Thursday, July 5, 2007

good question on health care...

Ezra Klien has a good point to make on the question of health care wait times in other countries...
It's fascinating how much more concerned conservative types are with a Canadian who had to wait 3 months for a hip replacement than with the 18,000 Americans who die each year because they lack access to quality medical care
I think its a great point but I'm going to reframe it without dragging conservatism as a philosophy into the picture--since I'll assume many conservatives don't want to be included in a group that does believe wait times are more important than deaths from inadequate health coverage, which a study by the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine estimated to be at least 18,000 deaths per year.

Anytime questions of wait times come up, an obvious question becomes: Are long wait times a more important issue to be addressed than the 18,000 deaths from inadequate health care per year?

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