Slashdot Mirror
US Life Expectancy May Have Peaked
Hugh Pickens writes "Live Science reports that although life expectancy in the United States has risen to an all-time high of 77.9 years in 2007 up from 77.7 in 2006, gains in life expectancy may be pretty much over, as some groups — particularly people in rural locations are already stagnating or slipping in contrast to all other industrialized nations. Hardest hit are regions in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, in Appalachia and also the southern part of the Midwest reaching into Texas. The culprits — largely preventable with better diet and access to medical services — are diabetes, cancers and heart disease caused by smoking, high blood pressure and obesity. What the new analysis reveals is the reality of two Americas, one on par with most of Europe and parts of Asia, and another no different than a third-world nation with the United States placing 41st on the 2008 CIA World Factbook list, behind Bosnia but still edging out Albania. 'Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing through 1999 those who were already disadvantaged did not benefit from the gains in life expectancy experienced by the advantaged, and some became even worse off,' says a report published in PLoS Medicine by a team led by Harvard's Majid Ezzati, adding that 'study results are troubling because an oft-stated aim of the US health system is the improvement of the health of "all people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities.'"
Ditto!!!
Don't get me wrong - US health in general has its problems - but just after a new report indicates that life expectancy has reached an all time high (by a significant margin) we are asking whether or not it has peaked? Premature much?
Ok, let me pee on everyone's parade and burn some karma.
> those who were already disadvantaged did not benefit from the
> gains in life expectancy experienced by the advantaged, and
> some became even worse off
Oh stop already with the politics. Stop with the infernal 'progressive' talking points and bringing class into everything. Simplify to this:
"Stupid people do stupid things that cause them to die sooner." Not that there aren't stupid people everywhere, but in America we still have the
right to be wrong to a much greater extent than the nanny states in Europe.
And since I'm burning karma anyway lemme toss another sacred cow onto the grill. Enough with this continual blather about the 'disadvantaged/poor/etc.' if you nitwits aren't going to deal with the actual problem. To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money. Things like failure to get an education (or worse reject the value of knowledge entirely), become a single parent, waste money on substance abuse or Xbox... but I repeat myself.
Normally I wouldn't flame so hard but this entire article so reeks of slashkos politics I just couldn't hold back. Enough with the thinly disguised political stories outside the politics topic. Raise your hand if you actually think this was 'news for nerds' and not the DNC talking points being put into action.
I mean, seriously, take this bit:
> ..because an oft-stated aim of the US health system is the improvement
> of the health of "all people, and especially those at greater risk of
> health disparities.
WTF? I thought that was what the current argument was about, whether we were going to HAVE a single "US health system" or not. We currently don't
have a single system so how does this asshat ascribe policies to the current industry? The 'aim' of most of the people in the current semi
free market system is the same as any business. Balance customer (patient) service against earning a living.
Democrat delenda est
They have stopped human aging from getting older before it blows up an economy with useless old people. Isn't this part of the US overhaul in health care - get rid of the old and sick because they are holding the herd back?
That guys gonna be pissed he won't actually be able to live forever.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Just remember, the USA is better at everything. Why? Because!
Don't ever question that or you'll be a traitor. Why try to change what is already perfect?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
[citation needed]
The "US health system" has a stated aim? I thought the aim was to maximize the profits of the insurance companies, which we know can only be done by denying health care to those at greater risk. Where, exactly, is this stated?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
smoking and not exercising is bad for your life expectancy! news at 11!
... that we're going to spend over 1 trillion dollars on health care reform and our life expectancy is going to decrease?!?!?
Just wait until government Death Panels start pulling the plug on Grandmas!
What?
That's a bummer, man.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
When you look at the 20 year trend chart for obesity in the United States, it's clear that there's going to be repercussions. It's appalling what has happened. The cost of obesity isn't going to manifest right away, but over the next two decades, it's going to hit the mortality rate hard. And to think that people fear disease but don't seem to be doing too much about preventable self-inflicted health problems.
Or maybe not. Maybe only 37th.
Seriously, the way the insurance companies are sabotaging health care reform what we need is what I call the nuclear health care reform option. Maybe something like along the line of if reform doesn't pass:
1) All members of congress that blocked it must pay for their own health insurance out of their own pockets. No more public health care for them like most of them currently have through their Congressional pay and benefits package..
2) No more bonuses or stock options for the top tiers of insurance company execs as long as they deny insurance to people. And cap their pay at 100K per year and force them to pay for their health benefits out their own pocket. No health benefits as part of their compensation. They have to purchase their own plans.
If they pull the trigger and kill reform, then we should pull the trigger on them. Mutually Assured Destruction.
The only health care program that really works is the single payer option.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
All I can say is thank god we have so many people fighting against health care reform. Sure, the people with the 3rd world life expectancy might have access to preventitive health care that could bring them up to par with the dreaded Europe, but is it really worth giving in to Obama's death panel nazi plan just to save a few hundred thousand American lives??
Does anyone else see it as slightly ironic that the average life expectancy appears to be lower in the more rural areas, like the Deep South, Appalachia, and Texas? In other words, solid red state territory. And, they say that other parts (the blue states?) are on par with most of Europe. So, in other words, for the most part, the folks that are more in favor of health care reform are living longer than the people that are staunchly against it. Maybe we should just let the red states die off and that would solve a whole host of other problems! ;-)
> Seems like it's going downhill in all the heavily Republican parts of the country. They're human garbage anyway.
Folks in red states might die a few years sooner but we are outbreeding you blue folk. If we had the time we could win the Freedom vs. Socialism battle purely on birth rates. But alas.
Hint: gays don't reproduce even if they play like they are married.
Democrat delenda est
The 'two Americas' comment in the article, I've been saying exactly this for years. I have a theory that the population of a given area is inversely proportional to its level of education and healthcare and directly proportional to its crime rate and minority percentage. It's not the availability of these things that matter, which is why socalized healthcare will fail, its the proximity to old-family, old-money, old-history americans, who are all white.
Next up, how helping minorities is showing diminishing returns, and they never really 'caught up' to whitey. Money well spent.
Use the same solution to our peak oil problems.
Mandate an IRS prostate exam when you file your taxes and proof of medical insurance.
Large portions of the low life expectancy part of America also take in close to 20% more federal funds than they put into the system. If you've ever stopped off at a gas station between New Orleans and Atlanta on I-10, you'd know how low the standard of living is there. We're talking large swaths of the states in that area with average incomes barely breaking the $20,000 mark. In defense of Texas, the portion they're talking about is between Beaumont and Texarkana, right on the border, bleeding into the Tyler/Longview area. Houston/Dallas/Austin have some of the highest standards of living (and lowest cost of living) in the country.
moox. for a new generation.
I suspect people in some cities might be surprised to hear that their life expectancies are going down. After all they've had high literacy rates, above-average educational systems, and even higher-than-average rates of medical coverage for years. Granted, when those pesky bridges fall into the river after years of neglect that might not help the life expectancy rate much...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I was going to post on this article, but I think you've said it all.
I expect your post will be highly rated for the actual duration of this discussion, but will probably suddenly drop to "0, Troll" in about three days.
Hold on there. She was in remission!
The troll bait is strong in this post.
Keep telling yourselves that. You wingnut freaks are gonna lose all the major social and political battles in the next couple decades.
Man, it's gonna be so great to send you guys to the re-education camps. I'll personally beat you extra.
I Want My Country Back! Death Panels! Death Panels! Death Panels!
*ahem*
Sorry, I've been watching too much tv...
It's not even good troll bait. It's like the worst of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity rolled into some huge conglomerate of even bigger fail.
How much of that is due to homicides? How much is due to car accidents? The study does not seem to control for these factors. It's pretty much rubbish. How much of that is due to selection bias ?
I too can take the distribution of age at death, cut it in half and argue that the lower part's age expectancy is dramatically lower than the upper half.
People doing these studies are quite often bozos which start from the answer (we need socialism and redistribution) and work backward.
\u262D = \u5350
No "health care system" is going to be able to overcome the human propensity to make unhealthy lifestyle choices unless it forces people to bear the costs of those choices themselves.
Here is a comparison of life expectancies between the US and Europe.
For unadjusted life expectancy, the U.S. ranks #14 out of 16 countries, but for the adjusted standardized life expectancy, (adjusted for the effects of premature death resulting from non-health-related fatal injuries) the U.S. ranks #1.
I know the AC was trolling but Republicans on average have higher SES (socioeconomic status) than Democrats do (Subramanian, S. V., & Perkins, J. M. (2009). Are republicans healthier than democrats? International Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/ije/dyp152). Sure, people who live in rural areas tend to be Republican, but people who live in inner-cities tend to be Democrats. As the article I referenced shows, Republicans actually tend to be a little healthier than Democrats (related more to SES than anything else).
gains in life expectancy may be pretty much over
And nobody will EVER need more than 640K of RAM.
Forget the fact that things like the internet and the Human Genome project have lead to a flood of medical research, the likes of which we've never seen, that is bound to produce results.
Sorry, but that's about the most ridiculous statement Slashdot has posted today.
If the average life expectancy increased while it stagnated for some, then those who have benefited from the increase to life expectancy have experienced a higher increase to life expectancy than what the average increase suggests. How can it be anything other than good news?
US Life Expectancy May Have Peaked
Is that like saying the glass is half empty?
