Slashdot Mirror
Americans Are Seriously Sick
jd writes "A study by US and British researchers on frequency of illnesses shows that even when you compare like groups in the US and the UK, people in the US are considerably sicker than their counterparts in the UK. This is after factors such as age, race, income, education and gender were taken into consideration. The most startling conclusion was that although the richest Americans were better off than the poorest Americans, they did no better (health-wise) than the poorest of the English. Previous studies of the entire population had shown similar results, with America placing around 25th amongst industrialized countries on chronic disease prevention, but it had been assumed that minorities and economics were skewing the results. This study suggests that maybe that isn't the case."
No doubt many other people are going to write in talking about "fat americans" being the problem - and its true that nutrition in America is a serious problem, but the comparison is to England, so not the cause of the differences.
Personally, I work on average 8 months a year and spend the rest of the time travelling - I am rarely stressed and almost never sick.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
So who ate all the pies?
Socialism == Medical
US != Socialism
HENCE
Medical != US
Sheesh.. when we'll we learn?
But at least we're not revolting!
A friend of mine who is typically an ardent democrat told a Democratic Party representative (who was asking her for money) told the representative that she'll give the Party money as soon as they get her universal healthcare.
Perhaps she's being a little unreasonable, but then again, if the Democratic Party continues to be ineffective, and impotent, perhaps we should be looking towards a party that does have the courage to stand up to the Republicans and actually get things like universal healthcare into the running for issues.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
NHS in the UK where if you are ill you might be waiting YEARS for treatment, so people die before they are treated so never go on the list of people being sick.
I often visit the UK & am aware that the NHS is far from perfect.
However, I'd like to see some links backing up your assertion that you have to wait years for life-threatening procedures.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Whereas Canadians are "x-treme", and the French are "to the max"
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
America placing around 25th amongst industrialized countries on chronic disease prevention, but it had been assumed that minorities and economics were skewing the results.
I really don't believe that was assumed by most public health experts, and certianly not ones outside the US. The US does not just have greater socioeconmic differences, but since thay have no proper pubic heathcare, those differences matter a lot more. And even if you belong to the group that can afford proper care, you still have to go get it; there is little follow-up by default. It would really be quite shocking if the US system resulted in high a level of public health as the more proactive systems found in western Europe. Now, I know that there are varying opinions on what are the responsibilities of society and of the individual, and I'm not going to go into that. But of there are effects. I assume that most of those against public healthcare accept those consquences as a fair price (for someone else) to pay, but if this result came as an unwelcome suprise, I would call that a tad naïve.
sudo ergo sum
I believe health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich, and I'm proud to pay my taxes towards the NHS that provides top notch treatment to EVERYBODY.
I'm guessing you're one of the lucky ones with private health insurance. Try living on the povery line and making a choice between getting that lump looked at or eating for a month. I know what most people are forced to choose in your so called land of the free...
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
...but, working in the healthcare profession in the US, no one gets paid unless you're sick. Sadly, healthcare here is definitely for-profit. So of course we're all 'sick.'
(Not a supporter of socialist programs in general, but healthcare is too important to be trusted to human greed.)
Well, I am sure it has something to do with diets. You see, I haven't been sick for years (except once for a day or two in China). I stopped smoking, I eat a varied healthy diet and I exercise. But I'm not a health freak. I drink, I eat hamburgers etc. every now and then and I don't exercise THAT much.
However, my brother smokes, eats lots of junkfood and never exercises more than going for a walk. He gets a flu or some other bug maybe five or more times a year!
A simple change in lifestyle will make you much healthier.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Michael Moore is going to expose the rotten health care system in the USA in his new movie called Sicko:h p?id=193
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.p
The health insurance industry is a parasite the purpose of which is to interfere with your patient-doctor relationship and to deny your treatment.
You don't wait years when you're ill. That's retarded, so don't spout bullshit. Oh and by the way pasting in a daily mail headline of one poor person who had to isn't evidence, that's using an exceptation as an example. Americans get fucked over by their insurance just as often, if not more. The waiting lists are usually for things like knee replacements, which are my no means life threatening.
You should also remember that the per head costs of the health service in the UK is about half the per head costs of medical care in the US.
It would be interesting to know how rich you actually have to be before the US system looks like a better deal.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Living in the Chicagoland area where air quality is more a mocking term than something to brag about, I seem to remember during my stints in europe several years ago that everybody seemed to be a lot more concerned with things like air quality, environmental impact. I remember there being a law severely restricting output of several chemicals in germany as early as ten years ago whereas some of those are still being thrown in the air happily every day around here. that's just one of several items where laws and regulations are a lot tougher in europe when it comes to the environment and keeping it healthy.
Maybe it's because of the fast food? I live in England and I eat pretty much entirely home cooked and prepared meals, except maybe apart from the odd sandwich from Sainsbury's.
I recently went out to stay at a friends house for a weekend, and on the first day we ate McDonalds in the evening. The next day I was feeling pretty sick. All I ate about two burgers and some chicken nuggets.
Let me quote this from the BBC article:
Rates of smoking are similar in the US and England but alcohol consumption is higher in the UK.
There you have it, folks, DRINK!
(I am only half joking)
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Normally I'm not a spelling Nazi, but "pubic healthcare" is too good to pass up... ;-)
Grab.
PS. Having said that, you've written "naive" with a diacritic, which I'd never bother with, so bonus points there.
Sure, the US does expend much more money on healthcare than the UK, but if this study suggests that people in the UK are still healthier, what does that say of the US healthcare system?
Perhaps the NHS with it's endless 'performance targets', NICE reviews, and Local Trust bureaucracies is actually doing a better job of making people better than the largely private US system, with it's deeper pockets, and strong-arm tactician pharmaceutical companies?
I did not expect such a big number...
From tfa:
"The United States spends about $5,200 per person on health care while England spends about half that in adjusted dollars."
So you lot are spending twice as much to get worse results? Great system guys. It's shameful that in the the richest country in the world people are suffering and dying because they can't afford to see a doctor.
The official nationality of people from the UK is British, not English. By referring to Brits as "English", you're pissing off a sizable number of people who are proud to be Scottish, Irish, Welsh, etc. Us English did some pretty nasty things to them in the past, so calling them "English" isn't exactly going to ingratiate yourself with them.
By referring to people from the UK as British, you're still going to piss off some Irish, but at least you're correct in your terminology. Yes, British is the correct term to use for somebody from the UK, even if they aren't from Great Britain. References:
Having read the article, I have no clue exactly which region of the world it is talking about, because it seems to use different regions as synonyms. It could be the UK, which is a country and member nation of the UN. It could be Great Britain, which is a geographical region within the UK comprised mainly of England, Wales and Scotland. Or it could be England, which is a region, home nation and constituent country of the UK, but which doesn't have its own government.
If I had to guess, I'd say that they were talking about the UK, even though they don't use the word "UK" at all, instead opting for "British" and "England". I base this guess on years of experience with peopel from the USA getting it wrong and the sentence "Those dismal results are despite the fact that U.S. health care spending is double what England spends on each of its citizens." Hint: England spends nothing whatsoever on its citizens. The NHS in England is run by the UK government. It's the NHS in other parts of the UK that belong to their respective constituent countries - England actually has very little to call its own these days.
England, Great Britain and the UK are three completely different things. Mix them up, and you piss people off. It's a bit like mixing up California with the USA with North America. You'd think somebody was pretty ignorant to do that, right?
It was "pubic heathcare", you insensitive clod.
sudo ergo sum
What exactly makes health care a right to you or anyone else?
The mark of a mature person is not creating arbitrary criteria for considering others mature.
That was Austraila, and they seem to be doing a damn sight better without us.
So from the evidence, I can only assume "Nutcase" and "criminals" depends on your point of view, and as for the number of "Sick people". it looks like they dealt with it pretty well.
Most of the people who emagrated to America were pretty healthy. Sick people would have had trouble surviving the journey.
Yeah this is true. People often talk about how much more money is spent on medical care in the USA without actually looking at the underlying figures. Most medical procedures and drugs cost a hell of a lot more in the States than they do in the UK so just looking at total spending is very misleading.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Uh, how about all the tax we pay? You know, for public services?
It's up there with liberty and live mate.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Not only are they sick, they are rather fat too!
w00t
Well, I know that there is a lot wrong with the NHS but I've actually never had a problem with it, the service my family has had has always been first rate (particularly the few occasions when we had to visit the Sick Kids hospital here in Edinburgh when junior had an accident). I used to have private health insurance (which is still an option in the UK) but I couldn't see the point.
"Only non-Hispanic whites were included in the study to eliminate the influence of racial disparities. The researchers looked only at people ages 55 through 64, and the average age of the samples was the sammples was the same."
Great. Of course as the comparison data, they must have used the non-Hispanic and non-mainland-European Brits to compare them to. I didn't know NHS would have that data available.
What if e.g. the Hispanic people would have showed to be healthier in US than in Latin America? Or Black Americans as opposed to Black British, Black Africans, Black Latin Americans, Black Swedish, Black Canadians and so on...
Why do they make the conclusion that ALL Americans are so and so, based only on selected WHITE Americans of a certain age? Because they still think there is a White MAJORITY of people?
Not only are they sick, they are rather fat too!
I can't help but wonder, do you think these two things might have something to do with each other?
Um, maybe you didn't read the article, but the results are in...
sudo ergo sum
It's also possible that we (in the UK) simply don't get sick as often and some of the protections we have (including the NHS) but also employment protection (most people can't be kicked out of their job on a whim, unlike the US) and greater holidays makes us less stressed and thus less prone to sickness.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Its so obvious!
"Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English, 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of the English."
I am dutch, but have been to the states a lot as my parents have lived there on several occasions. My impressions:
Higher diabetes rates could well be explained by the large amounts of sugar in lots of food products in America. Even the bread was very sweet to my senses, let alone the rediculous amounts of soft drinks consumed( "would you like a refill for that half-a-litre of coke you just drained?" ).
Higher blood pressure: higher work stress. I don't think I need expand on this, it's a well known fact that Americans work more and have less holidays/vacations.
Also less physical exercise will not help either conditions.
But the higher cancer rates quite baffle me. Strange stuff.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Because we decided as a nation that it should be a right that want to grant to our fellows - and I'm very proud of this fact.
I should have added *ducks* whoops.
ALmost every health analysis names another issue being the cause of the given results. But I almost always tend to agree that one of the most important cause is probably in the differences of the different countries' health care systems. Many arguments can be raised in favor and against the different systems, still, such high differences IMO can not be explained just with working culture/number of workfree days per year/income/immigrants. Just my 0.02.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Seriously.... is there anything which makes America a preferred place to live? Most Americans hardly seem to know much... make that anything, about other peoples, cultures, food habits etc. The images on TV during the Great Power Outage over New York.. well, even young people seem overly bloated.
Ingenious health insurance schemes making it even more difficult and expensive to stay reasonably healthy... not much political will to change things anytime soon.. why not dump it all and relocate elsewhere? The culture of "Each Man to Himself" seems largely to blame for the inertia.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
My experiance with several family members using the NHS recently was very good.
Waiting list are down to a week or two for most things.
My nan passed some blood and was in for a biopsy within days.
Of cousrse just like the USA you can pay for private health care and get seen instantly but the service we recvie on the NHS is nothing to sniff at.
No, you are wrong.
UK law gives you four weeks holiday, which is 20 days a year if you work 5 days a week, but the law does not give anyone time off on bank holidays. Some employers will give you a paid day off, but some will make you use your annual leave allowance if you don't want to work on a bank holiday.
There is lots of information here and here.
From adviceguide.org.uk:
A latent existence
Dude, you want to eat Indian food. You will have a hot ring the next day, not in 4 days time. OK, I haven't got the faintest idea what governs the rate of progress of food through the gut, but your timing seems way weird- curry was just an example, tomato skins and sweetcorn also prove to be reliable timing indicators. Dunno why you are modded flamebait, people seem interested rather than annoyed.
AS to the whole veggie thing, I'm with the mythical Chinese "eat tree bark when you have to, chicken when you can". Or in my case, rare beef, and bacon.
American food producers favour appearance over everything else, which is why they have a lot more additives in their food. Things like tomatoes in the US look fantastic but actually taste very bland.
Healthy people cost less money to make better, unhealthy people cost more money. The US burns through healthcare money not because of the poor service, but because they're unhealthy long before they get to the Doctor's office (or the ER). Honestly, how can you say that the country home to some of the best hospitals in the world (Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins, etc.) is second tier in terms of services rendered?
You could argue that most citizens never make it into these tier one hospitals, that they are reserved for the rich, but TFA makes the point that our health is worse across the board (from richest to poorest.) The issue that this article is bringing up isn't about poor healthcare, it's about poor lifestyle (whether that's too much work, too little exercise, too much food, or whatever would probably require further research).
1. Americans eat too much; there are all-you-can-eat buffets at Denny's and similar places, and fast food chains have "value-added" extra-size meals. And since Americans work a lot, they don't have time cooking.
2. Americans exercise too little; they sit in their cars for an hour to work, then an hour from work, and when they come home they are so tired that they can't do anything but watch TV and drink beer (plus having BBQ and mashed potatoes before bed time).
3. Americans are socially divided; since some parts of the US are like third world countries, it is to be expected that the lower stratum should be worse off than anywhere in Europe, where the poor at least have guaranteed access to medicine and doctors.
4. Americans don't give a shit about the environment, and is the premier polluter in the world. Pollution causes disease and death. For instance, the drinking water in most parts of the US are undrinkable, and contains various metals.
5. The American school system is to blame for giving the kids a bad dietary foundation. American schools serve pizza and hamburgers for lunch... and the P.E. in American schools also sucks.
Those Texans will always keep fucking up their geography.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
But which has less healthcare costs per kg of bodyweight!!!!
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Oh give it a rest. This is a site based in USA where the majority of the people havent got a clue where England is located anyway. They cant find Iraq nor Iran on a map and a whole freaking bunch of the youths havent got a clue where New York is. They think Sweden makes chocolate and is located in the Alps. They think that Hitlers first name was George.
Y'know, I get the feeling I'd do a lot better with my career if I were to strike out on my own as an independent consultant or by founding a small start-up. The problem is, I have a health condition that requires a trip to the emergency room once every few years, and some seriously expensive medicine to keep it under control. There is no way in hell I can find affordable health insurance on my own, and I can't afford the enormous cost of an ER trip out-of-pocket, or the couple hundred bucks per-month in medication while I'm in the "Eat ramen, max out the credit cards and work out of the garage" phase any solo gig or small company goes through for the first year or so.
Even if I didn't have the health condition, and were fit as a fiddle, I'd be doing the equivalent of driving without car insurance. I'm one serious traffic accident or cancerous tumor away from financial ruin if I don't have healthcare.
So, I turn down all kinds of consulting gigs, and leaf wistfully through my file of business plans, and wonder, do I love my country more than I love my career? I'm poorer and less fulfilled by living in a country without a single-payer system. I'm dependent on a corporate benefits package, and unable to pursue the American Dream.
I could emigrate to New Zealand in a heartbeat, as they're looking for tech workers there and would put me on an immigration fast-track. I really like Montreal and Halifax, too... but I'm a New Englander at heart, and I would like to stay where I feel I belong, where all my family and freinds are.
Now I find out that even with a company-funded HMO, I'm not as healthy, either. I mean. what the hell am I getting for my healthcare dollar? It's a serious chunk of change out of my paycheck and my employer's operating budget, and an expense that gets more and more and more expensive every year without returning much in the way of improvement in quality of service or quality of life. As far as I can tell, I'm just paying to fund Washington lobbyists and golden parachute accounts for HMO and Big Pharma execs.
I think it's time to put to rest the United State's overpriced, poorly managed and underperforming healthcare system, and join the rest of the civilized worl in the 21st century.
It is easy got spend less IF you force the medical staff to starve.
Considering other alarm stories about the NHS I would hardly claim the medical care is the cause of brits being healthier.
But from the study I think there is one shocking possibilty.
What if the UK health care is so bad that only the strongest survive. If in the UK you die while in the US you can live on unhealtily then yes UK citizens are more healthy.
It makes as much sense as claiming the NHS is somekind of miracle institution. Most likely it is down to differences in live styles.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yes I only realised what i was doing after i hit the post button.
I think more early nights with less beer are called for.
Averege expected life spans for the US and the UK are nearly identical, and the average expected life span for non-hispanic white Americans is considrerably better than the UK average. So what does this study mean?
(1) Being more sick more often won't actually make a difference to how long you can expect to live? Sounds implausible.
(2) Americans get sick more often but their health care is better so they live just as long or longer? Sounds more plausible, although it seems like too much of a coincidence that better healthcare is almost exactly balancing worse health.
(3) Maybe better access to health care in the US results in a higher rate of diagnosis, rather than a higher rate of illness? That would explain the nearly identical lifespan, but only if the better access to healthcare makes little difference to lifespan.
(4) A difference in medical culture, where doctors in the US are more likely to diagnose and attempt to treat problems that doctors in the UK would just tell their patients to live with? I know that psychiatrists and psychologists in the US are very quick to diagnose and prescribe drugs compared to Japan or New Zealand (the other two countries that I am familiar with). Maybe there is something similar going on with the medical profession in general.
The fundamental problem in large parts of the US is that people spend far to little time walking anywhere compared with the UK. Also, it is often difficult to find good quality food amid all the wasteland of fast food joints. I actually ate less than I do in the UK when I was last in the US because the food was so awful. I'm not claiming the UK has great food but you guys have it much worse. Portions are too large and the food is too greasy. Worse, when you are on a budget this high calorie/low nutrition junk food ends up being attractive.
Add the rotten food to the car culture and you have a disaster. The UK is sure to follow this trend although it is much easier here to live close enough to work that you don't have to drive (I cycle). Just 30 mins exercise a day would make a world of difference (I try to get an hour in) and there is no reason why you should pay to get it at a gym. Heck, even if you do drive try parking 15-30 mins walk away from work and go the rest of the way in on foot. When I do have to use my car I do that and I still get in quicker than I would if I tried to drive the last couple of miles.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Too much exercise for those that do ...
Not enough for those that don't
I didn't see much wholesome food in the cities I visited and I saw too much food in the plate at every meal (not talking about junk food which you use to kill your poor)
Air pollution
Stress
The list goes on
realkiwi
Careful. Anyone caught by a Yank caring about someone other than themselves will be labelled a "Commie". :-)
Don't mod this a troll as I speak from experience.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Yeah, have to agree there - we may have less extremes of wealth and poverty, but I still have to get the bus from Old Swan to Liverpool City Centre sometimes, and it is a truly depressing journey though what I can only describe as Dickensian squalor - a long, long road of burnt-out terraces, vandalised pubs, closed-down shops not least of which is this hideous, oppressive 60's market that need pulling down desperately. Butty shops litter this grim landscape. I think environment clearly shapes our health, it's almost brainless of me to point it out.
Most saliently, I'm reminded of 'Chips or Crisps woman' - one morning an obese couple got on the bus with their daughter - the woman was so fat that she _did_ look like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. And the kid was screaming, and she was asking '...what? what? you hungry? do you want chips or crisps......chips?.......crisps?'
This was at 7.30am, and I felt truly sick. The kid plumped for crisps btw.
I've read the opposite. The koala's appendix ( i believe its called a coelem ) is eight feet long!, the human's is tiny in comparison and we can live without it. The appendix contains bacteria, that in other animals are used to break down cellulose, something our stomach enzymes can't do by themselves.
It takes quite a bit more plumbing to digest plant matter. Cows have three stomachs, koala's have a huge ass appendix. We're much closer to carnivore in the internal piping than a vegetarian.
Kent Simon Multitheft Auto
Spot on, poster. One point you missed though: despite the long hours and few vacation days in the US, there are more Americans in poverty now in real terms than at any time since the Great Depression. For tens of millions of Americans, despite all the work they are still dirt poor. This is for several reasons:
- Minimum wage is not tied to any meaningful cost of living index.
- The official 'Poverty Line' is similarly not based on any meaningful cost of living index (it is uselessly taken as 3 times the cost of food; food is dramatically cheaper now than even 25 years ago, and much less healthy, so this metric is positively retarded).
- Rent on property has gone sky high as the economy has grown, meaning the cost of even the crappiest housing is essentially unaffordable for a minimum wage worker.
And lastly, Employers are becoming increasingly exploitative, harkening back to 19th Century labor practices. Labor is less organized now and unions are weaker (where is a Wal Mart workers union for their 900,000 employees?). With so-called 'unskilled' jobs, employers encourage high turnover so they don't have to give pay increases with all sorts of draconian practices.
On this last point, culpability falls largely on the government. Without regulation, unbridled capitalism is taken America steadily in the direction of Asian sweatshops. Supply and demand in the labor market defies all textbook economic logic because workers have no time to shop around for the best jobs, or to switch jobs when a better one becomes available and because they have no access to information about what other jobs might be available. Sure, you might get a dollar an hour more somewhere else, but if they withhold the first weeks' pay there, you can never switch because you won't ever be able to pay the rent or buy food if you miss a week's wages. Millions of people are that close to the edge. And so without rules - without government regulation - keeping companies from fucking low-wage workers, guess what? Those workers get fucked.
So the point you missed is that millions of Americans are in a state of profound poverty. Sure, the US has pretty good general public infrastructure - roads, water, electricity - so it doesn't seem like poor people are living in the same poverty and desperation that exists in places like India, but in many instances they are. The toll on a person's health from the stress of poverty alone probably outweighs the toll of long working hours and few vacations. Bill Gates works 80-hour weeks, so I hear. He probably doesn't have the kind of stress-related health problems that a single mother holding down two jobs has, even if she only works a 60 hour week.
Be sure to read Nickel and Dimed for more information about the impossibility of surviving in America on minimum wage.
A-Bomb
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
sorry it is cecum that is the word I was looking for. Coelem refers to how the body is segmented or something like that jazz.
Kent Simon Multitheft Auto
The combination of following...
These are mentioned in article but not enough to explain it entirely.
Obesity.
Unhealthy food.
Lack of exercise.
Stress.
These are not mentioned in the article...
Air pollution from cars and power plants.
Chemicals that can cause health problems, dumped to environment getting to people.
