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Americans Less Healthy, But Outlive Brits
An anonymous reader writes with this intriguing snippet: "Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower death rate than similar people in England, according to findings published in the journal Demography."
Clearly this is because of our lack of socialized healthcare, and this is no other factor that could possibly affect this.
The UK is more depressing what with its annual 4 hours of sunshine and the best looking women maybe rating a 7. Who can forget the warm beer, bad food and lovable totalitarian government?
I'm not kidding. You don't think all of that stuff can have a negative affect on a persons psyche, perhaps affecting their health? Especially the warm beer...that's especially depressing.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
It has been my experience that Americans hold onto life harder than almost anyone else on the planet. There is no saying "Well, that's enough then." There is no accepting the inevitable. No matter how sick, how weak, how miserable a person is, in the US it seems that it's still better than throwing in the towel.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
No matter how badly we treat ourselves our doctors fix us up good!
Despite all this clever wording, Americans do not outlive Brits in the vast majority of cases.
USA - Male life expectancy 75.6 years, female 80.8 years.
UK - Male life expectancy 77.2 years, female 81.6 years.
Notice how one set of numbers are larger than the others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman
At least 250 people died at the hands of this one man. Did they take that into account when considering these statistics?
So your life is miserable, but at least it lasts long, eh?
Not suprising is it? The US right just had a political 'victory' and now we get the politically motivated stories about how socialist universal health care isn't as good as Americas fucked up system. It makes no difference that the story and the study is a flat out lie of statistical manipulation. Nor does it make any difference that hundreds of cultural and societal differences could account for any difference far more than any minor difference in health care quality. It's just inevitable.
Cynic? Moi?
How long old people still have to live heavily depends on medical treatment. Surprisingly (at first sight) bad healthcare can mean old people are more healthy. (It stops to be surpising if you consider that bad health care means only the healthy people live long enough to be old).
Thus you can get numbers that in the USA looking at the right age, you can get much longer life expectancy if you are black and poor than if you are rich and white.
Another nice paradox (numbers might not be totally accurate and might have changed over time): Getting older might increase the years you still have to live. Especially if you are 60 (or something short of retirement age in your country) you might have statistically less years before you than if you are 70 (or something a few but not too much years after typical retirement), because all those people dying between 60 and 70 lower the chances for a 60 year old more than the 10 years less do reduce the expected years for the others.
So be careful with those numbers.
I know some politicians will use a study like this to argue that single payer health care is a bad idea, but when you consider that this study looked at older citizens, who tend (in America) to be on Medicare (our single payer health care), it seems to suggest that that program isn't so bad after all.
Of course, you have climate, pollution, diet, genetics, and a dozen different factors that you can't control for when you compare Americans and Brits. So studies like this one are probably pretty useless.
It would be interesting if you could take a group of senior citizens and split them up three ways: no insurance, single payer (Medicare), and traditional health insurance. Then see who lives longest.
The article misses an important detail - the Yanks actually dieing earlier than Brits, it's just that all the extra preservatives they consume keep them in a state of animated death for a few extra years.
I would look to all sorts of things for differences between the two locations. I would look at what types of people were sampled from both populations. For example, did the two samples include impoverished people as well as middle and upper class people? Does it account for various [sub-]species of humans ranging from varieties of white and black to asian, hispanic/native american? There are far too many differences for this study to simply compare the two locations and draw a conclusion. (Yes, I know I am being un-P.C. by saying [sub-]species of humans but I hold that when naming other species of other animals, we cite similar differences even when there can be successful mating between different species of other animals. And let's face it -- different species of humans have different strengths and vulnerabilities from others -- sickle-cell, various forms of diabetes and more If that doesn't at least qualify the acceptance of a sub-species distinction, I don't know what does. And no, I am not against inter-racial breeding, in fact I have practiced it quite a bit... some black women are just hot and my kids are half asian. So don't start with calling me racist -- I'm not -- I just want to deal in facts, not politics.)
It would be convenient if we could all point to a single factor in any given study of human longevity, but there is no such convenience. I'll read the study later when I have time, but simply stating "U.K. and U.S. population longevity different for reason X" isn't good enough.
If I were to cite a single factor, I would probably cite that the people of the U.S. are more prone to being over-weight. Why? Morbid obesity is bad -- no question about it. But it has been shown through [questionable] studies that having a little extra weight makes people more resistant to various problems and promotes healing... think of it as having a little extra "spare parts." Makes me think our "picture of health" is still not quite reflecting reality.
