(To the right is a map showing countries that have universal healthcare. We'll have to color in parts of Africa and Asia now. Click to enlarge.)Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, gave a speech here in the US announcing a deal that would fund universal healthcare in developing countries:
"Today at this United Nations General Assembly, we will see history being made with the beginnings of universal free health care in Africa and Asia," Mr. Brown said in New York.The plan is backed by more than $5.7 billion from UN member nations. I can't find details of US (the only industrialized nation without universal health care) participation. In fact, I can't find decent coverage of this story inside the US. The excerpt above is from Australia.
"Ten million people will now for the first time get the treatment they need without being turned away of fearing how they will pay."
- $5.7bn Plan To Expand Health Care In Africa, Asia, ABC News AU
The UK published Brown's article, in which he wrote:
"The reduced use of health services in 20 African countries charging fees was alone responsible for 233,000 child deaths a year. Other estimates suggest that at least three million children have died as a direct result of user fees.I expect, as one of the richest countries in the world, we were called upon by Brown's Taskforce "to help poor countries achieve the goal of universal health coverage."
The evidence is shocking and conclusive and the entire world should be shamed into action.
I will call on every country in the developed world to help poor countries achieve the goal of universal health coverage. ... One step we can take immediately: to stop charging poor people for health services that they cannot afford.
I hope today it will be a turning point: a day when the battle to provide healthcare to all and abolish user fees won a significant victory."
I wonder how our contribution to universal healthcare in the developing world conflicts, if at all, with our national stance against universal healthcare.
6 comments:
Let me get this straight. Our taxes pay for universal coverage in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and Asia? But not here? Give me a break...
Looks that way, Eric.
I read that the goal is that “the United Nations will call on every country in the developed world to help poor countries achieve the goal of universal health coverage”. I have not read that it is a done deal or how it would be achieved. I assume member fees to the UN will pay for this coverage and that since the US, reluctantly, pays fees to the UN that indirectly US taxpayers would partly fund this plan. I also read this, “The evidence is shocking and conclusive and the entire world should be shamed into action.” Yes they should be shamed into action to provide minimal care for these countries. Yet the US heathcare system, since it is a huge profit maker controlled by corporations and insurance companies, does not offer basic universal health care to its own citizens. We should be shamed into action. We should be shamed that there is a debate or doubt about offering basic health care to all of our citizens. I feel shame that I am a citizen of such a rich, insular, selfish, mean country. Compassionate conservatives, my ass, more a collusive conspirators.
"We should be shamed that there is a debate or doubt about offering basic health care to all of our citizens"
Excellent point. That there is even a debate!
Yes, it turns out that, by the time you factor in the tort system, doctor and pharmaceutical company profit motives, medical device maker patents and overcharging, medical test overcharging, an opaque billing system, cover-your-ass medicine, insurance policies that pay for overtreatment and then simply raise the premiums, and health care as a 'growth industry' -- can anyone be surprised that we lack universal coverage in the US?
You can approach universal healthcare much more cheaply in countries where this whole, gridlocked legal-industrial-medical complex does not exist.
It's the system people. It's the SYSTEM.
I still can't believe Brown came here and in a public forum claimed that providing healthcare to all and abolishing user fees is a "significant victory," as if ... what rational person wouldn't conclude that? He knew what he was saying. He knew we're in the midst of an emotional "debate" here. He could have announced it in the UK. He waited until the high-profile G-20. It was deliberate.
The System ... God. It's so corrupt.
Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England of Medicine, just wrote an article frowning on how "reform" is shaping up:
"Baucus Bill: Health Reform That Isn't"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-angell-md/baucus-bill-health-reform_b_293093.html
"We'll simply pour more money into a system that's already shown itself capable of absorbing whatever we put into it without providing anything like commensurate health care."
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