Look at the cancer rate its double in US, so there must be something that causes that problem. And its probably the attitude towards environment biting back. When nobody cares if they pollute their neighbours habitat the result is that all get pollution in their environment. And in the end just like wild animals we humans get affected by the pollution we put in our environment, and we all get some health problems because of that.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Are you seriously implying that all Wikipedia editors have multiple PhDs? I think you'd be in for quite a shock when you realize how many editors are still in high school.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
Cannot agree with you more.
I spent three years in the US and the vegetables were the largest, most colourful beasties I'd ever seen, and tasted like cardboard. The meat looked large, and succulent yet tasted of nothing. The experience did however teach me how to make fantastic sauces using a huge variety of herbs and spices.
I think you replied to the wrong post.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
As onyone who has worked in Japan will tell you, even though work days are long, they don't actually work very much.
However, in The States they really make people work hard, especially managers. And there are always PLENTY of managers in the work place.
I guess it is because managers can legally be made to work crazy hours with no compensation.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
The fast majority of citizens of the UK are white and if you want to sample "normal" group where social/economic factors aren't going to be a major influence then you are stuck with them.
Would a study between say muslims or blacks be intresting? No. Background is too different.
A large portion of blacks in americas were former slaves. Britain was a slave nation BUT did not import them in any numbers. The majority of blacks in britain today are the descendants of immigrants.
As far as muslims are concerned. Well at least in europe there are huge differences per country as to where the muslims come from. Germany has a lot of turks, Holland morrocans and england has a lot of people from pakistan. So you can't compare them because their ethnic background would interfere. Hell, you are talking three different races if your strict.
So this study focusing on whites is not racism. It is just trying to exclude other factors from influencing the results.
If you did a study into the health of pets in various countries would it really be fare to compare the german shepperd with the british bulldog to determine wich country takes better care of its pets? No you would have to pick a generic breed to elimenate inbred diseases from skewing the results.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you plot the percentage of doctors in a society, and the percentage of illnesses in a society, you will get 2 lines that follow a similar path.
If only it were so easy as to just say "meat is bad, plants are good." It's the nutritional components they break down into, and your overall intake of nutrents and "poisons" that matters. You need carbohydrates, fiber, protein, omega-3's, etc. Trans fats, saturated fats, sugars, etc. tend to not be good for you.
While these may typically be more abundant in meat products, all meat is not created equal. A prime steak (which is worth having on ocassion) or a burger from McDonald's is not equivalent to grilled chicken breast & fish.
And on the vegetarian side... McDonald's french fries - nutritionally the most evil thing that even McD's serves, which says a lot - are completely vegetarian.
There's a big difference between being sick and using medical benefits. Big difference between being sick and taking a day off, but the way PTO is structured at many companies, there's no difference at all, :-). And so on. Statistics can tell you any truth you want them to tell you.
No, I'm implying that the sum total would be equivelant to several guys with multiple PhDs.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
American employee: Hello Boss, I can't come into work today. I'm seriously sick.
American employer: Oh, how sick?
American employee: Well, I'm in bed with my sister.
Get your own free personal location tracker
nt
At least that much. (God, I hate thinking of something to add to my post right before hitting submit)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
To people claiming that this is due to socialized healthcare versus not--how does that affect cancer rates and diabetes rates? It's possible I suppose that such conditions are caught more frequently in the US, I don't know. I would think diabetes is clearly a lifestyle issue, while cancer--who knows.
A second point--The US has the lowest incidence rate of stomach cancer in the world. The two countries with the highest rates? Japan and Korea. Interesting, given that the Japanese are generally considered to live one of the healtheir lifestyles in the world as born out by life expectancy.
Someone else made another good point in this discussion--to everyone sneering at American work hours, well, the Japanese work as much, and probably under more rigid frameworks and high stress more often than not. Everyone's heard stories about the Japanese suicide rate. Yet they still live a long time...
So let me get this straight...diabetes is caused by the fact that we don't have socialized healthcare? Cancer is CAUSED by the fact that we don't put control of our medical fates in a vast and unwieldy bureacracy? I had no idea that there were such causal relationships......
this means the weak are effectively being weeded out, which will in the end lead to a stronger, conservative America!
the sad thing is, I have to state explicitly that I'm being sarcastic here...
The recent influx of diseases like West Nile disease suggests a warmer north is facilitating the spread of tropical diseases. I believe there's a suggestion that tropical climates or climates with extended warm seasons and no freezing winters breed a greater diversity of diseases and disease carrying hosts. Heat is also a stress factor and can complicate bad air conditions.
It would be interesting to see the demographics broken down between the northern U.S. and the far south.
just my loose change
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
It is quite likely that this has to do with eating habits. Not meat necessarily, but sugar. Sugar is added to almost anything (eg ketchup is 40% sugar, honey has added sugar) because Westeners like the sweet taste. Asian people more go for a sour taste.
Sugar is very unhealthy for people, however if you are healthy your body is able to cope. If you are a bit sick it gets harder for your body to get well.
Next time you are in the shop try to get some food that has no sugar added. You'll be surprised.
The incompetence of our NHS, the apathy of their "professionals" and utterly abysmal levels of customer service lead me to believe it is just a scheme designed to ensure that healthcare professionals have the right to a paypacket without actually having to compete with others in their field.
I have been given the wrong treatment twice, diagnosed incorrectly three times, almost killed by an allergic reaction to an antibiotic when I was twelve years old, and was given 10x the adult dose by a doctor who could barely speak any English, I have been refused treatment for 2 debilitating physical injuries suffered in my teenage years which now in my late 20s restrict my ability to enjoy sports and sometimes to even walk normally.
I have no dentist and cannot get one, and apparently eyecare I must arrange and pay for myself... I can safely say that if we had no NHS and only private sector medical care I would have a much higher quality of life.
It seems this is the only thread going today.
Anyway, I thought I should mention a great essay of Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness . His argument takes the extreme view that we should only need to work for four hours a week. Empirically, the argument derives from the experience of Britain during the second world war when most of the productive capacity of the country was spent on maintaining the war. And we didn't starve.
Of course, Russell is being a little toungue-in-cheek by calling his essay In Praise of Idleness. He doesn't really mean that we should watch TV for the remaining 108 hours of the (waking) week. Rather, he imagines a regime in which we need only do 'unpleasant' work for four hours to earn our income, and the rest of the time could be spent wisely on whatever might suit our tastes. Partially, this seems to be the ethos of Google labs, where a third (I think) of developers' time is given over to their own projects.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
I just finished watching American Pie and came to the same conclusion.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
a liberal commie?
My parent's generation, the returning soldiers (etc) from WW2, voted for the Labour government whose central plank was the Welfare state - universal state provided healthcare, universal state provided education.
I think those people (and the soldiers (etc) of WW1) had put their lives on the line for society, and had a right to define which way it should go.
I'd rather live with their vision, faults and all, than that of assorted isolationist fat-cats.
My gf is in medical. When she is informing her patients she tells them to stay away from a bunch of foods - she has some really cool props that shows how much sugar and fat is in the US diet! In short, you are absolutely correct in your assessment of the US diet!
From what I've gathered from folks who treat heart disease and other weight related ailments, the access of evil is: Coke, Krispy Kreme, McDonalds (of course, everyone else in that industry!) and ALL of the cigarette corps! It's funny, all of the firms I mentioned are also some of the rischest and most powerful corps on the planet - with the influence on our politicans to match!
I hear this all the time, that the US has the best healthcare in the world. If you do a little research, the ONLY area that we lead in is cost of care. Our infant mortality rates are an embarassment, our life expectancy is dismal, and satisfaction is ranked low. We don't have the best healthcare in the world. We rank pretty far down on nearly everything. Regardless of the actual quality of our healthcare system, what use is even the most mediocre of services if you can't afford them? The majority bankruptcies in the US are medically related. The majority of those declaring bankruptcies due to medical reasons had health insurance before the bankruptcies. Our healthcare system is broken but we're afraid to take it to the emergency room because we can't pay for it. Meanwhile little babies and children die.
They take vending machines to the next level
My contract is pretty typical (for information).
I get paid:
20 days annual vacation - some of which have to be taken during plant shutdown
10 days public holidays
12 days flexed off (2 hours per week back as one day per month, approx) - 6 have to be taken on specified shutdown days.
37 hour working week, overtime is in theory payable, in practice I just flex more time off as it suits.
1.5 days per month accumulative sick leave to 120 days max (weird logic applies after that)
5 days per year accumulated long service leave - accessible after 10 years.
Compared with the UK, I'm behind on annual leave, ahead on flex time off, and the long service leave more or less makes up for the AL deficit. Sick leave is about line ball in practice - except that in Oz it is culturally acceptable to take sick days off at ones discretion.
(And for the record, due to free education (and healthcare) for disadvantaged families I'm now earning a 5 figure salary, and I'm paying back my student loan and a lot of tax that goes to the NHS and I'm happy to do this)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
My mod points ran out yesterday else I'd mod you straight down. Hopefully others will.
I fail to see how your implied answer; the government should take care of you, is relevant. Oh, we have to take care of our own health insurance. Oh, we don't get a free month of not working.
Quit your whining about how America isn't socialist. We work for a living, and if we take care of ourselves we're PLENTY healthy. The answer doesn't lie where you seem to think it does.
Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
no hidden comments and I only mod UP
Its not cancer its more like. Preventice health care, and curing versus dealing with complications and symptoms. Later is more profitable constant income stream and previous is loss leader. Which one patient prefers and which one for-profit hospital prefers?
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Some of the results may be explained by overdiagnosing. Nowadays, there are so many "new" diseases that one loses count. Every other kid has ADHD or some other disorder that needs immediate medication.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
I was reading this report on the BBC website earlier today, and I thought then that there is always the possibility that there is a flaw in the study method itself. As the study looks at self-reported health issues, you could also draw the conclusion that people in the US are more aware of health problems than the British.
I'm British and I haven't been to the doctors in about five years. I know several people who aren't even registered with doctors. No-one I know of my age (36) has had tests for prostate cancer, checked themselves for testicular cancer or even has regular annual check-ups.
There's a possibility, IMHO, that relying on self-reporting of illness would produce this kind of result in the older generation of Brits, as they're still following the "just get on with life and don't bother the doctors" mentality of those who grew up in the aftermath of WWII.
My mother had a lot of pain in her lower back for years - when I eventually persuaded her to go to the doctors he got her to go to hospital. They did a scan of her lower back - nothing wrong with it - but noticed something wrong with one of her kidneys (it had never grown from when she was a child). So they took another scan higher up to have a better look at that. Then noticed something wrong with her liver. So they took another scan higher up and saw that she had severe cancer of the liver (despite her being a non-smoker and a very light drinker). She died about 6 weeks later.
She would never have thought of getting either her kidneys or her liver checked out. If she had then maybe she would still be alive. But, like so many people from her (and her parents) generation going to the doctor was only something you avoided as you didn't like to bother him/her.
As usual, your views may vary.
--
silas
There are 200+ countries on this planet, many of which are home to several peoples and minorities, often with special political status. Many of these countries are part of difficult to understand supernational structures. Could you answer all possible trivia questions about all of these states? I bet you can't.
I for one don't expect anybody to know mundane political facts of my country and am certainly not going to call anybody ignorant because of that. If somebody is really pissed off for my lack of knowledge of such things, I will choose to talk to somebody else more fun and jovial.
>healthcare is too important to be trusted to human greed
it's too important not to be.
Er, RTFA? The system ain't working.
You can't take the sky from me...
I've never understood the (frequently European) mindset that when there is a possibility of making money, people instantly turn completely evil and ruthless. Do imagine hospital CEO's sitting around thinking how they can make people sick to get more money out of them? I honestly think that's one of the most ridiculous things that I've ever heard. If you had ANY experience with the healthcare system in the US or knew anyone who worked in healthcare, you would realize how ridiculous these ideas sound.
Your point about dealing with "complications and symptoms" versus curing doesn't seem to make much sense either. Sometimes diet can cure diabetes--it can at least control it once you have it, but I guess that would be dealing with symptoms. Same for cancer, I don't know why you think that it's the fat capitalist pig doctors fault that they can't always cure cancer..
An interesting supplement to this study would be cancer survival rates.
But the fact is that the NHS provides free treatment to ALL UK citizens, not just those who can afford it. In America you can be seen quickly as long as you're willing to pay.
Well spoken. As a Brit doing a year's study in the US, I had an accident which partially knocked out a couple of teeth at the beginning of a weekend. My insurance didn't cover the work, so I had it done as cheaply as I could by trainee dental students. Plus, if I wanted it done outside of normal working hours then there was a massive surcharge that I couldn't nearly afford. So I spent all weekend with two teeth dangling by their roots, in pain and unable to eat.
Now I know that's hardly the end of the world, but many people have it a lot tougher. It certainly makes the US appear less civilised to someone who's used to nationalised healthcare.
I should imagine that the reason so many americans are unhealthy is that they are told, repeatedly, by "official" sources, that they are sick.
If I lived in a hazy black and white world where colors might become unnaturally saturated, bright and vivid by taking a pill I might go get some. "If you think you might have any of these symptoms go see your doctor and ask about x... NOW!"
If you go to the doctor enough they will find something wrong with you and they will do something to cure it because you don't have to pay for it and therefore have no incentive to question their judgment. [Many] Doctors have become used car salesmen in white coats with fat wallets (remember Stanly Milgrams "Obedience to Authority"). It's no wonder that a doctors strike in Israel a few years ago caused havoc in the mortuary business after the strike had caused the mortality rate to drop fifty percent... would probably drop seventy-five percent in the states.
I wonder how many americans are sick compared to how many americans are actually sick.
In contrast, when my mother had breast cancer, whatever she needed, she got, and fast too. Surgery the day after tomorrow? No problem. Home care nurse? No problem. And no cash exchanged hands - my parents didn't have to sell their house to pay for it all. No system is perfect, but I have few complaints about Canada's public health care (now if only I could find a GP in this town who's taking patients...).
Freedom: "I won't!"
- Why spend 10x the water and food to raise stock, when that food could feed the rest of the world?
;-) when you begin to eat vegetarian is actually cleansing of the body / adjustments to different metabolism.
Because we already have enough food and money to feed the rest of the world. Why is the US government paying people to turn corn into fuel (literally, burning food)? We've got enough food.
- Why torture animals by putting them in cage and giving them a totally unnatural/undesirable life - one which if we see movies of something like this done to humans we call it "horror movie" and "bad aliens".
Humans are not animals. I simply don't care if they live 'unnatural' lives.
- Your food is what you become - both in body and mind. It is both healthier (if you have knowledge about it), gives you more energy and spiritual development. OTOH, eating meat gives you a share of bad karma and foul smell. Any foul smells
Huh. If I ate no meat I'd have to eat so many carbs I be farting up a storm. Stalk about foul smells. Meat gives me plenty of energy. Animal protein makes me healthy. I rarely get sick. As for karma - I thought this was supposed to be a rational argument - go peddle your religion elsewhere.
- Animals are more similar to humans.
more similar than what? A caroot? Well, I guess I have to give you that one.
We wouldn't want to eat humans, but we eat animals because we think less of them. Actually, by eating them you become more "animalistic", because their energy is going through your body. I know many here think this is a far stretch, but energy is always preserved, so it makes sense that some of the animalistic mind is still left in the meat while plant-food is more "tranquil".
Don't you dare conflate conservation of energy (a scientific principle) with your fuzzy headed wacky religious believe that 'you are what you eat'. In science there is no such thing as 'mind energy', and it is most definitely not conserved.
- I don't want to participate in ignorance. Even though "everybody" does it, I prefer to do what I do based on knowledge and compassion.
Good for you, now leave me to do what everybody else does and enjoy my tasty steaks. You are simply never going to win this argument (and by win, I mean get everyone to stop eating meat). We've been eating meat for long enough that our digestive tract is thoroughly adapted to process it - that's a lot of evolution you are trying to fight. You can't win.
Guys n gals, we should also remember that here in the UK we have a free nationwide National Health Service, which i imagine makes a bit of difference too. granted, it's rubbish, but nevertheless it's better than nothing
I had that when I was younger. The cost of the injections was trivial, the nurse's time cost more.
Works like a charm. I didn't do the allergan free diet, mine was all tree pollen, and I don't eat trees.
What about survival rates?
x _Study_Compares_U_S__and_European_Survival_Rates.a sp
w ww.ntrac.org.uk/About/QA.aspx&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk& cd=11 (claiming that UK survival is on the average less than America or European)
A quick google turned up a study on cancer survival rates in America and Europe: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1
Here's an article on cancer survival in the UK: (google cache): http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:VZmy8v8wLdMJ:
BBC article on survival rates http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/546846.stm
For those that don't want to read--much higher survival rates in the US for most cancers (gastric cancer being a difference). No, it's not US and UK, so not directly comparable, but an interesting study nonetheless, especially for the countless posters coming out of the woodworks declaring the infinite superiority of socialized healthcare (though I still fail to see how socialized healthcare systems in and of themselves prevent cancer and diabetes..)
My point in posting this ISN'T to cast doubt on the article's study, or to deny that Americans are pretty damn unhealthy (we too often are). It's merely to respond to the people who seem to to place a great deal of their mental energy on the existence of government institutions, and when these institutions are absent blame all ills on their absence.
groups of chimps will hunt small monkeys (for food)
Europe is better of because of less work
:-)
Japan is better of because of the diet
Let us get it straight: we do not like ourselves
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
What's your point?
Haggis _will_ kill you? Or haggis is good for you?
Guinness we already know is good for you.
While poverty in America is certainly a problem, it's irrelavant to this study. TFA (and even the summary) note that the study results compensate for income, education, age, race and gender. Thus there is some other cause for Americans being sicker than the British.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
.. when you have a pharmaceutical-industrial complex running amok, inventing new problems for their pills to fix, left and right, up and down .. over and over ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Contractually we can be sacked if we use more sick leave than we have owing to us. In practice, in the past, if we had 120 days and are struck by something serious the company used to try and figure something out. These days that might not be true - watch this space.
As to the taking sickies thing. It used to be that most hourly paid workers took their entire sick pay entitlement every year. That didn't happen so much with office workers. Where I work the average absentee rate across the entire sub-organisation (say 400-600 people) is ~2%, (ie 4 days off a year) which probably compares very well with anywhere except Japan.
Americans are more pushy with doctors than the British. They are less likely to accept a "it will go away by itself" or "there is nothing wrong with you" or "you don't have heart-disease, just take an aspirin" diagnosis from their GP. Also, if there is even the slightest chance of a missed diagnosis, the doctor risks a lawsuit. The patient of the laid back doctor is likely to go to another doctor who WILL eventually find something, anything wrong with the patient's health, and the more laid back doctor loses patients, can't afford the $200,000 a year legal insurance fee and goes out of business.
This is why I am lacto-ovo vegetarian. With beans, lentils, soya, ie. stuff that gives proteins, and milk and egg, you're better off on a vegetarian diet than meat.
Except, you forget one thing. In order for cows to lactate (that is to produce milk) they need to have a calf each year. That is right: you cannot have milk without having lots of calves produced.
And yes, obviously some of these calves can also be make into milk-cows, but I can promise you that at least half of them cannot. What do you propose that we do with all the bulls running around waiting to die of old age? In fact, you lacto-vegetarian diet can only work because of those of us who find that dead baby-cow goes well with a aromatic rose'.
You can of course keep your diet (as long as you don't preachy to the people who help consume the waste products of your milk production), but I would not recommend proposing it for the rest of the world.
The stats in the article are for England, not the UK -- the topic header is wrong.
The UK is a union of nations, as the US is a union of states.
This is only a comparison of US vs UK in as much as a comparison of Delaware vs UK is a comparison of US vs UK.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The fact that we democratically decided that it should be.
The fact that it's basic human decency to help those less fortunate than yourself, particularly those in potentially dire need.
The fact that when a single life is needlessly cut short, the whole society is affected in some way.
Failing all that, simple enlightened self interest. Even if you can afford to pay for your healthcare or insurance now, can you be sure of that in the future? Heaven help you if you fall on hard times, or require treatment that your insurance won't cover.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The average USAn in the same job as me gets into work at 8, has a looong cup of coffee in the canteen, checks ebay, has a long cup of cofee and a doughnut in the canteen, organises where to go out for lunch, goes out for lunch, has another looong cup of coffee in the canteen, and goes home at 430.
I work the same hours, and even if I'm hungover I'm not spending almost two hours a day sitting in the canteen or a restaurant.
And according to an apocryphal study, having a hangover is not detrimental to your performance in the office (well OK, barfing over the keyboard probably is).
Reported illness is a way to get out of work and have more days off in the US. Europeans get many more holidays and days off and therefore don't need to take sick days as vacation days as often as Americans have to.
They probably did not thell you... what you can read over here : http://www.wddty.co.uk/ Don't read the book Lynne Mc Taggart wrote, because your family may fall over you once you decide to skip your kids vaccinations.
- Started walking at least half a mile almost everyday, sometimes more, but not if it's raining.
- Stopped eating butter & drinking full cream milk.
- Gave up the petrol|gasoline habit.
- Started eating a least 1 orange & 1 apple every day.
- Started eating green veges of some sort almost every day.
- Cut back severely on the amount of meat I eat.
- Gave up drinking sugar-laden soft-drinks.
By doing that I have dropped 10 kilos without even trying, and feel so much better. Can't give up coffee though. Tried very hard and felt like death warmed up for three months so started supporting the Central Americans again. It really _is_ addictive, don't start youngsters. I've never smoked and drink only very lightly. A glass or three less often than weekly but more often than monthly.I am fortunate to live in a country with a caring social welfare system, and am very grateful indeed for it. It was when I was taken several hundred miles - at no expense whatsoever to me - by car and 'plane to the specialist hospital for a chest operation that the penny dropped. The point was reinforced when I read about Patrick (Slackware) Volkerding's strange illness and the ghastly tribulations attached. That tale was what made me truly realize how lucky I am. If a tiny country of only 4 million souls can do that, why can't the richest one in the world? It's time for a revolutionary rebellion on that point if nothing else.
I used to get sick at least twice a year especially during the winter with the usual cold/cough/flu. My eating habits were pretty crappy. Last January (2005)I decided to start eating healthy and ate a good balanced breakfast with multivitamin, big healthy salads for lunch (no dressing), and whatever i wanted for dinner (usually rice a and meat of some sort with various sauces). To date I have not gotten sick even once. This was no double blind study but im convinced its because i upped my veggies from once in a blue moon, to every day, and also because I exercise regularly.
