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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Some Salient Facts

By The Daily Dish
Jun 30 2007, 7:25 AM ET

CNN highlights some obvious information that somehow never made it into "Sicko":

Moore focuses on the private insurance companies and makes no mention of the U.S. government-funded health-care systems such as Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Veterans Affairs health-care systems. About 50 percent of all health-care dollars spent in the United States flows through these government systems.

"Sicko" also ignores a handful of good things about the American system. Believe it or not, the United States does rank highest in the patient satisfaction category. Americans do have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when it comes to nonemergency elective surgery such as hip replacements, cataract removal or knee repair.

So half of US healthcare is already government-funded; and patient satisfaction with treatment is the highest in the world. Does that not count for something in the argument?



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