Health Statistics and Health Care Reform

I know - this is supposed to be a photography blog, and will be most of the time.  However, as I posted in the past, the state of your health (and I don't mean NY or CA or some other state) will determine, to some extent, the results you get in a photo session, or even if you will be around to have a photo session, not to mention the quality of your everyday life.

Health care reform (aka Obamacare, but should have really been called Insurance Reform or Mandatory Insurance - but probably would not have passed with those names, LOL) would have been something a bit different.  What should it have included?  Education about nutrition, exercise, and supplements (these things you can do on your own, as I did), reigning in health care costs, lessening of environmental toxins, eliminating the use of those drugs that are not needed (DON'T ask your doctor if a drug ad drug is right for you - drug ads are illegal in almost all countries for a reason)  including the over-use of antibiotics, etc.  Obamacare does have some good provisions - like the part about pre-existing conditions.  But does anyone know what else is covered in the 1,000 pages?

Health Care Reform should have been aimed at changing the following statistics (I'm just reporting the highlights - the full article can be read here:  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/10/05/us-health-care-system.aspx?e_cid=20131005Z1_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20131005Z1):

Americans spend twice as much on health care per capita than any other country in the world; in fact, according to a series of studies by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, the US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia.

Other astounding statistics include:

• The US spends more than 17 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare1
• If the US health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet2
• While the US makes up only five percent of the world’s population, Americans consume over 50 percent of all the world’s pharmaceutical drugs
• Overall, Americans also pay 50 percent more than other countries for identical drugs, as a result of laws and regulations preventing the US government from reining in drug prices like other nations do

Despite all of this spending and pill-popping, the US ranks dead last in terms of quality of care among industrialized countries, and Americans are far sicker and live shorter lives than people in other nations.

In 2000, the Institutes of Medicine reported that medical errors were the eighth leading cause of death in the US, killing between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year. This was followed by a 2003 article aptly titled "Death by Medicine", authored in two parts by Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, which described in excruciating detail how the modern conventional American medical system has bumbled its way into becoming the leading cause of death and injury in the United States, claiming the lives of nearly 784,000 people annually!

In 2010, two additional reports published in New England Journal of Medicine9 and the Journal of General Internal Medicine10 respectively, showed just how little things have changed since 2003. For example:

• Out of 62 million death certificates dated between 1976-2006, almost a quarter-million deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors.
• An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the US every year.

Will Obamacare change the above statistics?  Or will it add to them?