Americans are seriously lacking in the eating healthy department. So many of us are obese its not even funny. Go into wallmart or something and just count how many fat people you see.. i mean REALLY fat people. This whole nation needs to be put on a diet and on a treadmill. Being obese increases the risk for so many other health problems, I cant see how anyone can do that to themselves.
Mom, and popeye, and Mr. T was right... eat those greens.
What are you on?
I eat raw meat quite frequently.
My instructions to anyone cooking steak for me is "throw it so hard at the hotplate that it bounces onto the other side, and then pick it up".
I now know "I'd like my steak raw, please" in as many languages as I know "hello".
And it's not just steaks. Steak tartare (which is not a steak) with onion, olives and spices is absolutely the perfect starter. Note that I live in the country with probably the tastiest and healthiest cows in the world - there's no shortage of space, and their foodchain contains no short loops.
Don't get me wrong - I absolutely adore almost anything done with chick-peas too!
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Want a real weapon of mass destruction, look no further than the amazing amounts of junk food sold. the stuff is pure crap. It does nothing to better your health and in fact worsens it in many ways.
the stuff sold in supermarkets/convienence stores makes what fast food resturaunts sell look like health food.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Perhaps people who are poor are less likely to seek medical treatment for minor illness in a country with high taxes and no free health care?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
enjoy your TWO YEAR WAIT for cataract surgery... hahahahahhaha
This is because we are, literally, working ourselves to death.
... about 3 to 4 times that.
... I'm done with my rant ... for now. I'm going to eat my oatmeal.
Either we have low paying jobs that don't provide us any medical benefits or we have medium to high paying jobs that we work at constantly to maintain and we don't have time to go to the doctors or eat/exercise correctly.
It's a loose - loose battle for us.
In Europe, I believe that the job comes secondary to family and health. They take time to take care of themselves without the fear of not being "one of the team" and giving your job 110%; which I thought was mathematically impossible until I realised that a standard work day SHOULD be 8 hours but they want you to work 9, 10 hours plus (just because they do). We even have MUCH shorter vacation times than do our counterparts in Europe. Most people get, on average, about 2 weeks a year for vacation time. And you can forget about "sick days". I hear that in Europe they get much more than that
Okay
This is why I am lacto-ovo vegetarian. With beans, lentils, soya, ie. stuff that gives proteins, and milk and egg, you're better off on a vegetarian diet than meat.
Except, you forget one thing. In order for cows to lactate (that is to produce milk) they need to have a calf each year. That is right: you cannot have milk without having lots of calves produced.
And yes, obviously some of these calves can also be make into milk-cows, but I can promise you that at least half of them cannot. What do you propose that we do with all the bulls running around waiting to die of old age? In fact, you lacto-vegetarian diet can only work because of those of us who find that dead baby-cow goes well with a aromatic rose'.
You can of course keep your diet (as long as you don't preachy to the people who help consume the waste products of your milk production), but I would not recommend proposing it for the rest of the world.
That's bullshit. Hindus don't consume meat at all, it is illegal to kill a cow for meat or skin in India even for the non-Hindus, and milk is central to the Indian diet. They support a very large population in this fashion, and have for a very long time.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
>> I believe health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich, and I'm proud to pay my taxes towards the NHS that provides top notch treatment to EVERYBODY.
Hear Hear! And don't forget food. What good is the right to health care without food? While we're at this, how about a right to guaranteed housing, a good job, and happiness!
I agree with you on the guaranteed food and housing, Mr sarcastic social darwinist. A good job and happiness are things that you can take at your own pace once you know you're not going to die of hunger or exposure.
Not each year. More like once every four years. Also that's how it's generally done, not a requirement.
The hormone that causes a mammal to give milk is well known and available. If you wanted to lactate, you could take it.
And I'm assuming you're probably a guy.
Is this off-topic yet? I can never tell.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Because your godly "system" is horribly, utterly broken by a huge cartel of government, doctors (AMA), drug companies and insurance.
There used to be times when a doctor's visit didn't cost you several hundred bucks, and I'm not talking inflation here (no, I didn't live then, but I've gotten the message).
Sorry, I meant to say they don't consume beef at all.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This is America. This is a hedonistic society who's sight is not set on the future and living sustainably. Consumers are bombarded with advertisements to cure the ails that other products cause. It's a wheel and it goes round and round. Corporate America and their ad campaigns win. The little guy loses, mostly because the little guy is too lazy to gain an education and stop consuming those things he need not consume. There are holistic approaches to living life, and these are automatically labelled hippy by Fox News, and the peanut-heads that live and breathe Fox News are so outspoken that no one can refute them. Fox News tells us that the economy is good. And that Fox News is the only media that will tell you that the economy is good. Of course the economy is good to those who have investment capital. What about the little guy? There will eventually be a breaking point, and we will have a paradigm shift, much like the fall of Rome. The consumer machine will break.
Spending Resources on Defense leaves Less to defend.
This is true. In my experience, at least 60% of Americans host websites with pornography, of which at least 20% feature donkeys and agile mules.
Considering that the American media have spent the last 30 years belittling Britain's socialized health care program, this is good news indeed.
Apparently laughter really is the best medicine - particularly when it is the last laugh!
There may be laws that require insurance companies to provide group insurance to businesses in your state or offer insurance to otherwise uninsurable people. Colorado, for one, has laws that enable a self-employed person to get group insurance regardless of prior health history-- the only trick is that you can only get it in the month of your birthday. Colorado, for one, also maintains an insurance plan for high risk individuals who prove they can't get individual health insurance.
IANAL, but you might want to look more carefully at your state's insurance regulations before you give up on starting a business.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
So the problem isn't really that there's no public healthcare in the US. The problem is that there's no healthcare that people can afford.
That should be hardly surprising, given that for every little common sickness, you need to visit a highly paid expert controlled by the AMA cartel, and for everything they prescribe you expensive drugs that we didn't even have 50 years ago (and still people didn't die that much younger). Nevermind that drug companies and cartelized doctors have a huge interest to keep the current system which pays them large amounts of money.
I live in Germany where healthcare is pretty much public, but still I don't usually bother to go to the doctor anymore. I'm sick of expensive medicine that only cures symptoms, not the disease.
There used to be affordable healthcare for almost everybody (and the rest could have it, if there was a little welfare or charity), before government "fixed" it with lots of regulations.
About the UK I've only heard horror stories with loooong waiting lines and patients that aren't getting treated, because the centrally planned health economy doesn't really work *that* well. France reportedly also has those waiting lines, and here at home in Germany you're lucky if your doctor's visit takes less than two hours.
Nitwit...our disgestive tract is evolved around an omnivore's diet. We can process plant matter, but not as well as dedicated plant eaters which we aren't designed to be. We can process meat, but not quite as well as dedicated carnivores. What we're evolved towards is a more flexable diet, but one which does nutritionally require materials from both plants and animals. We're similar to bears, racoons, coyotes, and a number of other predators in that respect. And it's proven a superior survival mechanism in nature than being either a pure herbavore (which vegitarians obviously aspire to be), or being a pure carnivore. Omnivores for the win!
And no, I don't mean the subject the way you would think. I am saying Americans are TOO HYGENIC. Or to elaborate:
- Clean your kitchen? Antibacterial soap!
- Slight cough? Penicillin!
- Washing yourself? Every day a shower.
From a CONSUMER point of view it would make sense to try to keep as healthy as possible by eliminating all those evil bacteria. Kill them, use extra-strong cleaning products. Slightly sick? Use penicillin or whatever other 'industrial strenght' medicine.
And america is of course on the very bleeding edge of consumer-driven marketing where each soap is antibacterial by now, cause it sounds sensible.
From a MEDICAL point of view however, this approach is not a good idea. It's all in the way diseases and bacteria propagate. Use some type of 'killer' on a colony of bacteria, they die.. until the time one lucky bacteria accidentally is resistent against the killer.. and that one lives, multiplies, spreads..
With the result that that strain of bacteria can not be killed by simple means anymore. Now if this would only apply to the common cold, then well sure. But you're in trouble when you (accidentally) hit the SERIOUS bacteria, and make those resistent too.
And so on.
The lesson is: 'Only fight what really NEEDS to be fought'
That must be why our groceries are so expensive and inaccessible. Or the total lack of improvement over time in our electronics. Or the constant increase in price in our clothing.
The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action. Every other market you care to point to either
a) Has seen declining prices and increasing quality.
b) Involves trade in a finite commodity (think land, even gas goes up and down with the commodity price, which goes up and down with supply and demand).
I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business.
And the USA is not America but English people say that all the time.
The NHS does not provide "top notch treatment to EVRYBODY". The standard is variable throughout the UK depending upon where you live and how generous your PCT is feeling. Apart from those internal differences the overall standard of health care in the UK is much lower than comparable European countries, none of which have a tax funded national health service.
You fall into the same false dichotomy trap that all misguided defenders of the NHS (the largest stalinist organisation in the world) fall into. The choice is not the NHS or the US system. The choice is the NHS or something better. Personally, I'm sick of pouring my taxes into Gordon Browns tax black hole for little return.
The National Health Service is NOT the envy of the world. If it was why is nobody copying it?
No but, yeah but, no but...
Oddly enough, up to good job, I was nodding my head in agreement. Eliminate the qualifier "good" and I pretty much agree with your sentiment. If happiness could be guaranteed, I'd be for that, too.
This is the reason why I believe in a limited federal government. People like me can have our "commie welfare state" in, say, Massachusetts, and you can have your "if you can't pay, you deserve to die" state in Texas. This way we will both be happy rather than one of us forcing the other to live by his desires.
Suggestions? Examples?
There's no system we could replace it with that would still provide care to people who can't afford to pay huge medical bills. Or would you like that?
Perhaps removing all the pointless, non-medical middle managers and getting rid of the PCTs (thanks Maggie) system, running it less like a business and more like a health system would help somewhat?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
"The American way of life is non-negotiable" said Dick Cheney. He should know he's already had four heart attacks.
Aspirin doesn't seem to have the same effect on people in England. If you haven't read Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, I highly suggest you do. It talks about how strong the mind is in regards to personal health and getting sick. From the book:
"The placebo effect may also be affecting is in far vaster ways then we realize, as is evidenced by a recent and extremely puzzling medical mystery. If you have watched any television at all in the last year or so, you have no doubt seen a blitzkreig of commercials promoting aspirin's ability to decrease the risk of heart attack. There is a good deal of convincing evidence to back this up, otherwise television censors, who are real sticklers for accuracy when it comes to medical claims in commercials, wouldn't allow such copy on the air. This is all well and good. The only problem is that aspirin doesn't seem to have the same affect on people in England. A six-year study of 5,139 British doctors revealed no evidence that aspirin reduces the risk of heart attack... Whatever the case, don't stop believing in the prophylactic benefits of aspirin. It still may save your life."
I'm not sure what this says directly about Americans, but using this data it seems very apparent to me how powerful beliefs can be when it comes to affecting personal health. Whether it be commericals showing us people sneezing and coughing because of allergy season, or someone not getting enough sleep, the mind can be very powerful in convincing the body it needs these medicines in order to get better.
I highly suggest anyone read more about the powerful effects of placebos. That will change your ideas about getting sick.
I gotta have more cowbell.
People might suffer more chronic illnesses in the U.S than the U.K but when you look at survival rates for cancer and other serious diseases, the U.S does much better than the U.K. Also many people live with chronic ailments that would have killed them much earlier without quick access to things like heart bypass surgery and transplants that we receive in the U.S.
Probably the best study I've found debunking the "utopia" of nationalized health care: 12 Popular Myths About National Health Insurance.
Because of goats. It's goats' milk, not cow milk.
Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
"You typically don't see packs of monkeys chasing down a water buffalo and tearing out its throat."
Actually I've seen packs of chimpanzees chase down monkeys, tear them apart and eat them damned near still alive. Chimps like us are omnivores, they eat meat if they can get it. That isn't to say that meat with every meal is healthy.
Deleted
We've developed a sedentary, couch-potato lifestyle. We eat fast food, restaurant food, junk food, food full of all kinds of preservatives. We eat foods that are significantly different from the foods our individual ancestors ate. We spend hours in our cars commuting. We work 50-60 hours a week and carry our pagers/pda's/notebooks on the few vacations we take. Our retirement funds are failing, businesses are off-shoring our work , etc...
Not only is there no mystery, its suprising that the suicide rate hasn't risen.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
McDonalds, McDonalds, KFC and the Pizza Hut
It's a song they sing in Europe whenever Americans are around.... Guess now I know why....even comes with some interesting hand poses (not obscene).
What? You never heard of the Pubic Broadcasting Service?
Um, maybe you didn't read the article
Did you read the article:
However, Britain's universal health-care system shouldn't get credit for better health, Marmot and Blendon agreed.
Both said it might explain better health for low-income citizens, but can't account for better health of Britain's more affluent residents.
Marmot cautioned against looking for explanations in the two countries' health-care systems.
"It's not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place," Marmot said.
Many of the things that have already been commented on which I agree:
Overweight;
Lack of sleep;
Not enough exercise (maybe related to using cars, maybe not).
However, perhaps there is something else at play that is not related in TFA. Perhaps many Americans studied have private insurance coverage? How would access to a private doctor (vs. more socialized systems such as those in Canada and much of Europe/the UK) alter how one feels about going to the doctor? Are people more likely to go to the doctor if it is cheap to do and is almost on-demand (vs. waiting longer periods of time before one "gets seen")?
A Passionate Independent Musician
It's:
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The NHS is a complete disgrace. If you ever had to use it you might know this. It is almost impossible to get a referral out of any doctor nowadays. It is just as difficult to get a dentist. Should you get sent to hospital, chances are you will be misdiagnosed and there's also a high probability you will catch MRSA.
The situation in the US is partly due to the incredibly unhealthy food there though. Gluttony of the most ridiculous extremes, everything contains masses of sugar and/or chemicals and virtually no nutrients.
kin242.net
First off, I agree that the "health care provider/health insurance company" game is rigged to the point that if you're not in the insurance system, you're boned. I.e., you cannot save the money you and your company are spending on insurance costs and use that to pay for medical costs because the billed costs are hyperinflated beyond all belief. (The insurance companies "negoatiate" the costs back down to saner levels, something you aren't likely to do, alone.)
That said, bullcrap! Canada's health "care" system is so overburdened and inefficient that it takes months, MONTHS to get to a dentist for a painful tooth problem. Contrast that to my experience in the USA when I had a stupid tooth-colored filling pop out of one of my teeth (not in pain, mind you, just anxious to get it fixed), and I was in the dentists' office in three days! They even offered to do it the next day, except I told them it wasn't an emergency (no pain).
A Navy friend of mine ripped his Achilles tendon, and a civilian UK co-worker of his happened to have the same thing happen to him at roughly the same time. Admittedly, the Navy guy got fixed up courtesy of the USN, but his co-worker wasn't able to see a doc for weeks... enough time for the leg to heal improperly, making him a gimp for life.
Keep your stinkin' broken socialistic health "care" system out of my USA!
(BTW, I am by no means "super rich".)
>I know that psychiatrists and psychologists in the US are very quick to diagnose and
> prescribe drugs
Unless they are in New Mexico, Louisiana or Guam, psychologists do not have the training or legal authority to prescribe drugs. As well, the training programs for psychologist prescribing in New Mexico and Louisiana are controversial, just starting and to my knowledge haven't graduated anyone. Psychologists are not medical doctors. Psychiatrists are medical doctors. Psychologists have much more training in psychotherapy and psychological testing and have much more training in psychopharmacology than in psychotherapy and testing. Frequently psychologists will refer patients to a psychiatrist for medications. Frequently psychiatrists will refer patients to a psychologist for psychotherapy.
-- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
"Only non-Hispanic whites were included in the study to eliminate the influence of racial disparities." What about the UK? Did they only include Whites? The UK is far from an all-white population.
Tea has much better health benefits than coffee (and in fact even helped keep illnesses down in grime filled cities in the Industrial Revolution). So Americans drink more coffee to keep them awake so they can work longer hours hence getting more stressed and more ill.
Betcha don't feel so clever about the Boston Tea Party now!!!
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
>Psychologists have much more training in psychotherapy and psychological testing and have
>much more training in psychopharmacology than in psychotherapy and testing.
Should read:
Psychologists usually but not always have much more training in psychotherapy and psychological testing than Psychiatrists. Psychiatrists usually have much more training in psychopharmacology than in psychotherapy and testing.
-- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Kids should really be made to be more active. Just as they may fail if they dont exercise their brain, they should fail, and not be allowed to move on to the next grade if they dont participate well in PE... PE should also be at least 3 times a week.
The way it is now (at least at my old hs) as long as you show up you get credit... what a load of crap. It makes it even worse for people who actually do want to play games cause your team is interlaced with people who just dont give a shit. One time we were playing volleyball and this girl just stood there and watch the ball fall literally a foot in front of her as she played with her hair... I would have failed that bitch on the spot.
We lag in the lifespan department, there, chum. You are evidently not reading something correctly. We just caught up with India on lifespan not too long ago. Try again.
My book, podcast
For instance, the drinking water in most parts of the US are undrinkable, and contains various metals.
I don't know where you heard this, but I have never heard of a water system in the US that produced unpotable water. Just about the only metal you will find in water in some places is iron, which while making it taste not so hot, isn't dangerous at all. And that's only to be found if you are far from any urban area.
Isn't it possible the health differences may be food related, and that even the rather greasy English cuisine, if you could call it that, is better than the American junk culture of pizza, McDonald's and KFC? Not much bettter, perhaps, but on the whole less fatty, sugary and salty? It would be interesting to see a comparison with data from France, Spain and Italy. French and Mediterranean food is regarded as the healthiest in the world.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Does a more direct responsibility for medical costs (rather than "free at the point of delivery") lead to later average diagnosis/intervention due to a culture wide reluctance to consult early?
I'd go for the ambient stresses induced by living the American Nightmare increasing susceptibility across the board.
And there we were thinking that we had the higher cost of living...
__
Arse
americans work more and are richer too. I think asia (HK, singapore, japan etc etc) have a similar or even more intensive work culture. There is a reason why some countires are on top and others are stagnating.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
You could argue that this was emergency care, so that there counldn't be any delays. I had another daugher that needed tubes in her ears. We did have a wait of a couple of months, but this was largely because the probem started before we were in England, so getting the doctors to get the notes of the previous (French) doctors took a while. In short, I was quite pleased with the health care that I recieved in the UK. The really good health care was in France, but that is another story. So, go ahead and repete the stories about long waits. Just don't think that your apocrophal accounts will sway the minds of people with first hand experience.
Think global, act loco
You've made the assumption that the GP cares about the ethics of eating/not eating meat.
Certainly not all vegetarians care about that. They may just care about their health and how their diet makes them feel.
In that case, who cares what happens to the calves?
--
lacto-ovo veg.
Leave me alone! I'm trying to screw my sister...
Is that sick enough for you?
While I do not agree that this is necessarily true. The fact is, society is not an entity, but a collection of entities. And, sometimes when the worse of these entities is eliminated many of the remainder are affected positively.
Let's begin with you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
why is it the responsability of rich and safe people to subsidize your protection from terrorism, theft, murder?
You live in a dangerous place, why aren't you solely responsible of your own protection? (within the limits of "what's legal", of course, since the above-mentionned sick isn't allowed, to, say, steal).
I've tended to work quite a bit over the past 10 years (even during two non-consecutive years working regular 60- to 70-hour work weeks without missing any days). I am almost never ill -- I've had one or two colds, and I got a very mild case of the flu about five years ago.
I agree that the stress of it all is taking a toll, but it's not the long hours, nor the unpaid overtime, nor the paucity of holidays -- it's the stress. The stress, anxiety, and depression are causing unnecessary strain on our bodies and minds and fostering the root causes of illness (not causing illnesses themselves, but creating conditions of susceptibility).
Studies (see excerpt from an abstract below) have shown such trends as well:
The problem isn't the long hours, nor the work schedule. It's definitely not the "burden of health care falling on individuals" (I, for one, am very glad it falls to us -- even though, by the way, I currently do not have health insurance because it is too expensive... but I don't want public health care to cover me for a wide variety of practical and principled reasons).
No, the problem is stress. Psychological stress, emotional stress, ... these require both a stimulus and a permission: when something happens "I'm getting laid off from work next week" there is an impetus to become stressed (a strain on the emotions or mind). But these are also a choice. With practice and with grace, one can choose not to worry, but to anticipate the future without worry.
The thing is, we have far fewer things to worry about than most people in the world (take Chad or N. Korea for examples of extremes, or just India for a middle-of-the-road example). Reducing causes of stress never reduces causes of stress -- people will just get stressed about smaller and smaller things unless the root is taken care of. As a post above pointed out, Japan has a similar work schedule and similar health care, but not the similar issues with health.
Happiness=money=buy more crap. America is so fixated on social climbing through salary that it's... sickening, really.
I'd bet that more Americans do social climbing through debt than salary. Conveniently, debt is more stress-inducing.
Americans burn the candle at both ends far too much, and don't get nearly enough sleep. One of the biggest contributors to all kinds of illness, disease, and the ability to properly recover from both is the lack of sleep.
...because you never know who you're dealing with.
This is the same reason Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world.
There are mountains of empirical evidence showing tea reduces risk of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer. Even the mechanisms are now fairly well-understood.
Anyone who has the least bit of concern for their health should either be drinking tea, taking a green tea supplement, or both.
This analogy is (IMHO) the #1 reason why healthcare should be public. Doctors should not be on a commission.
The great thing about this discussion is that there's no stereotyping nor unsubstantiated claims of fact going on here.
Oh, and here's the kicker - lack of sleep causes people to eat more. Can you say "really really nasty positive feedback loop a.k.a. vicious circle" ?
(1) Obesity -> Sleep Apnea -> Lack of restful sleep -> increased food intake -> (1)
Repeat until heart attack or fatal road accident after falling asleep behind the steering wheel.
If you're not sick, you wouldn't NEED more health care, and you were, you would. So of course the U.S. spends more: because Americans are more sick! We shouldn't expect that spending money to treat sickness would prevent us from becoming sick in the first place.
Also, are they being diagnosed the same way? Based on what I hear from Londoners and their disgust with NHS (to the point some of them come here for treatment because NHS refuses to believe they have a chronic disease or puts them on a six-month waiting list), I suspect not.
But more than anything, I go back to the prevalence of tea drinking. It explains a lot, especially when you take Japan into account.
