Issue date: 9/30/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Chad Stoermer [Click to enlarge]

The American free-market approach to health care offers the world's highest quality health care in a timely fashion to its recipients.

Dr. Michael Tanner, the director of Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank group, wrote that America houses most of the world's top doctors, hospitals and research facilities and that 18 of the previous 25 Nobel Prize in medicine are either U.S. citizens or work in the country.

"Half of all the major new medicines introduced worldwide in the last 20 years were developed by U.S. companies," Tanner said. "Americans played a key role in 80 percent of the most important medical advances of the last 30 years."

In addition, health insurance companies provide services for the insured that often surpass what they pay to the company. Most insured people are not stricken with an ailment that requires copious amounts of insurance dollars, but the company is used to ensure health costs will be assuaged when care is needed.

In the U.S., those afflicted with cancer can usually expect surgery or chemotherapy to commence immediately following diagnosis. Patients with heart conditions find themselves receiving an angioplasty in days. Those with diabetes receive insulin minutes after finding out what type of diabetes they.

The largest flaw its detractors find is many people do not have health care, nor can they afford to pay for it.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that it took 80 percent of patients up to three months to see a specialist. Ninety percent reported they received an MRI within four months, as opposed to the few days it takes a patient to receive one in the U.S.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 40 percent of those without health care earned $50,000 annually, but did not buy health insurance. For some, it is a choice; just as it is a choice for individuals who have not practiced healthy habits and depend on doctors to cure self-inflicted ailments.

It should be a government mandate that companies provide health insurance to all full-time employees and their families, and require that the cost not exceed a set percentage of the employees' annual income. The health care system does not need reform and it doesn't need government intervention. responsibility must dictate one's lifestyle. Lifestyle, coupled with the availability of health insurance through the workplace, will open availability and allow U.S. health care to remain on top.

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