Americans spend a lot more than top countries, but aren’t as healthy...

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But we haven't been attacked by a mythological Arab boogeyman who lives in a cave in seven years!

I really do not understand the Business Roundtable's aversion to cutting costs by having guv run health system. Many of these CEOs cited healthcare costs in the past as reason for the massive offshoring of jobs previously held by US citizens.

Strikes me as a trifle anti-labor and anti worker attitude.

I guess those rich CEOs don't want to pay their share.

Another battle in the on-going class warfare that workers have been in since value of wages froze in 1973 - when families began needing two wage-earners to avoid poverty.

But I could be wrong !

Any CEO that advised nationalizing anything would surely have his Hahvahd MBA ripped off the wall by hordes of angry billionaire alumni. You can't expect these tigers to change their stripes no matter how much factual information they accumulate.

I do think they need to differentiate between health CARE costs and health INSURANCE costs. If I pay $2000 for insurance, yet only accumulate $200 worth of doctor bills, my personal cost is still $2000.

We could also save a lot of money by changing some prescription drugs to over-the-counter.

"The CEOs of the Business Roundtable believe health care for U.S. workers and their families should stay in private hands, with a government-funded safety net for low-income people."

These CEOs know damned well that this country is quickly moving to THIRD WORLD status where the majority of workers will be in the low-income bracket. Of course they want health care to remain in private hands if the government is stupid enough to borrow from other countries to maintain the insurance industry status quo.

Class consiousness, pure and simple. See V.I. Lenin
v.purto

"The CEOs of the Business Roundtable believe health care for U.S. workers and their families should stay in private hands, with a government-funded safety net for low-income people."

Faced with the obvious failure of the industrialized world's only privatized health care system, this country's brilliant CEOs still favor its continuation. No matter how blatant the evidence contradicting their viewpoint, they don't change it. The US is being choked to death by fundamentalists: Christian, Moslem, Jewish,...and Free-Market.

This article along with some others have appeared since Obama's "healthcare" summit--more like an insurance industry summit.

What they're doing is trying to cast the healthcare crisis as a business problem.

The problem is, business is just one component of a civic society.

That is, healthcare is a public problem to be addressed with public principles and ideals--not economic principles and ideas--that's what got us into this mess in the first place.

Here's an issue that could possibly generate enthusiasm for a 1 or 2 day general strike!!!

But I am probably wrong !

I love this line: "The United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S."
This, especially is great "though all their systems differ..."
Good one, except that all their systems are different iterations of single payer health care....
In Amerikka, health care that doesn't include profiting on the afflictions of others is too far beyond the pale...
The Associated Press can't even utter the phrase "single payer health care."
God forgive Amerikka

Six facts that will help keep you alive:

1. Your doctor is trying to kill you.
2. 20 minutes after logging on to e-medicine you will know more about your condition than your specialist does.
3. Re. the term "health care:" If your mother is still living, she is the only one who cares whether you live or die. Your doctor doesn't care. Blue Cross doesn't care. Your government doesn't care. That leaves only you, and possibly your mother.
4. When your health fails, your insurance provider wants you gone. Dead or otherwise cancelled.
5. The candy striper who files your blood test results for your doctor is also trying to kill you.
6. Healthcarewise you are like Rambo, alone in a jungle surrounded by lethal enemies. Trust no one. If you are wounded, try to get medical help. It is mostly located in Canada and Europe, roughly north and east of here respectively.

Attention: Silly Boys & Girls
Subject: Business Roundtable Members

Please review this roster ... http://www.businessroundtable.org/about/members
and then write a 75 word essay on Why U.S. Healthcare Should Stay in 'private hands'!

"The CEOs of the Business Roundtable believe health care for U.S. workers and their families should stay in private hands, with a government-funded safety net for low-income people."

Faced with the obvious failure of the industrialized world's only privatized health care system, this country's brilliant CEOs still favor its continuation. No matter how blatant the evidence contradicting their viewpoint, they don't change it . . .

