…at least not in the aggregate.  See this post by Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute.

State Policy Network | Blog | Prevention Does not Save Money
Here’s another example from a study published last year in the journal Circulation. Suppose we enact several highly recommended measures to control cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Among other ends, the programs would improve blood pressure monitoring, increase access to medication and reduce cholesterol levels in high-risk patients.

Suppose that these prevention measures were 100% successful. The estimated cost of treating at-risk patients over the next 30 years would drop by about a trillion dollars. The preventive measures themselves, though, would cost $8.5 trillion — offsetting the savings by a factor of almost 10.

This morning while on the radio I got a question, as time was running out, related to the Canadian health care system.  The caller asked why I didn’t believe the Candian system to be successful when Canadians, on average, live longer and have lower infant mortality rates.

Leaving mortality rates (which are manipulated often, btw, see article here) aside for a moent, I briefly answered that statistics are difficult things.  Life expectancy, though, is decidedly not a function of the health care system.  There are hundreds of societal and cultural factors that have much greater impact on life expectancy than the health care system.  Americans drive more, for example, and auto deaths in the US are much higher than in Canada.

As this article notes, if you want to see the impact of the health care system on life expectancy, you need to look at cases where the delivery system can save/not save lives.  One important area here is cancer survival rates, which are highest in the US of all developed countries.  A US citizen, contracting cancer, has a much higher survival rate than a Canadian in the same scenario.

The sad part is that proponents of a single payer system should know that these statistics are misleading, and that health care delivery is only one of many components of life expectancy, but they continue to use the statistic  to convince the public that major reform is necessary.  This type of one sided, uncritical use of statistics needs to be examined.  If we are to seriously look at what needs to be fixed in our health care delivery systems, we need to move past misleading stats and actually examine the problems and solutions, not look for statistics that support our predetermined solutions.

And even if (and it’s not the case) the government taking over the health care system would increase life expectancy, is a small increase in the average life span worth a huge sacrifice in personal liberty?  Because remember, average life span is just that, average.  It does not mean that some individuals (the ones with liberty) don’t have shorter lives under the new system.  And the system with the greatest liberty, in the long run, will be that which produces the greatest lives.

UPDATE:  found another post today dealing with life expectancy and statistics that bears reading.   Read it here.

Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » Insulation vs. Insurance
For health care providers, insulation is a bonanza. Because consumers are not spending their own money, they accept doctors’ recommendations for services without questioning them and without concern for cost. Faced with an insured patient, a health care provider is like a restaurant catering to convention-goers with unlimited expense accounts. The customer will gladly take the most high-end recommendation and not worry about the price.

This is a great article on the difference between insurance and insulation in the area of health care costs. The total spending in health care being seemingly out of control is a direct result of insulation.

Yet another way that health care sharing ministries are superior to most insurance–there is no insulation from actual costs.

I was reading at Christianity Today about the insurance crisis in churches. There were a few comments that mentioned health care sharing ministries, but sadly the article does not.

“It’s really a crisis,” NAE president Leith Anderson said. “If things stay as they are, there is going to be a significant loss of pastors from the ministry.”

Many denominations, like the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), formerly offered health insurance benefits to their pastors, but ceased when insurance costs increased. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, health premiums increased 78 percent between 2001 and 2007.

For Christians, there are alternatives. But we’ve become very accustomed to the “guarantees” of insurance. And become insulated from our health care costs. And because of that insulation, the thought of going by faith, and joining with a community of believers in a health care sharing ministry, is not even considered by many of these denominations.

These rising costs are a problem, yes, but they are not the only story. And many people have found a more affordable option with one of our member ministries—and have seen health care solutions that are ministry based, rather than profit based. And a solution that balances faith, liberty and charity.