Self-Fullfilling Prophesy?

An Associated Press report titled “Health System Deemed a ‘Mess’” appeared in the Journal-Sentinel in Milwaukee today. It obviously has appeared across the country.

The first two paragraphs read as follow:

“The U.S. health care system is ‘a dysfunctional mess’ and politicians who insist otherwise look ignorant, according to a medical journal essay by a prominent ethicist at the National Institutes of Health.

‘If a politician declares that the United States has the best health care system in the world today, he or she looks clueless rather than patriotic or authoritative,’ Ezekiel Emanuel wrote in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association."

Mr. Emanuel went on to decry our health care results, to express dismay at what is spent per person in the U.S., to advise that our average life expectancy ranks 45th in the world behind both Bosnia and Jordan. He also noted, for good measure apparently, that the U.S. infant death rate is 6.37 per 1,000 live births, higher than that of most developed nations.

First, the AMA was in the company of the AARP and Families USA when, on January 18, 2007 they issued a joint press release announcing the “unprecedented alliance” of themselves and some 13 other organizations which had come together to solve the health care crisis.

A careful reading of that unprecedented agreement suggests that some of what had been more reasonable organizations rolled over and became part of the liberal solution. The solution used several federal programs to expand coverage, increased participation of the uninsured, encouraged state experimentation, etc., etc. There is nothing wrong with any of that, except it is apparent to me that the “solutions” lay on the left side of center. Isn’t that always the case when the left-leaning organizations announce some great new coalition?

Next, Emanuel plays loose with his numbers by not taking into account the variations that exist. We spend more per person and we get more. Countries that spend less ration care to their citizens. Our birth rate adjusted to the manner of accounting employed in other countries would show better survival than the rest since we permit low weight, premature and disadvantaged babies to be born into the world, and then we fight to keep them alive. By the way, we count every live birth. We do not extract from the total those that are unlikely to survive for the first year as is common in many other higher ranking countries.

Is the Journal of the AMA publishing this misinformation simply to try to justify its own beliefs, or did it simply take for granted the veracity of the author? I’ll bet that it didn’t simply print without an editorial vetting.