There're many other factors... Such as amount of money spend on health care... For instance the US spends more than twice as much on heath care per citizen as the UK (and the US doesn't even cover all of their citizen).
That's according to OECD: http://tinyurl.com/cr9753
I think they just spend more money on pills over the pond. Most Brits have an aversion to all things medical.
No sig today...
The summary is misleading. Brits, on average, outlive Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
This study compares the survival of people with similar diseases once they become ill.
Off topic: I was, at one time, an advertising copywriter. I notice several shortcomings in the Helium Designs web site.
But I would rather die healthy at 60, than live in an old home while being overweight at 80.
Outliving your peers is not a good thing for everyone
In the US, physicians tend to emphasize curative (disease-fighting, life-extending) care. Many American physicians view the death of a patient as a personal defeat. Thanks in large part to numerous advances in medical technology over the past half-century, physicians (worldwide, but especially in the US) have become very good at "keeping people alive." That said, keeping someone alive often comes with a price - namely, the patient's quality of life. Relative to their English colleagues, American physicians are generally more resistant to moving patients from curative care to palliative care - care that focuses solely on reducing/eliminating symptoms. It comes as no surprise, then, that patients with chronic disease are living longer in the US. Saying that longer lives implies "better" healthcare is naively simplistic at best. That conclusion is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of the goals of medical care. The goals of quality health care demand a balance between curative and palliative care. On one extreme end of the curative-palliative-care spectrum you have the physicians (think: Kevorkian) who want to focus solely on reducing symptoms - even to the point of death. On the other extreme of the spectrum you have those who want to extend life at any cost (think: Terri Shiavo case). On this axis, American doctors lean somewhat to the "right" of most doctors worldwide. The best doctors in any country are straddling the line between "excessive" and "inadequate" care. That being said, conflating palliative care with "giving up" on the patient is an all too common issue among physicians and patients. Though I have full confidence in this research team's statistical results, they (Smith, in particular) seem to be unfamiliar with how heavily differences in culture affect healthcare, especially among patients with chronic diseases.
UK has higher life-expectancy then USA, but this study has some bias built in that allows it to get the results that may be wrong. The bias is that there are more people who are sickly in USA, so the people who would be at good health in UK will be sick in USA. So, assuming the two populations are kind of similar genetically speaking. Then some in the group in UK will not get sick, and will not be in these statistics. So, the genetic life-expectancy of the group in the UK will shift, but nothing changes for the population as a whole. It is still better to be in the country with highest life-expectancy, it will only be more likely that you die earlier if you are sick in a country where people don't normally get so much sick.
65 years is an interesting age, namely thats how many years ago the war ended. While the war wasn't as hard on England as it was most of the rest of Europe there was significant shortages and rationing when compared to the youth of the US during that same time period. There are a lot of studies nowadays that basically say that malnourishment during childhood can have negative effects all throughout a persons life. I wonder if the war has anything to do with the people over 65 dying at higher rates than the US.
The Brits are just better at offing people by committee.
Why not compare the lifestyle and longevity of Americans with longer lived countries..?
Japan, some of the Scandanavian places and Australia/NZ all rate pretty highly.
Here in Australia (shamefully) we are probably the second fattest nation behind the USA, but maybe our longevity is because of our falling smoking rates. I think at last count we were in the top 10 longest lived country.
Me? I'm a very healthy vegetarian, never smoked, and I've lost 70 KG (about 155lb) over the last 3 years.
Watch "Supersize Me" for an insight into the ills of the American diet... 8^)
Wow, it sucks to be in the US! With our old people being less healthy but still living longer, that's a recipe not only for a lot of personal misery, but also for uncontrollable health care spending. The optimal thing economically would be for old people to be healthy until their sudden death. It seems that in the US, just the opposite happens: Sick people are being kept from dying by (I assume) lots of expensive technology. Not only does that not sound like a future I want for myself. It might also help explain why our health care costs are so much higher here than anywhere else. By the way, this is not a question of private v. public medical care, because at that age, both Americans and Brits are getting their health care costs paid by the government. It just seems that the Brits are somehow getting a better deal than we get from Medicare.
It's all in dental hygene.... I know we have all seen the big book of British smiles at sometime in our lives. Those wacky Brits and their pointy teeth... plus don't they brush like once a week. Either way, some of them may look good naked but as long as they dont smile.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
To the submitter:
FFS - English or British? They are not the same thing and not interchangeable. It's quite a simple thing to grasp you moron. I suspect that even if you had the suspicion that there was a difference, you'd probably think English means British and vice versa.
