I’m going to be throwing a lot of numbers around over the next few posts. I intend to source them with US government numbers or as independent, non-partisan sources as I have found.

First, why is healthcare so expensive in the U.S.? Most of my information will be coming from a 2007 McKinsey report on Healthcare costs in the US. To download the PDFs from McKinsey, registration is required. There are two PDFs; a synthesis report that is fairly brief and a longer, more detailed report. Both are worth viewing and downloading.

Main points of this reporting worth considering (these are taken from the shorter PDF linked on the McKinsey page as “Synthesis”):

• The United States spends more of its wealth on health care than any other developed country.
• The amount is 16% of GDP. This expenditure on health care is more than the U.S. spends on food. This bears repeating. The United States spends more on health care than it does on food.
• The U.S. spends $1,645 MORE per person than 13 other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. (more here, you’ll have to click into “Health” as the site is done using frames and linking to the specific page is difficult)
• The U.S. health care system is intrinsically more expensive in the following areas: hospital care, drugs, outpatient care, administration, insurance and public investment in health.
• The U.S. consumes LESS drugs than Canada, Germany and the UK.
• U.S. drug costs are 50-70% higher than peer countries.
• U.S. physician compensation is 6.6 times GDP per capita for specialists and 4.2 times GDP per capita for generalists compared to 4 times GDP per capita for specialists and 3.2 times GDP per capita for generalists in peer countries.
• U.S. physicians see, on average 1.6 times more patients than their counterparts in peer countries.
• In 2003, the U.S. spent $412 per capita on health care administrative costs—nearly six times that of other OECD countries.

The U.S. is expensive. These are just top-level points. The complete McKinsey report is well worth reading as all of these points are examined in a depth that I cannot do here. I did not touch physician owned facilities where expensive procedures (scans, outpatient care, et al) are performed. I also have not talked about expensive technology and how it is utilized and/or self-referred from physicians who also have a stake in said facility.

Many people are calling into question the number of uninsured in the United States. This chart:

from: U.S. Census information about uninsured as of 2007. It’s a PDF.

Whether or not you count illegal immigrants in those numbers or not, the number of uninsured in the United States is far too high and is a travesty. It is nothing short of a massive market failure to provide a service to the general populace. It’s a damning blow to privatization of for-profit healthcare.

Finally, the U.S. spends a great deal of money on health care, surely this would mean the U.S. has a better quality of health care service, care and delivery. However, the U.S. ranks lowest on overall life expectancy compared to England, Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Japan.

See also: WHO rankings and Study on Healthcare Quality.

Your thoughts? o

Hit this link and sign the petition if you want your voice heard for a “public option” in this round of healthcare reform:

Stand with Dr Dean

This is a great way to make your voice heard.

Via: Torrie over at I Pretty Much Hate Everything. o

Over the next little bit, I want to post about healthcare reform in the United States. Before we start calling names and yelling, I thought it might be super fun to see where readers of blurbomat™ stand:

Thanks for playing and stay tuned. o

Before Marlo was born I taped an episode of Momversation where dads talk about getting the “raw end of the deal” when it comes to parenting. I really enjoyed the conversation and I think that the producers deserve a medal for wading through all of the footage. My videos were close to 20 minutes of yapping. I definitely think they pulled out the best bits.

It was great talking with Danny Evans, Chris Loesch and Marcus Jennings. Great perspectives and conversation, lads! Happy Father’s Day!

So, blurbomat.com readers, do you think dads get the raw end of the deal? o

If you think that the “market” is going to do better than the federal government at administering a health plan, this is a good place to start:

How Bluechoice Carefirst scammed me, and how I beat them | Chasing Mist

Via: A Whole Lotta Nothing. o

Healthcare CEOs Shoot Themselves in the Foot | Mother Jones

Article about hearing where CEOs of healthcare companies display the arrogance that will be their undoing. Even if you pay into their systems for years, they will drop you from the plan using a process called rescission. In plainer terms, it’s called getting screwed by an immoral corporation.

UPDATE: Source article in the LA Times. Best bit:

“It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.”

You can watch the three-plus hour hearing here.

Q: Where’s the “free market” now conservatives?
A: The free market can’t talk right now, it’s buy figuring out ways to no longer offer insurance coverage to the people who need it most.

Broken system. Time for change.

Via: Daring Fireball. o

Not looking so good right now:

Oh Apple, I thought we’d moved past these kinds of things…

I wonder how well all the new push notifications are going to work if they can’t handle the rush of people upgrading software. o

Marlo Iris Armstrong
7lbs 15oz
21 inches
born 1:53am, 6/14/09

Named after a husky voiced actress/author and my favorite aunt. We’ve gone the rounds on naming this kid, but when Heather suggested both these names, I knew pretty quickly that the other options weren’t as good. Sure, I tried, but this little one is definitely gentle and sweet so far.

Yesterday in the hospital we had a lot of visitors, and it reaffirmed our desire to live near our immediate families. My youngest sister grabbed our camera and started taking pictures of everybody. She got some great shots, but my favorite is this one where Leta is meeting her sister for the first time:

And now for the delirium brought on by lack of sleep, adrenaline and absolute beauty. o

Op-Ed Columnist – The Big Hate – NYTimes.com

Krugman is dead on. In the past 10 days, conservative extremist domestic terrorists have killed on U.S. soil. The rhetoric from Beck, Limbaugh etc. is toxic. Conservatives are laughably fringe at this point. There appears to be no such thing as a middle ground or moderate conservative in the U.S. o

Here are three tracks that we released on I Wish I Had a Raygun that we redid for the CD. These were all recorded at the same studio, but we’d beefed up our sound considerably and we pushed the 16-tracks as hard as we could.

Clueless:
Featuring a guitar solo from Lou that is pretty close to what Jeff played on the original. I love the beefed up horns. The tempo is slowed down substantially from the original and I think it’s better as a slower song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – Clueless (MP3, 320kbps constant)

Compare to original here.

Chevy Bossa Nova:
You can really hear my custom programmed synth sound this time. Plus, Kent had this thingy on his bass that he’d flip and it would drop the low E string down a few steps so he could play the bassline an octave lower. Super awesome. Instead of the ponderous and horrid fake timbale solo, the horns stepped in to add a really nice bridge on this version. I’ve always loved Pat’s playing on this song as well. Something about a lighter touch on the skins… The tempo is noticably slower, which probably cost us at least 30 minutes in studio time with me arguing with Pat and anybody else that this song should be slowed down. We had that argument quite a few times.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – Chevy Bossa Nova (MP3, 320kbps constant)

Compare to original here.

Baby Babaar:
A more metalized version, particularly at the end. I believe that Merkley sampled the backing vocals from I Wish I Had a Raygun and laid them into this song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – Baby Babaar (MP3, 320kbps constant)

Compare to original here.

In the weeks of listening to these songs I’ve been struck at how much personality Rod has in his singing. I believe we owed a great deal of our success to his stage presence and persona, particularly as the band got harder. Good lead singers are hard to come by. You want somebody who can put on a show. Rod did that. I’ve given a lot of props to others in these posts, but I should really give the most ups for Rod. He drove from Salt Lake City to Provo three nights a week to rehearse, while working a demanding day job. He and Pat carpooled, but Pat wasn’t working as stressful a day job as Rod and I think Rod paid a particularly personal cost with the band. That is entirely speculation on my part…

More to come over the weekend unless Heather kills me or gives birth.

STILL NO BABY. o