We have the best health care in the world
To the editor:
Richard Cohen's howlingly silly op-ed, "We need to look to Europe," (Review Journal, March 24) once again reveals the deep disgust so many American liberals seem to have for anything American, including our health care system.
As someone whose father emigrated from Europe in pursuit of the American dream and had suffered under quack doctors in Germany, let me state the obvious: The United States still provides the highest quality health care in the world. Period.
Eighteen of the past 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine either are U.S. citizens or work here. Why? Because with no price controls, free-market U.S. medicine provides the incentives that lead to breakthroughs in new drugs and other medical technologies.
American companies have developed half of all the major new medicines introduced worldwide over the past 20 years, and Americans played a key role in 80 percent of the most important medical advances of the past 30 years.
When you get sick, the United States is the place to be. When former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery last year, he didn't go to France, Canada or even an Italian hospital -- he went to the Cleveland Clinic.
When French crooner Johnny Hallyday contracted an infection during surgery in Paris last year, where did he go? Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
The American health care system certainly needs tweaking, aka "reform." But the ObamaCare bill is not the answer. It is a constitutional 9/11 that will increase taxes, decrease job creation and force more and more doctors to leave the profession.
Instead of looking to Europe, perhaps Mr. Cohen should instead look to the Constitution. That would be a start.
Ted Mueller
Las Vegas