Also: some British (self included) don't like the word Brits. Want to save room on the title? Change American to Yank: "Yanks less healthy, but outlive Brits". Don't like 'Yanks'? Then don't use 'Brits'.
If you group them all in you've got your ghetto clan who may live to 18, typical black male is under 50. Some Latins live longer but if you group them much lower than the WASP. WASP men live to a grand old 87. Women much longer at 92. Nearly all still have their teeth. Contrast to Brits, few of whom have all their teeth at death. And there are no "african-american" Brits. It's true !!
I'm not saying americans are more healthy (I find that really hard to believe), but is it possible they appear less healthy, simply because they are sent for more procedures because they are the ones paying for them?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
There is nothing wrong with allocating health care resources: In a private system, this is done implicitly based on the size of a patients bank balance. If instead you believe that whether or not someone deserves treatment should depend on whether they need it or not, and whether it will help, then there is nothing wrong with refusing to pay for overpriced medicines which will only have a marginal effect.
There will always be a limited supply of health-care: limited number of doctors, MRI machines, medicines, and most importantly money to pay for all these things. At some point you have to make a decision as to how these resources should be allocated. "Death panels" is scaremongering hyperbole which makes a false comparison: choices are already being made already, they're just based on ability to pay, which seems just as unjust.
Whilst it is hard to say "sorry, we're not going to pay for this treatment because it will only extend your life by a year. Instead we're going to use that money to pay for X number of other people's operations which will have a greater impact", the alternative is "sorry you can't have this treatment because you can't afford it. Instead, we're going to spend our time treating this guy over here because he wrote us a big cheque".
Also, the British thinktank who instituted this are a right-wing one, no doubt plotting to destroy the NHS alongside the Tory allies. So they publish a non-peer reviewed piece of 'research' designed to conclude what they want it to conclude. Bullshit.
The Tories recently gutted NICE, the body that evaluates the cost effectiveness of drugs to see if they should be made available on the NHS. They were doing a fine job, but got nothing but shit because they prevented pharmaceutical companies gouging into the state healthcare providers ample budget. When retards in the US talk about 'death panels' they are usually referring to these guys, and they don't get much of a good press in the UK either.
Basically, they talked to terminal patients to find out how much of their life they would be willing to give up to remain in good health for the rest of their life, and used this to calibrate a 'quality adjusted life year' which represented the value of a drug. Thus they could reject a hugely overpriced drug that added 2 weeks to the life of a late-stage cancer patient and spend the money saved on a drug that might allow a very sick child to reach adulthood. That second part *never* got a mention by the rightwing critics. When opportunity costs are being used to make the state healthcare system more efficient whilst forcing drug companies to charge realistic prices based on what their products can actually do, the right suddenly decides to reject economic language and talk shit about 'death panels' and NICE 'killing patients'.
Yes, we ration healthcare in this country - but up until now it has been based on how much extra life (across the whole population) that healthcare can give. The US rations healthcare too - based on how rich or poor you are. Our system is, frankly, better.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
If you RTFA, what it seems to be saying is that rates of chronic illness are lower in England, but rates of recovery are higher in the USA. The example given is diabetes. Now, diabetes can either be entirely genetic, or partially brought on by lifestyle. Lifestyle is a lot easier to fix than a genetic disorder. If the majority of the extra cases are lifestyle driven, then the study says nothing about the relative qualities of the countries' health systems. The article seems to skirt very carefully around this issue.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
Americans in general are a lot more willing to prolong life, regardless of the expense, and regardless of the quality of that life. I, for one, would prefer to check out of the game at a younger age with good health rather than spending 10 miserable years in a nursing home shitting on myself.
That must be why Hollywood needs to import all our Hot British actresses.
Elizabeth Hurley
Keira Knightley
Kate Beckinsale
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Kate Winslet
Claire Forlani
Thandie Newton
Rhona Mitra
Poppy Morgan
Keisha Kane
Alicia Rhodes
Yeah, it's called "friendly fire"
Canadian life expectancy = 80.3 years, UK ife expectancy = 78.7 years, and US life expectancy = 78.0 years (in 2007) according to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html and that's because Canada and the UK have life-long public health care.
But when medicare starts to cover US citizens at age 65, suddenly US citizens have a much better outlook. US citizens lucky enough to survive until age 65 and receive medicare coverage have a longer life expectancy than their British peers.
