Until November 2008, all Americans become lobbyists and the candidates become saviors.

Healthcare is one of the most hotly debated issues that will eventually land one of the contestants a seat in the White House. American healthcare is in need of reform, but are we truly in crisis or accepting a fabrication of half-truths?

Justification for a National Healthcare System
The Democratic Party would have us believe we are in desperate need of a national healthcare delivery system. Justification is offered in an amazing display of half-known facts. The United States cannot possibly have the greatest healthcare system in the world when America spends over 16 percent of GNP on healthcare.

First of all, would we not expect superior healthcare to cost more? Spending more on healthcare should not make our system inferior but rather superior. We as a nation spend 56 percent more on healthcare than any of the other seven industrialized nations. These nations all have a national healthcare system that is almost totally funded by the government and that government in turn controls healthcare. The U.S. government contributes less to healthcare than any other industrialized nation by a low of 44 percent and as much as a high of 91 percent. The most compelling statistic in all of this is the 56 percent more the United States spends is almost exactly the amount covered by private health insurance.

We have the lowest tax rate of any other industrialized country except Switzerland. The Swiss, however, spend more per patient than any other country in the world. The reason for this is behind the layers of delivery in their system. The national system buys one level of healthcare and each preceding level is a function of private pay. These countries have higher tax rates because of the need for funding for their nationalized plans. Each also has a critical situation in which their hospitals are closing at alarming rates due to lack of funds. In other words, for America to go to a nationalized delivery system of healthcare, our tax rate would increase no less than 20 percent and our current system would still be underfunded.

The number of uninsured Americans is at an all time high. More than 47 million Americans do not have health insurance. The facts in this matter are really rather revealing. Almost 20 million represent the age group of 19 and coming off mom and dad’s insurance to 28, in that invincible age where possessions are more important than something they do not use. They simply choose to not have insurance.

Around 10 million represents illegal aliens who are counted among the 47 million to dramatize the numbers of people in the United States who do not have insurance.

One in four Americans — about 12 million people — who don’t have health coverage are eligible for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) but aren’t enrolled, a new report shows. Reasons cited for the lack of enrollment include unawareness of the programs, uncertainty about how to enroll, fear about being linked with a publicly financed program. Plus, the report said, it can be difficult to stay enrolled.

Health or Healthcare?
In addition to cost, we receive other alarming partial statistics.
Surprisingly, Americans, the citizens of the wealthiest country in the history of the world, have a lower life expectancy rate, higher rates of heart disease and cancer, and an infant mortality rate that is twice as high as other rich industrialized nations.
Even Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, according to the CIA Fact Book.
These issues are all a matter of health, not healthcare.

Heart disease is by far the number one killer in the United States, although a third of those deaths could be prevented if people followed better diets and exercised more often, this from a report from the American Heart Association.
Additionally, 50 million Americans have high blood pressure, 12.6 million have coronary heart disease, and 4.6 million have suffered stroke. The crisis in healthcare is that all of the top killers in the United States are related to eating and stress. If we could control these two conditions in our lives, most of us could live to 100 and remain fully functional!

One of the most alarming statistics is the infant mortality rate, which is slightly higher, on average, in the United States. Our rate is attributed to minorities, low birth weights and poor prenatal nutrition. However, the most alarming statistic that is never pointed out is the number one killer of prenatal infants in the United States is abortion and this act is enabled by the Democratic Party. This statistic is a sad commentary on the United States as a nation, yet it has nothing to do with inferior healthcare. The United States births more babies each year than other industrialized nations and 500,000 are born prematurely. We should focus on the fact that we have more infants who survive than any other country in the world. Of these 500,000, we lose less than 1 percent because we have a superior healthcare system.

Healthcare Reform Begins with Technology
As is the case in each of the industrialized nations, the United States has escalating costs and a lack of healthcare funding. We see 98,000 deaths each year caused by medical errors that would be drastically reduced if healthcare providers had access to comprehensive patient information. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports electronic medical records would reduce the cost of healthcare by 30 percent annually and provide a permanent solution.

Health Information Technology available today to the physician will literally pay for itself in less than a year. When you consider IT eliminates the disparity payments to a physician between $.63 and $1.00 or 37 percent, a physician already has a handsome return on investment. When paper changes to electronic charts, each physician saves more than $15,000 per year. Add to these the elimination of duplicate tests, lost charts, lost charges, coding, diagnostic testing and so on and so forth, and we need to wake up and realize the reality is we cannot afford to put this off any longer.

Conclusion
Candidates seeking office will promise anything to gain position. A careful examination of the facts will find that much of what they say is, at best, half of the detail. We are blessed to live in the most advanced civilization in the world. Placing the wrong ideology in office can take away our most valuable resource, healthcare. Placing the right candidate in office will reform our current system and maintain our world dominance in healthcare and technology. It is important to understand the facts are not always as they are presented.

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