10 Surprising Facts About American Health Care," that shows how Americans get something for the extra dollars they lay out. To wit:
• "Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers." Breast cancer mortality: 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in the United Kingdom than in the U.S. Prostate cancer mortality: 604% higher in the U.K., 457% higher in Norway. Colo-rectal cancer mortality: 40% higher among Britons.
• "Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians." Rates for breast cancer (9%), prostate cancer (184%) and colon cancer among men (10%) are higher than in the U.S.
• "Americans have better access to treatment of chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries." Roughly 56% of Americans who could benefit are taking statin drugs. Only 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of Germans, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians who could benefit receive them.
• "Americans have better access to preventive cancer screenings than Canadians." Nine of 10 middle-aged American women have had a mammogram; 72% of Canadian women have. Almost every American woman (96%) has had a pap smear; fewer than 90% of Canadian women have. Roughly 54% of American men have had a prostate cancer test; fewer than one in six Canadian men have. Almost a third of Americans (30%) have had a colonoscopy; only 5% of Canadians have had the procedure.
• "Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians." Nearly 12% of U.S. seniors with below-median incomes self-report being in "excellent" health, while 5.8% of Canadian seniors say the same thing.
• "Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom." Canadians and Britons wait about twice as long, sometimes more than a year, to see a specialist, have elective surgery or get radiation treatment.
• "People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed." More than seven in 10 Germans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Britons say their health systems need either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."
• "Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians." More than half (51.3%) of Americans are very satisfied with their health care services, while 41.5% of Canadians hold the same view of their system.
• "Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K." There are 34 CT scanners per million Americans. There are 12 per million in Canada and eight per million in Britain. The U.S. has nearly 27 MRI machines per million. Britain and Canada have 6 per million.
• "Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations." The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed nation; the most important recent medical innovations were developed here.
Can the nationalized, universal systems in Britain, Canada or anywhere else improve on this? No, but we can ruin our health care by following the policies of countries where medical treatment is far below the American standard.

It is my pleasure to have now returned and with much more life experience. I am currently a business owner of a small legal services shop and a 2L law student at SIU where I received full 3 years scholarship paying full tuition. Chicago is my home where I maintain my swanky lil 1 bedroom condo in the loop. I have accepted an offer to join a brilliant litigator’s office in Chicago where I will hone deposition and trial skills practicing in the medical malpractice field. Within this field I will develop a nursing home subspecialty because remedying and preventing elderly abuse is a passion of mine. 

I will hold forth on topics of political philosophy and the implicit elements of moral ethics therewith. I am currently beginning research in the health care field both for professional reasons and ultimately to invoke free market principles into the debate.

Spelunker returns!!!

Bush and Blair made me quite proud today. It seems as if they truly are acting upon the strategic vision laid down by the President through successive NSC Strategic Defense Initiatives. You can simply not analyze the current global security condition without understanding the key point: We are in a war with a death cult ideology that is masquerading as the Islam religion. B&B are consistent in seeing opportunity in the overreach of our foe. Wretchard has provided a key analytic contribution by noting that terrorist should never seek to hold territory as a military objective. Yet this is what they are left doing...and getting soundly thrashed. They reality on the ground will drive the political winds. There is no Arab Street, at least since the 6-day war, and there will never be one again. If anything the Arabs are the easiest to predict.

The looming 11-2006 election season will display the advantages B&B’s strategic approach has for the GOP. I am convinced that the American left cannot come to grips with Bush’s key strategic insight, because they are just soooo much smarter then the President. Thus they, and all their really smart friends, will not be able to provide a coherent or efficacious alternative to Bush. In fact their criticisms can lack any argument because it can be assumed that they have really good reasons: the kind that Joe 6 pack, who cares only for his family’s safety, couldn’t begin to fathom. Its Bush’s Fault!!!! Alas it’s not so easy because the current state of affairs is not the result of Bush’s proximate aggressive policies; rather it is the result of the terrorists believing that they might prevail with a tried and tested method that has garnered consistent rewards against a limp wristed diplomatic approach. The very diplomatic heavy approach adverted to by the left over and over again.

In sum, terrorist [T] merely undertakes some violent action against Israel and when the IDF finally responds in force, T simply screams for the inhumanity of their plight and a suspiciously sympathetic world community runs to T’s aid. T then is provided with a “buffer”, some aid, and obeisance showing the sincerity good intentions of their benefactors. T the uses this hiatus to rebuild and retool and enjoy the vast PR advantage they have over Israel. But in a post 9-11 world this re-tooling phase can provide T with extraordinarily powerful weapons. And as the current situation shows, T can obtain and conceal such weapons until the minute they choose to use them. This is an unacceptable risk in post 9-11 WMD world. A strategic assessment understands that a hostile state power may deliver, or rather is highly likely to deliver, WMD into the hands of such undeterable proxies. The US will face this situation if we fail to defeat this enemy now. The left can show no leadership in this regard because it cannot grasp the simple strategic vision that the President has understood 1 minute post 9-11. The elections in 2006 will be fought on the competing visions of how to prevail in the WOT, and frankly the Democrats look weak! Because they lack urgency, nay, lack the will to come to grips that we are in a war. Never forget electing Democrats will GET YOU KILLED!

I've grown apprehensive at the lack of concrete action to confront what seems to be multiple situations that require force.  Its hard to imagine interlocutors like Iran or North Korea ever signing a document worth the paper its written on.  I must say there is a time for negotiations and a time for war.  Both these states have shown themselves recalcitrant, to put it mildly, in foregoing nuclear "weaponizing" and both fail to meet good faith assumptions of credible contracting parties. 

Why must we opt for war on the sly?  Why not use the reality of Iran's proxy war against Israel as an act of war visited upon the United States?  President Bush needs to go before Congress and the American people and lay out the case for war.  I'm very confident Congress will then declare war and we can then move to full overt mobilization. 

Japan can be our operational partner in far East against North Korea, and Israel in the middle East. 

One of the boilerplate criticisms from the academic left against it foes, is that this “other” stands against the Enlightenment. This sobriquet “enlightenment” is normally juxtaposed to the “the dark age” as if the former is a recrudescence of human faculties and sensibilities. The currency of the left’s adage then imputes clouded or deluded thinking upon its foes. But like the “dark ages” the term “enlightenment” is a serious misnomer: The product of political public relations or branding with little evidence to support its reputed import.

This author rejects the general themes of the enlightenment as promoting irrationality rather than perspicacity. The whole of nature is transformed into the product of Mans ratiocinative processes…the psychologization of causation. We are only now recovering from this two century old delusion.