Isn't the headline wrong? How can "gains in life expectancy may be pretty much over" if the "The culprits [are] largely preventable." On the contrary, the headline should be "Large Gains in Life Expectancy Still Possible." I'll leave the politics and policy aside but "preventable" means preventable.
Let me get this straight- in the US, our lowest classes are so well fed, with so many calories, that they become overweight. Because they are poor, they can't afford to lose weight.
Astounding. In many other countries, the poor starve to death.
We're so rich that even the poorest of our poor is suffering from over-abundance.
Every American should take a trip to a real 3rd world country at lease once in their lifetime. It would solve a lot of the entitlement issues we have.
Now it's all coming together! The Health Care Reform will end up saving money by decreasing our life expectancy. The Death Panels are making sense now.
I don't see why this wouldn't be a figure that would fluctuate up and down depending on what's going on in the world. Just because it goes up for a long time, and then takes a dip, doesn't mean that it's only going to go down from here out.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Oh stop already with the politics
Yeah, you'll show em when you get political on the matter!
"Stupid people do stupid things that cause them to die sooner." Not that there aren't stupid people everywhere, but in America we still have the right to be wrong to a much greater extent than the nanny states in Europe.
So then are you saying that anyone who makes less money than you is inherently stupid in comparison to you?
Enough with this continual blather about the 'disadvantaged/poor/etc.' if you nitwits aren't going to deal with the actual problem.
Then kindly enlighten us 'nitwits', if you could.
To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money.
Really? I don't know where you live, but I haven't heard of many people who are born into families with money and then end up broke.
They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money.
Which is ignoring the fact that some good decisions require money...
Things like failure to get an education
That is an excellent example of one. If you are in a poor family, you might not even have access to enough credit for student loans.
Though even more so, if we want to talk about health care (which most reasonable people would agree has at least some correlation to life expectancy), we should note the relationship between health care and education:
If you want a higher education:
Hence many people of lower income status are stuck in failure spirals. While providing them with health care may not be enough to get them out, it should at least be able to help some people, both from that classification and others.
Normally I wouldn't flame so hard but this entire article so reeks of slashkos politics I just couldn't hold back. Enough with the thinly disguised political stories outside the politics topic. Raise your hand if you actually think this was 'news for nerds' and not the DNC talking points being put into action.
Were you not reading yesterday when a conservative opinion got made the slashdot front page and lead to a conservative orgy in the discussion?
But don't worry, there may be some conservatives running around with left-over mod points who will mod your post up to +5 just as they did with several from other conservative authors yesterday.
I thought that was what the current argument was about, whether we were going to HAVE a single "US health system" or not
Perhaps you haven't been reading the news? Congress gave up on single payer health care at least a full month ago. It won't happen in this congressional session, period. Really the discussion now is just on how much the democrats will fold on any sort of change whatsoever; will they fold like a nice origami piece (perhaps a swan or a dove would be nice), or completely down like a lawn chair (to be stuffed away for the indefinite future in someone's garage)?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This might mean all those calculations projecting imminent bankruptcy of social security will have to be redone. If people are not going to live as long as they do now, there will be that much reduced pressure on the social security trust fund. Couple it with stalling the insurance reform, make healthcare more expensive, and bump another 45 million more Americans off health insurance. That way we can bring down the number of people getting on to the social security benefits and the duration also will be cut. So looks like all these problems are self correcting and they will solve themselves. Of course we may not like the way the problems solve themselves and we might personally get the short end of the stick too. But we at least know how the problems are going to solve themselves.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
When I read that, I assumed that they must be talking about North America and South America. I mean, nobody is stupid enough to call the United States Two Americas, right? Wrong..
Being poor is most likely to shorten your life expectancy and we have gutted most of the manufacturing in our rural communities. I suspect this has more to do with these areas life expectancy than government funding, education or anything else.
love is just extroverted narcissism
To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money.
Yes, like choosing parents who are alcoholics and drug addicts. Like choosing to be brought up in homes where there are no books. Like choosing to be brought up by people with no connections to wealth. Like choosing to live in the ghetto with horrible teachers imprisoned in decaying schools with no school supplies.
YOU, sir, are the problem. YOU, sir, are the reason these folks are "Stupid" (your word).
become a single parent
Or are brought up by one, or worse, in a foster home.
waste money on substance abuse
Or are brought up by meth addicts and crackheads. There but for the grace of God goes YOU, and you should thank whatever deity you do or don't believe in that you weren't brought up under these circimstances. If you had been, you would now be as dirt poor as they, and you'd likely be smoking crack instead of getting drunk on fine wine and your own ignorant vanity.
Free Martian Whores!
Sounds like yet another political-statement-masked-as-science story.
I'm done reading. Moving on to the next story.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
do i need to "make this a large for 49 cents extra" or not!? i mean, there are kids in china starving to death who would gladly take the melty stuff left in the bottom of my mcflurry cup.
but thats why my jazzy chair comes with a cup holder, damnit.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Apparently the quote is from the CDC website
There's always a lot of political hay to be made out of comparisons of this or that factor of American life to "3rd world country" quality. The unstated (or baldly stated) point being: why can't the world's wealthiest country take care of its underclass better? Why can't it be improved (and, in a pointed comment toward conservatives/Republicans who tend to oppose such 'improvements' wholesale), why are you so heartless?
This is, in my experience, particularly baffling to Europeans who live with a social support system generally unparalleled in the modern world.
Here's the secret: it's about CHOICE, and the consequences of your decisions.
Speaking generally, people in poverty are there because of some shitty life choice that they made along the way. Have a baby before age 18. Have a baby out of wedlock. Do drugs. Commit crime. Drop out of school. There are exceptions, but the HUGE majority of the chronic poor fall into one of these categories. And, born from the 'self-reliant' protestant ethic that founded the country, there used to be a cultural reluctance to help these 'free-riders' in any way.
(The only broad exception to this would be the poor little buggers BORN to parents who made similar crappy choices. They didn't really have any say in the matter, and their futures are pretty much doomed. Unfortunately, really the best situation for them would be to be taken AWAY from their stupid parent (generally there's only still one around) and put into a boarding school where they could get a good education without their biological role models; this is seen to be 'inhumane' in today's society, so instead we leave them to grow in a horrid environment, really just enabling the cycle to continue indefinitely.)
This is why the US has so many poor, and cares so little for them generally; starting with free public education through high school, it's been proven repeatedly that in the US you can become a success with simple hard work, determination, and self-discipline. You probably won't become rich, but you can work 2 jobs and build your child a better foundation from which THEY can climb, ultimately improving the lives of your grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. CHOOSING to live a life of narcissistic self-interest an immature egoism, why should I (the argument goes) help you with a damn thing?
-Styopa
and THEN deciding, or does that sound un-American?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
So on one hand this looks like it's talking about the failings of our health care system, and on the other hand it's saying that the problem is smoking and obesity.
So let me get this straight ... we need a better health care system to help people stop smoking and being fat? Or we need to improve the health care system to make it so that we can continue to smoke and be fat, plus live longer?
I think that gist of this article is that we have a lot of problems to work on irrespective of health care. Maybe that's how we should lower the costs of health care ... by fixing all the stupid things we do, such as smoking and eating things that we shouldn't.
No, I forgot, this wasn't about asking people to take their health into their own hands ... it's about letting them not worry about it anymore and just paying what it takes to help them, no matter how many cheeseburgers they eat a day, or packs of cigarettes they go through. We need to make sure that the people who spend $200 in cigarettes a month, and who can't afford health insurance, are covered! Might as well be my tax dollars doing it.
please delete my slashdot account
If people took care of their body then they wouldn't need to see the doctor's all the damn time.
Actually, there has been quite a bit of talk about prevention programs, things like physical education in school, and other inexpensive options to try to get people to take better care of themselves.
The problem is, that there is no good way to correlate it to money saved. If we spent X number of dollars on getting people to get off the couch and walking, it would be nearly impossible to say that it saved Y dollars on long-term health care (regardless of whether you choose a Y less than, greater than, or equal to X). And with all the calamity over the cost of the health care reform that hasn't yet passed either house, it is hard to sell prevention right now.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Don't eat so much! You'll live longer. Humans aren't meant to carry an extra third or more of their bodyweight in fat.
Not only will you live longer, your remaining years will be much more enjoyable without knees and hips failing under the load, diabetes and all the fun complications it brings and being unable to walk a block without having to stop twice to catch your breath. Seriously, put down the cheeseburger, turn off the tv and get up off the couch.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
PS - as few people who are born into poverty become rich as those born into wealth become poor. Like the Blood Sweat And Tears song says, "those that got shall get, those that not shall lose." There are a few, like my late uncle, who are born into near poverty and became rich, and hard work played a big part of his success, but luck played an even bigger part. Had he not been born with excellent eye-hand coordination and creativity (it runs in the family, and that's pure luck) and met his one legged business partner in the hospital (also pure luck), he would likely NOT have become rich making better artificial limbs than were available at the time. He would have been middle class, like my parents.
And had he been born in a slum he would be poor.
Your ignorance is appalling.
Free Martian Whores!
Many of those factors...diet, smoking, etc are personal choice. We all know what is 'good', but
I would rather die at 70 and enjoy a nice juicy steak and good ale now and then as opposed to living to 85 on a diet of tofu and salad.
Though the American government seems to have taken it upon themselves to insure we all lead long, happy, tax paying lives, regardless of personal happiness.