Actually, if you go back and study the data at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html and http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf you'll discover that the US has both higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy than Canada and almost every developed European democracy (even Germany who absorbed the disaster known as East Germany a few decades back). For what its worth, the US also pays much more per capita for their lower life expectancies. I wonder if this data would change anyone's mind about the benefits of health care reform...
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Yeah, replacing a person hip really lows their quality of life. (This is from the Democrat President Obama remark on replacing a 80+ year old hip.) Tim S.
The US is a bizarre statistically outlier when it comes to healthcare spending and outcomes:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/mlm/healthscatter2.png
Drastically outspending everyone while having some of the poorest outcomes.
Sadly, because of lobby money it will never be fixed.
CUSTOMER: Here's one -- nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not!
MORTICIAN: He isn't.
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go in the cart!
CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER: Oh, do us a favor...
MORTICIAN: I can't.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't
be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to Robinson's -- they've lost nine
today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEAD PERSON: I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there
something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: I feel happy... I feel happy.
[whop]
CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much.
MORTICIAN: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
CUSTOMER: Right.
[clop clop]
MORTICIAN: Who's that then?
CUSTOMER: I don't know.
MORTICIAN: Must be a king.
CUSTOMER: Why?
MORTICIAN: He hasn't got shit all over him.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
One possibility is that the Medicare payment model which is, I believe, fee for service, could lead to over-diagnosing in the U.S. This could lead to "more illness" with "longer survival" rates.
The reverse possibility is mentioned in the article. The English system, that I believe does not use a fee for service model, may lead to less aggressive diagnosing, followed by "less illness" and "shorter survival" times.
My non-expert opinion is that the Canadian system is "best" because it is fee-for-service," costs less per-capita than U.S. Medicare, and provides greater choice than England. It may also cost less per-capita than the English system.
Yeah because govt health care is soooo efficient! You act like there is nothing other than medicare. The 1 year difference doesn't mean much, hell that could be part of my life where I crap myself all day, no need to go through that, thank you very much.
As American who has spent a few months in the UK outside of London... there are few-to-none serious obese folks in the UK. I can walk around the Wal-Mart 5 minutes from my house, and it's like an Obese Safari. However, I also noticed fewer particularly lean folks over there. My gut (no pun intended) tells me the distribution of weight for Americans has much fatter tails (again, no pun intended). While I didn't see obesity in the UK, I did believe I saw more folks who just a bit "not in shape" as I do here.
USA is not worst in class; Ireland and Portugal both have slightly lower life expectancy.
The study cited in TFA only discusses US citizens 65 and above, i.e. those benefiting from nationalized public health care in the form of Medicare. I think the data unequivocally says that people with life-long national health care almost always live longer, and get much more bang for their health care buck.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Real ale is fresh living beer that undergoes a natural second fermentation in the cask. Like any natural live product, the beer will mature age and ultimately go off. Real Ale must therefore be drunk within a strict timescale. Real ales requires proper handling on its way to the pub, and care within the pub to bring it to condition for serving. However, real ale can reach its full flavour potential, without chilling, filtration, pasteurisation and added gas.
Keg Beer, mass produced, often pasteurised, dead, with C02 gas added. The reason it is chilled is to inhibit a natural secondary fermentation.
Campaign for Real Ale definition of Real Ale.
Rationed healthcare? I would like to see a list of people in the US who had to pay their bill _before_ the service. No, the fact that services are performed before payment is one of the things killing the hospital system.
That this is the answer.
Yes, government healthcare is efficient as proven by the countries that pay less for healthcare and whose citizens live longer than the USA. Government healthcare may have many faults, but efficiency certainly isn't one of them.
Yes, government *insurance* is very efficient. See a comparison of Medicare v. Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is one of the most inefficient programs we have. We basically subsidize private insurers to do what Medicare already does more cheaply.
Government health-care? That's a different ball of wax.
That could explain it right there. Some people have enough money for health care, so those aren't much of a difference. Of the rest, the weak die and so don't make it to 65. So the superior health at 65 could be explained by simply killing those people off who would have died at that time before they get there through lack of health care. So medicare could be vastly inferior to the British system and still provide better outcomes at 65. It's like a poor teacher who lets the stupider half of the class die to make the class place better on tests.
Sorry, but Grampa's gotta die so little Timmy can live. Sure, it sounds better than "Grampa's gotta die so some bean counters can be happy", but it's rationing nonetheless.
In the United States, everyone gets Medicare after age 65 - we only have universal healthcare after age 65.. Before the age of 65 many people have no healthcare, no preventive services, so they have more health problems and die younger. That causes the life expectancy in the US to be lower than the UK. But if you can live past 65 in the US, then finally you have access to healthcare and you can live longer.
