Thom Hartmann: In New Jersey, just recently, a few days ago, a CVS pharmacy, pharmacist, or pharmacy employee, nearly allowed a woman to die in their store when she denied her the use of an inhaler as this woman was suffering from an asthma attack right in front of her. Her boyfriend was there, as Katherine O'Connor was on the floor desperately trying to catch her breath. And he tried to purchase the inhaler but was a dollar short of the $21 retail price. The pharmacist refused to sell it for a dollar discount. The guy said I’ll give you my cell phone for the dollar, I’ll bring the dollar back. You can hang on to my cell phone, it’s worth a lot more than a dollar. The pharmacist said there’s nothing I can do. They called an ambulance and took her to the hospital.

Since when did CVS start acting like United Healthcare, saying oh I’m sorry we’re not… is this a glaring example of how the poor are treated in our country or is it a glaring example of how dysfunctional our healthcare system has become? Or all of the above. T.R. Reid is on the line with us. His new book, “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care.” Previously released in hardcover, it’s now out in paperback. Frontline documentary, “Sick Around the World" and "Sick in America.” T. R. Reid, welcome back to the program.

T. R. Reid: Hi Thom, great to be back.

Thom Hartmann: Great to have you. And congratulations again. You are doing such great work reporting on this and spreading the word. I find it astounding that so few Americans know the simple realities. Give us a list, just talking about the OECD or the developed countries around the world, the 34 or so. Give us a list of the countries where people never in their lives pay a hospital bill or a doctor bill.

T. R. Reid: Well all the other rich countries, Thom, provide healthcare for everybody. But in some places you do have to pay a co-pay or an insurance premium. But let’s see… Britain, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, all of Scandinavia you never pay a doctor bill. They can buy, they can buy private care for Botox or breast enlargement but for any basic healthcare need, 98% of the people go their whole lives and never get a doctor bill or a hospital bill. Everybody’s covered. And interestingly those countries generally have better medical statistics than we do and they spend half as much per capita on healthcare as the United States.

Thom Hartmann: We’re talking with T. R. Reid. T. R., I got a viral email the day before yesterday and it’s one I, actually I saw it a year ago too. But it, I’m guessing probably every Republican or conservative in America has gotten 10 or 15 copies of them. And it says, an interesting report from the United Nations. The number of MRI machines in the United States versus other countries. We have a lot more MRI machines. The average survival, years of survival after cancer diagnosis in the United States, much higher than other countries, etc., etc. Do you, are you familiar with this email that I’m talking about?

T. R. Reid: I know that email, it’s bogus. It’s all bogus. For one thing…

Thom Hartmann: It’s just plain old, flat out, made up? I assumed that there was just sample bias.

T. R. Reid: It says that it comes from a story in the Investor’s Business Daily and Investor’s Business Daily never ran that story. The statistics it uses, Thom, come from the United Nations Office of International Health and there is no such thing. There is a World Health Organization, that’s part of the UN, but they don’t do that kind of comparative study. The really good comparative studies are done by the Commonwealth Fund in New York. It’s a great organization. And what they find is for some diseases like breast cancer, prostate cancer, the US is the best in the world in terms of recovery rates after diagnosis. But for most major diseases we rank about 20th or worse among the rich countries in recovery rates for major diseases.

And here’s the real stunner for me. In infant mortality, that is keeping babies alive the first year after they’re born, the United States ranks 23rd out of the 23 richest countries. We’re the worst at keeping babies alive. And the reason for that is so many mothers in America don’t have any coverage and whatever disease comes up during pregnancy they have no treatment and they show up in the emergency room and give birth and that’s when we lose the baby. So it’s really a stunning number. So in terms of international comparisons, there are definitely some areas where the US is the best. But overall we…

Thom Hartmann: Might that have less to do with our medical care system and more to do with the Susan G. Komen fund? I mean you know the fact that breast cancer and prostate cancer are highly publicized in the United States, and just 30 years ago you didn’t talk about those things. You know those are parts of the body you didn’t discuss.