And since I'm burning karma anyway lemme toss another sacred cow onto the grill. Enough with this continual blather about the 'disadvantaged/poor/etc.' if you nitwits aren't going to deal with the actual problem. To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money. Things like failure to get an education (or worse reject the value of knowledge entirely), become a single parent, waste money on substance abuse or Xbox... but I repeat myself.
Well, it has become more difficult to earn money if you are willing to work but not very educated. Low skill jobs are increasingly replaced by machines who are cheaper. So if you missed a good education because of some bad decision in your youth, or just being not bright enough, it is more difficult today to earn a living than in the 80s. Even some qualified jobs tend to be outsourced to India these days (IT support...).
And all of the plausible explanations why do have a political angle.
Globalization with more outsourcing to third world countries?
Could be slowed down by more protectionism. Which has its own disadvantages, but the decision to use more or less protectionism is a political one. Since I'm at it, here is my idea how to handle it:
Keep the international trade free as it (mostly) is, but extend the first sale doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine) to cover international sales, so parallel imports (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_import) become fully legal. This way, consumer prices will be forced down and the current working poor will be financially better off.
In short: Currently globalization is mostly good for big corporations. Lets change it so the consumers profit too.
Karl Marx's predictions finally coming true?
I think there is some truth to that, and the social market economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy) in 20th century Germany was a reasonable compromise. You might strongly disagree with that, but again the decision what to do is a political one.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Take a step back and ask if you believe that (a) Americans are genetically more likely to die young; (b) if America as a location is inherently more deadly from pesticides or something. Neither one flies for me.
You are left with only the two variables I can think of. Health care and lifestyle. Where "lifestyle" includes everything from "your personal diet and exercise" to "national norms in diet and exercise", to "crime" Japanese just eat less fatty foods; Europeans walk more. MOST nations have less bullet-related deaths.
A conservative of my acquaintance tried to pass it all of as the latter. I believe his harsh words were "subtract the crack babies and they're the same as Canada".
So I did some research which I alas can't cite, but it took me about 30 minutes with Google, so I'll leave it as an exercise. Limited to over-65 white males with kidney disease, Canada STILL had better survival rates. 65+ females with heart disease? Canada in the lead, by statistically significant amounts. I remember it running like that across a whole matrix of hospital-admissions reasons. Liver, digestive tract, neurological...pick your organ, it's better to get sick in Canada. The stats even apply (with much less force to be sure) for the American insured, probably because American "insurance" has a way of disappearing on you when most needed.
So, sorry conservatives, health care explains a lot. (Canada, sorry to admit, has ALL your obesity problems, and then some in a few provinces.)
Not to forget the early-deaths, but not all of those are bullet-related. A factoid from the current debate includes this one: children born into uninsured households have a 50% higher chance of dying before the age of 1. It doesn't take a lot of baby deaths to really haul down an average.
So, in summary: American lifestyles could improve. So could American health care. Blame both.
"My understanding is that in England, most of the time if you are born in the "working class", your children will die as part of the "working class". If you look at U.S. statistics, you discover that most of the people in the bottom quarter of wealth in the population ten years ago, aren't in the bottom quarter today."
Might be true, might be false, I don't know. But I'd like to hear your references. Also - you should match like with like. You suggest people in England born poor die poor, but people in USA (of undeclared age, you're not suggesting new born) ten years later are more wealthy. This is not matching like with like. Give me equivalent statistics for both places and I'd be interested to hear more. You might expect somebody aged 20 to move up the wealth scale in both countries by the time they reach the age of 30. It's a different argument to suggest that somebody born into a socio-economic group in England is more likely to die in that group than in the USA.
Interested to read your arguments once referenced though, they are certainly an interesting theories.
One thing I learned about the US that is hard to grasp for someone from say Holland is that there are areas in the US where you just can't buy produce. No vegetables.
Sure, you can DRIVE to another area, but that costs money.
Now I can't say exactly how true this is, but the simple fact is that even in "poor" areas in holland you can easily WALK (in less then 5 minutes) to a supermarket. Often one of a regular big chain like the AH. Which carries in all its stores, fresh vegetables.
They are still relatively expensive however.
If you do the math, then cheap fast food (the cheapest no-brand frozen pizza's) can be a LOT cheaper then even buying healthy base products and making your own. Good luck making a meal for 99 euro cents (cost of a frozen pizza). That of course assumes that such fresh products are even available, which in america they apparently aren't always.
You do get fat from eating to much, but you also get fat from eating the wrong things. Eat only frozen meals and your waist line will expand.
What europeans forget is the sheer scale of america. Everything is really bigger over there and this includes the slums. What might a be a bad neighbourhood in holland, consisting of maybe a few streets, is an entire suburb housing the same number of people as major town in holland.
Amsterdam, the dutch capitol has 750.000 people and is surrounded by farm land. It would fit several times into a large american city. In fact, the entire country is less then a 1/3rd of the state of new york.
Being poor can make it very hard to eat right especially if you are in a poor area where there just ain't a market for expensive healthy food.
Compare the prices, cheapo no-brand coke vs apple juice (and I am not even talking about the stuff with no sugars or artificial flavors added).
Frozen poptarts vs fresh bread (and wonder bread does not count as bread, it is a building material).
Remember, it is not the expensive fast foods that make people fat (well they do) but the stuff we are talking about here is the no-brand really crappy cheapo kind that is decades away from cutting down on articficial flavors and saturated fats.
When I buy fries, mine are made from real potatoes, cut on the spot, properly fried in expensive fluid fat that is replaced often. When you do it on a budget, you have cheapo thin fries (more fat) that are fried in your own cooker with months old solid fat.
Poor people eat unhealthy because healthy food is really expensive. live on a budget for your whole life to find out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The reason is simple. The US health care system has one key flaw that is the problem. All of the medical options available are for illness and injury treatment, NOT Prevention. People are allowed to grow to humongous sizes that they could stunt double for Fat Bastard and there is complaining but no real options given or pushed. The moment these people have a heart attack the medical system jumps in with drugs, transplants, continual followups, etc all costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. But only a tiny fraction is ever spent on trying to prevent them from become obese in the first place. result is bad habits, and health care costs ballooning almost as fast as waistlines and soon a dropping life expectancy. Its only because of the ability to do extensive medical treatment do many of these people even live that long.
It seems that we're interested in making some political points and (or) walking lock-step with some biases.
If you check the data from the PLoS Med citation (http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/slideshow.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066&imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050066.g003#) you'll discover that finishing high school would appear to be a detriment to longevity (my personal guess is that a fair number of more educated folks cash in earlier due to stress).
When you talk poor and rural, there appears to be two, one in the south and one in the northern Midwest. It's true that the rural south has seen a decline, but looking at the "WebMed" citation (http://www.webmd.com/news/20060913/top-states-for-life-expectancy), unless you've got the technology to convert your genetics to become a non-Pacific island Asian (defined as America 1), you're next best bet is to join "America 2" defined as; "3.6 million low-income rural whites living in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska with income and education below the national average. Average life expectancy: 79 years."
My personal read with "America 2" is simply (again) a more "kicked-back" (less stress) lifestyle. In wandering the U.P. (home of the "Uppers", namely the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) if there is a common trait among the folk, is that they're simply taking it easier than most folks in urban settings. They're "in-to" out of doors (less sedentary) and if you want to get one's attention, its not by the latest fashion, but where there's a better hunting / fishing / biking / beer joint (meet a Upper and you'll understand the last item). Cars are rusty but the barrels are clean and the reels oiled.
I've added a fair amount of personal opinion, which is clearly open to argument (and I hope that any Uppers reading this do not take offense that I secretly...or at least used to secretly...covet their lifestyle) but none-the-less, if you're about to write spout off on the subject, at least read the citations.
In a nutshell, we tend to be fat and lazy, which doesn't take a high school education to figure out, and we're also way too stressed.
Greg
According to a report in 2000 by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the third leading cause of death in the US is doctors:
http://www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm
http://www.dorway.com/jama.html
I remember reading that since 2000, the report has been revised, and doctors are now the second leading cause of death, but I couldn't find a citation.
So when you are talking about diet and lifestyle choices, remember that you are more likely to die because of a lack of insurance or denied coverage, or if you do see a doctor, they are more likely to kill you than automobile accidents, crime, natural disasters, infection, and attacks by giant mutant lizards.
the west coast and the east coast should join with canada and just let the fat lower middle of the usa (pun intended) descend into the third world fundamentalist hell hole it is
the civil war turned out badly. it should have been "lost" by the north. and today maybe we'd have a smaller, but much better usa without the morons in flyover country holding us back with their low iq reactionary politics
socialism! socialism!
jesus shut the fuck up you ignorant angry retards
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The bible includes this. It designates 70 or 80 years as the life expectancy limit, with some able to live much longer to to "special mightiness" Psalms 90:10. One of many things that The Bible has been able to point out long before science.
Somewhere down the curve it is perfectly fine to die of AIDS at 16, IF you've got it from fucking 5000 prostitutes in one day, while being high on speed and cocaine?
Though the American government seems to have taken it upon themselves to insure we all lead long, happy, tax paying lives, regardless of personal happiness.
Those evil bastards! Wanting you to live longer.
I say screw em. Take a gun and blow your brains out. That will teach them to fuck with people's happiness.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
- this shit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat should be totally banned.
- also smoking in closed buildings.
- and also a couple of products from monsanto which are barely healthy.
now go and question the "negative" effects on economy of these 3 "strict" rules. then you should ask yourself what do you want: some more quick and dirty dollars or some more and better life expectancy?
rich, poor, white and black people is dying from cancer at ages of 50's and 60's. what a fail guys.