So basically the solution is to get Medicare for everyone in the United States and our life expectancy will improve.
The fact is that the US health system costs 10 points of GDP more than socialised systems with better outcomes. So as far as efficiency goes, experience shows public health care is massively more efficient than private one.
And this is obvious: you cannot ask someone to decide objectively how much to spend on their health when their life is on the line. This is exactly equivalent to legal mugging.
Basically, you are arguing that 10% of US GDP (way more than the average deficit even with the Bush madness) is well spent just because instead of staying in the pockets of the people, goes to line the pockets of private companies? For no benefit to the public at all? Because you are not getting better outcomes, you are not getting better innovation, you are not getting more employment. You do get better catering, but if you think hospitals should be run as glorified hotels you need to look up on what is expected of a hospital.
You fail at basic logic and basic knowledge.
England != Britain
of GM Foods, Preservatives, Colourings, E numbers galore, fast food, sweeteners in drinks etc. Why do Americans not feel as healthy as Brits? well maybe it is because 75% of the population are Fat Bastards and the Fat Bastards here in the UK are equally as shameful. There is no substitute for good excercise and no excuse for sitting on one's arse. Really though, it is cultural change over the years so it is just a lifestyle option and just remember the study into this only takes into consideration a sample amount of people and not a National Census.
Here I am, deluded and home alone in the dark. I've never considered the death rate before. Too me the death rate for all mortals is 100%. Apparently I am misinformed.
it's rationing nonetheless
Of course it is, and the poster you replied to said so:
"Yes, we ration healthcare in this country - but up until now it has been based on how much extra life (across the whole population) that healthcare can give. The US rations healthcare too - based on how rich or poor you are. Our system is, frankly, better."
Of course it's rationing - the GP said so later on in the same post you quoted.
When there is a finite amount of something, you have to ration it.
The US system does this rationing by basing it on your ability to pay up front, or via insurance. If you're poor, you don't get to queue. This keeps the waiting times down for those who can afford it, but it does increase the financial burden on the wealthy - when you break a system down like that and have individuals paying, the cost goes up for everyone.
This is why the US spends twice the GDP per capita on healthcare than almost any other system on earth, and *still* requires its citizens to pay for insurance out of pocket.
... they're called HMOs.
But USA health care is profit oriented, and there is more profit to be made in selling snake oil than there is in treating diseases.
There, fixed that for you. Seriously. I talked to a guy with high blood pressure recently. his doctor wants to put him on drugs, but he's not so sure.
I commented that well over 1/2 of the population doesn't get even the RDA of magnesium in their diet. high blood pressure is usually related to stress, and how can one relax if they don't have enough of the relaxation mineral in their diet?
I did some more reading, and the "life extension" people (Pearson & Shaw) say that potassium bicarbonate can help with blood pressure too.
A little Mg, KHCO3, and daily total-body relaxation will deprive the pharmaceutical complex of years of income for treating the symptom of high blood pressure. I guess I don't get why doctors refuse to treat a symptom by addressing the causes.
Allopathic health care treats symptoms, and Obamacare continues this fine tradition.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
A co-worker who is a British expat was royally pissed off when his ageing mother was told to go home and die when she had heart ailments in England when she was nearing 70.
But don't despair, we're going to fix that in the U.S. We're going to tell our seniors to curl up and die as well.
The Tories recently gutted NICE, the body that evaluates the cost effectiveness of drugs to see if they should be made available on the NHS.
C.S. Lewis wrote more about NICE in That Hideous Strength:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Hideous_Strength
It just proves to me that our health care was already better. Look at how much fatter Americans are, and how much more infrequently they visit the doctor, yet how close their life expectancy is, and how after 65 they outlive the hell out of Canada/Britain (when they actually realize that maybe they should go to a doctor more than once every 15 years).
The study was published in a journal called Demography http://www.populationassociation.org/publications/demography/. From the journals web page: "Demography is a peer-reviewed journal. All manuscripts considered appropriate for the journal are reviewed externally." Consequently, the research study was actually peer reviewed...
How long does the average black/white/hispanic citizen live in the US, and how long would they live in Germany?
I wonder if this data would change anyone's mind about the benefits of health care reform...
No. Facts and data don't seem to be playing any role at all when it comes to that topic.
