War on Medicaid

Letter to AJC 7-14-2012

A letter writer decries the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act and claims that the  USA has the world's premium health care system.  According to the World Health Organization, the USA ranks 3 7th out of 191 countries examined, behind  France, Italy,  the UK and many others.   To put our ranking in perspective,  Slovenia ranks 38th, and Cuba 39th.

The WHO reports  also states  that the U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country. The USA, according to a report from Reuters, spends 16% of GDP on healthcare. In contrast the United Kingdom spends just six percent of GDP on health services but ranks 18th  in the WHO survey

One key recommendation from the WHO report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible. WHO says that it is better to make "pre-payments" on health care as much as possible, whether in the form of insurance, taxes or social security.

It's clear that many of our citizens are misinformed. The media bears a large part of that responsibility and needs to provide accurate and concise information to help people understand and separate politically driven hyperbole from reality.