POLITICS: Even He is tied up by red tape?!

POLITICS: Op-Ed: Cut Health Care Spending On The Elderly

This is from National Public Radio. - OlderMusicGeek

August 17, 2009
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, author Richard Dooling makes a radical proposal. He argues that it's time to stop spending so much money on health care for dying, elderly patients. Otherwise, he sees a generational spending gap on the horizon.

From the introduction of the NPR show:
To be clear, Richard Dooling is not talking about pulling the plug on granny. That accusation was tossed around last week in the health care debate. But Richard Dooling argues that we do spend too much money on surgery after surgery for grandma, with so much evidence of wasteful and even harmful treatment, he writes, shouldn't we instantly cut some of the money spent on exorbitant, intensive care medicine for dying elderly people and redirect it to pediatricians and obstetricians offering preventive care for children and mothers instead.

Listen to the interview

From The New York Times op-ed piece:
IN the 1980s, I worked as a respiratory therapist in intensive-care units in the Midwest, taking care of elderly, dying patients on ventilators. I remember marveling, along with the young doctors and nurses I worked with, over how many millions of dollars were spent performing insanely expensive procedures, scans and tests on patients who would never regain consciousness or leave the hospital.

When the insurance ran out, or Medicare stopped paying, patients and their families gave the hospital liens on their homes to pay for this care. Families spent their entire savings so Grandma could make yet another trip to the surgical suite on the slim-to-none chance that bypass surgery, a thoracotomy, an endoscopy or kidney dialysis might get her off the ventilator and out of the hospital in time for her 88th birthday.

The rest of the opinion piece

CULTURE/SOCIETY and SCIENCE: U.S. Life Expectancy Lags Behind Other Countries

I found this originally in my work newsletter. But it's from Associated Press. I edited it down. Here's a link to the complete article. - OlderMusicGeek.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan and the Cayman Islands.

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore.

The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.

Among the other factors:

• Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."

• Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.

• A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe, had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

Another reason for the U.S. drop in the ranking is that the Census Bureau now tracks life expectancy for a lot more countries -- 222 in 2004 -- than it did in the 1980s. However, that does not explain why so many countries entered the rankings with longer life expectancies than the United States.

Murray, from the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, he predicted, the U.S. won't move up in the world rankings as long as the health care debate is limited to insurance.

Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.

A link to the complete article