ABC News' Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson says the U.S. health-care system is in Critical Condition
ABC News’ Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson says the U.S. health-care system is in Critical Condition.(ABCNEWS)
Peter Jennings Interviews ABCNEWS’Medical Editor on the Health-Care Crisis
Oct. 21 — Did you know that the United States spends more on health care, per capita, than any other country in the world?
Even so, 43 million Americans have no health-care coverage — including one in 10 children. Americans spend $1.6 trillion on health care and much of the system is clearly troubled.
Insurance premiums are going up for the third year in a row. Americans already pay twice as much for prescription drugs as anyone else. The ramifications of all this are huge in the world’s richest nation.
Every other country with a single-payer system, and all of the rich ones do, manage to cover everyone, have universal care, get very good results and do it at a far lower overhead than in the United States have.
This week, every news program on ABCNEWS is taking a closer look at the American health-care system. Peter Jennings interviewed ABCNEWS’ medical editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson for Critical Condition.
Peter Jennings: Tim, you helped us decide on the name of the series, Critical Condition. What is it essentially that is so critical?
Dr. Timothy Johnson: Costs are rising, we’re getting less for our money, we spend twice as much per person on health care in this country than any other industrialized country but we have 43 million uninsured. So we spend a lot of money but we don’t take care of a large section of our population. I think we’re at a critical juncture as to how we should proceed.
Jennings: So you think it’s a critical juncture as well as a critical condition.
Johnson: Yes, I think that’s a fair statement. Certainly for some people it’s a critical condition. The uninsured in our country, we know that they have a 15 to 18 percent mortality rate increase compared to those that are insured. We know that 18,000 of the uninsured die each year in this country for lack of insurance. For them, it’s critical condition. But for the rest of us it’s a critical juncture: What’s going to happen to our health insurance?