THAT'S THE POINT I FOCUSED UPON.

THE ELITE CORPORATE EXECUTIVE SEGMENT OF SOCIETY ARE HANGING ON TO THE FAILED PROPAGANDA THAT DE-REGULATION AND PRIVITIZATION ARE GOOD THINGS.

THE REST OF US ARE -- WELL -- I GUESS WE'RE JUST BARELY HANGING ON THE BEST WE CAN.

voxclamatis, I think I agree with you. On the other hand, I have found doctors who do care, but are quite overwhelmed with patients. Yes, there is a lot of good health info on the internet. Not everyone is able to comprehend or evaluate it in their best interest, if they have access to a computer. It's the insurance companies who may be trying to kill you. They definitely do not care if you live or die. They will be the roadblock at every corner of your health "journey." Single payer is the only help for our aging society, and our young workers.

The healthcare lobby sunk 162 million dollars into their pet representatives and presidential candidate (O'bama) last year alone. They did that, of course, to protect the obscene profits they receive from the extortion of the American public. They frame the national debate through their money-buying influence in communications (TV,net, press etc...) with enviable propraganda campaigns.
(Remember Harry and Louise? Ever wonder where the Canadian "horror stores" come from?)
The only thing unexplainable here is that the latest polls show American willingness to go with single-payer healthcare approaching 66%. At the same time, the "health care" summit at the White House has basically declared single-payer DOA. Money talks; BS walks. Something is out of phase here.

Thank you Bidness Roundtable for proving the adage that there is none so blind as those whose paycheck - or in this case stock options - depend on not seeing. No siree, nothing another subsidy to big business can't fix. And here I thought the free market economy was supposed to produce superior results. Sheesh.

A Single Payer health insurance system is the only plan that makes any sense. We need to hound the media until they begin to utter those words with respect.

Motto of big drug and big insurance: "Harm? What harm can there be in profit I'd like to know."

I think maybe the factory farming of animals is in collusion with them also.

U.S. business leaders say hobbled by healthcare costs
Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:48pm EDT

By Donna Smith with comments added by Dave Cox
Irony or hypocrisy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. business leaders urged lawmakers on Thursday to act quickly on healthcare reform, saying American companies were losing out to other countries with cheaper healthcare and healthier workers.
The Business Roundtable, which represents the largest U.S. corporations, released a study showing that for every $100 spent in the United States on healthcare, a group of five leading economic competitors -- Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France -- spend about 63 cents.
"While today's economic challenges span the globe, companies in other countries may be better able to weather the storm in part because the value that their healthcare systems deliver," Business Roundtable Chairman Harold McGraw told reporters in a telephone conference. McGraw is chairman, president and chief executive of The McGraw-Hill Companies.
U.S. President Obama has made reforming the expensive and inefficient U.S. healthcare system one of his top priorities and Democratic leaders in Congress hope to get a bill to him by the end of the year.
The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but some 46 million Americans are still uninsured.
Ivan Seidenberg, chairman and chief executive of Verizon Communications, said an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system "should have been done yesterday."
The United States, where most (?) workers get healthcare insurance through their employers, faces an even bigger competitive disadvantage against rising economic powers Brazil, India and China, the Business Roundtable study said.
It said those countries spend about 15 cents on healthcare for every dollar spent in America.
BOILING FROG
"This is a boiling frog issue -- how long can you stay in the water before you get boiled to death," Seidenberg said. "We're looking at close to double-digit increases in healthcare costs going into the future."
The Business Roundtable executives said their study showed that despite the money Americans spend on healthcare, U.S. workers are less healthy than workers in other countries, putting U.S. firms an even greater disadvantage.
The group wants changes that would reduce costs through greater use of technology and other efficiencies and require (here come the mandates to effectively further subsidize the insurance companies) everyone to obtain health coverage -- echoing proposals made by the Obama administration.
They support plans to provide government aid (more subsidies with our tax dollars) to help those who cannot afford insurance, but said they do not want to see a government insurance plan that "dominates the market." (Why?)
Most Americans -- 170 million -- get health insurance through an employer, although some buy their own private insurance. Business Roundtable members provide health coverage to about 35 million workers and their families. Does that make any sense at all? -- for supposedly smart Business Roundtable members to oppose a fair and equitable single-payer system that would alleviate the aforementioned economic difficulties? Sounds like Boiling Lemmings to me.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and David Storey) and commented by Dave Cox

