Call 911.
The country’s health care market place is in critical condition. It’s going to take high-tech care, the best medical practices and lots of attention to get it on the road to recovery.
Senator Tom Daschle presented his prescription to cure the health care crisis when he visited Kent State Stark as part of the Featured Speakers Series. Daschle said he hopes, and to a certain degree believes, that his colleagues in the U.S. House and Senate can revive the broken system.
During a pre-event press conference, Daschle noted that the United States has very unique circumstances involving health care.
“We are the only industrialized country (in the world) that does not have a health care system,” Daschle said. “We never have and it’s likely that we won’t have any in the near future. What we have in this country is a health care market place.”
“There is a huge difference (between the two),” he continued. “A system is defined largely as having a central administrative authority and universal access. We have neither of those in our health care market place. That’s what makes reform so much more difficult. We are actually dealing with about 18 percent of the entire economy in a market setting which doesn’t allow the efficiencies of a system in many respects.”
Daschle continued that there are two schools of thought on how the health care market should be reformed – on a comprehensive basis or an incremental basis. Democrats today, generally support a comprehensive approach while most Republicans support an incremental approach to a health care overhaul.
“We don’t really have one problem in healthcare we have three problems,” he said. “We have a serious cost problem. We have serious access problem. The third problem we have is a quality problem. The World Health Organization when they last reviewed all the of the systems and markets in the world, listed the United States as 37th – just below Costa Rica and above Slovenia – in overall quality.”
To further make his point on the cost, access and quality problems, Daschle included several statistics. For instance, $8000 is spent on every man, woman and child in the country, that includes taxes, premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. About 50 million in the U.S. are uninsured; 48 percent of the people in this country are underinsured. Daschle also noted that about 26,000 people a year die because they don’t have access to health care. Daschle quoted a statistic from the Institute of Medicine that 100,000 people a year die because of medical mistakes.
“Ultimately, I think question today will be can we find a solution both in terms of process as well as the policy that begin to address the three problems I just mentioned,” Daschle said.
What Daschle didn’t really discuss was President Barack Obama’s health care bill – which happened to be introduced on the same day as Daschle’s presentation.
“I think what the president has attempted to do today was to find even more common ground between the Senate and the House-passed version,” Daschle said. “I do like what he has presented and I will be a very enthusiastic supporter. It doesn’t do everything I’d like but none of the compromises ever will. For example, I’m an advocate of the public option and (the President’s plan) doesn’t include a public option. I think it represents a practical resolution to the outstanding differences that exist between the House and the Senate and to that extent, I think the president did a very good job of attempting to find the common ground necessary to move forward.”