In America you can be seen quickly as long as you're willing to pay. Fine if you can afford it or if your employer gives you health insurance, but if not you're screwed.
O RLY
No, I'm not talking pollution and such.
The UK has a generally cooler temperature than a large portion of the US. Typically bacteria and viruses like to be at around body temperature, which is a rather warm 98.6F/37C. If I remember correctly, London has a record high of 96F. London is forcasted to reach a high of 21C/70F today, where I live is slated to be 79F. The hot, humid weather of the American southeast is much more condusive to diseases than any place in England.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I've maybe been through ten various NHS proceedures / departments over the years. In only one case can I fault the treatment and/or level of care, and that was only because the ingrown toenail (full on surgery, was a bad one) which managed to retain some root and grow back. Even the nurses that came to my house to change the dressings were great, considering I was a whining teenager in pain.
Bitching about the NHS just seems to be the thing to do these days. From your experience, it sounds as though you've maybe been in and out hospital way more times than someone might choose to be. Without knowing more detail, I can't say whether or not you genuinely have been treated badly, or are perhaps just a little pissed off with the whole healthcare thing and are transfering those feelings onto the NHS.
Please don't take this as an insult or anything, but how do you treat people yourself? The phrase you used "The incompetence of our NHS, the apathy of their "professionals" and utterly abysmal levels of customer service" suggests to me that you yourself don't treat the staff very well. At the very least, you have no respect for them. What I'm trying to say here (without pissing you off) is that perhaps your own attitude might be part of the problem. I know that if I were a doctor or a nurse and had a patient that used quotations around the word professional when refering to my colleagues, that patient would get the minimum required treatment, while other, more deserving, patients get my help. Stands to reason.
Europe has much better environmental and consumer protection laws and regulations than the US.
Consumer protection is especially stringent in the area of food.
Thus, in Europe, substances whose long-term effects are now well known are usually forbidden in the food chain.
These kind of regulations affect not only processed food but also things like how farm animals destined for human consumption or which make food products such as eggs or milk are bred.
Thus for example, use of growth hormones in cattle is forbiden and the kinds and amounts of additives that can be added to processed food are highly regulated.
Similarly, environmental regulations are stricter in Europe, and things like car emissions are very thightly controlled all across Europe.
My personal pet theory is that this kind of regulations in Europe has decreased the incidence of the health problems related with long term exposure to chemicals which, unknowingly to the science community, cause those health problems which, such as cancer, are very difficult to track back to their source.
In other words, food and air around here are less likelly to make us sick in the long term.
I reckon that this is another important factor in explaining the difference in health between Americans and British.
You went to the local MegaMart, I'm guessing?
I recently started visiting an independent butcher shop and the difference in meat quality - and prices - is astonishing. Very trim cuts, great flavor, lower prices per pound, and a guy behind the counter who knows his stuff.
I can't wait till the local farmer's markets open up for the summer. One of our local MegaMarts "features" food from local growers, almost directly off the farm, but I'm expecting that going right to the source will get me even better produce.
Isn't that what welfare / the dole are for? Granted, I think we don't have food stamps here, but what you've said essentially exists in both countries.
What would make a difference would be access to healthy food (not even paid for, just access). Right now, in both countries, being poor meaning eating badly. Healthy food is generally more expensive than junk.
Well, alot of American's do anyway. Sometimes punctuated by pizza and beer. Exersize? Right. So is this really a suprise?
I refuse to allow such "food" into my home. Well, beer every now and again. It really appalls me when I look at the diet of many of my fellow Americans. I am by no means a strident vegan, and I generally keep my views about diet to myself - however I do note that I am in shape, rarely sick, and according to my doctor in great health. I just maintain a healthy and varied diet of lean meats and veggies. I eat one portion per meal, no seconds. No snacks after 8 PM. Work out three times a week. That is it.
I find that my wife and I are exceptional this way.
As has probably been noted - Europeans walk much more - to the train, to work, to the store. Americans drive. I don't know of their diet is better over there - they certainly have alot of the same junk foods on the shelves in London. Maybe they just eat two or three Oreos at a sitting rather than quaffing the hole damn package.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I'm sorry but a private medical care system will never be effective. Why? Because sick people don't really have choices. Let's say that tomorrow everybody had exactly what you described. You, as a healthy consumer shop around for insurance and get amazing rates because you're healthy. Now, a few years later, you get sick. Your insurance company doesn't want you anymore because you're costing them way more than you're bringing in. So they up your premiums, or drop you all together.
There is no such thing as competition for the insurance dollars of the sick and that's why private health care will never be effective. Universal single payer health care is the best option because:
1) It provides a large pool of people paying into the system, thus making sure sick people get covered but that healthy people don't pay too much
2) It makes everybody overall healthier because poor people can get treatment for communicable diseases quickly rather than avoiding a doctor and spreading it to everybody
3) It's a national security benefit, see also, #2 plus the communicable disease being something suitable horrible like weaponized ebola (doesn't exist so far as I know, but theoretically it'd be bad)
4) It reduces the waste that's a fundamental part of private health care. That is, eliminating profits and the need to pay lots of people to try to weasel out of paying your bill. A publically heald insurance company was recently getting grief for paying out 80% of it's intake because it wasn't profitable enough. 80% efficient and it's getting grief for it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Please explain to me how the NHS has anything to do with the policies of Stalin. I am genuinely interested in whether a) you have some interesting political insight, or b) are just another person who thinks socialism / stalinism and communinism are essentially the same thing.
Hear, hear. European public health care systems not only cover people comprehensively, they do so very efficiently as well -- check out Finland/Sweden for example, which have VERY efficient health care systems by purely bang for euro measures (although some specific improvements can of course always be made).
This of course doesn't stop our ideologically-driven, reality- and ethics-challenged Conservatives from trying to destroy the system by first creating bogeymen about it "being inefficient", then trying to starve it, and when it doesn't run on thin air it needs to be taken down because it's not delivering -- the typical "drown it in the bathtub" strategy.
To add insult to injury, while in opposition, they willingly support motions of no confidence teamed up with a left-fringe party that criticizes the lack of nurses in old people's homes -- a mostly funding issue at its core, and which would be the LAST thing they'd be interested in, should they be in power.
A comprehensive health-care system can be made efficient simply because of economies of scale, and because good care standards are, in my opinion, quite easy to agree upon. You may not get the bells and whistles if you are pragmatic, but the outcome of treatment on a person is objectively measurable so the argument on "choice" in care essentially boils down to one axis, saying that some people need to get better care than others, according to ability to pay.
The reason why American-style costs so much is, IMO, two-fold. In health-care the market is skewed because first of all, at extreme, it can be a choice between dying and getting care, so it's a seller's market (unless buyers organize in a big buying force such as a public non-drug-company-aligned health-care provider). Second, exposing one's health to competitive pressure encourages ignoring preventive care and thinking in the short term, making it ever more likely that when issues do become crippling enough to require intervetion, they are advanced and need expensive treatment. An example of this is diabetes, which is easily treatable by insulin, but can result in amputations othewise.
I tend to see health-care as a societal infrastructure issue like roads and utilities that can and should be planned for the long term, produced in bulk and managed objectively and transparently, as this just simply is a very efficient way of providing a good that nearly all people need during their lives and removes a lot of the shit from life that prematurely and unneccessarily destroys people and keeps them from doing more productive things than being sick and struggling with the consequences.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Actually, a vegetarian diet combined with eating fish is probaly the best route to go. Eating lots of sushi and non-deepfried sea food will usually cover this. It is why people in Iceland, Norway, and Japan are so healthy... The massive amounts of fish in their diet.
Eating cow, pig, and chicken is tasty but the amount of fats, hormones, and various anti-biotics (plus bad feeding practices) tend to make mass farmed animals unhealthy to constantly eat.
If you do want the occasional steak, you should really put up the extra money and buy organic or range raised. You know... The ones that aren't fed other cows and live on open ranges and they can eat grass and not be in unsanitary farm factories.
Heck... They even taste better.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The health insurance industry is a parasite the purpose of which is to interfere with your patient-doctor relationship and to deny your treatment.
Oh yes, no doubt that millions of people invest their money in companies that are formed specifically to deny people health care treatments. There is this enormous camp of people out there that find it essential to make sure that patients receive no care. Good for you, finally exposing that fact! I'll be curious, though, if you'll let us know when you post anything like actual evidence that the countless people that fund and work for health coverage providers are doing so expressly to make sure that people don't get health care. It's amazing that so many people have been able to keep that conspiracy so quiet until you came along.
Hmmm. Or maybe you're lying, mischaracterizing the entire situation, know it, and are hoping that making emotionally charged, irrational Moore-like rants will rhetorically resonate with at least a couple of other reason-challenged readers.
The debate isn't about insurance companies actively trying to prevent people from getting health care. It's about striking a balance in how the money they pay out (which they collect from their own customers, under circumstances dictated by both the millions of people that invest in the ownership of the companies and an incredibly vast body of government regulation) does or does not land on the spectrum of people that pay the money in.
I pay a fair amount for coverage. I can see my doctor any time I want, have never felt that relationship to be in any way limited, and can get referals to specialists if needed. The amount my wife and I consume (in terms of health care dollars) is a pale shadow of the amount we spend (in payroll deduction premiums). That money is being redistributed among the larger group of my co-workers, and if I don't like that miniature little bit of socialized medicine, I can opt out of it, or get a different paycheck. It's risk management, and I'm willing to forgo an additional $150 a month for a plan that removes the risk that I'll have limited choices in my healthcare. If I want to save that $150, I'll still get the care, but it will be under a more generic plan... but in no way will I be without health care if I actually get sick... I'll just be $1800 ahead at the end of the year, and could consider investing that money towards future, age-related medical expenses (instead of telling YOU that you have to pay for me).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why have schools?
Educate your child yourself.
Why have hospitals?
Heal your child yourself.
Why have motorways?
Build your own road.
Why have laws?
Shoot the evildoer yourself.
Why have taxes?
Keep all My Money for Me. Me Me Me Me Me ME MEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why have civilisation?
Barbarism is much better.
The United States of Anarchy. Sounds cool, doesn't it?
"The NHS is a complete disgrace. If you ever had to use it you might know this. It is almost impossible to get a referral out of any doctor nowadays. It is just as difficult to get a dentist. Should you get sent to hospital, chances are you will be misdiagnosed and there's also a high probability you will catch MRSA."
That really is nonsense. Impossible to get a referral - what? My GP gave me a wide choice. I have an NHS dentist. I've been hospitalised six times in the last 4 years and have never been infected with MRSA. In fact, the NHS is no worse than any other large organisation when it comes to administrative inefficiency or general incompetence.
Where I do agree with you is on American food, it is quite abominable, and most products are barely more than GM soya by-products and corn syrup held together with hydrogenated palm oil.
That was classic intercourse!
However, Britain's universal health-care system shouldn't get credit for better health, Marmot and Blendon agreed.
Both said it might explain better health for low-income citizens, but can't account for better health of Britain's more affluent residents.
Marmot cautioned against looking for explanations in the two countries' health-care systems.
"It's not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place," Marmot said.
Seriously, why compare with the UK? The UK is one of the countries in Europe with the worst food, least exercise etc. Id like to see the US compared to countries like Spain, Norway or France. Those differences would even be bigger.
:)
Ps: love the title
Why, that's the TLC you give your girlfriend's "evergreen shrub" in that strategic area...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
What your mind becomes is a result of social environment, experiences and introspection. Barring serious deficiencies in your diet, food does NOT enter the equation.
Plus, I will echo another poster in saying: if you need pills to supplement your vegan lifestyle, it is NOT healthy or natural.
And i enjoy the occasionnal bloody steak and I am fully equipped to ingest it.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Yeah, but the people who empty your bins would all be dead. Here's a shovel and a plot of land, start burying!
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Yes, the above poster has the right answer. Longer work hours might play a role, but the real factor is the difference in environmental laws. For example, our FDA sees no problem in US food producers putting drugs in our food.
Take dairy alone: Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) is injected into most US cattle. It's been repeatedly stated here that there's no scientific study showing this hormone affects the humans that eat it; but a little more digging reveals that's because scientists view such a study as silly, as it seems almost impossible to anyone in the field that it would not affect the human consumer. So the same drug meant to fatten and tenderize our cows is tenderizing us. That can't be healthy. rBGH is banned throughout Europe.
The way livestock are raised here makes them prone to disease (sound familiar?) so antibiotics are fed to them as a daily supplement. These antibiotics inevitably remain when we then consume them. Further, this daily regimen ensures that any bacteria surviving in that beef are immune to those same antibiotics, reducing our ability to cure ourselves with medicine when we actually get sick.
The list of differences in our food and water laws between the US and Europe goes on and on. US firms consistently state a long list of risk factors are safe, yet in Europe these things are banned and surprise! Europeans are healthier. Could it be these obvious risks are what they are?
The comparitive study was done between the White populations of both countries. Perhaps most of the posters here are white, but as a person of color I am a little dismayed at the lack of reflection on ht enon-white populations.
Suggest you re-read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; oligopolies, monopolies and cartels are as much an outcome of the market system as are competetive markets - Smith boy even warned against them and thought very poorly of them.
I stopped eating man-made food on in January, when I weighed 215 pounds. I now weigh 185 pounds, and feel like I'm 35 instead off 75 (I'm actually 45). The relentless drive of market forces has caused food manufactures to squeeze every last penny out of their operations - replacing "real" ingredients with chemicals for cost reasons as they go.
You're not eating what you ate 20 years ago - that's no longer available. And that's why America is getting fatter and sicker faster than any other nation.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action.
The US government-run health care institutions and programs are the most efficient in the nation, handily beating private health care systems in terms of cost, overhead, and at least equalling it in quality. And I believe if you looked into it, you'd find the same for education. Both health care and education have been broken by the market.
I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business
Adam Smith's invisible hand has a long list of preconditions to work, preconditions on the numbers and sizes of competitors, on information available to competitors and buyers, on the kinds of goods being exchanged, etc. Claiming that it "works almost everywhere" is just completely wrong and demonstrates an utter unfamiliarity with economic principles.
For health care and education, several of the preconditions are violated and therefore a free market approach doesn't work; the current failures of the US health care and educational system are a direct consequence of that (however, aspects of both health care and education can be left to the market--it just requires careful planning and design).
The free market works wonderfully when its preconditions are satisfied. It's the purpose of our government to ensure that free markets exist in as many goods and services as possible. It is also the purpose of our government to ensure that the small subset of goods and services the free market cannot supply efficiently are provided in some other way.
People like you, who have an irrational and factually wrong belief in the universal applicability of free market economics are at the source of a lot of our economic ills. It's adding insult to injury that after wrecking our health care and educational systems, you then turn around and blame the government for the mess you made through deregulation and privatization.
Giving the working population cash (and letting them decide whether to put it into health insurance or not) only works if we as a society are prepared to let people regularly die or be permanently maimed by treatable conditions like cavities or broken arms or pneumonia. As long as there is the emergency care "safety net" paid for by society -- and, honestly, there always will be because emergency workers can't be the insurance police, checking if you have enough cash or insurance before treating you -- then people have insufficient motivation to buy sufficient insurance for uncommon but expensive treatment.
In a simple but extreme example, economically it doesn't make sense for me to set aside enough cash to save myself if I get into a bad car accident or my house burns with me in it. I could never afford it and anyway, I don't have to -- emergency care will be provided regardless. Another poster noted that Americans seem to have too much respect for human life to let me die at the emergency room door.
Less obvious but, I suspect, also true: there is insufficient economic motivation to invest in preventive care. Getting a regular checkup and a prescription for $100 might avoid a $1000 emergency room visit, but that $100 pays for a lot of food and clothing and shelter that are clearly needed today, and society isn't willing to let me die at the door of the emergency room anyway, so my motivation to pay the $100 now isn't enough, and I end up costing everyone 10 times more.
Relying on that emergency system is not an efficient way to pay for health care, but as long as that system is in place, just giving workers cash means people _will_ rely on it. There are just a lot more obvious needs for that cash in many people's lives. Preventive care that might avoid the emergency room visit, and insurance to cover that visit if it happens, definitely look like luxuries in a lot of budgets.
Having employers automatically enroll employees in a health care plan takes many workers out of this wildly inefficient emergency care system and puts them into the slightly less inefficient semi-privatized insurance system. Also really not a great system for the reasons you mentioned, among others. Time to consider alternatives like a national single-payer system.
-Scot
101010, 222, 52,
Rubbish - we'd just import cheap labour from elsewhere in the world to take their place. Morality aside there is basically no limit to supply of unskilled labour. Admittedly there's a long lead time for each unit but producing them requires no skill and no capital. Compare that to the manufacture of industrial robots which requires large amounts of expensive material, a hugely expensive production centre and a relatively rare skillset.
The main problem with your pollution data is that it does not concern itself with concentration.
You see, the USA is a big place. In a manner of speaking, it can absorb a greater amount of pollution before becoming polluted.
The UK is roughly 1/40th the size of the USA. So, if the UK puts out 1/40th the pollution as the US, then they can be thought of as being equally polluted.
I think this simple fact explains most of the contrary views between much of Europe's view on pollution and much of the USA's view on pollution - a little goes a long way in the high-population density parts of the world.
ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN, you idiots
I won't argue because I don't really know the difference. I do know this: Your point would have been better taken if you explained the difference. You might have thrown 'UK' in on your explanation as well. As it is, many American readers still don't know the difference and will continue to use 'England', 'Britain' and 'UK' interchangeably (mostly UK when writing because it's shorter). You don't think anyone read your post and subsequently bothered to go study up on their English history, do you? Or would they study up on their British history... UK history? See what I mean?
Don't take it personally. Most Americans also don't know the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. Hell, you might be surprised to find out how many don't know the difference between Switzerland and Sweden. At least misunderstandings about the identity of UK/Britain/England don't usually involve confusion with other countries. So... what IS the difference between England/UK/Britain? As far as we can tell from your post, you don't know either, just that England != Britain... and that we're all idiots for not knowing (or caring).
Mike: Hey look! A lion!
Tom: That's not a lion. That's a tiger.
Mike: Oh. I've never seen a lion. What does a lion look like?
Tom: Well,... a lion is not a tiger, you idiot!
Mike: Wow, you're so smart. Hey look! A lion!
Tom: That's not a lion. That's a Puma.
Mike: Oh. I've never seen a lion. What does a lion look like?
Tom: Well,... a lion is not a Puma, you idiot!
Mike: Wow, you're so smart. Hey look! A lion!
If you can't just be yourself, then be more like me, ok?
Still, it is a funny picture. It is also funny to see businesses housed in distinctive buildings - I've seen sushi places in what obviously used to be an IHOP and other restaurants in ex-Wienerschnitzel buildings. I haven't seen any of those fried-check "barn" buildings lately, but they were around long after the chicken was gone.
Maybe the escalator pictured used to go to a "Home Country Buffet"!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If you like In Praise of Idleness, you might like The Abolition of Work by Bob Black.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Fortunately, I've only been "in hospital" a few times, once for a routine but necessary operation as a child, once when my eye was injured, once when I was assaulted in public and injured quite badly, and twice for sporting injuries (both minor).
The operation left me with unsightly scarring (luckily not visible when wearing clothing you would wear for a job) due to incompetence on the part of the surgeon/finisher.
The time my eye was injured I actually received excellent help - though I did have to wait two hours to be seen despite freaking out over blood leaking from my eyeball - apparently it didn't count as a "head injury" - though the person with a nail hanging loose, and someone with a bad back were seen before me... go triage.
When I was assaulted in public the medical treatment I received was OK - but again left two small scars on my face (not their fault, but the second opinion of a private surgeon was that had they been done professionally, there would be no scarring) as apparently they were heavy handed when doing it, and their treatment of me was abysmal. I was attacked while out for a meal for a friends birthday by a drunken guy who thought I looked at his girl... I was treated as a drunken lout by the NHS despite barely having had anything to drink, and as it was a "friday night" and I'd "had a beer" it was clearly my own fault that my face was split open in two parts.
When I was 16 I was involved in a clash in a sporting match which left two heavy people lying on my right leg and wrenched it further sideways than it should go, this tore some muscle and a tendon in my groin. I was twice rejected from having any treatment (or even a decent inspection) by staff at an NHS hospital, which left me with a bad injury. After six weeks of treatment from a private clinic (paid for by my mother) including heat therapy, massage and a course of exercise designed to build strength up in that area, I was able to walk without pain again, though any stress with my right leg turned outwards today leaves me in pain for a couple of days.
Finally, when 17 I received a terrible tackle at a soccer match that damaged my Anterior Talofibular Ligament (outside the ankle bone). At the time the doctor AND the emergency room told me it was nothing serious despite swelling to a truly enormous size and me being unable to walk. Ten years and nine recursions later I have discovered due to a private physiotherapist and good scanning equipment that the ligament is now almost entirely composed of scar tissue - for several months until I received private treatment I was unable to walk properly, but the NHS didn't want to know because "old sporting injuries can be hard to pin down" and I just got fobbed off with "put an ice pack on it and relax it for a few days" - despite the fact it would reoccur approximately twice weekly and prevent me from walking or driving without extreme pain.
As mentioned in my grandparent post I was also given a dose of antibiotics 10x the adult dose at the age of 12 for a sore throat by someone who could barely speak English - and nearly died. I've also had other, more minor, misdiagnosis and issues at the hands of GPs, but they do not have any lasting effects like the above problems (the over prescription has left me with a dangerous allergy to an antibiotic I previously had no issues with).
This is my tale of the NHS, I hope it has been instructive. For those who replied to my post saying I "support the positions of letting the proles die out" or similar, I do not - I believe emergency medical treatment should be available for all - but for more minor issues a privatised system with genuine market forces would ensure better standards of care for less.
And finally, I have several friends who work INSIDE the NHS in a variety of capacities - and almost all of them believe the current system is a mess and needs a huge change.
Yeah, and I know this vegetarian guy who was hit by a bus!
Healthy? Pah!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Ha ha. Look at the funny man.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I'm responding to the grandparent post that has been modded into oblivion, not yours. The one where some fool said:
I know you'll shake your head at it like everybody does, but the typical vegetarian gets no cancer, never gets influenza (yes your flu last year could be avoided if you dumped meat) and will never have the depression, bowel disease, heart problems and overweight that inflict meat eaters!
