American Cancer Society Please Read This

Four times this morning, I watched as a series of PSA's made by the American Cancer Society played on my TV screen. Now, I like the American Cancer Society. I think overall they have done good work. I've given money and raised money for the American Cancer Society. But I have to take them to task about these new PSA's, and if they continue down the path that they seem to have embarked upon, I soon may no longer be able to support them.

The most egregious of these PSA's begins, "This is what a healthcare crisis looks like to the American Cancer Society." The basic point of these messages is that there are cancer patients who can't get treatment because they don't have any or enough medical insurance. I agree this is a problem. I do not agree with the way they phrase it, however, referring to it as a "healthcare crisis".

American Cancer Society, please read this: There Is No Healthcare Crisis in the United States!

Words mean things. Yes, this is basically an issue of semantics (see particularly definitions 1 and 3b), but it is an important issue of semantics. If people are told enough times that there is a "healthcare crisis", then they will begin to believe there is a fundamental flaw in the actual medical care that is being delivered in this country. And we have the highest quality, most technically advanced healthcare in the world. Qualitatively and quantitatively, the average American receives more healthcare, and higher quality healthcare, than the average citizen of any other country.

Is our healthcare system perfect? No, it's far from it. Let's look at some recent numbers. Of people being treated for hypertension, around 63% are treated to what are recommended as goal levels. Pretty abysmal, huh? Must be a crappy system, right? Well guess what? Almost every other country is far below us, in the range of 31-46% or less. Can we do better? Yes. Must we do better? Yes. But everywhere else in the world has to do better just to catch up with where we are now.

If someone cannot get needed care for a life-threatening illness due to a lack of ability to pay, I would agree that is a tragedy. But the tragedy is not that our healthcare system is in crisis. It is a tragedy because our societal system has led to such high medical costs that many people cannot afford the price.

And the solution to that problem does not involve destroying the best healthcare system in the world. Indeed, we should enhance such a system. It is everything around that system that needs to be changed.

Stay tuned.