Submitted by Scott Baker, Aug 23, 2007 16:15

First, people DO leave America to get treatment - as 60 Minutes has shown in several pieces, among other news organizations, people regularly fly to India, and Eastern Europe to get equivilent treatments to what's available here, at a fraction of the cost. There's no evidence the outcome is any worse.

Second, why wouldn't you count the overall health of Americans, outside the confines of the doctor's office and hospital when evaluating healthcare? One of our problems is we expect doctors to give us a magic pill to fix a lifetime of self-abuse in diet and lack of exercise. One of the reasons a poor nation like Cuba is able to keep up with us in most measures is because people don't overeat (stop sniggering about rations; the result is what counts), exercise (stop sniggering about all those broken down old cars; again look at the results) and in many ways have a less stressful life. Har to believe, until you look at global happiness surveys, which puts America near the bottom.

Third, every other industrialized country covers all its citizens' health needs, as if they're, well, some sort of basic right. Imagine that! I'm convinced that if America wrote its constitution a hundred years later, when medicine was out of the dark ages, health care would have been regarded as basic a right as legal representation.

Fourth, we are not getting our money's worth. Too much money is spent for too little result. We have the most expensive care in the world and yet, whether by the medical profession, or from external forces that Mr. Stossel doesn't want to count for some reason, we rank near the bottom in life expectency and infant mortality. It's not government that make insurance artifically expensive - we don't have socialized medicine, remember? You can't argue the case both ways. It's the HMO and legal costs that drive up the bill. Government may be supportive of these parties making a killing by, um, killing us, but that doesn't make what they're doing equivilent to socialized medicine.

Mr. Stossel should see Sicko before he makes such a sick diagnosis.

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