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A couple of things to consider about these statistics and the comments that the British live longer. While I support US healthcare reform, in a fair comparison of the US and UK's health system, I think it is important to understand some key differences between the countries. First of all the US population is 6x England and 5x of Britain with the US having many diverse geographic and cultural regions. While the UK does have immigrants, the US has many different immigrant populations some large with a wide variety of health and nutritional backgrounds. Different groups may have had poor nutrition and health care as children or may eat unhealthy diets because of cultural habits or because high calorie food is inexpensive and plentiful. In addition the US is a nation of independent states and people and what might be the best for California, might not work in Kentucky and vice versa. All of this means that health care delivery in the US and the resulting outcomes of live expectancy and illness recovery rates is complicated and not well understood by simple numbers. It may be just as complicated in the UK, but in different ways because the demographics of the countries are so different. Plus the thing to remember about US healthcare is that it is often excellent if you have it. The problem is not the quality of health care in the US, its having affordable access to it. However, by law in the US, if you are acutely ill or injured you can go to any emergency room and you will be helped and if you never pay the bill not much happens. Most rental agencies don't count medical debt. This means that many poor and working class adults get no preventative health care, but if they become ill they are saved from death. The statistics that show that the US pays more for health care but gets less quality of care don't mean that all of US healthcare is expensive and second rate. It is usually first rate and expensive because the US spends a lot on expensive emergency procedures and life saving care for the unisured which are absorped into higher medical costs across the board. Most Americans, even Democrats are fiercely capitalistic and do not like a one-size fits all approach to medical care, so I don't think single payer health care is realistic for the US. What the US needs to do is find a solution to health care that allows all citizens to receive comprehensive preventative and diagnostic medical care at low costs and also funds regional emergency services, and then allow all citizens to purchase additional benefits through insurance companies. The government also needs to step in and take an active role in reducing the cost of health care and medical services across the board. Some obvious first steps would be increasing the number of doctors and nurses and helping local governments and regional health care facilities provide free & low cost preventative health care services to the uninsured and effective, cost efficient emergency services. I think that is why a lot of American are mad about the recent health care legistlation. Health insurance and health care are available but they are expensive. We don't need the government to provide health care or even health insurance, we want it to lower the cost of health care and health insurance and make it more affordable. Unfortunately, the recent healthcare legistlation increased almost everyones premiums who already had insurance and the insurance provided by the new legistlation is expensive and available to only a few. I do support insuring all citizens as part of the solution, but the health care problem in the US won't be solved until the cost is reduced for everyone while maintaining quality. I believe it is possible, but it will mean lost profits for some groups (although gains for others) and innovative thinking so real reform is probably some time coming.
Careful there. The US delivers more babies that are premature, which skews the stats.
britain is fog, humidity, and rain. ah, also cold ocean air too. youre in between humidity, cold, and rain, most of the time. you see sun maybe a few months in a year. that is if you call it a 'sunny' day. in case you havent noticed, british literature is full of mentions of sunny days. 'it was a sunny day in wilhelmshire that day and ...' this that. sunny days are something worth mentioning.
usa has a HUGE geography with innumerable climates. from arid desert to temperate highlands. and, there is a huge demographic scattered around that huge country.
there is no chance in hell that these two demographics can be compared. 'americans, despite being sicklier, live longer than their peers' -> yeah, subject them into rainy, humid, ocean cold every day in a place like britain, and see how fast they are dying with their sickliness.
Read radical news here
Is that the same people who will cry that we should question climate change science will rush to accept this study on the face of it.
Of course, that works in reverse. The same people who say we should "trust the experts because we don't have degrees in this", will be first in line to question it.
Ahhh, partisan hypocrisy, may you never die.
Without reading the whole report, there's no way to know if they took obesity or other environmental effects into account.
The findings showed that both disease prevalence and the onset of new disease were higher among Americans for the illnesses studied -- diabetes, high-blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, chronic lung diseases and cancer. Researchers found that the higher prevalence of illness among Americans compared to the English that they previously found for those aged 55 to 64 was also apparent for those in their 70s. Diabetes rates were almost twice as high in the United States as in England (17.2 percent versus 10.4 percent) and cancer prevalence was more than twice as high in the United States (17.9 percent compared to 7.8 percent) for people in their 70s.
Sounds like obesity to me.
Researchers say there are two possible explanations why death rates are higher for English after age 65 as compared to Americans. One is that the illnesses studied result in higher mortality in England than in the United States. The second is that the English are diagnosed at a later stage in the disease process than Americans.
So there's a few things wrong with taking the study at face-value.
It could be the diagnosis rate is lower in England, leading to less "unhealthy" people, and because Americans are living longer, there would be a higher rate of illness.