These sound like the conservatives who protest health care reform and screaming about 'death committees'.
You know, the same people who take guns to presidential rallies because they can. Then scream about Bush protesters, who are exercising their freedom of speech, as being un-patriotic. while applauding the so-called "free speech" zones.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
It's interesting that the areas with the worst health problems -- outside of some urban areas -- are also full of people who are terrified of health care reform. That may not be quite right. They're afraid of an America which is willing to take "individual rights" seriously, including a right to decent health care. 1865 redux.
The only problem with it that I see is the assumption that it's the duty of individuals to pursue the benefits of long life and accumulate property.
These may be good values to pursue as a society but one of the nice things about living in a free society is the freedom to choose different goals. If some choose to abandon the burden of education and the discipline of health maintenance in preference to short term gratification, who are we to say as individuals that they're stupid?
Some people don't want to die old, rich and well educated. They want to live fat dumb and happy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
what exactly is this ignorant aversion to socialism all about?
if a guy breaks his leg, do you walk by him in the street?
no, you help him up
that's all universal healthcare is, on a societal scale. the cost of NOT helping those with medical need is far greater to society than helping those who are in need: a guy who can't provide for his family, a guy who can't show up for work, a mother who can't care for her chidlren, etc.: these situations have cost. add them up, and getting these people healthcare they can't afford currently means FINANCIAL SAVINGS for society
why is it you are so propagandized you can't see this?
did you ever actually stop and consider what "socialism" actually means on a philosophical level rather simply kneejerk in mindless propagandized ignorance?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh stop already with the politics.
Darned right.
TFA sounds like the Ministry of Truth in action.
I expect a lot of similar research reports with a message of "Oh, Horrors! US healthcare delivery is SO unequal and SO substandard!". Like "climate change" research. these projects are largely funded, directly or indirectly, by the fed, which is currently firmly in control of the Democratic Party. So a bias toward sucking up to their agenda in the hopes of continued funding can be expected - at least in the statements of conclusions. (Just like during the start of the Drug War, when the conclusions all wrung their figurative hands about how unhealthy LSD and Marijuana were, while if you actually read the data it often said just the opposite. Read back issues of journals from the late '60s and early '70s to see what I mean.)
I'll be taking any such reports that are released during the "healthcare reform" legislative push with enough salt to raise my blood pressure to life-threatening levels. Until that frenzy is over I won't even be bothering to read such reports and check their methodology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Do check out the blogspot post, but then check this out:
According to "OECD Economic Surveys: United States 2008", p. 137 (http://tinyurl.com/mt3g76):
"It has been claimed (Ohsfeld and Schneider, 2006) that adjusting for the higher death rate from accident or injury in the United States over 1980-99 than the OECD average would increase US life expectancy at birth from 18th of of 29 OECD countries to the highest. In fact, what the panel regression estimated by these authors shows is that predicted life expectancy at birth based on US GDP per capita and OECD average death rates from these causes is the highest in the OECD. The adjustment for the gap in injury death rates between the United States and OECD average alone only increases life expectancy at birth marginally, from 19th on average among 29 countries over 1980-99 to 17th. Hence, the high ranking of adjusted life expectancy mainly reflects high US GDP per capita, not the effects of unusually high death rates from accident and injury."
In other words, the figures in Table 1-5 are not U.S. life expectancies adjusted for fatal injuries, but rather a model that assumes that both the relationship of life expectancy to per capita GDP and injuries in the U.S. follow OECD trends.
That is - they are falsely giving the U.S. credit for having the same basic life expectancy as other other high GDP OECD countries, when in fact it is markedly lower.
Check it out for yourself, the Ohsfeld and Schneider report is at:
http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844742403.pdf
See p. 20-21.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I think 'partially hydrogenated oils' and (though the current fad is to say the opposite) Vitamin D supplements in milk should also be on that list.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
only 77 wow!! Its much higher (82) in UK. I guess our health must be generally better than the US's.
Funny how the US health care system is the most expensive (read: corrupt) in the world too.
Maybe you yanks will get a health system as good/affordable as our NHS someday.
How many carbohydrate-based lobby groups are there in the USA bribing the medical policy makers into keeping starch, grain and sugar products firmly cemented onto the bottom of the infamous food pyramid.
No wonder Americans are fat and die sooner than any other 'developed' country... Politics is in charge of science; Stupid, stupid, stupid. Bad Americans.
... they are in the nursing homes (or in home-care), where they are costing everyone a bundle.
Captcha: ascetic. Nice irony.
Okay, so we made great advances in medicine and sanitation. That really boosted the average life expectancy and the quality of life for humanity and while things have stagnated some in many respects such as high profit patented drugs being cycled every time a patent is expired, I have to wonder if progress is being held back intentionally in the name of extending greater profits.
But what is killing us now? Okay, it's not the diseases that used to kill us. Now, more often, it's cancer caused by our increasingly polluted environment, artificial sweeteners and other flavor "enhancers" and the excessive amount of carbohydrates in the form of high fructose corn syrup and highly processed starches that literally torture our insulin organs to death giving us record high rates of diabetes and morbid obesity issues flooding our healthcare systems.
Sure, some people are insisting on organic foods and are shunning these ultra-long-shelf-life food products, but they are more expensive than their industrialized counter-parts and ridiculously rare to find and are therefore more than just inconvenient. All the while, the food industrialists are lobbying the FDA and similar organizations to redefine the word "organic" so they can put that word on more of the crap they are shovelling at us.
So where does that leave us? Longer lives due to improvements in medicine sanitation and shorter lives due to the industrialized environmental hazards we live in and ingest. Oh yeah, and let's not forget about the super-bugs we have been breeding due to our over-use of anti-biotics. We still have an ever-increasing population of old people and the problem is far worse in those countries where the food quality standards are more strict than in the U.S. (Yes, I'm talking about Japan, the first-world nation with a seeming absence of morbid obesity and EXTREMELY controlled and prohibitive food and drug market)
US life expectancy may have peaked... for now. But if we REALLY want to address the healthcare problems in the U.S., let's start at the cause of the vast majority of health problems in the first place! It's time to turn up the restrictions on the foods that are allowed for sale in the U.S. to make them healthier and safer as other nations have done and been shown to be highly effective. That would reduce the load on the health care system and insurance rates would go down with the frequency of need. Suddenly, the healthcare system is competing for customers instead of turning them away and everyone is living more healthy than ever before. In short, FIX THE FOOD and the current majority of health issues will go away thereby making traffic accidents the primary focus on preventing death and injury.
"Then there is me, who I scrimp and save even though I don't "Have to". I own my car, lock stock and barrel because I bought a used car. I own my own residence because I scrimped and saved so I could get a decent down payment on it and scrimped some more to pay it off ahead of time. I buy generic food at the grocery store and take other cost cutting measures. I don't buy expensive clothes and don't have an alcohol or drug habit."
When hyperinflation hits, you're the sacrificial lamb. A net debtor like me (vehicle plus mortgage, nothing else) will watch in relief as 30 years of future debt turns into something that can be paid off with change from the purchase of a loaf of bread, while the savings of people like you turns into dust as you watch.
Would be funnier if it wasn't true.
People think much too small... unhealthy lifestyles, poor decisions, evil corporations. But what's the cause of it all?
Malthus has the answer... it's a trap. As populations grow they strain limited resources: clean water, quality food, convenient housing, affordable health care. These constraints then start to limit population growth. Lower life expectancies is one small signal that this is happening. People live shorter lives, a net decline in population.
What are large changes in population? Famine, disease, genocide, and WAR. These happen when scarce resources are pushed to their limit. But survivors are joyous when they do, since they have abundant resources left over just for them. Nobody ever has sympathy for the dead.
The last time this happened was WWII. The "good" war was good for the USA because much of it destroyed a large chunk of population in Europe and Asia, leaving the scarce resources for us. I believe this explains most of the good years following the war, up until lately.
You're now banned from flicker for pointing out that Obama is not a major diety.
There's an elephant in the room that is being ignored. The AMA artificially limits the number of doctors and nurses available, which drives up prices. As the baby boomers age, it is going to get worse.
If you increase the supply of doctors and nurses, the shortage will decrease and prices will drop. Unfortunately, the AMA would switch from being a strong supporter of health-care reform to a strong opponent and it would be more difficult to pass.
> What about our obesity problem, which is causes by diet and lack of exercise (in most cases)?
Other countries, like Canada, have obesity problems, too. He said that our *higher* death rates are due to it. So if you have the same problem with obesity in both countries, it's irrelevant (even though it does, in fact, cause lots of deaths).
So, IRTFOPMA (I Read The Fine Original PLoS Med Article), and it seems the problem is going to solve itself. According to this graph, we'll run out of Republicans if health reform doesn't get passed.
Actually, there has been quite a bit of talk about prevention programs, things like physical education in school, and other inexpensive options to try to get people to take better care of themselves.
The problem is, that there is no good way to correlate it to money saved. If we spent X number of dollars on getting people to get off the couch and walking, it would be nearly impossible to say that it saved Y dollars on long-term health care (regardless of whether you choose a Y less than, greater than, or equal to X). And with all the calamity over the cost of the health care reform that hasn't yet passed either house, it is hard to sell prevention right now.
