slopes downward. Think of an upside-down U on the graph. This is called a Kuznets curve.

Generally the trend is as countries get richer they have more incentive and more financial means to clean up pollution. Of course there are exceptions (especially with countries with inept governments and poor system of property rights). But the general rule is that as incomes go up, people focus on pollution.

Tierney says: “As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850.”

I think this suggests a positive environmental future for developing countries. They may be ascending the Kuznets curve right now, but this could change once they are heading down the slope of the curve and address environmental concerns. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

Rationing

Will America have to consider rationing health care? Perhaps the more accurate question is whether America will ration health care more than it does right now. Let’s be honest, we already ration kidney dialysis and organ transplants (kidneys, hearts) on the basis of objective (and sometimes subjective) criteria. But is more rationing of health care on the way?

Many people believe that it is because of a funding item in the stimulus package. It allocates $1.1 billion into medical “comparative effectiveness research.” The researchers will compare various drug treatments, surgical treatments, and medical devices. A council will determine which treatments and devices are effective and which ones are too costly and ineffective. It doesn’t take much imagination to see where this is leading.

Charles Krauthammer believes that: “Once you establish what is ‘best practice’ for expensive operations, medical tests and aggressive therapies, you’ve laid the premise for funding some and denying others.” After all, almost half of a person’s lifetime health costs are consumer in the last six months of life.

Krauthammer points out that the National Health Service in the UK can deny treatments it does not deem cost-effective. As you get older, the cost-effectiveness of treatment plummets. In Canada, they ration health care by queuing. Patients sometimes wait a long time for elective procedures.

Fred Barnes, writing in The Weekly Standard, believes that cost-cutting in Canada may have cost the life of actress Natasha Richardson after her ski accident. He notes: “The nearby hospital had no scanning equipment or neurosurgeons, and there was no helicopter to fly her to a trauma center. By the time she arrived at one, she was brain dead. Why wasn’t proper treatment and equipment on hand? Government had decided not to pay for them.”

Obviously there were other factors involved in Natasha Richardson’s death that had nothing to do with the Canadian health care system. But you have to admit that equipment and personnel were missing because of government cost-cutting.

Is America ready for more rationing? Members of Congress better consider that question as they begin deliberations on changing our current health care system. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

Fiscal Nanosurgery

In the midst of so much government spending has also come a call for trying to trim the federal budget. Recently President Obama directed his cabinet to cut $100 million out of the federal budget. Within hours, pundits and politicians started making fun of his request.

After all, President Obama had already submitted a federal budget of $3.6 trillion. That works out to spending almost $10 billion a day. Put another way a cut of $100 million amounts to a cut of 28 ten-thousandths of a percent. Pundits and politicians had a field day with the request.

The Associated Press compared it to cutting one latte out of your annual budget and feeling like you have done something significant. CBS said it was like shopping for a $50,000 car and having the dealer slash the price by one dollar. Investors Business Daily called it “Fiscal Nanosurgery” and said that it was like a dietician telling you to give up one apple a year in order to abide by his diet plan.

One budget expert said that $100 million is essentially a rounding error in President Obama’s fiscal budget. It is the amount the federal government spends every 13 minutes.

My reaction wasn’t to ridicule the amount but to call for more. If we could cut $100 million from the federal budget every day, we would be on our way to something significant. Yet, even if we did that, we would still have an enormous federal budget, but at least the amount would no longer be a rounding error.

One thing the pundits and politicians missed is that to most of us $100 million sounds like a lot of money, because it is a lot of money. The median family income in America is $50,000. It would take a typical American family 2,000 years to earn $100 million. Yet $100 million is merely a rounding error in our federal budget.

If Americans really began to understand the magnitude of federal spending, I think they would call for more than a cut of $100 million. Perhaps this commentary helped you to see how much the government is spending. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.

Carbon Dioxide

While Congress is debating cap-and-trade legislation to deal with climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in with their ruling that may have a profound impact on the debate. The EPA published what is called an “endangerment finding” stating that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

So what is wrong with that? First, the EPA has granted to itself unprecedented power. This finding gives the agency power to impose taxes and regulations across the economy. This was done without any legislative input from our elected representatives. So it is effectively “taxation without representation.” That’s a catchy phrase, I wonder where I’ve heard that before?

Second, the EPA’s ruling changes the meaning and intent of the Clean Air Act. Just ask Representative John Dingell (D-MI) who helped write the original act as well as the 1990 revision. He says that the act never was intended to apply to carbon. The major reason for the EPA’s action was a ruling two years ago by five Supreme Court justices calling for the EPA to determine if carbon dioxide qualifies as a pollutant.

Finally, someone needs to say the obvious. So I will say it. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a trace gas that is essential for all plant life to exist. And since plants and vegetation are at the bottom of the food chain, it’s not really a stretch to say that all of life is ultimately dependent upon there being carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Perhaps it would be helpful to put a few facts on the table. Has carbon dioxide concentration increased? Yes, in the last 150 years, carbon dioxide concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million. But it is also worth noting that the oceans emit about 96 percent of all greenhouse gases.

When you look at the scientific facts as well as the legislative history of the Clean Air Act, it is hard to justify the EPA’s decision to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view.