Third World Care? By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

(This is exactly why I dont want a public option, which would lead to socialized medicene)

Reform: Buffeted by growing outrage that ObamaCare will ruin quality medical care in America, a top administration official has resorted to telling desperate lies.

'Frankly," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a recent meeting of AFL-CIO leaders, "the health delivery system is under-delivering in terms of quality of care. We spend over twice as much as any nation on earth, and our health results look like we're a developing country."
Tell that to all the princes and potentates from developing countries who flock to America for lifesaving treatment. Saudi billionaires could go anywhere in the world to cure what ails them, but they check into the Mayo Clinic or the Texas Medical Center.

And poll after poll shows Americans are much more satisfied with the quality of their care than their counterparts in industrialized countries with government-run health care.

More than 70% of adults in countries with government-controlled health care — Britain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Canada — complain that their systems need either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."

That's because they wait longer for treatment and die sooner than Americans from common cancers and other diseases, according to a study by Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

Consider breast cancer mortality, which is 88% higher in Britain and 9% higher in Canada. Or prostate cancer mortality, which is 604% higher in Britain and 184% higher in Canada.
We have better cancer survival rates not only because we have better treatment, but because we have earlier detection. And we have earlier detection because we have better access to tests that screen for cancer.

For example, almost 90% of middle-aged U.S. women have had a mammogram, compared with 72% of Canadians; more than half of U.S. men — 54% — have had a prostate-specific antigen test, while only 16% of Canadians have had a PSA, and fully 30% of Americans have had a colonoscopy — the procedure for detecting colon cancer — compared with 5% of Canadians.

We also spend less time waiting for care. In fact, Canadians and Britons "wait about twice as long — sometimes more than a year — to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer," Atlas found.

Access to lifesaving drugs is also better in the U.S. Some 56% of Americans take statin drugs that reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, compared with 36% of Dutch, 29% of Swiss, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians.

Finally, we have better access to critical diagnostic equipment. The U.S. has 34 CT scanners per million people vs. 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. And we operate 27 MRI machines per million compared with six per million in Canada and Britain.

The U.S. medical industry is responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations in the world. It's no coincidence that since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to Americans more often than recipients from all other countries combined.

America decidedly does not have a Third World health care system. But it will if Washington takes control of it.