To frame that to fit our current situation, there's no way to guarantee that prevention will pay off because there's no guarantee that the people who get the benefits of that prevention will be with the same insurance company that paid for it. So even if you could prove that it'll save money in the long run, it still won't fly.
What kind of health care you get in the US depends on what the insurance company decides to pay for, and they're making their decisions based on having to answer to stockholders, not to their subscribers.
He wasn't ranting on socialism but pointing out how the morons in the South scream Socialism at the tops of their lungs every time there's a bit of talk about health care reform.
Hardest hit are regions in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, in Appalachia and also the southern part of the Midwest reaching into Texas. The culprits -- largely preventable with better diet and access to medical services -- are diabetes, cancers and heart disease caused by smoking, high blood pressure and obesity.
And those are the areas of the country that most consistently vote Republican, i.e., against their own best interests. But hey, at least dem fags ain't gunna git mur-reed!
This healthcare debate is really bringing out all the rabid loonies on both sides. The actually differences between Americans and Europeans in their overall lives is scant and neither side can claim any overall superiority on all issues. Europeans like to claim the moral high ground, but this hides their fears of being disadvantaged or even marginally setback (can't lose a job, can't lose your apartment, can't lose healthcare, can't lose vacation or union benefits--nothing). Meanwhile people in the US think the world hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.
Until life expectancy numbers actually go into decline, this recent increase should be treated as good news. Almost all health statistics of any consequence (except spending) have improved consistently over the last 50 or so years. This is largely do to increases in wealth and education, some medical advances, and improvements to the environment. There is no indication that these overall trends are reversing.
Besides the obvious use of live expectancy to get indirect information about the general health of the population,
how important is for an individual to live 0.x years more or less?
What is the threshold of time after which it makes sense? A little sooner or later we all die anyway.
It's really easy to blame insurance companies, especially since the Democrat party has been on the propaganda trail blaming the insurance companies, but they've actually been quite acquiescent about the whole thing.
this is the image they have cultivated, but its a lie.
The truth is while the insurance companies themselves claimed they were for reform, they shadow-funded several groups which are out there right now undermining reform and propagating lies through TV spots and astroturfing.
Hint: those TV spots you see talking gloom and doom are NOT from the RNC, and certainly not the democrats. Theyre the health reform version of "hands off the internet", the notorious anti-neutrality astroturfing group.
I can tell you as a person who is "uninsurable at any price" because of crohns while 600 lb men get coverage for gastric bypasses that the insurance companies ARE to blame, they are responsible for every single massive lie being propagated today. It's vicious, ugly, and criminal what they're doing to make sure people like me, who are crippled by easily managed chronic conditions, remain bankrupt and suffering.
You may not like their solutions, but that's ok, we can come up with a solution. But believing that a single payer system will magically solve everything is just silly. Such a drastic overhaul of any system is likely to cause more problems than it solves.
yes, there are so many horrible problems that every other industrialized nation has one, and anyone in those nations suggesting getting rid of them is marginalized as a dingbat (if they say so from a political office, they don't have it in the next year).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Nope,
You're a lying shitbag. The reason switzerland's life epectancy is so much higher is because they don't count most infant mortality as such. If the baby has a low birthweight, or dies within 2 days of birth, then the baby wasn't "viable" and doesn't count. In the states, though, if the baby has 1 heartbeat after birth, then it counts as infant mortality. Add a heatlh care system that spends an insane amount of money to carry a non-viable infant to term, and you end up with bullshit statistics. I guess the states would have better statistics if they didn't have good enough health care to give that baby a shot of living.
John
with a coherent response. that was charitable of you
socialist healthcare has absolutely every problem you ascribe to it, and more
but what you fail to see is our current system is even WORSE than that
i don't appreciate universal healthcare single payer because it will make cotton candy come out of my ass and my grandma to come back to life, i appreciate universal healthcare because its BETTER than the bullshit we have now
take any negative you can launch at "socialist" healthcare and our current system fares worse:
1. bureaucratic waste: you ever actually deal with an hmo?
2. rationed care. what the hell do you think that hmo worker in a cubicle looking at your charges and saying "approved" "denied" is doing?
3. shoddy care: ever been to an emergency room? why is every poor person there gumming up the system? furthermore, with socialist healthcare, you get an emphasis on PREVENTATIVE medicine so you don't even need to cut your foot off from diabetes or get a heart transplant for cardiomyopathy
4. underpaid doctors who don't care: your doctor looks at you now as nothing more than a series of expensive tests to run in order to get paid more, while the hmo is doing its best to deny those expensive tests. where's your actual well-being in that mix?
etc., etc.
borrowing liberally (pun intended) from winston churchill: socialist healthcare is the worst system of healthcare in the world... except for every other form of healthcare that has been tried
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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is one of the most paramount concepts in this world
you should be punished for the poor choices you make in life
absolutely
well, you know, you turned down that road in a rain storm, should have known better. so yes, you've called emergency services on your cell to report that you slid off the road, but you know what? emergency servies is really expensive. so we're going to force you to walk back to town in the rain for 20 miles, to teach you a lesson
look: you punish people for making bad choices in this world. ABSOLUTELY. but in a CIVIL society the punishment is always LESS in impact than the actual CRIME. it HAS to be. why?
in sharia law, you get your hand cut off for stealing. you get stoned to death for adultery. why is this wrong? because the punishments are worse than the crime. this makes for a less civil society, it rots society, it does not increase people's sense of responsibility, it just rots the very social fabric because society itself is now promoting crime itself
when a kid steals from the proverbial cookie jar, you give them a spanking and send them to their room. do you lock them in their room and don't feed them for a week? why is this wrong? what are you teaching your child about "personal responsibility" in that scenario? do you understand the punishment has to be calibrated to the crime?
in the same way, you are basically saying: "i'm sorry you are poor and have diabetes, but if you don't have insurance, you have to have your foot cut off. next time, you will learn to keep a job, even in a tough economy, to pay for your diabetes treatments. learn personal responsibility next time"
are you beginning to understand me?
the actual effect of your so-called "moral" position: a punishment worse than the crime. rotting the richness (literal, financial) of society by rotting people's concept of right and wrong. the guy who can't provide for his family because his arm is broken and he can't get it fixed at the hospital becaus ehe has no insurance leads hungry mouths to feed. one of those hungry mouths will rob you on the street. so do you "teach a lesson" to that hungry mouth about personal responsibility and send him to jail, which you have to pay for? maybe its CHEAPER just to fix the fucker's arm in the first place, no?
if you don't have a job, and you have diabetes, in the country with the best healthcare imaginable, your life is still a living hell of consequences for poor choices. enough to teach people to act better. your whole: "bad choice"="punishment" STILL APPPLIES. but you don't let them lose their foot! not because you are bleeding heart liberal who thinks death row inmates deserve better healthcare than hard working honest folks, but because in a civil society, the punishment for crimes is always LESS the crimes itself
or society rots, because then society is the criminal
that's the fucking honest to goodness truth
ruminate, and learn, ignorant motherfucker, and don't talk to me about morality, as you don't even fucking understand the concept
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
marry me
i'm joking of course, but with all of my liberalness, that obviously makes a socialist muslim homosexual, so it's all good
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Also, 640K of memory is enough for everyone!
If you think life expectancy has peaked, you're an idiot... We're just getting warmed up...
hard core geek-ware
is not done because you have a cattle prod at your ass of death and disease
personal responsibility is an aspect of higher character that develops in a social environment of modest rewards and modest punishments
in other words, if the social safety nets aren't there, you don't suddenly create people with more personal responsibility
you have the same amount of people with little personal responsibility in a society with a lot of social safety nets as you do in a society with no safety nets
except now they don't have a foot because of diabetes, so they can't provide for their family, so that hungry mouth tries to mug you, so you have to pay for their jail cell
or how about you just pay to fix the motherfucker's diabetes in the first place so he still has a foot and save yourself some dough you ignorant propagandized moron?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
After a long career in the tourism and non-for-profit sector, my brother became fond of the statement "the first rats off a sinking ship are the best swimmers". When this happens, the contrast ratio tends to increase, leaving a dysfunctional organization ever more dysfunctional. If the best and brightest of rural America are heading into the cities, the same applies. Averaged across America as a whole, nothing has changed, but you do have a slightly smaller, more woeful bucket.
Arthur Benjamin suggests we have the wrong focus in our math education. We should be teaching statistics, not calculus.
Arthur Benjamin's formula for changing math education
A typical person, after learning some calculus in high school, applies this skill precisely zero times in the rest of their adult life.
Statistics, however, is something we encounter on a daily basis, such as this article, with its potentially bamboozled statistical claim (did it properly account for a selective migration effect? Impossible to say from the story summary.)
People tend to have a relatively poor intuitive grasp on statistics, yet it impacts many of our daily decisions. Worse, even among those who have a reasonable grasp of statistics, few have a solid handle on robust statistics, which can be surprisingly subtle.
Bart Kosko (Edge.org is link challenged.)
Does everyone know the old joke that you can take the dumbest guy from a room of 50 pound foreheads and move him into a room of evolution deniers, and the average IQ in both rooms increases (really). This is just to point out that it matters how you draw the lines, as every corrupt politician knows instinctively. It doesn't mean that a single additional person voted in favour of the corrupt politico, yet moving the line can still result in victory.
On another front, urban migration is a fact of the modern world.
Stewart Brand on squatter cities
I have a friend who paddles at an elite level. As the club where she presently rows, the coach recently decided to split the top six athletes three each in an A and B boat. Two things happened: A) the race time averaged across the two crews improved, B) neither boat medalled. The six elite athletes were not impressed.
