OPINION:
Scott Atlas lays out the usual comparison of the single-payer (European) medical system and whatever you want to call the U.S. system (“The conservative case for health care,” Web, May 22). When it comes to public health, both systems are an abysmal failure. In fact, the failure is so glaring that at this point it is starting to give rise to little rebellions. The vaccine issue, which should have been easy to confront and dissipate, turned out to be anything but. Most of the resisters get their information straight off the Centers for Disease Control website, and then there is that sticky liability problem that by law the drug companies just don’t have.
Chronic disease in young people is epidemic, and parents are beginning to notice. Two-thirds of the U.S. population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic, and most of those ambulance sirens you hear are related to another heart attack. Neither of these diseases was even known — or in the case of heart disease, even defined — at the end of the 19th century.
Europe decided to deal with their failure using public rationing of acute care, and the United States, being perhaps more financially creative, decided to figure out new ways to expand the acute-care profit centers at various hospitals. If you are a type-II diabetic you can get your foot amputated as soon as you get off the dialysis machine — no wait. Eventually people are going to start asking what the medical profession is all about because basically they are being eaten by it.
I presume Dr. Atlas had the typical medical training, which means he was trained to diagnose a disease in under eight minutes, and map that diagnosis into a menu of drugs that make a lot of money but do not cure anything. There are exceptions, but these days the exception list is very short. Today’s health care, whether it is funded by taxes with rationing or comes straight out of your pocket into the pocket of a private provider, is probably one of the most successful financial frauds in history. It is not about your health and your doctor was not trained to tell you how to be healthy. The cost-benefit ratio involved is rapidly approaching infinity.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston, Va.
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