My girlfriend's current cancer treatments cost $25,000 per week. A bottle of 150 Tykerb tablets costs $3,500. Sick people are golden geese for the pharmaceutical companies. The insurance companies would much rather that you just bleeping die than take a penny of their cosmic profits.

Frankly, they can all go drink sea water followed by a cyanide chaser.

I have read a lot of blogs and seen many programs denigrating single payer national health care systems. They seem to come from people that have no personal experience with such systems. Numerous studies has established that single payer national health care systems cost about half of our system while providing better health care as measured by outcome such as infant mortality, longevity, hospital mistakes etc. My family has personal experience with national health care systems in England, Germany, Norway and USA from living in those countries. I would not hesitate one moment to choose any of their systems over ours (USA). It is difficult to understand why systems demonstrated to be better than ours, no matter which criteria you use to compare them, are not seriously considered here in the USA. Are we that misinformed, brainwashed, uneducated, dogmatically tied to capitalist philosophy (that in this case is failing), not as smart as citizens in other countries, or is it that it was not invented by the self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth.

A viable health care system must also be decoupled from ones place of work like the rest of the world. This will help make our industry more competitive, and encourage employee mobility into new economic activities to help spawn and expand new businesses.

The bottom line, born out by facts and not emotions or dogma, is that single payer national health care systems work better for more people at lower cost than our for profit system.

Covance's Torturing Of Monkeys For Drug Research! Humans Are Their Next Victoms

Is this real science at work?

Or the work of Dr. Mingela you ask?

While our televisions and radio and internet, inundate us with pharmaceuticals while warning us what they might do.

As useful idiots who call themselves doctors who have been miseducated, give people who have had breast cancer, pharamaceuticals, which are another form of chemo. A deadly way to die

Sounds like to me, the food and drug industry create the problems and then provide the solutions.

Eugenics!

In a very slow degradation of all life and humanity.

Convance also uses human test subjects to test pharmaceuticals for trial studies

While they could be part of phase 2 or 3 of a trial study after the pharmaceutical company has killed off teenagers before releasing their drugs such as Cymbalta for example. Where a teenage girl was given it for 3 days on and 3 days off, and killed herself? Or they killed her? In Eli Lilly's Labatory. Then, after the drugs get law suits they have the gall to put them back into white washed trial studies like Covance it seems.

The drug Chantix, has already been on trial after being released out into the world

Convance pays you way because it's only apparently because, they want to pay off the liability of damages they can incur upon you while taking their experimental drugs and after you have signed over or waived your rights I take it.

You could walk out of their experimental facility with money in your pocket and lots of it, and yet the money they gave you cannot replace or pay for a new kidney or organ they have damaged in the process.

Are we going to continue to allow Nazi Science as we allow today to pervade our food, medicine and everything around us?

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.a...
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! Patrick Henry
http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/6104101/view

The elite chimps are trying to reserve space for themselves on the ferry that's leaving the sinking island. They acknowledge the healthcare problem in order to curry favor, gain attention, retain influence, get a contract, but they fail to admit they caused the problem and they fail to propose a lasting solution that addresses the fundamental issue: their very own greed. We have to play hardball with them: We have to ostracize them from the society.

"The results are not encouraging.

The United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S."

_________________________________________

Let's not forget that WE, the United States of America installed Japan's health care system during the reconstruction. If it was good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for our own people?

???"The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country."

Isn't the $1928 per capita ststistic an error? I thought we spent close to $7000 per capita.

Please clarify or correct. Thanks.