In Canada, we're inclined toward this kind of social experimentation. I deliberately live on the edge of a slightly seedy area of town, because I oppose further polarization (seedy by Canadian standards is no great hazard to life and limb).
In America, the balance is tipping so that one more year of life for some rich old white fart is procured at great expense, while a far cheaper intervention for an inner city black kid, who might live another twenty years with the benefit of treatment, is often neglected.
Here's an interesting question for debate: how does our widespread statistical ignorance bias social policy? If schools taught statistics instead of calculus, would the coefficient on power-law wealth distribution change one way or the other?
have you ever dealt with an hmo?
do you know how much paperwork are current system entails? how much money is wasted in the shuffling around of forms between entities and fighting about line item approved and denieds?
a government system would be chock full of bureaucratic waste, just as you say
and it would still be more efficient and less wasteful than what we currently have!
wake the fuck up you propagandized fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You, sir/ma'am , are an idiot.
Because you should be able to buy fire insurance after your house burns down.
Do you have the slightest clue how insurance works?
Here's what would happen if fire insurance were like health insurance.
Under this system fire insurance is provided by your employer, who gets a group discount from the insurance companies. Neither your employer nor the insurance company is allowed to disclose how much the insurance costs, because they both consider it a trade secret. Once a year, in November, you get the chance to change your fire insurance company if you are unhappy with them. But since you probably haven't had a fire, what is there to be unhappy about?
If you lose your job, you lose your fire insurance but the insurance company is required by law to allow you to pay an exorbitant sum to continue your insurance for 6 months. They will also allow you to buy a cheaper plan, which will replace your house with a tent if it burns down. By the way, the most common way to lose your job is to have a house fire.
If you are self employed or unemployed, you might be able to buy insurance. It will be much more expensive than the group plans that employers get. You will also be disqualified if you have had a fire in the past, smoke, or have been seen with matches or a cigarette lighter.
The way the fire insurance system works is that your insurance company will provide you a list of twenty fire inspectors. You are required to have a fire inspector in order to get access to a fire station. You will call all twenty and their secretaries will tell you that they aren't taking any new clients. You will eventually get taken on by one of them because your mother is one of his clients.
The inspector is paid a flat fee per year per client by the insurance company. He gets paid this amount whether he inspects your home or not. Each time he does inspect your home he might get a small payment from the insurance company, but you need to give him a $20 additional payment. This is to encourage you not to get your home inspected. If your home has apparent problems that need further investigation, the inspector does not get additional payments from the insurance company. If your home needs repairs to prevent a fire, the insurance company will pay for them, but the inspector might get charged a fee for referring you to a contractor. This is to encourage your fire inspector not to refer you to a contractor to perform repairs.
The fire inspector contracts with a fire station to handle emergencies. It might not be the closest fire station to your home. None of the firefighters working at the fire station are employees of the fire station. They are all independent contractors who are paid by the person who has a fire, or by the insurance company. The only employees at the fire station are the 35 people they have on staff to handle billing the 65 insurance companies that they contract with.
If you have a fire, the first thing you do is call your fire inspector. If he agrees that there is a fire, he will call the insurance company to get authorization to call the fire station. Some fraction of the time these authorizations will be denied.
When the fire station gets the call they will also call the insurance company for authorization. When each fireman gets to the house, they will ask for a copy of your insurance card before putting out the fire. If any of the people involved forgets to get authorization, they won't be paid by the insurance company. They will either bill you, or eat the expenses.
Fortunately it was just a minor fire entirely contained in a frying pan. After the fire has been put out, and a contractor has started repairs, you will receive a bunch of bills that have "THIS IS NOT A BILL" written on them. You will get one from each fireman, one from the fire station, one from your fire inspector, one from the contractor who is repairing your house and one from each of the construction workers the contractor has hired. They will come wit
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Posting to undo bad moderation
First off: credit to you for presenting an actual policy argument in a time when so many conservatives appear to have completely lost their minds.
That said, a couple of problems with the argument.
The first: in general, if the central core of an argument relies on an examination of how rationing works in a system with a fully nationalized industry, then it's not likely to be an apt comparison.
The system under discussion when we talk about the "public option" isn't anywhere near a single-payer system -- let alone actual socialized medicine like the NHS. There are real distinctions between these, they don't all collapse into insignificant differences behind an event horizon of government involvement as some people seem to suggest. If you think about it, unless all medical professionals are employed by the government (NHS) or there are explicit laws against personal funding of medical care, the scenario you quoted from the article is simply impossible. And I haven't seen any evidence that anything like either of those provisions is in the proposed legislation.
The second one... like rationing, there's no getting around the fact that someone will decide who gets treatments and, who doesn't. The state is far from a completely trustworthy entity, and I'd agree in an instant that wherever it has *any* responsibility -- let alone over life and death -- there needs to be real watchfulness and accountability. The thing is, the mechanisms for this are already at least to some degree built into our state system. There's nothing comparable in private insurance. A lot of the "market forces" that work to make private enterprise efficient and responsive in other industries aren't present here: insurance isn't driven by studied consumer choice, you can't easily make another choice and move to another insurer once you've developed a need for the insurance, and there's a *huge* information and power asymmetry between most insurers and their clients. Even the courts don't work well as mechanisms of accountability. MEGA Life & Health has been in and out of court for bad faith denial of claims and has settled or been ruled against in class action lawsuits... and they're still out there, operating and selling.
Handing anybody power over life and death is worthy of close examination, but the fact is, someone will have to do it. It's far from clear that the government is any less trustworthy than the private sector, and it's at least theoretically more accountable.
Tweet, tweet.
skyrocketing healthcare and insurance costs plus economic contraction has led to less people with health insurance year over year this decade.
Correlation may not be causality, but you tell me if you think having health insurance affects your longevity. Some think so.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Some people try to live a long time by eating right, exercising regularly, keeping a close eye on their medical needs, and basically taking good care of themselves.
And, for the most part, those who stick with it probably will live a lot longer than their peers.
Which means....provided they don't suffer some unexpected injury...that they will live long enough to watch everyone they love die.
They will wind up old and utterly alone...and that is the best case scenario.
I'm surprised I haven't seen a lot of debate about the other issue which skews the statistics (at least the one on life expectancy at birth): aggerssive neonatal resuscitation and infant mortality. The reality is that that US is MUCH more aggressive about the care of premature infants than most other countries and ~1/8 of all US births are preterm. neonates who would be called 'stillborn' at delivery or otherwise not counted as live births in other countries will get the full court press by American neonatologists who are constantly trying to push back the definition of viability.
I'm not assigning a value judgment to this, but the fact that there is this whole cohort which tends to die early in life which never gets counted as alive in Eurpe undoubtedly skews the statistics.
if someone can't AFFORD healthcare, do you let them die?
then stop it with the free market nonsense
free markets do NOT apply to something like healthcare, its a need that doesn't fit the philosophical underpinnings of what makes free markets work in CERTAIN human endeavours
applying the free market model to ALL human endeavours is some sort of monomaniacal fundamentalist insanity
free market is not a religion, or at least, it shouldn't be. unfortunately, you seem to be some sort of blathering free market fundamentalist idiot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and socialism is better than our current system
ps: the "help the guy with a broken leg" is morals just as Christian as it is Muslim or Hindu or Secular Humanist. And morals go obsolete only on the day humanity goes obsolete
anything else i can help you with retard?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm so glad I don't live in your obese, religious country. :)
Nothing except refusing to cover "too expensive" life-prolonging treatments and massive regulation power over private ensurers and doctors to punish those who prescribe and approve them. See about the UK's NICE and QALY system and how much effort it took the UK's elderly to get some treatments covered under that system. Yet, this is exactly what the "stimulus" bill prescribed.
Russian government in the 1990s did not have any "authority" either. It's just that treatments (and sometimes ambulance calls) were refused for people over 65.
The system under discussion when we talk about the "public option" isn't anywhere near a single-payer system
You are absolutely correct... for now. Individuals will have a choice as to stay with their current private coverage or to go with the new government option (now called "public option).
Of course, the government option will have to be as good as any private insurance, right? Otherwise why have it? If health insurance is a right, then everyone, regardless of income should have equal access to it.
Next, it will have to cheaper than private insurance. The whole point is universal coverage. That means the poor should be able to afford it as well. The only way the poor will be able to afford it is if it's cheap. How do you make it cheap? Well, tax the rich, of course. (Obama has already stated that this is how it will be paid for)
So now you have a competitor to the private sector that is just as good or better than the private sector, at half the cost. It is financed by the American taxpayer so it can profit is not a concern. For that matter, it doesn't have to break even. It can lose billions of dollars every single year and it does not matter. Oh, and it can make it's own rules because it has the backing of the United States Congress. They are the people who write laws.
Now tell me. How long do you think it will take before every private health insurance company is out of business? Obama says 10, 15 or 20 years.(watch the whole thing, but it's about 50 seconds in where he says eventually, he plans for there to be a single payer system.)
Handing anybody power over life and death is worthy of close examination, but the fact is, someone will have to do it. It's far from clear that the government is any less trustworthy than the private sector, and it's at least theoretically more accountable.
If an insurance company screws over enough of its customers, word gets out and it loses its customers and goes out of business. It has to keep a vast majority of its customers happy or they'll become the competition's customers.
