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HL Mencken said, that “for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple neat – and wrong.”

And a perfect – and perfectly frightening example of this is the movie “SiCKO” and it’s simplistic and calculated portrayal of how other nations provide healthcare.

Michael Moore made the British National Health Service (the NHS) and the Canadian health system particular exemplars of excellence.  And he backed it up with a lot of statistics.  But statistics, as the saying goes, are like a bathing suit.  What they show you is interesting, but what they conceal is essential. Statistics alone, and without context, is not research.

And what “SiCKO” concealed was that systems such as those in the UK and Canada are cost-based rather than patient-centric models.  The devil is the details. Facts, no matter how inconvenient to one’s argument must not be ignored.

Citizens of countries with government-run health care systems experience long wait times, a lack of access to certain treatments and, in many instances, substandard medical care.  For example:

• The five-year survival rate for early diagnosed breast cancer patients in England is just 78 percent, compared to 98 percent in the U.S.
  
  
• A typical Canadian seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment had to wait 18.3 weeks in 2007, an all-time high, according to The Fraser Institute.

• The average wait time for bypass surgery in New York is 17 days compared to 72 days in the Netherlands and 59 days in Sweden. 

• More than half of the Canadian adults (56 percent) sought routine or ongoing care in 2005 – of these, one in six said they have trouble getting routine care.
  
  
• Eighty-five percent of doctors in Canada agree private insurance for health services already covered under Medicare would result in shorter wait times.
  
  
• Approximately 875,000 Canadians are on waiting lists for medical treatment.

If we’re going to look to other healthcare models for solutions, so too must we uncover and study their problems.

Healthcare is too important to allow reform by soundbite

Last autumn, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest interviewed people on the streets of New York City and asked them if they’d prefer “government” healthcare or “universal” healthcare.  They overwhelmingly chose “universal” healthcare – but when we asked them to explain the difference between the two, they generally just shrugged their shoulders. See for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnvQt587TPY

And when we asked them how much more in taxes they’d be willing to pay to support universal healthcare, they shook their heads and said, “No, we want it to be free, like in Europe and Canada.”

Such are the fallacies that political rhetoric hath wrought.

Equally as prevalent is the notion of “free” or “low cost” drugs “like in Canada and Europe.” And here too we need to be honest and examine the other side of the coin – that of cost-savings for the payer (often in the guise of healthcare technology assessment programs such as Britain’s NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) versus care denied for the patient – that price controls equal choice controls.

And so, as we enter into a presidential election campaign with healthcare reform as a top agenda item, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest is excited to announce an initiative we call “BigGovHealth.org” -- the first salvo in what we hope will evolve into a barrage of reality on ways to reform the American healthcare system in ways that keep patients at the center of the conversation.

Our national conversation about healthcare has to go beyond vague concepts of reform and convenient political rhetoric.  We must all be part of the solution. 

As Governor Deval Patrick commented at the BIO convention last week, “Be very suspicious about false choices.”

Here’s what Congressman John Shadegg (R, AZ) had to say at yesterday evening’s National Press Club  launch  of BigGovHealth.org:

“Congress has an important role to play in health care reform” said United States Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ), who has introduced health care legislation in support of free-market competition.  “We can help patient in this country, not by setting up a massive new government bureaucracy, but by empowering individuals to make the best choices for themselves and their families.”

Indeed.

To learn more about why government-run health care is not the right prescription for reform in the United States, please visit www.BigGovHealth.org.