I would like to point out that I was vegan for three years and vegetarian for ten, and that I enjoyed the flu a half-dozen times in that stretch. People making claims like this are idiots.
I eat a little fish now, on advice from several doctors who were kind enough to point to well-done studies that argued for the health benefits. There is no reason that eating some meat is bad for you. There are, however, problems with getting an excess of iron (in men), too much fat from the wrong meats in excess, and so forth-- but the same downsides are true of anything with a lot of bioavailable iron or fat.
Meat does not magically cause the flu.
No, you don't get it! The additives are actually preserving your body for science. It's really just inappropriately named. Instead of "overeating" or "binging", it should be called the "pre-death embalming process"!
;).
But on a serious (sorta) note, how long does milk typically last over on your side of the pond, compared to here? I grew up over here, so don't know any better
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
I was in Cuba a couple years ago and although they are very poor (everyone makes about $13 US per month) they were very very friendly and looked happy and healthy. They have highly trained doctors and other professionals.
So, I get myself on Google and discover that Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans. Well, that shocked me.
This is a place where I can't drink the water, and the beef looked pretty scary. It's certainly possible that the more expensive stuff we have available to us (more food, more highly processed food), the worse our health could be. I read once that in Rome the rich people had plumbing with lead pipes (it was a luxury) but it ended up killing them faster from lead poisoning. It's possible something similar is happening to us in industrialized nations right now.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Go look in the mouth of a gorilla. Then look at what they eat. Those teeth mean nothing.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
From the first +5 post in the thread:
Statutory minimum annual leave plus public holidays
UK: 28 days (four weeks + public holidays)
US: 10 days (0 weeks + public holidays)
Maybe the reason why us folks in the US report so many sick days is that we're simply telling the boss we're sick and can't come in because there is no other way of getting the hell out of the office.
I've done it. I'll bet everyone here who lives in the US has done it too. Unfortunately with my current job I can't even do that, because the US has a new scourge: PTO. Paid time off. It's a pool of vacation and sick leave. You get sick, the days come out of the pool and your vacation time dries up. It's horrible.
In fact, I'll take it a step further. Americans get a lot of flak about how we're not very worldly. I think one of the reasons why is that we're not allowed to travel.
Honestly, it's true. We're not.
I'm a college graduate with a BSEE working what most people here would call a pretty darn good job in a good company. I have relatively high pay and what folks around here would call good benefits, leave time, etc.
I get 15 days of PTO a year. How the hell can you own a home, take care of your mundane living details and see the world on fifteen lousy days a year?
I've had entire years where I haven't even left the state I live in. No time to do so.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...but there's two observations I've made. The first is that Americans have shitty healthcare but are much more alert and aware when it comes to self-treatment.
The second observation is that regardless of the level of "free" dental care you provide in Great Britain you still can't teach brits to brush their teeth.
-This man is going for the jackpot! A few comments, a little sarcasm, some wit - and he COULD be the winner of a FREE molestation by the regular Slashdot crowd.
You must not be from Texas. They would laugh at the tiny steaks your coworkers eat.
(1 kilo = 35 ounces)
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Speaking as a liberal, you're dead right.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
My uncle nearly died from eating McDonald's once. Back when they had their nastification called the Arch Deluxe, he had eaten one, but unfortunately they forgot to tell him that the mayonnaise/special sauce had been baking on an unrefrigerated truck for its entire trip. Soon, he was in a hospital with tubes going every which way fighting for his life.
Somehow, "i'm lovin' it" just doesn't seem accurate.
US citizens are bombarded with media "crisis" reports on their health, alleged health risks, conflicting medical research, and drug marketing. The perpetual "you are not safe" media message results in hyper sensitivity to any health issues. In the US, a springtime runny nose is considered sick.
Combine that with long days, overtime, and only 10 days off a year, and you get people who are frequently ill and think they are.
Ooooh don't listen to them! Here, have a cookie!
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Also, making sure the poor get health care is a good way to reduce the chances YOU will get sick because of some disease they are culturing. Even a selfish, inconsiderate asshole has good reason to support some level of universal health care.
Personally, I think the US should require and pay for basic medical care for all citizens. Even if that means visiting nurse practitioners instead of physicians. But I don't think it is economically possible to make every type of health care available to every citizen... Just the basics.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
So what you're saying is that you'd rather be treated for cancer in the US than not having cancer in the first place?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I can. I planned.
No you can't. Not even a tiny fraction of a percent. I assume you have savings? The bank you've placed your saving in could collapse. Don't think it'll ever happen? Then you're niave. What if you were involved in an accident and were sued? Do you have seperate savings to cover those potential costs? What will you do if the economy took a long slide and wiped out the value of your savings? How about your wife files for divorce, gets a good lawyer and takes you for every penny? Do you have a seperate "Divorce Settlement Fund"? What if you sucumb to a long term illness? Most peoples savings wouldn't even begin to cover the treatment costs for the first year. Do you believe your insurance company wouldn't try to drop you?
You've "planned". Right, of course you have. If you live in Happy Fun Land.
Cash prices are higher for one major reason: collectibility. As doctors move over to automated systems, finally, it'll improve. Right now, the level of collections for cash customers for medical services is terrible. I don't remember the exact rate, but it's brought up often in the arguement over pushing towards electronic medical records. Insurance is reliable, you'll get it every time. Cash, you have to ask for up front or pretty much write it off, and asking for money up front is something many doctors aren't comfortable with doing once you get up into larger figures.
Medicine is horribly out of date in this way, and I'm not saying this to excuse them, because it really needs to change.
That doesn't count for pharmacy, obviously. I assume that probably has to do with some kind of price negotiation between the companies, but I don't really know.
It wasn't being argued that poor diet and exercise in the case of Americans is definately a factor, but when you compare to a country with equally unhealthy dietary habits the Americans are still coming out on the bottom.
What I'd like to know though, is -as a Canadian - how do I compare with my US and EU cousins? Here we have a similar to US lifestyle and/or environment with a few subtle differences.
how it is that the USA can have a 60% obesity rate.
Small nit, but "obese" != "overweight." According to this table (admittedly out of date, but clearly shows the trend), 64.5% of Americans are "overweight." Only 30.5% are "obese." There's a difference.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
It is official; the WHO now confirms: the USA is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered US population when the WHO confirmed that the USA quality of life has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent UN survey which plainly states that the USA has lost more quality-of-life, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The USA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent WHO comprehensive assessment.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict USA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: USA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the USA because the USA is dying. Things are looking very bad for the USA. As many of us are already aware, the USA continues to lose quality-of-life. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The employer-subsidized health plan is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its corporate members. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long-time employer-subsidy providers Bechtel and Citibank only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: the employer-subsidized health plan is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
National association AHIP states that there are 70,000 000 holders of Individual Policies. How many users of Medicaid are there? Let's see. The number of Individual Policies versus Medicaid payouts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70, 000 000/5 = 14, 000 000 state health plan users. Other health-plan costs are about half of the volume of Medicaid costs. Therefore there are about 7, 000 000 users of other health plans. A recent article put joint employer/employee health plans at about 80 percent of the USA market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Group Policies holders. This is consistent with the total payouts for Group Policies costs.
Due to the troubles of abysmal sales and so on, many Group Policies providers went out of business and were taken over by the Federal government, who administer another troubled health plan. Now Medicare is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that USA has steadily declined in quality-of-life. The USA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If US healthcare is to survive at all it will be due to custom from foreign elites. The USA continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save the USA from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the USA is dead.
Fact: USA is dying
The Department of Agriculture occupies the largest federal building complex in Washington, DC and has a perennial habit of writing a great number of entitlement checks. Hardly an invisible hand. //Okay, the Pentagon is a bit bigger, but it isn't in Washington...
The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education.
Oil? Housing? Energy?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
And it's proven a superior survival mechanism in nature than being either a pure herbavore (which vegitarians obviously aspire to be)
Our legal system should take a lesson from nature and allow non-vegetarians to kill and eat vegetarians.
I am saying Americans are TOO HYGENIC. Or to elaborate:
- Washing yourself? Every day a shower.
Look, I know this is Slashdot, but you can't criticise people for not exercising, and say they shower too much. If you want them to exercise more, then trust me, one shower every 2 or 3 days is not going to cut it. I shower daily even if I haven't exercised on that day. Days on which I do exercise, I shower twice (the usual one in the morning to start the day, and again after exercising).
Heck, sometimes in the summer, I occassionally even shower 3 times in a single day (the morning shower, after an afternoon workout, and one more right before bed if it's hot and muggy).
Showering doesn't make a person unhealthy. It makes them less stinky.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I've never understood the (frequently American) mindset that when things are obviously broken it's socially unacceptable to fix it if someone is making money out of the status quo.
It's not just the doctors/CEOs that suddenly change. I recently saw someone I know on a respirator, having her lungs sucked out, for two weeks because "going to see a doctor" was too expensive (she was currently unemployed).
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
What's wrong is people like yourself who continually insist that others bear the burden for her. People get sick. They die. There is not an inherent right to have your illnesses cured because they are heartbreaking.
I have to agree with you. Death is a part of life. Some things can easily be cured, and should be. Others are probably beyond the resources that we have on this planet. Our resources are limited, and as sad as it is, that means that some things are not worth treating. You end up draining people's ability to support themselves attempting to do so, and it gets to the point where this makes them unhealthy, because now they can't do the things they need to remain healthy. Then they go onto healthcare, further draining everyone else..
You really don't need to know anything about British history to know a modicum of world geography.
The name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for short the United Kingdom or UK.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are the administrative subdivisions of the United Kingdom. They are not countries in the sense of being autonomous legal entities that enter into treaties etc, although sometimes people confusingly refer to them as 'countries' (partly because they used to be countries). They are analogous to California, Iowa, Ohio, etc.
The word 'Britain' is generally used as a synonym for the United Kingdom, although 'Great Britain' specifically means the landmass which comprises England, Wales and Scotland, i.e. the UK minus Northern Ireland. The 'British Isles' refers to the UK, the various Crown dependencies (Isle of Man, Channel Islands etc), plus (usually) the Republic of Ireland, which is a separate country altogether.
Using 'England' as a synonym for the UK is an insult to Scottish people, Welsh people, and Northern Irish. London is not the capital of England, it is the capital of the UK. It is very simple.
- Animals are more similar to humans. We wouldn't want to eat humans, but we eat animals because we think less of them.
So plants are sufficiently different to humans that it is ok to think less of them?
Basically, you're drawing the same arbitrary line meat eaters are.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
I doubt that. The countries are too diverse within themselves. Typically German, typically French, what does that mean (leaving aside clichés)? The differences are more along the lines of social classes and origin (immigrants or not, which part of the country exactly a person comes from, and so on).
As a long-standing freelancer I've had many decades in which to observe management (and techies) in their respective roles, and that experience leaves no room for doubt. With an exception rate of far less than 1%, managers (in the UK) are entirely clueless, useless, pointless, worthless, and harmful to the success of their enterprise.
So then only the stupid companies hire managers, right? No, managers are (usually) profitable for their company, even when they are annoying and occasionally get in the way. I know I wouldn't do much if no one cared whether I worked or not, nor told me what to work on.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
In an ideal world paperwork would exist for accountablity, but unfortunately people have found paperwork useful for creating delays and making the process of doing something hard enough to not be able to do, the concept of ability varying somewhat.
The show was fine and great when they stuck to just busting paranormal crap... but then they started doing all the political shows. Made be lose all respect for the show and I can't watch it anymore.
Meh.
"we all know it is a terrible thing when a loved one gets cancer" is not a very good argument for not using emotionally charged arguments.
Once upon a time, the theory of HMOs was that they would have better incentives and would give people blood pressure tests, run stop-smoking programs, and closely track blood sugar levels in diabetics.
The last survey I saw (wish I remembered were so you could get a proper citation) indicated that HMOs did much better on basic, necessary followup and monitoring than did the fee-for-service sector.
Which does not contradict you because the performance of HMOs next to medical standards for followup and prevention was still pathetic.
but for more minor issues a privatised system with genuine market forces would ensure better standards of care for less.
I know your ideology tells you this must be so, but we have a free market for health care here in the US, and it sucks. Market forces don't work for health care. What are you going to do, not get sick if the price is too high?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
you have the unions to thank for the 5 day work week you insensitive, white-collar clod.
But, the observation that the US of Alien idea of associating the cost of health care with employment being at least partly to blame is spot on.
When the relationship between the HC Insuarance provider and the patient is temporary, as it is when provided as a benefit of employment, there is an incentive to defer treatment. Every other ascpect of out lives we buy into the concept that preventative maintenance and early detection reduces costs. What do we say about computer programs; when it works it should say nothing but when it fails it should do so noisily and early. Your health care provider is going to treat you within the terms of the agreement that they have with the insurance carrier, he who pays the piper calls the tunes. You may think that the little black spot is a matter for concern, but if the provider is only going to treat the things that the carrier pays for, and what you pay the provider for is covered under the agreement between the provider and the carrier as well.
If the insurance carriers were concerned about the cost of medical care over the life of the patient rather than the cost over the length of the contract (employers tend to switch from time to time) there would be a much greater emphasis on nipping it in the bud.
Of course there is another concept popular in this modern USofA, it's generally cheaper to replace it than it is to repair it. Which again takes us back to the lack of incentive for the employer to pay for medical treatment of the worker.
Insurance is designed to mitigate risk by distributing the cost across a group. Kinda like a simple machine distributes the load across a greater distance. Grouping the insured by the company that they work for makes less sense the longer I look at it. Before long people with certain genes won't be able to get jobs, regardless of their skills, training, attitude, etc.
My boss has only a limited interest in my health. He has a wholely different perspective on it than I do. Why does he have so much control over my health care and I have so little. (yes, that's a period)
Oh yeah, I pay way more than the deductible every year, I think a lot of people do - otherwise there wouldn't be Flexible Spending Accounts. Or people would only fund their FSA to the deductioble.
No more Soda will be in Elementry and Middle Schools.
America's largest beverage distributors have agreed to halt nearly all sales of sodas to public schools -- a step that will remove the sugary, caloric drinks from vending machines and cafeterias around the country.
I guess America is serious about not being the sickest.
\
Maybe that's one of the causes, I don't know how it's like in the UK, but here in France whenever you go to the doctor you pay 20 euros but you get refunded. Same for drugs, well at least the refundable ones, which are the generic ones that one really needs to improve one's health.
You just got troll'd!
Damm spot on! That's what pisses me off about our medical system in the US. It's the fucking lawers that are making the profits, not the docs. It's all about litigation at the expense of your health. I sware, it's so fucking evil. Worse yet, the public ignores this fact.
Life is not for the lazy.
Insurance companies have made a fortune off me. They've grown fat and happy off me, and people like me. I'm 36, never been to the hospital, never get very sick, never even go to the doctor more than once every 3 or so years.
If I am between jobs when I get sick does all that money I paid help me? If I get dropped from my current lowball carrier if I get struck by something expensive is that fair?
I'm sure most people use very little insurance for the first 3/4 of their life. Insurance companies want to insure these people then cut them once they're no longer profitable to insure. That is wrong.
Man, you really need that seminar!
The problem here is not that a person may die from a disease, but that someone could help, and won't, because it isn't profitable.
So justify it. And do so without emotionally charged arguments, because we all know it is a terrible thing when a loved one gets cancer. That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with forcing me to pay for her care.
You're asking a whole lot here, since we're talking about morality, a subject with no inherent underlying truth. I think it's difficult to justify why all society should pay to catch the person who murdered someone else's mother, without using emotional arguments, but that's standard practice in most countries, even when the murderer likely won't kill anyone else.
Here's a non-emotionally-charged argument, though. You don't know if you're going to get cancer in the future, nor do you know if your children or grandchildren will get cancer. When healthcare providers treat someone else for cancer, or spend research money on treatment, they get practice and knowledge, and are thus in a better position to treat you, or someone you love, in the (uncertain) future.
I understand your position that, if you don't care about your own possible future treatments, or the possible future treatments of those you love, you shouldn't be forced to pay for the current treatments of those you don't love, but I think that path leads to a governmental system close to anarchy (e.g., by analogy, if you don't know someone who was murdered, you shouldn't have pay for their capture, and if you don't use a road, you shouldn't pay for it's upkeep, and if you aren't worried about being attacked by another country, you shouldn't pay for defense, etc.).
Ultimately I feel you need to be making an argument not based on generalities like "I don't want to pay for your mother's cancer treatment!" which frankly makes you sound like an ass, but rather based on the idea that more people would be better off in the long run under the system you propose. I think that's a much harder case for you to make (and a harder case for someone else to take issue with).
Looking objectively at coffee prices historically we see the 1975 coffee price in the US was $1.2940 ($4.7194 in 2004 dollars) per pound, in 2004 if was $2.8920 per pound. So the real price of coffee has declined.
I remeber paying $50 for my nintendo games in the 1980s... and today video games are about... $50. Please note though, $50 1985 is about $88.73 in 2005 dollars. So yes, video games have gotten cheaper in real dollars.
Books... hmm... pulling a pocketbook with a printing date of 1996 off my shelf... it was selling for $6.99 ($8.48 in 2005 dollars). Today I pay about $7.50 for a pocketbook. So I'd say books are declining in price as well.
Please try again
>>The health insurance industry is a parasite the purpose of which is to interfere with your patient-doctor relationship and to deny your treatment.
>Oh yes, no doubt that millions of people invest their money in companies that are formed specifically to deny people health care treatments.
"Obscure" can mean "not well known". It can also mean "cryptically written". There is an obscure book called Have Fun At Work. It's about learning how to use complex systems by shedding your dysfunctional beliefs about them. Honest, I'm going somewhere with this.
"The Purpose of a System Is What It Does" ("POSIWID") is the first amoung the author's insights. For example, stop driving yourself crazy by thinking the government is here to protect national security. Regard it as a machine for sending money to contractors in the districts of key Congressmen and you can begin to get things accomplished, for example by siting $VITAL_FACILITY in $HOME_STATE_OF_APPROPRIATIONS_COMMITTEE_CHAIRMAN. That's why we have so many NASA centers: Kennedy and Johnson knew the way to land on the Moon was to put jobs in all the right districts.
Fast forward to today. What's the purpose of health insurance companies? On paper it's to collect premiums and rationally allocate them to health care while paying the employees and investors. But what do they *do*?
That's why insurance companies suck, and why I can't understand why people continue to buy into them (or why people think giving everyone health insurance is a good idea). If most people didn't have health insurance they wouldn't want to pay all the god awful costs that doctors charge (like $125 for a checkup), and doctors would be forced to reduce prices or go out of business.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Because in an advanced society everyone should have adequate medical care. Above all else, giving people every opportunity to live should be priority. Where are we headed when we start thinking "Look out for number 1 only"? Not on the right side of the good/evil war, I think.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
Are you really arguing that we are in a health care and education bubble?
Study was commissioned by the National Institute of Health, an org. with absolutely no motive in hiring a PR agency to slant and push stories about the alarming American health crisis. Come on. Overweight and bad food eaters, sure, generally, but this study relied on government statistics provided from two countries comparing different service delivery systems with articial cost structures and differing levels of accessiblity, based on a narrow demographic sliver ("white people" in their 50's and 60's) and relying on the diagnosis of doctors functioning under who knows how many different motives. This is transparent wire-service propanganda. And to all the bashers of the obese, fast-fooding Americans: even with gas prices to match our waistlines, our economic productivity and efficiency flat out kick every other economy in the world's ass. Europeans lecturing about the efficacy of the workplace - now that's funny. And just wait until we start eating healthier.
In the root canal example you cited, I as a dentist can charge you both a lower or a higher fee than the negotiated fee with your insurance company. For instance, the cash fee for a root canal for the region I'm in is about $700 (depending on what tooth). The insurance company in order to offer you a "steal of a deal" forces us to agree to do root canals for $500 (they pay $250, you're responsible for only $250 more) or they won't send patients to us. That means we have to resort to volumes to make up for the difference. On top of the cheaper negotiated fees, we have to spend hours doing paperwork, preauthorizations, billing, etc. My office hours per day is listed as 8, but in truth I have to stay there for an additional 2 hours a day for paperwork. Doctors are the ones who get squeezed here.
Doctors can elect to do one of two things:
1) Bite the bullet, do volumes with the insurance companies at the cheaper fee, but keeping the cash fee that they think is fair the same, or
2) Bite the bullet v2.0, lower the cash fee a bit to make it more attractive to patients so they won't go buy their own insurance and because we don't have to do the paperwork.
In regards to the communist health care system some of the other posts mentioned, that would mean we're compensated even lower than what we get now. There would be more paperwork/bureaucracies to jump through. We would be squeezed even more. No wonder dentists are ranked near the top of the suicidal professionals list every year.
I truly advise everyone to just pay for your services in cash. You would be treated faster (no paperwork to jump through), cheaper (the insurance companies are the middle men), and live longer (you're being treated faster!).
Another related point: There should be some sort of same-as-cash health care money so that if your company offers you money instead of insurance, you can't just use it to buy a new car.
Please enumerate the market preconditions you feel are missing in education and health care. Bonus points if those preconditions aren't missing due to government policies ;)
It took me over an hour on the phone to determine how it worked. If they took the cyst out and it turned out to be an abcess, it would be considered dental, and my medical would not cover it.
If they took the cyst out and it turned out to actually be a cyst or tumor, then it would be considered medical, and my dental would not cover it.
So then I had to take a long arduous journey trying to find someone who was on both my medical AND dental insurance (tough, considering dentists != doctors).
I finally got it out, but it took almost a month from discovery, and I almost got screwed over financially.
I'm lucky in that my family takes in $100K a year. Many other people would simply suffer, or be financially screwed, or medically screwed.
You seem to lack any imagination whatsoever to visualize how things could possible be worse than anyone else. I am a govt employee with a security clearance and had problems getting what could have been a cancer removed in a timely manner. And I'm an in-your-face flex-your-rights kinda guy. Someone timid, poor, and uneducated probably would not have been able to get it done in a timely OR costly manner.
It's no wonder there are millions of Americans not using any health care at all. The system is poised to make getting anything done as painful as possible.
And yea, my $1250 annual dental benefit? Gone in one day. I wont be going to the dentist til 2007.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Well, the study that was linked by this /. article stated that the United States spends twice as much per person than England's socialized medicine, so it's clear that our survival rates should be higher--and they are. So as much as the nanny state supporters and detracters would want to spin this as an issue of socialized medicine, it's not.