But you are correct about one thing. If there is going to be a single payer system, I would prefer that the monopoly be the government and not some corporation. But we don't have a monopoly now and we won't if we keep the government out of it.
With that said, I agree that there needs to be reform. For example, I don't believe an insurance company should allowed to consider your health history when providing coverage or deciding what to charge. They should not be allowed to drop a customer for any reason other than lack of payment, and in the case of unemployment due to the illness, the government should pick up those payments as part of unemployment benefits. But we don't need the government to compete directly with the insurance companies.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Kinda ironic how this study was released at the same time the brouhaha surrounding Nationalized Health Care and "Death Panels" is going on.....
BTW..... Am I the *only* one making Soylent Green jokes about the whole Health Care thing???
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
"We also have a relatively large fraction of our male population working in mining, fishing, logging and farming, " might have higher accidental death rates but it sounds great for fitness, a far more important item for average life span. I have not noticed fat Canadians the way I see fat Americans. ie. how many 100 kg Canadians at college age or 150 kg, 200 kg, 250+ kg adults do you see.
If we cut our sugar and starch intake by 1/2 to 2/3, eat even cheap colored veggies like cabbage, and take a *modern* multivitamin (e.g. with 2000 iu D3 + 2x RDA on vitamin Bs + C, low iron for most), we probably would pick up a few years of lifetime and hundreds of billions of dollars savings.
There exists a correlation between the average health care coverage and average life expectancy...This proves that medical professionals actually provide some tangible results. Are you surprised?
I have no education, chose to pursue a career based on my innate laziness (sales) and have become wealthier faster than most will achieve in their lifetimes. Why? Dumb luck. I made some careless decisions a few years ago which somehow worked out and life has just carried me along from there. Seriously, I believe there is an inverse correlation between how hard you work and how much money you make. I worked for six months hauling bricks around on a constructions site after I dropped out of highschool and did not make as much as I now make in a week. Now I just talk to people all day, mostly about nonsense.
an oft-stated aim of the US health system is the improvement of the health of "all people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities
Whereas the real aim is to create vast profits for corporations
Of course, the government option will have to be as good as any private insurance, right? ... It will have to cheaper than private insurance. The whole point is universal coverage. That means the poor should be able to afford it as well. The only way the poor will be able to afford it is if it's cheap. So now you have a competitor to the private sector that is just as good or better than the private sector, at half the cost. It is financed by the American taxpayer so it can profit is not a concern. For that matter, it doesn't have to break even. It can lose billions of dollars every single year and it does not matter.
Now tell me. How long do you think it will take before every private health insurance company is out of business?
A couple of points:
1) The most important one first: even if we do end up with a true single payer system, comparisons with NHS still aren't apt. There are important distinctions between even a true nationalized health insurance system and a nationalized health care industry which make the concerns described in the quote from your linked article unlikely.
2) It's likely that the discounted coverage for the poor won't be the price that's available to everyone. The private sector won't have to compete across the income scale on an uneven playing field, it will simply be an uncompetitive option in a market segment it already has demonstrated it doesn't know how to provide service to.
3) However vast the public budget is, it's a limited pie and even the largest state institutions have finite pieces. Competition for investment is different, but it exists. Nor do all state entities run at a loss. The U.S. postal service (despite laws that state it should strive to be revenue neutral) runs at a profit that's reached into 10 figures over the last decade.
Still, it's true that some programs seem to be given accounting-defying resources. If this is a basic concern, it'd seem that it might be as easily addressed by crafting policy with appropriate limits on the program's resources as a simple taboo on state operation in a given sector.
4) While it's possible that some private insurers will fold if they're confronted with sizeable state competition, I also have a measure of faith that the private sector sometimes really does unleash creative energy on a problem when faced with a real challenge. It's possible insurers might step it up a notch and learn to provide more cost effective service rather than continuing a general trajectory of borderline collusive gamesmanship and rent-seeking. And if it's true they can't outdo the proverbial government bureaucrats when it comes time to, it doesn't much help the case that we should have our insurance needs met privately.
If an insurance company screws over enough of its customers, word gets out and it loses its customers and goes out of business. It has to keep a vast majority of its customers happy or they'll become the competition's customers.
That's how markets operate in ideal circumstances. That doesn't mean all markets behave that way. Insurance is one of these markets for a wide variety of reasons. It's never as simple for a customer to go to the competition in the insurance world -- even if you're in the rare position of owning an individual policy or controlling the policy selection of a group, by the nature of the business, once you need the service, it make business sense for insurers to be reluctant to provide it to you. You can't simply sign up for another insurer to take care of the chronic illness you've discovered if you're unhappy with the service of the current one.
And reputation is a limited check at best. The huge degree of information asymmetry between businesses and consumers might be enough alone to introduce problems with any ad hoc reputation system -- and this isn't just theoretical, as an example, the aforementioned MEGA Life & Health company apparently still has enough customers to shrug off a recent $20 million dollar fine.
With
Tweet, tweet.
I don't know why you would think that Europe won't intervene.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4420446/Premature-births-cost-the-NHS-almost-1-billion-a-year.html
80000 premature births in the UK
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/prematurebabies.html
480000 premature births in the US.
Adjusted for population they look very similar to me.
The fact is that the NHS will treat every and all premature birth. It will also treat every and all pregnant mothers (unless you elect to pay to go privately) If there is skewing of the statistics due to infant mortality I'd think it was the other way with babies not being taken to hospital in the US until it is too late.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Greetings and Salutations.
After skimming 800 bitches, moans, complaints, ad hominum attacks and one invocation of Godwin's Law, I want to ask This:
Since pretty much everyone agrees (to some extent) that the health care system in America is broken...WHat can we do to fix it?
it is easy to complain and snipe about the situation, but, that is what has gotten America into this position. What we citizens need to do is find a way to FIX the problem, and implement it.
I have my own ideas, but, would be more interested in seeing if anyone else out there is willing to pick up the challenge.
Regards
dave mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Now if anything about economics is right, that means that demand as 0$ is damn near close to infinite.
So can you please explain where Obama, who will not refuse any treatment according to you, will get those infinite resources.
If he can't get infinite resources, please tell me which treatments will be refused and why ... since clearly you have a better source, else you wouldn't make this claim, right ?
yes, you need to help support your society, your community, and if you don't then we have every right to insist you pay your fair share
most people understand this concept implicitly. but if you need goons with guns before you pay your fair share, then i'm all for it
why do you think you deserve to contribute less than everyone else?
do you enjoy your roads? your infrastructure? or did god make it?
you think you are an island? that your cash in your bank is some magic stuff that exists independently of your society?
fact: it is CHEAPER for all of us, for YOU to pay your fair share of health insurance for your society. if we don't do that, then society decays in such a way that this effects the overall richness of society, and therefore the amount of cash you have in the bank
that you are too ignorant to understand this doesn't mean you get a pass
if you are too stupid to understand this simple fact, and all you understand is goons with guns, then i'm all for those goons to come have a knock at your door
you aren't fighting tyranny, you aren't fighting fascism
you're fighting the SIMPLE COMMON GOOD. oh noes! my taxes might go up 5%! its the communist apocaplyse!
fucking moron
no, i'm sorry, we can't agree to disagree. that would require some sort of mutual respect. and i don't respect you, because you're IGNORANT
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you go visit a hospital. you go visit their billing department. you figure out why hospitals are always on the verge of bankruptcy
people don't pay their bills. because they aren't $50 under current hmos, moron, they are $1000 before the insurance company pays a dime
its called a DEDUCTIBLE
this is ON TOP OF THE monthly gouge out of their paycheck
the majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck. you think they can afford a sudden $750 charge for getting a broken arm? do we not fix their arm?
so force the hmos to have no deductible? ok, boom: now that monthly swipe from your paycheck doubles
or just pay a LITTLE HIGHER TAXES, which would be CHEAPER than what hmos gouge from your paycheck, and let single payer without the shitstorm of paperwork between hmos and doctors and hospitals wasting all that cash flow
my god, you are genuinely ignorant
you imagine the situation in simple pat ways that do NOT resmeble reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is that your body may age to that state BECAUSE of your smoking.
See, for example, gout.
Those who are suffering from it suffer it in old age.
Those who are GOING to suffer it are causing it at a young age.
But if you don't drink port, you won't be laid up in bed with gout at 60, dead at 70, you may instead be laid up in bed with infirmity at 70, dead by 80. But that's still 10 years of active life you lead you wouldn't otherwise have had.
Of course, the government option will have to be as good as any private insurance, right? Otherwise why have it?
Because a whole lot of working class people DON'T have it.
Next, it will have to cheaper than private insurance. The whole point is universal coverage. That means the poor should be able to afford it as well.
The current system gives no health care to the poor at all until it's too late. Then they're admitted to the emergency room, where thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on them despite the fact that they're past helping. The indigent actually have insurance; it's called "Medicaid". It's the upper lower class and the middle class who can't afford insurance and who can't get medical care until it's both too late and incredibly expensive.
I'd point to my late friend Linda, but she's not a good example. She stayed away from the doctor out of fear; had she seen a doctor I don't know if she could have been saved ot not, but she would have suffered a lot less. But in her case it wasn't the system's fault.
I now know you can die of cowardace. But may who who could be saved and WOULD seek medical treatment can't. You're paying for this, as the hospital eats the cost of treatment for those without insurance as part of their operating expenses. You insurance company is paying for people who they're not insuring, and that cost is passed on to you in the form of your insurance premiums.