T. R. Reid: Good point, yeah.

Thom Hartmann: And we kind of culturally broke through that in the last 15 years. And maybe these other countries haven’t?

T. R. Reid: Yeah that’s a good point. But you know what, it turns out in every country there are politically desirable diseases to treat that get more treatment. That’s true in every country. In our country it happens to be breast cancer particularly and prostate cancer. And you can see the results. For those diseases we do great. Other countries focus on other things. But the real stunning part when I went around the world to see how other countries do healthcare, the stunning discovery was that just in terms of overall care, America ranks near the bottom of the rich countries. We’re the richest, most innovative country. We ought to be the best, but we’re not.

Thom Hartmann: And apparently we’re not because our health insurance companies are stealing all our money. You know their costs are running over 20%, they, hospitals have entire floors devoted to processing paperwork. How is it done in Europe? How is it done in other developed countries?

T. R. Reid: Yeah there’s no question. We have the most inefficient, most wasteful healthcare payment system in the world as you say. Our insurance companies use at least 20% and some plans 35% of every premium dollar goes to bonuses and paperwork and marketing and underwriting and stuff that doesn’t pay anybody’s bill. In the European countries, let’s see, Germany is all private insurance. Their administrative costs are 5 and ½%. Switzerland is all private insurance, 5%. France is about, is a mix of government and private insurance, 4 and ½% administrative costs. So it’s interesting because our insurance companies get huge salaries and bonuses. They pay their CEOs 20, 25 million dollars a year. At United Health, there are 100 employees at United Health who make more than a million dollars a year and yet they’re the least efficient payers in the world. They’re not getting paid for performance.

Thom Hartmann: Right. And the CEO Stephen J. Helmsley, his first five years in the job made 477 million bucks. His predecessor, “Dollar Bill” McGuire made 1.7 billion for 10 years work. I mean it’s mind boggling at United Healthcare.

T. R. Reid: Yeah I think that’s one of the reasons the insurance companies fight so strenuously against limits on their administrative costs. It’s not so much the profits, the profits are in line with other insurance companies. But those massive salaries, that’s what they’re going to have to cut if we put control on their administration costs and they don’t want to give that up.

Thom Hartmann: So is that, is that the big difference between Germany and Switzerland, where private health insurance companies offer health insurance although these are all not for profit corporations, if they’re offering primary health insurance, correct?

T. R. Reid: Yes, that’s exactly right. There’s no, many countries have private insurance. The notion that it’s all socialized medicine overseas is wrong. In fact I argue in my book that a lot of these countries are less socialized than the US. Germany doesn’t have a Medicare, people stay with private insurance cradle to grave. But as you say, those insurers are tightly regulated, they’re administrative costs are ¼ or 1/5 as much as ours. And they’re not allowed to make a profit. There’s no other country that lets health insurance companies make a profit on basic insurance and you can… here’s the reasoning. The reasoning is…

Thom Hartmann: And T. R. Reid, we just have about a half a minute left. When you pointed that out in your documentary for PBS they made you take it out? Or what was the deal?

T. R. Reid: No the second documentary I did, or the third one actually, for PBS, they suggested that all over the world people buy insurance like American private insurance. And I said no that’s not right, there is no other country that would allow the products that are sold as health insurance in our country to be sold. So that was our disagreement. It’s just, you can have a disagreement and we did.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, yeah, and a fine thing it is. But it’s just, we need to get the word out. An MRI costs 98 bucks in Japan, it’s 1400 in the US. It’s insane. T. R. Reid, the newly revised, out in paperback now, “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care.” T. R. Reid traveling around the world with, presenting himself with the same ailment in country in country after country. Brilliant. And TRReid.net, R-E-I-D.net the website. Thank you T. R.

T. R. Reid: Hey Thom, thanks so much for putting me on the air.

Thom Hartmann: Sure.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.