Unfortunately, there's no real-world way to be sure the UK or US system is superior, even if you switched the whole country overnight there would be countless other factors changing the outcome.
In other news, Ice Cream consumption increases the chances of head injury. /. meme: Correlation != Causation
(Well, not really, but the times when people are most active [summer] are also the times when ice cream consumption is at its highest)
Or to use the
Yea, because our healthcare system doesn't fix diseases, it maintains them to profit from torture. That is what happens when healthcare is a privatized good.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
In the US we do all sorts of things to search for tumors. Most people have a benign tumor, and thus we often will find one if we look hard enough. Then surgery is recommended for the tumor (it might be cancerous!). Now the US cancer stats are improved - because you had a tumor, it was removed, and you didn't die from cancer.
In most other countries they don't go to extreme measures looking for tumors, and if a benign tumor is found they don't cut it out 'just in case'.
So the numbers look like this (illustrative) say both populations have the exact same rate of cancer and benign tumors.
500 benign - survivability 100%
500 real - survivability 50%
US
(500*100%+500*50%)/(500+500) = 75% cancer survival rate.
Rest of World
(500*50%)/(500) = 50% cancer survival rate.
The numbers are exaggerated, but the principle is the same. The huge number of false positives in the US drastically inflates the cancer survivor statistics, with essentially no change in actual survivability. (Note from the study - "cancer prevalence was more than twice as high in the United States (17.9 percent compared to 7.8 percent"). More than half the excess cancer prevalence is from false positives.
I wonder if this has to do with the American Religious Right and the rather bleak picture they paint of the afterlife...
From the soundtrack of the movie Cold Mountain (about life in the South during the Civil War):
Farewell, vain world! I'm going home!
My savior smiles and bids me come,
And I don't care to stay here long!
Sweet angels beckon me away,
To sing God's praise in endless day,
And I don't care to stay here long!
(Chorus:)
Right up yonder, Christians, away up yonder,
O, yes my Lord, for I don't care to stay here long.
I'm glad that I am born to die,
From grief and woe my soul shall fly,
And I don't care to stay here long!
Bright angels shall convey me home,
Away to New Jerusalem,
And I don't care to stay here long!
(Chorus:)
Right up yonder, Christians, away up yonder,
O, yes my Lord, for I don't care to stay here long.
(Chorus:)
Right up yonder, Christians, away up yonder,
O, yes my Lord, for I don't care to stay here long.
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/coldmountain/imgoinghome.htm
Sung by the Sacred Harp Singers At Liberty Church on the OST. Some of the most up-lifting sounds you'll ever hear IMHO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g1UHZwN3ds
Careful there. The US delivers more babies that are premature, which skews the stats.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/11/06/0216207/Americans-Less-Healthy-But-Outlive-Brits#
One of the things infant mortality reflects is premature delivery.
If you have large numbers of premature infants, then there's something wrong with the health care system.
Look at forum posts. They are always screaming they can't wait till the older generation dies off because of the way they vote.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
>>>But when medicare starts to cover US citizens at age 65, suddenly US citizens have a much better outlook.
That's not what the article says. It says upto age 65 the US and UK have equal death rates/ outlook.
.
>>>US citizens lucky enough to survive until age 65 and receive medicare coverage
Only 7.5 million americans are not insured by medicare, or SSI, or SCHIP, or a private plan. The others are covered, so if there's a sudden jump at 65, then there's some other reason than "because they weren't covered before".
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
At one point, Sunrise hospital in Las Vegas has a vastly higher mortality rate for heart patients than any other hospital in the area -- and it's where you want to go with heart problems. They specialized in treating heart conditions that others wouldn't touch.
Our obstetrician showed us the hospital C-section rate for every doctor that had privileges at the hospital. One doctor had a whopping 95% C-section rate -- and if you didn't want a C-section, he was the one to go to. He mainly did home births, but if there was a chance a C-section was needed, he went with mom to the hospital.
Yes. Because it is financially better to perform a partial birth abortion. This lowers the costly treatment associated with premies and has the added benefit of lowering your infant mortality rate.
Ironic. When the numbers are reversed you numbnuts will reject any claim that life expectancy numbers are based as much on other factors as health care. You'll also gloss over the lie of infant mortality rates, which are counted much more stringently in the US than other countries.
Our healthcare system is expensive and the best parts of it often exclude poor people, but it's still the best in the world in terms of what the majority of people in this country have access to. Considering how fat and unhealthy we all are due to choices outside healthcare, it's amazing we do as well as we do on any of these studies.
