> By Robert Bazell
> NBC NEWS
>BOSTON, May 7 Ñ A new report from the prestigious RAND Corporation
>says the quality of health care for most Americans is surprisingly
>poor: The group ranked the U. S. medical establishment 37th in overall
>performance worldwide. But some hospitals, like BostonÕs
>MassachusettsGeneral, are taking much-needed steps to fix this broken system.
As I understand, the ranking system involves many factor in addition to medical technology, such as access to that technology - which is very poor in the US, hence its low ranking (see the last issue of the Dollars & Sense on that).
There are two analytically seprarable issues at stake here: the organization of medical care and medical technology. Every reasonable person would agree that while the US has one of the best medical technology available, its organization of medical care sucks big time. Which, in my opinion, is avery strong indictment, for having a treatment and barring access to it for some makes it a crime against humanity.
On theother hand, there is a renewal of newage post-yuppie quackery that thrives on bashing medical technology as the means of promoting its own sorcery. These are usually conspriatorial sentiments peddled to frustrated yuppies or newage types - a quite silly way to critque the US health business.
As I stated before, medical practice is an art, and risk is unavoidable. Judging medical practice by the standard of religious certainty misses the point altogether.
wojtek