This is a lifestyle thing, not a medicine thing.
Personally I suspect our country's culture of individuality--including individual competition in the free market, and our puritan upbringing has created a more stressful environment here in the United States than in England. We keep longer hours, we don't take a break in the afternoon for tea, we get less sleep, and we eat an endless stream of junk food vended from vending machines inbetween fatty foods and a morning breakfast that was ideal for farm hands who worked back-breaking labor every day but is about a thousand calories too much for an office worker stuck in front of a desk.
What few of us are in good shape squeeze in a workout at a crowded gym or run in circles around a crowded track, and even when we relax we are constantly on the go, going somewhere, doing something, buying reminders of our trip. We've become a nation of ADDs, and the stress is killing us.
I heard that stress and a lack of sleep along with bad diet contributes to chronic health problems. This strikes me as more evidence that our collective nation-wide stress and lack of sleep is contributing to nation-wide chronic health problems.
The only thing we need now is a follow-up study to study lifestyle factors such as hours of sleep, relative stress, and quality of food eaten by both nations to see if this is in fact the problem.
I'm no fan of the telecoms, or the way they are regulated, or the way they buy politicians. It sucks. But you can't honestly be suggesting that telecommunications hasn't become both cheaper and better in the last decade can you?
It's ultrapasteurized and in a drygoods aisle of the market. You can find "boutique" refrigerated milk, but by no means everywhere.
Man, you really need that seminar!
You're right, but for different reasons -- the twisted economics of private health care in the U.S. are such that insurance companies run like hell away from anyone who is sick.
When you see health plans marketed here in the States, it's done by showing healthy, happy people, not showing sick people receiving good health care. That's because insurers want to recruit customers who are in good health and leave those with diabetes or other chronic conditions for some other company. It's like a game of hot potato: who gets stuck with all of the diabetics and their lifelong health problems?
As for health care being a societal issue, that's right on. Some people can take action to be healthy and remain that way, and others may take action but still wind up getting heart disease or diabetes because of family history, etc. The people who live healthy lives and stay healthy, as well as the people who live less healthy lifestyles but still wind up not getting diseases -- these are the people who "pay" for the people unfortunate enough to get sick. The healthy peoples' low costs subsidize the costs of those who wind up getting sick. In a nationalized health care system, those costs are spread out over the entire society, and it's a wash overall.
In a private system, it's in the interests of insurers to seek out only the people who don't get sick -- also known as people without pre-existing conditions (those who haven't already been sick). Those with pre-existing conditions (diabetics) or those at risk for health problems (smokers, older people, etc.) are passed up, or charged far higher premiums, essentially locking them out of health care coverage if they aren't covered through their employer.
Here's an interesting factor that would be very, very difficult to isolate, but that may be having an effect on health in the U.S. vs. the U.K. -- how many Americans are staying in stressful, underpaid, overworked jobs because they don't want to lose their health coverage? Seriously, that's one of the top priorities for basically anyone here, whether they can keep their health coverage or not. If big employers like General Motors or Ford or Boeing start to phase out health coverage because of the cost it adds to their products, it's going to start to get even worse for us.
Not that it isn't already bad -- this is National Cover the Uninsured Week here, which is a good time to remind everyone of the following:
* There are 46 million people in the U.S. without insurance (about 20 percent of the population).
* The country spends more than 20 percent of its GDP on health expenditures.
* We spend more per person on health care than most industrialized nations, and despite our "top of the line" care and technology, we have significantly lower indicators or health than most of those nations.
* Hospitals (emergency rooms in particular) that provide charity care are becoming the first point of contact for many people who are uninsured, which is making it hard for some hospitals to stay financially solvent.
It's not at all an exaggeration to say our health care system is in a crisis right now.
It's not clear, but while the study appears well-constructed in terms of controlling for different demographic factors, but did they control for environmental disparities? Could different levels of environmental pollution between the US and UK explain at least some of the results?
-- Cerebus
Condition number one: That the consumer has a choice. If you are run over by a car and are bleeding to death, do you shop around to find the cheapest surplier of health-care?
Condition number two: That health is a commodety that only has value for the individual consumer. Since disease are contaguous other people has vested interest in keeping people around them healthy. The free market fails to address this.
Condition number three: That the service is evaluable. Can you tell who good a service you get in a hospital? Or are you more likely to look at how nice it looks, forcing hospitals to waste money one other things that their primary service?
Conditions.... Well, I am just getting started, please continue yourself. Like highways and other infrastructure, healthcare just doesn't fit a free market model in any way.
Another interesting look at declining consumer prices comes from looking at the 1975 Sears catalog, both in terms of real dollars and in terms of how long someone would have to work to be able to afford items then and now.
The reason why is two-fold. On one hand we have a horrible medicine company who refuses to look towards any cures they themselves did not develop and towards any long term health care that will bolster the immune system. Khemotherapy, antibiotics and other treatments do more damage then good in a long term basis since they do destroy our immune system or the 5 pounds of bacteria we SHOULD have in our stomach that leads to yeast infections, which leads to retardation and a lower immune system.
Our other problem is our crops. Besides irradiation, which thanks to Bill Clinton can be done to fruit and vegatables without consumer knowledge, that destroys the enzymes in fruits and vegatables (/makes them unusable by our bodies) we also have nitrate in our soil instead of naturally grown fertizilier (i.e. feecees and dead animals) which has been sold to the american public for fucking lawns (the devil! rebel against your suburban conformity! Your lawn serves no uses unless your a mansion dwelling farmer in England!) and un-edible druit bearing plants (like roses and flowers). The nitrate does not put the stuff back into the food that we need (minerals, etc...). Plus I believe the UK more openely accepts natural medicine.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Because it is a right. A civilised society is one which looks after its members.
So let's turn the question around. What gives you the impression that healthcare is a privilege?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Actually, by eating them you become more "animalistic", because their energy is going through your body.
So eat vegetarian and be like a vegetable!
Same logic as your off the wall statement.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
We're similar to bears, racoons, coyotes, and a number of other predators in that respect.
None of these animals would normally be classified as predators. They are scavangers capable of opportunistic predation, just like us. Polar bears are pretty much exclusively predatory, but black bears are pretty flexible with regard to lifestyle. I don't know if they're actually carrion-eaters, so "scavenger" might not quite fit, but they are certainly not exclusively predatory in the way big cats are, for example.
There have been suggestions that being omniverous scavengers was significant in the development of human intelligence--lots of choices to be made, lots of judgment calls, lots of flexibility to cope with. Raccoons are pretty similar to us in this regard--able to eat berries, willing to eat dead animals, and certainly willing and able to kill for food when the opportunity presents itself.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
"Twat" "idiotic" "fuck" "half-wit".....
The Ad Hominem argument.
The last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt.
Usually a sure sign someone's lost a debate.
I know this is futile, but I'll say it anyway....
Address the argument, not the arguer, simply because they don't mollify your ego by agreeing with your opinions.
Resorting to low abuse of this sort demeans you, not me.
I'm still waiting for your explanation as to why anarchy is a Good Idea. I won't hold my breath....
You may actually mean two things here. One is the choice of whether to seek a service or not. The other is the choice of where to seek that service. Clearly we have markets in things that are non-optional (food). So that can't be what you mean. The other is the choice of where to seek service. Clearly there are some examples in health care where the consumer is in no condition to make a choice (as the severe car accident you posit). But in the vast majority of health consumption, the consumer has a lot of choice. Even with acute things, like heart attacks, the consumers has a lot of choice. I know that sounds counter intuitive, but local to where I am hospitals are advertising their heart emergency centers in a play to pursuade people having cardiac emergencies (heart attacks) to come to them, rather than other hospitals in the area. I would say that patients could have quite substantial choice in a market health care system.
To this I counter: sanitation and plumbing. There is a fairly good case to be made that modern sanitation and plumbing contribute more to public health than modern health care. Yet we amazingly have a market in plumbers and plumbing supplies. True, I am required to have a working toilet in my business or domicile, and forbidden from having an outhouse, but that is not accomplished through government sponsored plumbing, nor can I get my plumbing done with tax free dollars through my employer. True, setting policy and standards for certain kinds of medical treatment may be a public health issue, but the market has proven perfectly capable of providing for those standards in other areas.
Again, I must appeal to advertising. I have actually been hearing adds for the local emergency cardio center that tout research on health outcomes, etc. If you wander into the public health realm you discover there is good hard data on error rates, hospital infection rates, etc. Would the creature comforts also get better, possibly. But I think you would also see increased data to help people evaluate the services rendered. Would it be perfect, no. But it would be a lot better than it is now. If the service is evaluable at all, it should be evaluable to consumers. If it's not, then providers will compete on other factors (patient comforts, price, etc).
Finally, look at eye surgery as an example of markets in medicine working very well. The proceedures keep getting better and better and cheaper and cheaper (exactly as one would expect in a health market).The insurance companies are an unnecessary middleman, a bureaucracy that that eats money like a black hole. Money that could be spent on providing the actual healthcare.
OK, so we cut out the middleman. No middleman allowed, including any government agency playing the same role. Now: you take the same dollars you'd normally use to pay your healthcare premium at work (don't forget the larger portion that your employer pays!), and use that money instead directly for healthcare, right? Great! No middleman!
Oops, you just put your head through the windshield of your car. You'll be needing three weeks in the hospital, and you'll be paying for the attentive services of a couple dozen people for three weeks, many drugs, supplies, and the maintained floorspace and services of the hospital. Total tab in the many thousands of dollars. Congratulatios: with no middleman managing a larger group of similar accounts and taking the financial risks for you, you're now bankrupt. Yes, it's much better not to have those pesky, deep-pocketed insurance companies around.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
from the post:
>> but it had been assumed that minorities
yeah, it must be those dirty minorities.
do the reporters think that only caucasians are reading their report?
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Just as I wouldn't buy sled dogs at a car dealership, I wouldn't look for diabetes prevention at a hospital. Try a gym.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
But you run into the same fundamental problem. Healthy people can afford to get the limited medical care that they need. Sick people cannot afford to get the large amount of medical care that they need. If you look at the cost of health care, what is charged to insurance companies and what is charged to the uninsured, you get a sense of what the real prices are.
Let's say you need a kidney transplant. This is an expensive procedure no matter how competitive a doctor is willing to be. It requires multiple doctors and nurses, hospital facilities, pharmaceuticals, etc. It is something that an average person cannot afford no matter how much the doctors are competing for your dollar. So then wealthy people will be able to get those procedures as they can now, and the poor will get screwed, as they do now.
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A society of people that care for each other will be a better society than one with the attitude you profess. Better meaning a stronger society, a far more bearable society and a society in which intelligent people wish to remain, rather than go next door. You might wish to remain in a society in which your daughter was left to die in agony, but I would happily take my life and ability elsewhere. On the specifics of cancer, the burden of treating or looking after a sufferer is minimal when shared by society. The benefits to every individual in a society behaving in such a way outweigh the costs to such an individual.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I've never understood the (frequently European) mindset that when there is a possibility of making money, people instantly turn completely evil and ruthless. Do imagine hospital CEO's sitting around thinking how they can make people sick to get more money out of them?
It's not about evil, it's about the bottom line. CEO's have to turn a profit that is as good or better than the market performance. So, obviously, they will look at the most profitable ways of doing that. Treating a disease instead of curing it is generally more profitable, so more effort goes into the r&d of drugs that treat instead of cure.
If a CEO does not turn a profit because he "is a good guy", he is guaranteed to be fired by the board/shareholders. Shareholders are only interested in ROI. When was the last time you heard someone say "you know, I've got shares in Xyzzy, and they're turning a loss, but they do so many charitable works, so I'm buying some more stock!"? It just doesn't work that way.
If you look at medicare, about 2% of expenditures are on overhead. If you look at private health care it's about 20-25%. Now granted medicare has less people in it at a higher outlay per person (because it's old people). So that skews the value of that statistic a bit.
But if you think about it, it makes sense that medicare would be more efficient in the long run if it was the only game in town. You'd have one set of paperwork to do for the one insurer that exists. You'd have less bureaucracy overall because, lacking a profit motive, they aren't as fixated on cutting costs and rejecting claims. Being that we'd all be in the same boat, we'd all have motivation to make sure it was being run right by our government.
In the end, all countries that have single payer systems pay less per person for their healthcare and the outcomes are better. So why is it even debatable? We seem to have this fixation in this country that private solutions are always better than government solutions, but there are certain things that are not readily solved by private companies. In a market that is innately competitive, private management is best. But health care is innately uncompetitive.
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Some Facts
US Population: 298,444,215. UK Population: 60,609,153. Actual proportionality k used to accomodate for increased error rates based on population size: None. I thumbed through a copy of JAMA at the library, and this study is horrible horrible horrible in terms of methodologies. And while the conclusions might be true, they might very well not be true; this study isn't a good indicator either way.
Heck why stop there? why pay taxes? Let's privatize security, national defense, municipal services etc. I think there was a word for such a society. It was called hmmm F-E-U-D-A-L-I-S-M. Do you remember what that is moron?
Doctor: Are you an alcoholic?
Me: No, I'm English!
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Check the facts
& pagesize=20&sort=Country
http://www.os-connect.com/pop/p4.asp?whichpage=11
"You'd have a hard time making an argument that health care in the USA is better than Cuba, if you used normal markers of health, like life expectancy, infant mortality, sick days, etc."
Yeah, it's stunningly difficult to look at numbers and tell which is larger. Apparently that's why you didn't bother before posting.
Cuba's life expectancy- Lower than the US
Cuba's unfant mortality- higher than the US
Sick days simply do not enter the argument, unless you can accurately track who is really sick and who is playing hooky.
So, tell us please, why it's so hard to look at facts and read them? Tell us how you arrived at conclusions that are demonstrably wrong?
Why it's the responsibility of healthy individuals to subsidize your illness?
I dunno. Why don't you ask Aetna or Humana or United Healthcare? After all thats what THEY do.
Do you just not realize that your privatized insurance and his socialist insurance are the same shared hallucination?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is what happens when illiterate boobs with no understanding of history are allowed to vote. They have no idea society has already struggled through all of these crises and realized working together is the better option. Privatized security whether from criminal action or from disease is not workable in the long run. If you want to see what privatized security looks like take a look at africa, without the concept of a nation state all you have are a series of private security/gangs running around looking out solely for themselves and only leads to the overall degradation of the standard of living in the majority of the african continent. This is why all successful countries have national militaries. A patient should be allowed to die if he/she so choses but there should never be a revocation of the social contract that we all stand together through thick and thin because we are americans. The biggest problem I think is that american public schools never teach simple morality tales to kids. Something as simple as aesop's fables would do. I remember a simple lesson I learned as a kid
United we stand, divided we fall.
It was simply taught, the teacher asked us to break some sticks individually then she tied another bundle together and asked us to take a shot.
I know a few people whose entire choice of career has been dictated by the fact that they live in the US, and have a health condition which means that they must work for a large company or they simply can't get health coverage. I can only begin to explain how medieval that seems to the rest of the Western world.
Try living on the povery line and making a choice between getting that lump looked at or eating for a month. I know what most people are forced to choose in your so called land of the free...
That lump is generally just a bit of haggis stuck to your throat.
Oh wait, the other land of the free?
a) An emergency room visit doesn't solve a chronic health condition.
b) There are hospitals in the US that are shutting down their emerg wings because of the costs incurred by the very law you're citing.
I maintain that Americans are not actually more sick than residents of other countries, but that routine conditions that are regular and normal (colds in the winter, allergies in the spring, headaches, etc) are paperworked into being 'sick' and treated medically, because there is more profit in doing so.
Some of the people who did the study thought the same thing, so they switched from self-reporting to biological things that could be measured and found that americans are actually more sick... At least that is what they said on NPR this morning...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
There's a lot of comments on this story, and my comments will probably get buried under the load of other comments... but I feel I have to comment as a British citizen living in the US for the last 11 years.
My unscientific view is that there may be something in upbringing, or there may be something genetic that's not being taken into account in this study. Despite the fact that the study made a point of the fact that it excluded certain races the simple fact that the US is a literal melting pot of cultures throws a variable into the mix that I don't think has been considered. We don't know historically how healthy the Native American people were. Today's native Americans aren't "pure", but neither are the "White" Americans. Almost everyone I know (this is living in the midwest) can trace some native American heritage in their genetic makeup, whereas I'd hazard to guess that most British people wouldn't. This does throw in a genetic possibility in the occurrences of cancer for example. We don't know how prevalent cancer was in old native populations... we just don't have that data.
I know my example is not very scientific, but I have lived in America for 11 years now. That means that I've had enough time now to "go native" and live a lifestyle that isn't very different from that of my peers (though does sometimes seem a little different in subtle ways because of ingrained ideals that I can trace to my childhood). I don't think I eat significantly differently from my peers, though I do often eat less. I don't drink any more or less than most of my peers, and I live in the same areas, drive the same roads... hell I even eat the same Mississippi river catfish that we catch on a Saturday afternoon on occasion.
What do I observe? Despite living a very similar lifestyle, I am a lot healthier than my peers. Most people my age are overweight. While I'm not thin either, I have only once in my life gotten to the point I considered myself obese (but my doctor said I was just overweight)... and I put myself on a strict diet. A cultural thing? Perhaps. Most of my peers also are losing their hair (I'm 33 and still have a full head of hair) or going grey. Is this a symptom of a diet/exercise problem... or something different in their genetic makeup? I noted when I returned to England last year for a vacation, my friends I met up with were mostly in much the same condition as me. Compared to my American friends we would all have been considered significantly healthier.
Now, please note that I don't make any special efforts to stay fit. Oh, I go out to the gym once or twice a week but sometimes it will be weeks between visits because of my work or home life. I eat at the same places as my peers and colleagues, and don't necessarily order anything different. I probably do cook at home on the weekends more than most of my peers, but that's just because I enjoy making good dinners completely from scratch (something few people do; they usually buy pre-packaged goods at the store and call that "home cooking").
To extend my unscientific viewpoint further I have two children. My eldest is my step-daughter... her parents are both American. I also have a son who's mine. The health differences between my two children couldn't be greater. While they both eat the same, and my daughter is not fat (actually she's very slim), she has bad teeth and frequent health problems she's had her entire life. Maybe she was just unlucky, but my son couldn't be more different. He's healthy as a horse... strong and active. The only time I can remember ever having to take him to the emergency room was when he decided that since he had managed to lock himself in his room and couldn't open the door, a second floor window would make an appropriate exit. Now again, there's no difference in diet between both kids... and they do share at least 50% of the genes (my wife), but something in there is very different which results in both of them having significantly different health.
I know none of this is very scientific, but I feel th
The bank you've placed your saving in could collapse.
My bank accounts are insured. The bulk of my savings is in more vulnerable accounts, though (stock investments), so they're at risk. But I don't actually need that money to live on, that's just for retirement.
What if you were involved in an accident and were sued?
I have insurance for that.
How about your wife files for divorce, gets a good lawyer and takes you for every penny?
Prenup covers that.
What if you sucumb to a long term illness?
My health insurance covers illnesses long or short-term as long as I pay the premiums, and I have long-term illness and disability insurance to make sure I can.
Do you believe your insurance company wouldn't try to drop you?
Healthcare insurance can't drop you for any reason other than non-payment of premiums, or fraud. Even if it's through your employer, and you lose your job, you can continue the coverage by paying the premiums yourself.
Really, it is possible to plan ahead for these things.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
the doctor is going to figure that he needs $450.00/hr to break even, that's Malpractice insurance (probably a third of the fee), his salary, staff's salary, depreciation on capital assets, and building and utilities; /450/hr = .22 hr * 60 min = 13 minute office call. In my last office call, the Dr. charged 125.00 + 37.50 , I paid a $25.00 copay, the insurance paid $37.50 + 15.00 and Dr wrote-off $85.00; then AFLAK send me a check for $25.00 because I got preventative treatment, a flu shot!
so 125.00 * 80% ( what your insurance calls "usual and customary fee")= $100.00
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Actually, in many cases it does. Sure lots of people have strong morals that cause them to turn down money and advancement to do what they believe is right. Maybe even most of them do. But SOME of them don't. Naturally those are going to be the ones who tend to get more money and advancement than average, which tends to put them in charge. I've just watched it happen, with disastrous results.
Greed makes people compromise on their morals. It's an instinctual thing. The worst person to make dictator is usually the one who WANTS to be dictator.
At the same time, I doubt that greed is directly responsible via poor hospitals and doctors for the results of this study. More likely it's poor lifestyle coupled with lack of skills and inability to pay for both better lifestyle and health care.
How many US schools have mandatory home ec programs these days? How many US parents have the time to either cook for their families or teach their kids to cook?
It is illegal to turn away people in "dire need" from emergency rooms in the US. It has been that way for some time, and the law is adhered to very strictly.
This is not a good thing, for two reasons.
1. There is no accompanying law to pick up the tab for the poor who use this service, and no collection agency can collect when there is no money to start with. It is NOT an equivalent to the UK system-- it is in fact forcing a private industry to subsidize public healthcare.
2. There is no nationwide system (private or otherwise) to give the poor general care. Without family doctors, guess where they take their sniffles, scrapes, and headaches? Sometimes, they even call an ambulance for these trifles because they don't have their own transportation.
The way our system is set up forces ERs to operate at a loss, drives the poor and uninsured to waste ER time. Sure, they're getting treated, but at dramatic cost to the efficacy of our emergency rooms for treating actual emergencies, including those of both the wealthy AND the poor.
It would cost us less to pay for their checkups than it does to pay for similar services rendered by an ER, and it would free the ER to treat genuine emergencies.
We should consider the preventative side when we look at how sick America is. We are one of the few industrialized countries whose policy says "first put the product on the market, then remove it only if proven damaging to public health." In most other countries, if there are concerns for health, products are kept off the market until proven safe. A few examples: (1) new-car smell sprays are still legal here - they use toluene (the source of actual new car smell), a known carcinogen. (2) our "wrinkle free low maintenance" fabrices encorporate Teflon, whose production byproducts (specifically, PFOA) are water soluble and suspected carcinogens. This cautious attitude towards chemical exposure isn't hyper sensitivity -- it's common sense that other countries follow and America misses.
