Good day, family and friends!
When last we met, we established that everyone, from the most indigent to the wealthiest among us, has access to healthcare. I am not yet dealing with physician choice or the cost of private physicians or the number of specialists per capita in a given area of the country or any other questions or issues. All of that comes later. All the last post was meant to do was answer the question, "How accessible is healthcare to the citizens of America?" The answer is, "Anyone within 250 yards of an American emergency room or department, whether or not they are a U.S. citizen, whether or not they are actually within the borders of the U.S., have access to all the medical care necessary to treat and stabilize an emergency condition to the point where they can reasonably be expected to care for themselves, or until they can be discharged into the care of a qualified caregiver, whether or not they are able or are willing to pay for such medical service."
But many people believe that isn't enough...that they shouldn't be 'forced' to go to an emergency room if they want to see a doctor. According to the Bureau of the Census, the American Medical Association, and the Centers for Disease Control, in 2006 (the last year this statistic was available for all three organizations), between 91% and 92% of the population of the U.S. lives less than thirty minutes from either a primary-care physician or a non-emergency clinic that is still accepting new patients. Of the remainder, just under 6% of the population chooses to live in remote areas more than thirty minutes from any sort of population center, no matter how small. This means that only 2% to 3% of the U.S. population lives in what are called 'under-serviced' areas.
While I do acknowledge that there are areas in which the American Healthcare system can be improved, I have to applaud our nation on accessibility to medical care. Of the twenty most populous nations in the world, Japan comes the closest to offering the level of healthcare available to Americans. There are nations that seem to be doing a better job of delivering healthcare to their citizens than America...Cuba and Sweden are the two countries most often used as examples...and for their population, they very well may be doing a good job. But comparing the logistics of delivering medical care in the third most populous nation on Earth to the logistics of delivering it in the seventy-fifth and the eighty-eighth most populace nations is like comparing the logistics of traffic management in Greensboro, NC and Chesapeake, VA to that of Chicago. It isn't even an 'apples-to-apples' comparison; rather, its more like 'apples-to-eggplant'. Basically, such a comparison is spurious and completely without merit. The bottom line is that, of the twenty nations that make up just over 79% of the world's population, none provide better access to healthcare than the United States of America.
Next time, I start looking at the cost and affordability of healthcare in America.
Until then, best regards...
© James P. Rice 2009
