The paper concludes, “that the vast majority of uninsured Americans are satisfied with their health care. Indeed, only 2.3 percent of Americans are both uninsured and very dissatisfied with the quality of the medical care that they receive. The paper finds that Canadians are much closer to uninsured Americans than to insured Americans in their satisfaction with their health care.”

At least in Canada Jess’ assumption seems misplaced.

I do not understand the concept of “arbitrary rationing” you discuss above. Nor do I understand rationing to occur in non-government health care in the US. Presumably you are not discussing the rationing that occurs in Medicare in Oregon, which has intentionally created a rationing system to limit costs within the Medicare system. The results in Oregon are predictably odd with one woman being denied chemotherapy for cancer but being offered assisted suicide if desired.

Mark

Here’s some more information about the UK to help clarify my statement of higher satisfaction outside the US.

“An annual social attitudes report compiled by Britain’s National Center for Social Research and released in January found that satisfaction with the NHS was higher than it had been at any time since 1984.
However, a breakdown shows that while satisfaction with NHS (general practitioners) was high, at 76 percent, satisfaction with inpatient services had dropped, from 74 percent in 1983 to 49 percent now.” -CNSnews.com

It’s interesting to note that the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research found that 3/4 of the NHS total budget goes to Primary Care Trusts which prioritize funding for general practitioners and prescriptions.

Upon reflection it seems satisfaction with healthcare is relative to how healthy a person is within his/her system. The UK system seems well designed to keep healthy people satisfied (low costs with good preventative measures in place). The US has much better satisfaction with inpatient care, but healthy people foot the bill with high premiums and taxes.

And you’re right, demand for primary care and elective procedures would go up in a government program. Perhaps we need to hybridize our system with the UKs and allocate more funding(third party reimbursement) to primary care in order to meet the demand.

I’m taking the liberty of combining the comments of “Throwing Money at the Problem” with this post in the interests of brevity and common issues.

You make a good point about the disablement of the free market in response to my post under “Throwing Money at the Problem”. The consumers do seek out low costs to themselves, but they do it through insurance company premiums. There is no consumer interest in knowing how much healthcare actually costs. Our disinterest may be crippling the free market system. More transparency in the industry would help as well.

I’d be interested in knowing exactly how much of the waste to which Sowell refers consists of healthcare providers and patients using a shotgun approach to medicine.