After a bout of this years upper respiratory virus lasting for 3 weeks, left me sicker and with many additional symptoms of things having gone awry, I landed in a hospital ER with a massive hypertensive event (thought by admitting physicians to suggest I was stroking out), and four more days of treatment which I would NOT countenance for my cats, I was informed by a Dr. whom I had never met, let alone been treated by, that the GOOD NEWS was that I had a four centimeter brain tumor. When I had the temerity to ask if I dared inquire what the bad news was, he simply continued his scripted next thoughts which were the itemization of the drugs he was prescribing, while edging toward the door and disappearing down the hall to his next victim...oops! I meant patient.
/. Journal(this is an excerpt from an entry I've been to embarrassd too post cuz ..well I DO GO On... like a teenie bopper diary. But what the hay! This is where I've hung out nearly every day for pushing 10 years now and the worst you all can do is think I'm a crazy old woman, which I've already coped to. So... What the hell? I have an excuse! I have a brain Tumor! Laff! It's my version of a joke.
/. For keeping me informed thru articles, links, who's who, what's up and where to find what I need, when I need it!
Exit stage left (the patient)! Upon arrival home, I had several good boo hoo, poor pity me episodes and then HIT GOOGLE and the INTERNET! Had I not been educated by 25 years of exposure to the birth of the Internet and Information Technology by some pretty bright and frankly ornery and testosterone driven young hackers, crackers, coders, developers, early adaptors etc., I would probably still be sniveling and making arrangements with the local mortuary for my immediate demise. As it stands to date, I obviously will be meeting up with said folks sooner or later but it won't be from being scared to death over this event and I may not know all the answers necessary to deal with this issue yet but sure know a hell of a lot more about it then the fools who informed me of the condition. Furthermore, I know a hell of a lot more of how to get the accurate information, which does not rely on being educated by Drug Company Reps IE SALESMEN, unlike the damn fool Doctors I have had to deal with the last few years.
End Rant! Begin apology: For using my
One more time! Thanks to all you unknowing teachers out there in cyberspace and Thank you
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Jeez, I'm not reading all these, though a lot of you seem spot-on, with the fact that Americans don't get as much vacation time. However, I have another speculation which a) may have been mentioned by someone already, and b) is entirely speculation based on my place as an American, and I have no clue how this relates to countries in Europe, so argue about it all you want but don't pick on me for acting like I know something about countries I have never even visited, b/c I'm so not.
Do you think we try to live in a more sterile environment than other nations? We sterilize every damn thing that even comes close to us or our children, we hardly let our kids play outside anymore (at least not as much as we used to - kids don't even get recess anymore, right?) I've seen my cousins freak out that their kids touched a worm or mud or something (and not just b/c they'd bring it into the house), but b/c it's "full of germs". Moms may also say the same things about why they won't let their kids have pets. Isn't this how people become allergic to things (generally?) By not being exposed to it in childhood? We take those stupid pills that are supposed to keep us from getting a cold, b/c God forbid we miss a day of work. For a nation that gets sick all the damn time, we sure think that getting a little cold is a horrible thing.
I had also read that there are cancer-causing agents in everything we have - from our sheets, clothes, anything plastic, not to mention housecleaners and those horrible sprays that people spray in every room of the house (jeez that drives me nuts.) We want a sterile, artificial environment in which to live, but b/c this is impossible, we are lowering our ability to fight sickness (but not necessarily cancer) when we do get sick. I wonder how large the housecleaner aisle has gotten in recent years. They have a spray for everything.
Yes, it is a diacritic. More specifically it is also a diaresis.
> What's wrong is people like yourself who continually insist that others bear the burden for her.
Then leave this country. Societies are founded on, among other things, mutual aid. If you don't want to pay, I don't want to think about having to pay for you either. Take off, get out of the social contract, it's all in your power. Go.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Doctor's don't solve chronic health conditions either, they just keep one barely alive.
Like "fixing" a car with a broken cooling system by stopping for 30 minutes and pouring water on the engine every 20 miles.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
For example, many people fondly remember the days during the 1950s when you could purchase a car for ~$1,000, versus a $21,000 average selling price today. However the $1,000 figure from 1955 is not quality-adjusted. Cars back then needed repair several times per year and lasted about 90,000 miles; cars today need repair about once every 4 years and last about 180,000 miles. So, quality-adjusted, the price of a car in 1955 was probably ~$3000 which is more than $21,000 in y2006 dollars.
The Sam's Club 2% milk in gallon jugs I buy in Arizona lasts 2 weeks easily. The doorstep delivered, non-homogenized milk I used to get in UK would last 3 days, at which point the fat at the top was yellow cream. On the fourth day, sour.
Note that having for profit entitys in the market does'nt prevent non-profits from playing. They should be at an competative advantage. But somehow they always seem to become bloated inefficent featherbeds staffed by powerfull peoples nieces/nephews.
What we should do is require American drug companies give the best deal they give to overseas socialized medical systems to American consumers. That will prevent them from selling to the likes of Canada at marginal cost because all their fixed costs are paid by Americans. If the Canadians move forward with their threat to invalidate medical patents because their sweatheart deals are over we just take them to the WTO.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So with that attitude, we shouldn't be spending funds on people when they get into car accidents, need medical care for disabilities or even complications from childbirth. If they survive on their own then great, otherwise well thanks for trying.
Your 'leave them to the wolves' attitude is disgusting.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I've never understood the (frequently American) mindset that when things are obviously broken it's socially unacceptable to fix it if someone is making money out of the status quo.
So why ignore the obvious? If American healthcare is so broken, why are cancer survival rates almost uniformly higher (and usually by a good %) than in Europe? Look it up, the data is there.
"They think that Hitlers first name was George."
Sure. George 'Dubya' Hitler.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I thought one of the more interesting cultural disconnects was the fact that city/suburb dwellers in both the North and the South acted this way, while it was typically the rural folk (aka, redneck, hick, and so forth...) who were perfectly nice and helpful. In rural Appalachia, people offered me rides without me asking. In the North, you could see the look of horror on their faces as they swerved to avoid my deadly, stinky hitchiker thumb. Oh yeah, and in the North, hitchhiking is illegal. WTF?! (Disclaimer: I am a northerner living in Boston)
I attempted to find a route to ride my bike a measly four miles to work. Forget about it. I would die under the wheels of some irritated middle-aged woman who is drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, and talking on her cellphone. Not to mention the tunnels, highway overpasses, etc. Pedestrians aren't even an afterthought.
Well, I didn't do any research, I just pulled up some random guesses myself of prices I've personally observed to be rising and not be in decline, as you claim. Although I may not have adjusted for inflation in my head properly. ;)
For coffee, I wasn't thinking of buying it in bulk since I don't drink coffee. I was thinking of the exorbitant prices that places like starbucks and borders charge for a cup. Admittedly, though, that growth might also have to do with trendiness.
The second google result for "average book prices" is a link to the school library journal, which seems a reasonable source:
"This year's increases reflect a 25-year trend of escalating book prices. Case in point: from 1990 to 1995, average book prices jumped by 9.5 percent; from 1995 to 2000, they increased by 12.3 percent; and from 2000 to 2005, the increase was even steeper, 14.4 percent. Overall, we have seen book prices increase by more than 35 percent in the last 20 years."
Although these price increases are a lot higher than your anecdotal example, it actually doesn't look too far from the inflation rate.
I can't find data on video games. Maybe games themselves haven't gone up so much, but the consoles themselves have certainly shot up. The xbox 360 costs what? $400? and your nintendo in 90s cost what? $100?
So justify it. And do so without emotionally charged arguments, because we all know it is a terrible thing when a loved one gets cancer. That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with forcing me to pay for her care.
Alright. You really want the cold, hard, rational argument for altruism. Fortunately, you've handed us one of the best cases for such an argument.
The costs for treating and curing cancer are enormous. Chemo costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend your life for a few years. Chances are really good that you can't afford those drugs as a sudden expense if you found out you had cancer today. This is true for many medical conditions. I had to have my gallbladder removed, and the total bill was $15,000 to my insurance company. An expense like that (due within a few months of it being incurred) would have killed me financially at the time.
So, it is in your best interest to pay a small fee every month to cover the costs of everyone else who is sick with the agreement that if you get sick, everyone else will cover your costs. This is the selfishly rational argument for altruism at its finest. You act as part of a group to help individuals face burdens that they cannot bear alone because they will be there for you should you face a burden that you cannot bear alone. It's why you help friends move; it's why you do weight lifting with a spotter; and it's why you pay for insurance right now.
That's right -- that's what insurance is at its core. You pay a monthy premium that amortizes the predicted average health costs you are likely to incur in your life which goes straight into paying for the care of others. Chances are that right now you aren't sick, but you're paying for the welfare of others. You do this because when your time comes around, others will pay for your well-being.
The average person will end up paying more into insurance than they will get back even with non-profit insurance. Many of us will die in a manner that is swift and incurable; we will not recoup the loss of money that went to pay for people put on life-support and expensive drugs. However, it's to our benefit to take the risk and put the money into the fund because there's always the chance that it will be we who are saved by a procedure we can't afford.
That's it: The rational argument for paying for others is at core that they will pay for you in a time when you cannot cover it yourself.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you have a pre-diabetic condition (read you are a fat ass) and need someone to tell you that you will have better health if you lose some weight and get some exercise you are too stupid to live. Please die sooner rather then later.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Interestingly, not an uncommon typo. Or should that be a freudian slip of the fingers? Google reports about 504,000 for "pubic healthcare". Here's their first search result for example:
In the old days of newspaper typesetting, you'd suspect the compositors of having a bit of fun.
Truely private healthcare would be doctors competeing for cash paying customers having to match their rates to what people can actualy afford rather than what they can get out of insurance companies.
I think you misunderstand the free market. Insurance companies are a free market institution. They are customers pooling their resources and hedging their bets against having to personally pay for healthcare costs instanaeously and without sufficient savings which could take nearly a lifetime to build up (if possible) for some procedures. Insurance companies are like a reverse lottery -- you pay in in the hopes of not having to get a pay out. They're a risk mitigation strategy, kind of like putting money into bonds or commodities just in case the stock market tanks.
A free market would not eliminate insurance in the slightest. You'd have to outlaw it, and then that regulation would make it hardly a free market at the point.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Still even Heffis are better then Vegimite.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
First of all, yes, doctors help with chronic health conditions... chronic doesn't mean "almost dead". It means persistent. A doctor can assist in identifying medications, lifestyle changes, and so forth, which can assist in such conditions.
Second, way to completely miss my other, I think more important point, that being that market forces, you know, that almight invisible hand that capitalists love to worship, dictate that emergency rooms should be shut down because they aren't profitable.
Don't sweat it if you don't do the inflation properly in your head, neither do I :) I use this calculator.
So, using this, what costs $100 in 1985 cost $177.47 in 2005. Or in other words, if nominal book prices have gone up 35% in that last 20 years, they have declined in real price.
Consoles very well may be more expensive, I don't honestly remember what the nintendo cost, but $100 sounds about right. The point is, a great many things that you *perceive* to be more expensive are actually less expensive in real terms. Even with the consoles, you get a far better product.
I'm sure most people use very little insurance for the first 3/4 of their life. Insurance companies want to insure these people then cut them once they're no longer profitable to insure. That is wrong.
Under a free market system that is right. If insurance companies spend more than they make they will go out of buisness.
I think this also fits with the car insurance analogy, I have heard that some of the insurance companies that claim to offer the lowest price minimum coverage drop you after the first accident.
To survive an insurance company needs to make more then they spend, which is why insurance polices cover specific topics.
there is a reason flood insurance is different then homeowners insurance. I have not been to Denver, but I imagine there is probably little need for flood insurance for a city that is a mile above sea level. I have not been to new orleans either, but I imagine there is a greater need for flood insurance in a city built below sea level.
In general insurance is probably like every other buisness. If you pay more you are likely too get more, or if that does not provide enough there is the possibility that you switch to an ala carte system where you buy everything individually.
I recomend a 22 (for target practice), a 12 guage (for home defense), a high power rifle (for hunting and if the shit hits the fan) and a quality handgun in the calibur of your choice (target practice and shit hitting fan). You could do worse then selecting an AR-7, a remington 12 guage pump, a M1 rifle and a SIG in .40 cal.
Also consider black powder as the seasons are much longer (for hunting outside the no doubt overhunted ancestral area).
BTW an unlimited supply of food and no preditors is heaven to a cow, pig or chicken (ummm pig).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You need to go back to school and learn the difference between feudalism and anarchy.
Feudalism essentially a pyramid scheme of government, where successivly larger landowners gives fealty/loyalty to the next bigger one, promising to provide troops and support when asked.
You're talking about anarchy, where there's no government.
As for privatizing municipal services, what's wrong with that? I mean, a coop is a private company, technically. What's wrong with having private companies haul garbage, provide phone service, etc...?
I don't read AC A human right
To this I counter: sanitation and plumbing.
Find us a sewer system built entirely without government intervention. That means no privatized, pre-existing, municipal systems, no government loans, no use of governmet force to acquire rights to lay pipe through private property without compensation, etc.
Also, explain how to give coverage to the poor sectors of society, maintain the system, and earn a profit for investors. Please provide numbers.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I know your ideology tells you this must be so, but we have a free market for health care here in the US, and it sucks.
It does? If the other poster had been in the US, and had health insurance, he would have received much better care in every one of those cases. Medical care here is expensive, but quick and generally of very high quality.
Both systems have their problems. The free market approach provides fast and excellent care for the majority, and for those who have acute and severe conditions, but leaves the poor without much in the way of preventive care, or care for chronic conditions. Actually, thanks to medicaid, the very poor get good care as well. It's the working lower class that gets shafted. The tax-funded approach provides mediocre care for everyone, including most of those who would could afford good care in the US.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Keep that flashlight away from the tuna, you'll ruin it.
Based on you cannines comment you certainly do like to participate in ignorance. Just the kind of ignorance that prevails in your social circle.
BTW vegetarians universally stink to heaven.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Both of my parents are teachers, and my sister is a teacher. You are absolutely correct.
The problem with education is the what passes for parenting today and the willingness of parents to fight to destroy teachers' careers rather than face up to the fact that their kid might be a little monster. My mom has to deal with this sort of nonsense ALL THE TIME from my her school's worthless community. Oh, and the petty interpersonal politics between teachers and the little martinets that aim to be school administrators doesn't help either.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Now THAT was informative. Thank you, seriously. Please excuse me if at some point in the future I mistakenly refer to the UK, England, or Great Britain by the wrong name. Likewise, I will excuse those who refer to USA as 'America' (which includes Canada, Mexico and all the countries in Central and South America). In the USA 'America' is generally accepted as a synonym for 'USA', but I can understand the offense taken by those living in other countries in the Americas when it is used as such, or when 'American' is used to mean of or from the USA. Still, I promise never to call anyone an idiot for referring to the USA as 'America'. That would just be rude. I might explain the difference, much like you did (I appreciate that). I wouldn't call anyone an idiot though, as did the AC to whom my I replied. That having been said, I'm not even the one who called the UK Britain. I was just commenting on the uselessness of a reply that did nothing but call the offenders idiots as opposed to explaining the difference.
If you can't just be yourself, then be more like me, ok?
We are much less homogenious then the 'rest of the world'.
I'd add that europes culture is no more diverse then the USAs. (Bleeding 'Watney's Red Barrel'.) Europeans don't understand just how fricking big the USA is.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is happening right now to about tens of millions of Americans.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I've also travelled quite a bit through Europe with tour groups and I have always noticed that while people from other countries embraced the cultural differences and wanted to sample new foods, the Americans generally couldn't wait to go trotting off to the McDonalds or KFC.
...Up until the bland facelessness of Starbucks screwed me out of that goal.
Damnation, that drove me completely crazy when I spent 3 weeks in Japan back for a class back in 2000! I had an explicit goal when I was there to never eat anything that I could easily get in America. I was essentially forced when hanging out with some classmates to go to places like McDonald's, KFC, and Starbucks and had to change my goal to always getting something that I couldn't get in America at everyplace.
(That said, KFC makes a delicious curry side dish, the Teriyaki Burger is kind of neat, and I really loved McDonald's "Shakashaka Poteto" which was french fries with a flavor packet, available in curry and umeboshi, and a bag to shake it all up in.)
Meanwhile, after a single week, some of the other students were whining about how they couldn't wait to get back to America and go to Pizza Hut. I just couldn't believe it. What's the point in going to a foreign country where you don't like the food?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
OK let me tell you a story of my last experience with the NHS, last year (July) I had an accident in a lane and came off my motorcycle, and drove into a hedge luckily the soft hedge took most of the 40-60mph impact and so all i ended up with were bruises and a completely and utterly mangled wrist. After getting help and going to my nearest A&E, I was assessed and sent straight through as an emergency patient (apparently your wrist should not look like a hump backed bridge) after sitting down for ten minutes i was seen given a pain killer x rayed and asked to wait (total time on a Sunday night 2 hours waiting) the sent up to a ward. Next day seen by a new doctor reassessed and placed on a waiting list, it took two days for my non emergency operation to happen, yes that's right two days but since I had no school or work to do I was happy to wait, probably saying that to the surgeon wasn't the best of ideas. The surgeon (head surgeon there) decided rather than give me a cheap fix, being a young man he would go to excessive lengths to make sure I could use my hand quickly and would gain maximum mobility out of my hand. The result was a 5 inch flexible bar. Within two weeks I was back at work using my wrist booking in physical therapy sessions if and when I needed them. My dad was seen, operated and in a ward 3 hours after going in A&E with a swollen appendix. The NHS does work and it works well but there are two problems to it, firstly waste of time patients, while i was waiting for my Xrays a work colleague turned up with sun burnt legs, she was worried she had skin cancer all she had was sun burn, but that's time hospitals don't need to waste. Secondly the inability to financially organise themselves, a while back when Labour first came to power a very old friend of mine who happened to work at the local hospital told me that since the hospital couldn't work out what to spend the extra money on, they bought laptops for staff to use for work related activities. This is pure and simple waste and happens a lot in the NHS. The really sad thing is the private hospital opposite now delivers low quality of service when compared to my local NHS go figure.
So because you cannot measure its usefulness, management is useless?
You must be one of the bad programmers, then.
Listen, I'm not fond of management as a class either, but a good manager (of which there are more than a few, though not nearly enough) can find ways to get groups of people working together much better and more efficiently. The problem, as you have so eloquently stated, is that it's nearly impossible to judge management by an objective standard, so there's really no way to tell if someone's going to be a good manager or not before you hire them.
It's largely a talent, which, like art, can be honed, but is hard to instill without a lot of hard work. And that's assuming that the person you're trying to instill it in realizes they don't have it in the first place, which most don't.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
"So please feel free to take two sentences from different paragraphs in my previous post, mash them together into 'quote', and demonstrate how completely illogical I am."
So I forgot to put a few line breaks between the sentences, what's your point? What does that have to do with the actual content of my reply? Or were you conveniently avoiding my 4 points by complaining about my poor quotation style?
"If you don't believe obesity is a precusor to a plethora of "diseases", please go talk to Any Medical Professional On Earth - traditional or otherwise."
Of course obesity leads to some diseases, but that has nothing to do with "organic" versus "man-made" foods, or the magic word "chemicals" to which you repeatedly refer. Skinny people get diseases that obese people don't, and vice versa. Everyone is susceptible to diseases, so stop kidding yourself. Your body mass index has little to do with how healthy you actually are (only in the 2 extremes).
Insurance companies have made a fortune off me.
Yes, and they've lost money on me. In the end, it all balances out. There are customers like you who are healthy as a horse and then there are customers like me who have chronic diseases that will require drugs and regular doctor visits for the rest of my days.
My ex-gf was successfully treated for breast cancer a few years ago. She added-up all of the bills related to the cancer treatment (dr. visits, chemo, MRI, surgery, radiation, etc.). The total was around $150,000. Her insurance paid 100% of the cost, she paid nothing (money-wise).
For every person like me or my ex-gf, there are many, many people who don't go to the doctor because they are healthy, don't take maintenance drugs or ever visit the hospital. That's just the way insurance works out.
I have made full use of my insurance benefits (not my choice).
Because private hospitals, as a general rule, don't have intensive care / high dependency units.
So if something goes really wrong with your appendectomy (for example) - like they sever a major blood vessel by accident - then what the private hospital will do is put you in an ambulance and take you to the nearest NHS hostpital - that does have an intensive care / HDU.
Do you want to run the risk of dying in the Ambulance? Just so that you can have tea and cakes when you come round from the anasthetic?
Hrmm... I don't usually feed the trolls, but you expose an important point of ignorance among people in general, so I'll respond.
If you have a pre-diabetic condition (read you are a fat ass)
The prediabetic condition is usally defined in terms of elevated blood glucose levels, either via a fasting blood glucose test, a two hour glucose sensitivity test. An FBS test (the easiest and most common) result of between 100 and 120 mg glucose/ dl blood is said to be prediabetic, while results of 120 are normal and diabetic respectivly. The idea is the same for the glucose sensitivity test, though I don't have the exact numbers in my head. Notice that prediabetes is not in any way clinically indicated by being as you say 'a fat ass'. People need to be taught how to monitor blood glucose, have A1C tests done every quarter, and ideally have access to nutrition education if they need it.
The point I was trying to make is that there is something fundamentally flawed about a healthcare system that would rather pay $7,500 to amputate a person's leg than a couple of hundred to prevent it. The US would be far down the road towards the best healthcare in the world if we had a system that emphasised prevention over catastrophic care. It makes sense from an economic point of view in that it's cheaper in the long run and from a human point of view since fewer people have to suffer.
In fact, the US already has within its own government the perfect model for this sort of healthcare system. The VHA really stresses prevention and early detection of problems among its patients (/. IT types would be amazed at how advanced the VA's patient information system is) and has consistently provided better outcomes for less money than the private payer system it competes with.
Kind of a side point, but since I was specifically citing the case of NYC I'll throw this in too: When I lived in NYC I walked about five miles a day, all told. And if I wasn't careful I tended to eat a lot of 'street food' on the run. Under these conditions a person could appear quite fit and still be prediabetic (though the condition wouldn't manifest untill later in life probably).
A good healthcare system keeps sick people alive longer. This is why you see a greater % of people in America with these conditions. The British simply die sooner as a result of not getting the same quality healthcare. So much for "science"...
Please cite the study linking vacation time to incidence rate of cancer.
That is possibly the most Insightful quote I have read in a long time.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What you do to the least of my brothers, that you do to me.
Hospitals in the U.S. are notorious for having rampant incompetence, apathetic "proffessionals", and abysmal customer service, too.
