Tarheel Red

We’ve all heard it before.  The United States spends more in health care and receives less in return than any nation in the world.

Or some such nonsense.

But only in America are surgeries performed on minor wrist fractures within 24 hours that allows elite individuals to return to work:

Just 24 hours after suffering a fracture of his scaphoid bone, Kendall Marshall, point guard for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, was recovering from surgery and contemplating playing again.

I suspect that Mr. Marshall, and all of North Carolina, feels that this expenditure is a feature and not a bug of the medical care distribution system in the United States.  Further:

Andrew, a hand surgeon with Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic,  said Marshall’s method of treatment – surgery and the insertion of a self-tightening screw to fix the break – is a common course for athletes.

“As you tighten the screw, it compresses the fracture site together and gives it better stability,” he said.

Marshall’s wrist will be stable enough to play, Andrew said. Most patients wear a cast to immobilize the thumb. A hand therapist could make a soft plastic cast for Marshall, who could replace it with heavy tape to play.

We have it within our ability to call upon such amazing technology as this.  And yet we complain that we have access to such amazing technology as this.

There is no where in the world, in the history of the world, that has a better medical outcome than the United States.