That's why the US dosn't have the highest life expectancy, and why it has the highest cost per capita. There is no more wasteful system on earth.
Well, tax the rich, of course
See above. You're already paying a tax, only the government doesn't collect it, your insurance company does.
So now you have a competitor to the private sector that is just as good or better than the private sector, at half the cost.
The insurance companies' costs go down, because they're no longer paying for patients who aren't insured.
It is financed by the American taxpayer so it can profit is not a concern.
That also cuts costs -- the middleman is gone.
Oh, and it can make it's own rules because it has the backing of the United States Congress
The insurance companies make the rules now. Congress is accountable to YOU, the insurance companies are only accountable to their stockholders.
How long do you think it will take before every private health insurance company is out of business?
Not soon enough, in my opinion. They're nothing more than parasites.
If an insurance company screws over enough of its customers, word gets out and it loses its customers and goes out of business.
Nope, because most of its customers don't have a choice -- you're insured by whatever company your employer decides on.
I agree with the rest of your post.
Free Martian Whores!
Nor do all state entities run at a loss. The U.S. postal service (despite laws that state it should strive to be revenue neutral) runs at a profit that's reached into 10 figures over the last decade
Another even better example is CWLP, the power company in Springfield, IL. It's run by the city and turns a profit despite the fact that we have the cheapest and most dependable electricity in Illinois.
Free Martian Whores!
Small corner stores sell the cheapest crap they can get hold of.
Cheap food tastes bad so it's loaded up with fats, sugars and chemical enhancers to hide the taste of the mechanically recovered meat. Protein makes you feel fuller and in the meat-eater paradise of the "American Dream", meat is the ONLY food!
And how does your point prove the study and the conclusion dkelinsc made wrong?
PS if rho reads this, you may get veg easily and simply when you plant it in your own garden, but that takes time and effort.
If you have work, it's so many hours you HAVE no time.
If you're on the dole you often don't have the will to live necessary to go gardening.
Seriously.
against low iq morons in the usa attempting to participate in a debate over healthcare in this country informed with nothing but propaganda and lies and low iq, and not a shred of understand WHAT IT IS REALLY FUCKING ABOUT
fact, solid fucking FACT: universal healthcare is SUPERIOR to what we currently have in this country, most definitely and importantly including IT SAVES YOU MONEY
as if the bite hmos take out of your paycheck isn't a tax that would actually go DOWN in a single payer system
and what do these ignorant retards rant about? it has nothing to DO with healthcare. it has to do with their irrelevance and their ignorance, and all they can do to try to matter is yell their ignorance at the top of their lungs
all i want is for some propagandized morons in this country to actually fucking understand what SOCIALISM actually is, philosophically, and how it is BETTER than the bullshit system we currently live under, before they open their ignorant low iq propagandized mouths
what the hell is socialism? its MEDICARE. its MEDICAID. HOW THE HELL DOES THAT THREATEN ANYONE YOU IGNORANT RETARDS
goons? goons with guns are going to force you to pay? WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND WHY IT I IN YOUR BEST INTEREST O PYA, THAT IT MAKES YOU RICHER BECAUSE YOUR SOCIETY IS RICHER FOR SUPPORTING BASIC FUCKING INFRASTRUCTURE YOU FUCKING MORON
oh noes! its a secret communist muslim conspiracy to destory all that america values!
fucking morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So when it goes up again will you post another article saying it has peaked again?
Of course, the government option will have to be as good as any private insurance, right? Otherwise why have it?
Because a whole lot of working class people DON'T have it.
A public option doesn't guarantee this people WILL have it. We don't know the real reasons behind why these people don't have it. If it's affordability, I'm willing to bet there are plenty that CAN afford it, but their priorities are f****d up.
I now know you can die of cowardace. But may who who could be saved and WOULD seek medical treatment can't. You're paying for this, as the hospital eats the cost of treatment for those without insurance as part of their operating expenses. You insurance company is paying for people who they're not insuring, and that cost is passed on to you in the form of your insurance premiums.
That's why the US dosn't have the highest life expectancy, and why it has the highest cost per capita. There is no more wasteful system on earth.
This drives me wild. There are more reasons for longevity not related to whether or not a few people do or don't have insurance. The USA doesn't have the highest life expectancy because we're all a bunch of lard asses, or have more other unhealthy habits compared to other countries. We also don't know the effects of living in some different areas yet. It does make a difference. The leading cause of death in the USA is heart disease. No system in the world can help your fat ass out except doing insane amounts of bypasses, but even then you're still a ticking time bomb.
Well, tax the rich, of course
See above. You're already paying a tax, only the government doesn't collect it, your insurance company does.
Yes, but then we'll have a tax AND we'll be paying in. Sounds expensive to me.
So now you have a competitor to the private sector that is just as good or better than the private sector, at half the cost.
The insurance companies' costs go down, because they're no longer paying for patients who aren't insured.
It is financed by the American taxpayer so it can profit is not a concern.
That also cuts costs -- the middleman is gone.
Yes, but now instead of businessmen handling business, you got a bunch of politicians who are notorious for overspending, wasting money, and being incredibly poor managers of any system.
If an insurance company screws over enough of its customers, word gets out and it loses its customers and goes out of business.
Nope, because most of its customers don't have a choice -- you're insured by whatever company your employer decides on.
Agreed. But I don't believe that a public option is the answer to everything. What employer in their right mind would be willing to pay a tax for the public option whether you take it or not and continue to pay the majority of the costs of the non-public plan? It'd all cost too much and they would just leave you the public "option", leaving no choices, and we're back to square one.
For the rest of the reform, I also believe there should be more protections for customers, and information should be legally required to be VERY available, and VERY clear. They shouldn't be able to drop you because you actually used the insurance, and you should be able to get some form of coverage with most pre-existing conditions, or at least transfer coverage from one place to the next.
I'd also like to point out that the public option does nothing for the quality of health care. All this bill is mandating is who you are paying for insurance. I'd venture to guess the most of the same problems will still be here even with Obamacare.
Taxing the "rich" constantly to solve our budget problems is not the answer.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
I went to Mexico in 2003, flying from the Netherlands with a stop at Houston. What I saw there was amazing...
_Very_ fat people were transported on rugged electrical carts all over the place, a KFC where the smallest portion was a friggin' bucket full of chicken wings, sweat-stained, X-legged fat people that tried to walk on their own, decided that three steps was enough excercise for the day, waiting for the electrical meat-carriers, people with asses so big that I started to wonder how they'd wipe, it was Harkonnen headquarters for sure. You could easily pick out the tourists: they all gazed around at the total amount of fat that gathered...
I'm quite sure the average life expectancy of that bunch has to be 60 at max, obesitas has turned the life expectancy for the worse.
I ... have no clue exactly what problem the Democrats are trying to solve.
The problem the Democrats are trying to solve IS how to insure everyone without drowning the country in debt or destroying the parts of the system that work.
Along the way, they have been quick to make changes and compromises (as of this writing, the end-of-life counseling originally proposed by the Bush administration and the "public option" so feared by the Health Insurance companies have been dropped). One reason for the flexibility is that the concerns raised by the Republicans and the "Blue dog" democrats about both financial viability and government intrusions have been acknowledged by the administration as legitimate.
A problem has been that no solution yet on the table seems to have enough votes to pass. The right wing fears that a system that successfully serves more than 250 million people may be wounded. The left wing fears being thrown out of power if the more than 50 million uninsured people are still uninsured when the next election happens.
An income tax surcharge that funds vouchers that private citizens could use to purchase private health insurance might work for everyone. (I think Australia has a similar approach.) That would remove employers from involvement in employee personal situations just as employers in this country are not involved in their employees' purchase of mortgages and car insurance. That would also create a larger market for private insurers to compete over.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Facts: Humans have not increased or decreased in biological life length. The total life time is completely enviromental and biological based on the health history of the human. Overall humans live to be around 70-80 years. What has increased is the overall enviroment for which a human can live. Better food, air, healthly living, medician and such have allowed humans to over come the enviromental or biological limiter that would have killed them before these advances.
But make no fact about it, medical science HAS NOT increased the biological age of humans, only helped with the enviroment that they live. The fountain of life (stemcells?) is still out of reach, so all we can do ATM is continue to create a better enviroment to live in and increase our knowledge on organ replacement and growth.
One of the people from the MSN article:
"Suzanne Mullins won $4.2 million in the Virginia lottery in 1993. Now she's deeply in debt to a company that lent her money using the winnings as collateral.
She borrowed $197,746.15, which she agreed to pay back with her yearly checks from the Virginia lottery through 2006. When the rules changed allowing her to collect her winnings in a lump sum, she cashed in the remaining amount. But she stopped making payments on the loan.
She blamed the debt on the lengthy illness of her uninsured son-in-law, who needed $1 million for medical bills. "
We live in a country where, even if you hit the lotto, you can still end up bankrupt from medical bills. Maybe single-payer healthcare doesn't just help the poor while robbing from the rich after all......
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
If you only knew...
This is it really. This combined w/ the rolling of costs for providing underinsured care into the cost of providing insured care. I've seen the #'s behind healthcare. I'm really afraid for our future. It's time we start educating ourselves again. Eat right, exercise, and stay away from risky activities. (1 out of 3 is a rare occurence in this country).
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Maybe Ben Stiller will step in and open up the: Derek Zoolander Center For People Who Can't Healthy Good And Wanna Heal And Get Medicine Stuff Good Too Just sayin'