Participants listen as Bob Enteen explain the U.S. health care system
The American Healthcare System
On December 15, 2011, Embassy Ouagadougou hosted a Digital Video Conference about the United States healthcare system with Bob Enteen, an American medical journalist based in France. As the former host of “Living without Limits,” a weekly program broadcast across the United States on National Public Radio (NPR), he has conducted interviews with many of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and physicians, congressional and state health policymakers, healthcare consumer advocates, and patients.
Enteen began the DVC with an overview of U.S. healthcare system, discussing the difference between American medicine and the American healthcare delivery system. The healthcare system, he said, is a complex patchwork of private and public programs, which work well sometimes but often work poorly, resulting in human tragedy, medical failure and economic waste. One of the key issues and, the fact that treatment delivered through the American healthcare system consists of products and services that in most cases have been created by private companies that benefit economically from their use.
At the same time, Enteen explained, American medicine is the best in the world. The audience learnt that 6 of the world’s top 10 medical schools are American, 24 of the world’s top 30 hospitals are based in the United States, 12 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world, responsible for developing many of the most important life-saving drugs, are American, and he estimated that the United States accounts for 80 percent of the world’s research and development spending in biotechnology.