So, even if this guy's right, you're no worse of than we are, and you're paying less for it. Congrats.
No one gets to use the "US Healthcare is so effin' great" argument EVER AGAIN. It's not great, it costs twice as much and does less to keep us healthy, that's what TFA is saying. Someone needs a refresher course in reading comprehension.
Based on scientific research, socialised medicine has been proven to be better, so you can go lick the Free Market's bunghole someplace else. Anecdotal evidence does not mean shit, and I would be willing to wager that most people who come up with these "Oh I live in a country with teh socialised medicine and I could not even get my hangnail fixed" stories in fact live in the US and are merely spreading FUD because they can't fact that "Their Team" is losing. For every one of these stories, I have heard two of the opposite, and now we have scientific evidence to back it up.
The free market works great, for some things, if no one is actively fucking with it, but for other things it does not work well at all.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When a guy who's sick of the flue [sic] hijacks a plane and flies it into a building.
Since when has a guy blowing himself and a building up ever led to his grievances being addressed?
Honestly, if someone did that, you'd see the mass arrest of sick people as a threat to the nation before you'd see national healthcare.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I told the bitch-ass receptionist (a real cunt) that. It was easier for her to tell my doctor to call me than for her to put stuff in the mail and deal with invoicing me 50 cents per page. She's a lazy cunt anyway and I got great satisfaction getting her to hang up on me.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
This is the reason why I believe in a limited federal government. People like me can have our "commie welfare state" in, say, Massachusetts, and you can have your "if you can't pay, you deserve to die" state in Texas. This way we will both be happy rather than one of us forcing the other to live by his desires.
YES.
It forms a marketplace of ideas in government. The states with the best policies will thrive, the others will be forced to adopt superior policies to survive. In cases where two or more ideas are about equally beneficial, it's likely that not every state will pick the same one, so citizens can move to another state if they don't like the way that one state does it.
Oh, and we need to stop this silly electing of Senators by popular election. Drop that amendment, go back to letting the state legislatures do it. They are supposed to be the *state government*'s representatives in the federal government, looking out for the states' interests, NOT looking out for the people in general (thought the two may often coincide). They should answer to the state legislature, which answers to the people of the state. We might as well make our federal legislature unicameral if we're going to do it the way we do now. Ridiculous.
It's a shame that so many people immediately think you're a pro-slaver loon if you start talking about increased independence for states.
/ end rant
If you fry some potatoes in non-hydrogenated vegetable oil, it's a perfectly healthy side dish.
No, it's not. It's just empty calories. The insides of potatoes are almost completely free of vitamins and minerals to begin with before you destroy any vitamins in the frier. That's just nothing but starch and fat -- admittedly unsaturated fat, but fat nonetheless. That adds a significant amount of calories to your food.
100g of plain baked potato is 136 kCal with 0.2g fat.
100g of french fries / chips from KFC is 294 kCal with 14.8 g fat.
Your comparison against highly processed foods is silly. Eat some steamed broccoli instead, dangit.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
All of which is irrelevant, because none of it would make it impossible for me to pay for my healthcare. Really, I should have just ignored that part of the GP.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
had anyone compared dental plans?
It's a shame that so many people immediately think you're a pro-slaver loon if you start talking about increased independence for states.
Or even worse, a conservative (I kid!).
I'm pretty far to the left (On the political compass, [-8, -7]), but I'm also a deontologist. For instance, I'm pro choice, but for the overturning of Roe v. Wade since it is a state issue.
Basically, if Kansas and Mississippi want to drive their states into the ground, that is fine with me. Just don't force the rest of us to do it via nationalization of state laws based on an overly broad reading of the commerce clause.
The references I see, don't obviosly say that: US mortality rate of 27 out of 135 ... vs. UK survival rate of 80% for breast cancer in the 1998-2001 period. Which is identical.
Not that I'd total trust the above stats. either way. For instance I'm not sure that the stats. are calculated in the same way ... it doesn't account for either country not diagnosing the cancer etc. What you really want is total number of people dying, or being sick, say (oh, wait ... that's what the article was about).
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
Viewing from Australias perspective, the whole USA healthcare system seems screwed. It will be interesting to see Michael Moores new movie (as spin doctored as it will be).
I'll briefly describe Australias health care system.
A. There is a basic public system that is free and my experience of a very high standard. Have an accident and you get a free (in Qld at least) ride to the neareast public or public/private hospital by chopper or road, and then 100% free treatment to make sure you don't die. It also includes rehab.
B. If you have a category 1 type illness (life threataning) you get FREE medical/surgical treatment promptly (ie before you die)
C. If you want something non urgent done you can wait anywhere from 2 weeks to 20 years (ie 20 years for breast reduction, 3-6 months for a knee replacement).
D. Then if you pay about $700 - $1200 per annum, you can have private health cover. This will usually cover the hospital bed fee but not quite the doctors fees (known as the GAP). It also covers lots of other stuff like fitness, well being services etc. In the private system you can choose your own doctor and hospital. In the public system you who you get.
E. For general day to day health you normally go see a private doctor which costs $50 of which the govt will normally refund 2/3 of.
F. Need medicine. The govt has the PBS (Pharmacutical Benefits Scheme). If you drug is expensive and the govt deems its payback to society is good, it negotiates hard with a drug supplier then supplies to the community at a subsidised rate. (The USA big pharmas don't like this)
Also if you spend more than about $500 on drungs in a year the govt will kick in and support you.
Its not perfect and you will always find whingers, but in my and my extended friends experience, it has been a fantastic system.
46137
Course I live in Canada and we have universal heath care.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
A study I read about on Wired stated that when there was less work among doctors, they "created" it, by making more cesarean births for instance in places with lower birthrates for instance.
I'm not certain if it was conscious though.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Actually, there *are* health studies and nutrition surveys that concern that question -- Is a diet full of meat, animal products and fried food good or bad for you? -- and some of them go back to the 1950s! One such study concluded that a diet rich in fiber carried enormous health benefits ....in other words, load up on breads and cereals, get plenty of fruits and vegetables, but ease off on the meat and dairy products (which have NO fiber).
Unfortunately, the meat and dairy industry doesn't like it when busybody scientists and medical researchers publish findings like that, so they rarely enter the mainstream attention of the public. Kind of like the smoking studies that kept getting badmouthed or buried by the tobacco industry....
At one point, though, the ills of the meat-and-dairy diet got major exposure when Howard Lyman appeared on Oprah to warn of the possibility of Mad Cow disease occurring in the US (this was the famous episode when Oprah publicly announced that she would never eat another hamburger). Whereupon the meat industry promptly slapped both Oprah and Lyman with their notorious "food disparagement" lawsuit.
Happily, Oprah beat the lawsuit. On a darker note, Lyman's prediction was proved devastatingly accurate when the first appearance of Mad Cow disease in America was confirmed:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/23/mad.cow/
However, Lyman isn't just the "Mad Cowboy" who's trying to stop us all from catching this deadly disease -- he's also committed to warning us that perfectly clean meat and animal products are still a poor source of food....
> I'd seen countless friends suffer from heart disease. I'd seen the cancer rate in America increase dramatically. My own health was hardly exemplary: I weighed 350 pounds, my cholesterol topped 300, my blood pressure was off the charts, and I was getting nosebleeds.
>
> Suddenly the circle came together for me. We were, as a civilization, making one big mistake. This mistake was killing us as individuals.... We were eating animals, and it wasn't working. If those animals had set out to take their revenge on us, they couldn't have done a better job.
>
> And I became, right then and there, something I never dreamed I'd become: a vegetarian.
>
> Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to go away. Not only did I feel better physically, but I felt better knowing that there was one answer to many of the different ills afflicting both ourselves and our environment.
>
> Everything revolves around the fork.
(Excerpt from "Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from The Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat!")
So, to use the old X-Files slogan, "The truth is out there." You just have to dig for it, and bear in mind that some people want very much to keep you from digging.
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
I'll try again.
It isn't fair for insurance companies to insure healthy people and drop sick people. Or take healthy people's money and drop them when they get sick.
Anyway, in general people need expensive care before they die. Just before they die. It is unacceptable to take premiums from people for their 50 years of health and deny coverage just when they need it.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I posted about this earlier.
4 8&cid=15252635
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847
make sure you use good water for coffee/tea/food (i.e. boiled vegetables) and for preparing dinner only use food and ingredients which are direct from its source. So no pre-cooked sauces or sort alike, only use genuine spices like pepper, salt, sugar etc. Eat bread, eggs, onions, tomatoes, cucumber, cheese, beans, potatoes, rice. Don't buy already sliced up food. Carve your fresh food inside the kitchen with a knife. It indeed will take more time to prepare that proper meal, just like your grandma was doing, but if your health is improving, no one should complain.
Robert
you were walking on the wrong side of the stree?
Seriously though, some younger people do that just to be annoying. Highschoolers especially. They didn't think you were a bum.
I'd like to see a reference to that please, specifically stating that it was on religious grounds. People are legitmately refused treatment because of drinking all the time, and your statement sounds like xenophobic claptrap.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but high-fructose corn syrup could be a major cause of this health discrepancy. According to Wikipedia, HFCS has "been linked to health problems such as obesity and diabetes."
Most interestingly (and I assume this is talking about Britain as well): "Currently HFCS remains an almost uniquely American phenomenon as, although it is not actually banned in Europe (and other markets), the relative greater availibilty of cane sugar against maize in these markets (coupled with generally negative consumer attitudes towards it [particularly in Europe]) has made it uneconomical to produce it there." Wikipedia.
HFCS is mostly consumed through soda, but that "healthy" fruit juice parents give their kids can contain even more.
Yes, because forty stupid people can do anything a genius can. Especially when they're all talking at once.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Read this. Still think it is superior?
http://www.health-care-reform.net/causedeath.htm
Or even worse, a conservative (I kid!).
ewwww.
I'm pretty far to the left (On the political compass, [-8, -7]), but I'm also a deontologist. For instance, I'm pro choice, but for the overturning of Roe v. Wade since it is a state issue.
Holy crap, I'm not alone after all!
Some choice quotes:
Now, consider that the US Government conducted more than 2000 nuclear tests in the roughly 40 years following WWII, 500 of which were above ground tests. Thats roughly one nuke every two weeks, one above ground every two months, for 40 years.
I think we all know where cancer comes from.
It's not that I don't feel empathy or compassion, it's that I resent the government forcing me to feel either.
The mark of a mature person is not creating arbitrary criteria for considering others mature.
"I'm a liberal person by nature and thus have very liberal beliefs in human rights. I believe all humans have a right ... to live healthily"
Tell this to the kid who will never see puberty because he's dieing of Leukemia.
The mark of a mature person is not creating arbitrary criteria for considering others mature.
There is a large percentage of doctors, most of whome got their degrees in third world cesspools. dodging either tuition costs, or admission requirments in the first world. They have substandard education and it shows. My grandmothers doctor retired and passed her on to another doctor from said third world hellhole. A particularly vile woman, who had been nicknamed dr death at the local emergency. Anyway, this doctor decided to take my grandmother off of her thyroid medication. Her thyroid basically does nothing, and she has been on serious meds for decades for it. so after a few weeks off of her medication my grandmother was hallucinating, and basically crazy. She had such nervous energy that she was literally vibrating. I was scared to death, I was alone with her and didn't know what to do.... So I go to google. Which basicaly confirms that dr death is basically a duck in a pond, and that we had to get some thyroid medication into her. I started her on half of the pills she had been taking before the quack got to her. She started to normalize after about 12 hours. Lovely time. Not exactly on topic for the main thrust of this thread, but relevent to the comment I replied to.
7 weeks anually, in Denmark - but then noisy brats can be a real stress *g*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go. Here in the USA we install brain scanners (lots of them too) where there will be patients and we don't die on waiting lists for anything other than an organ transplant -- and that only because we made it illegal to pay the dead person's estate.
Our real problems are:
Some of these problems are not really solvable. Economics is what it is, people like new technology, and nobody wants to see their little children die. The lawyers have some mighty lobbiests, but a change would at least be theoretically possible. The same goes for the co-pay insurance system, which could be replaced by a sliding scale or percentage system. (example insurance fix: the patient's payment must increase by at least 10 cents for every dollar of the treatment cost up to "$200 for $2000", then by 1 cent per dollar thereafter)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
And because that doctor had to write off $85 that you cost him because of your insurance, the rest of us who can't afford or choose not to buy insurance have to foot the bill. That's why I hate health insurance as it is designed, because it's used for stupid shit that doctors should be competing on while driving the rates of EVERYTHING else up.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You sure have thought of everything. Thank god everyone is a smug well-invested middle class worker with perfect job security, like you. Except those who are not, but hey, screw them right?
Freedom: "I won't!"
I've been living in Kentucky for a few years now.. let me tell you, it's practically a different country. You are treated different if you aren't Kentuckian. People aren't generally rude or mean if you aren't from here. But it makes one hell of a difference. Even in big cities (Louisville) people still have country attitudes. I've traveled quite a bit and found "urban culture" cold and inhuman. People are less hell bent on physical possessions, popularity, and dollar signs here. It's about achievements and who you are.
I can visit most any grave yard and find someone who died during the civil war and look him up. Then drive down to the battlefield where he fell and read about his unit's last actions before his death. My town was shelled by southern troops early in the civil war and a cannon ball lodged into a building can still be seen to this day from the town square. There are huge nature preserves and geological formations unique to only a few places in the world, such as the moon bow. All this is far off topic, but i just wanted to say that uniqueness is everywhere. There were probably fantastic places to see and people to meet just ten minutes from your Denver home. I think big cities have mostly imported culture. They can't create culture, only attract it. What culture does exist in a city, has always been there since the beginning. You don't see cowboys walking in downtown everyday. There's no ranch in the city to manage.
I just think twelve hours in any direction is MORE than far enough to tell a difference. You just have to get off the highway. Hell, if you were in Germany, it wouldn't matter where you were, you'd probably drive out of Germany and all the way through another country in twelve hours (though the autobahn does help:) .
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
There's nothing wrong with calories, though! You just don't want to eat more than you're burning is all. I'm just saying that if you're going to eat 300 calories, I think you're better off eating fried potatoes than many processed foods, some which may initially seem healthier... like artificial "diet" foods . Of course 300 calories of simple meats and green veggies would be even better, but I stand by my statement that simple natural foods are not so bad.
Cheers.
From Dr. Ruwart:
"Actually, such [socialist] systems only "seem" to work. Thousands of Canadians cross the U.S. border each year to pay for heart surgery and other treatments. The "free" health care in their native land is available only after months, sometimes years of waiting, even if you die before your number is called.
In Britain and over 55, you'll probably be denied expensive treatments such as kidney dialysis. It's sad enough to watch loved ones die when a disease is incurable, but it's much worse to watch them die just because the line is too long.
The secret to lowering health care costs is to do away with the excessive regulation which drives up prices by 70-90% with no added benefit. "
You can read more about this in her book posted online:
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap5.html
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/chap6.html
Libertas in infinitum
The average japanese citizen eats a lot more fish than the average american. This has a strong health-effect.
"No, a sure sign someone has lost the debate is when they resort to pointing out logical fallacies in order to avoid answering."
As opposed to resorting to low abuse to avoid answering?
"Pointing out logical fallacies" is more germane to debate than low abuse.
Although I am surprised you've even heard of "fallacy", given your tone of conversation indicates low intelligence and an extremely poor education, given that you're practically unable to write a paragraph without an obscenity in there somewhere.
"Three points, not four. Cunt."
Bravo! Just a little test to see if you could count that far...
That an insurance based healt care system would be ineffcient, have high cost and partial coverage was predicted by the an economic model by Nobel prize winners Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz. The problem is related to assymetric information. Contrary to popular belief European health care is not socialized. Some of it is, but in Europe the whole spectra exist. The difference between Europe and the US is that every European system has a full coverage scheme and most systems with private health insurance prevent insurance companies from doing risk assesments on you or deny you coverage for a basic package. The result of this is that insurance companies don't spend huge amount of money and paper work trying to assess your risk. Another myth is that places with socialized medicine does not use the free market at all. E.g. hospitalization is basically free in Norway. But going to the physician cost money although the prices are subsidized. But that still means they have to compete for customers. People will go wheree they get better quality and service. You are also allowed to choose hospital and the hospitals get payed for how many patiants they treat. So there can be competition among hospitals and an incentive to become more efficient even in a socialized system. I think people forget that the principles of the free market can be used within government, just as the priciples of planned economy can be used by private enterprise (monopolies e.g.). The American sceptism towards government and government intervention is hurting the American health care system. You should allow government to regulate the health care market in a such a way that it actually becomes a free market. The way it is now, the market is not free.
Do you have information about deaths in British hospitals? Without anything to compare to, the number of American deaths isn't very useful.
actually, this is based on a report that was posted in an internation medical journal that showed the results of 13 countries. I remember reading the whole report a while ago so I googled for it and found this article that referenced it. Sadly, the link back to the report is missing.
- Leading-Cause-of-Death-in-the-US.htm
Here is another article that references this year 2000 report, which may have more complete data:
http://www.healingdaily.com/Doctors-Are-The-Third
The message of this original report that I found surprising is that this was measuring the success rate of only people who DID receive medical attention in the hostpital and DID pay their medical bill. So poor people could not have been a cause of the US stats. This article was only compairing people who went to the hospital with illness, so the life expectancy of the whole US public doesn't play into it. The fact is, if you have the cash to pay for the medical treatment, you are less likely to be cured in a US hospital than one in another country. You'd be much better off to go to Cuba, for instance, which has one the best medical systems in the world. Japan is rated number 1.
it's a bit hard too understand but the insurence companies are like broadcasters, their product is a patient flow in a way and the Dr.s can and do negotiate fees with them, in return for accepting the plan, the product isn't patient care but patients, it's more like broadcasting where the product is advertising slots not the content. If the insurance charges the patient too much, they go else where and eliminat the product, if the insurance pays too little, the Dr.s go elsewhere and the insurance can't attract enough patients. The Dr.s and the patients develope a relationship where they play both ends against the middle just like childern do when they play the lienient parent against the disiplinarian parent.
The rates are going up because everything about health is expansive, we hald a dental light made by Healthco, the replacement bulb for the unit cost $24.95, I noticed that the bulb was marked H2, and kept my eyes open thinking it might be an industry standard buld, eventualy I found the same bulb in Kmart as a halogen foglight bulb for 4.95 retail; the only difference is the foglight bulb had a tab punched out but not bent like the dental unit bulb had; I can bend a tab and save more.
I'm not the one who made tutuion at med school obscenely expensive and I'm not the one who made all of the capital equipment needed and sits idle most of the time obscenely expensive, and I'm not the one whose frivolous malpractice suits makes the Dr. pay a third of his fees to the insurrance company and makes the lawyers rich.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Britain is the island, including England, Wales, and Scotland. It's a name derived from the language of those who inhabited England before the English, a p-celtic language closely related to modern Welsh.
England is a nation, comprising a large part of that island, excepting Wales and Scotland.
The UK is a state, historically descended from the (now technically defunct) English state. The English state conquered and subjugated all of its neighbors, and in a series of legislative acts effectively absorbed them. Under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 the conquered Welsh nation was partially absorbed into the English state, although left some concessions to autonomy. In the 1500s a series of acts by the English parliament effectively finished the job, abolishing the Welsh state and absorbing it entirely into the English. It also attempted to destroy the Welsh nation as well, laying legal discrimination against those who persisted in preserving Welsh language and customs. This discrimination was legally instituted from that point on until 1993.
The Scottish nation was the next neighbor to be conquered and absorbed by the English, although with great trouble and taking considerable time and mayhem to accomplish. In 1707 this had been accomplished, and was formalised by the Acts of Union. Technically speaking, these acts did not, like the earlier acts with regard to Wales, annex the subjugated nation to England, but actually dissolved both the Scottish and the English states, creating a superstate called 'the United Kingdom.'
This is the origin of the custom of loyal Englishmen taking offense at any reference to their nation by name as England - England is technically reduced to the status of a province within the greater 'United Kingdom' to which, it was hoped, the conquered nations might be accustomed to giving a loyalty they would never feel towards the hated English conquerers. It's easy to see why this might be considered nothing more than a legal fiction, however, as the 'United' government sits in the same place as the old 'English' government, conducts itself entirely in English with nary a word of Scots or Welsh to be heard, and indeed has clear continuity with the techically defunct English state in every respect.
In 1800 a new Act of Union added the conquered nation of Ireland to 'the United Kingdom' as well. Of course, much of Ireland managed to free itself a little over a century later, leaving a 'United Kingdom' of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
So, when someone refers to 'England' where you suspect they mean 'the UK', it may well be out of ignorance - or it may instead be out of knowledge, and a dislike for the legal fictions of the conquerer.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
If a person were inclined to get a bunch of people sick with a dangerous, communicable disease, and knew where to catch it himself, this is all it would require:
1. Get a job at the concession stand at the local stadium, or at a food booth at the county fair, or anywhere else with a lot of customers doing a lot of other things (so authorities will have a much harder time figuring out the common thread -- though this doesn't much matter if the incubation period is long enough).
2. Get infected. If unsure, go on to step 3 anyhow. It won't hurt.
3. While hopefully incubating but not visibly sick, lick all the paper cups around the rim and put them back. Not only will this directly infect people he sell sto, but cow-orkers will be inadvertently doing it for him, and likely to themselves -- how many people in that position don't drink the soda? (If it's required that they bring their own cups, he just licks those too, directly or indirectly.)
4. If it turns out the self-appointed Typhoid Carny is not infected, GOTO 2.
5. He survives, or not.
The real downside (from the perp's perspective) it is that dying of Ebola is probably a lot more unpleasant than just blowing himself up in a crowd. It also doesn't raise the same type of fear as a suicide bomber or suicide hijacker or a bomb on a train. These cause immediate panic, like kicking an anthill, and better suit a lot of possible agendas.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
But you won't get anarchy for very long. Someone will figure out how to get a bigger bunch of idiots to obey him and then with those he'll proceed to control more and more people.
Yeah, but then it's called a 'dictatorship' or possibly 'monarchy' if it's hereditary, 'oligarchy', etc...
;), but consider myself a moderate libertarian. I have no problems with having a moderate police force, military, etc... I just think that government has gotten too big and needs to be shrunk.
One of the reasons that I'm not an anarchist
I don't read AC A human right