I wonder if this data would change anyone's mind about the benefits of health care reform...
No. Facts and data don't seem to be playing any role at all when it comes to that topic.
Would some TV attack commercials help?
I've seen these stats before along with a few overlooked confounding variables. The infant mortality rate for instance is (at least partly) due to actually trying to deliver some babies that would simply be aborted or not counted due to dying within 24 hours in other countries. Part of that life expectancy difference is due to unnatural death rates that are considerably higher than in Europe. That is the higher gang related violence and vehicular accident based deaths account for most of that difference in life expectancy.
With healthy teeth comes a healthy body! Common, it had to be said! lol
Yes, we ration healthcare in this country - but up until now it has been based on how much extra life (across the whole population) that healthcare can give. The US rations healthcare too - based on how rich or poor you are. Our system is, frankly, better.
Better? I'm sure I misread, surely you meant "frankly, unsustainable", right?
The US is not some tiny little country like yours. 300 million people, with a larger number of completely worthless poor people spitting out large numbers of children they abuse or neglect.
How about we ship 30 million people or so to you, and we get to pick who. Since poor people are just as worthwhile from a societal perspective as rich people, don't' expect Bill Gates to be one of them - just saying.
And they're not worthless because they're poor, they're worthless because they're vermin. My wife does social work for these people and the myth of the noble poor is a huge joke. Sure, some of them really are good people who don't care if they don't have a 50" TV or designer clothes, have 1 or two kids, work hard, and raise good kids. But many are baby neglecting chain smokers who will abuse the welfare system to get junk they don't need, spit out kid after kid as a meal ticket, and then abuse or neglect the shit out of them. You wouldn't believe the stories of what these people do to their kids.
Not that middle class or rich people can't be similarly evil, but based on the numbers and percentages the poor as a "class" are anything but deserving of 4 hours of work every single week on my part to pay for their food, medical care, housing.
Religions, reward after death religions, have to be like this. Else you get mass suicides. After all if life after death is better, why wait? So all religions that have an after life that can be perceived as even remotely more pleasant then this life HAVE to have a mechanism that stops people from popping off to this after life first chance they get.
That is why suicide is a sin in most religions. But if dying is a sin, then soldiers are in trouble, so they also got "rules" that make dying for a cause okay.
You only have to look at the mass suicides that some cults experience to see what happens if this brake on entering the after life is absent. No religion were everyone kills themselves as soon as they can hold a knife would survive, so the simple rules of evolution soon dictate that all religions still around stop people from killing themselves to quick. It is related to the reason that being Pope is not a hereditary job.
The US position on healthcare is however not all about religion. That is a side effect. It is instead about economy.
Americans die younger then europeans, they score fairly low in life expectancy especially considering wealth of the nation. But it turns out the US spends a LOT of money on the old. Why? Because wealth and life expectancy are closely related. The old people on which the US spends a lot of money are the old people that got old THANKS to their money. These people ALWAYS had a lot of money spend on their healthcare. Just that in their younger years they were outnumbered by poor Americans, but as the poor Americans die off thank to lack of healthcare, the older ones with money become more prominent. The US isn't spending a lot of money on the old, it is spending a lot of money on the old with money.
So basically this story is, rich old americans who always had good healthcare life longer then the general population of britain... oh yeah, fun with statistics. And slashdot editors falling for it as the gullible idiots they are.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since there are about 4 million births a year in the U.S., and about 2,000 so-called partial birth abortions a year, then including intact dilation and extraction would raise the U.S. infant mortality rate by 0.05%, from say 6.26% to 6.31, still behind Cuba (5.82%) and the European Union.
Poor quality publication: Junky articles.
is it the health system?/
"But...but...teh fats! Tehy are teh evils!" Yeah, so there we go, can we have enough whining about fat/obese Americans now? No I guess not, people are still bullies when it comes to weight and appearance. Hate that you morons didn't outgrow it in, y'know, Elementary School with the rest of us
"Yes, that's exactly the part I was eluding to. It doesn't tell us anything about comparative differences between the countries as regards wealth. I.e. are the differences in health care between the two countries constant across different wealth demographics or are they different, e.g. we find the the US is ahead of the UK in heatlh care for the wealthy, but the UK is ahead in health care for the median earners or the poor. That's what would be really interesting to know if we want to start examining the role of health care in more meaningful depth and by the sounds of it, they collected data relevant to this, but it is missing from their conclusions. I find it highly unlikely that the difference in health care is constant across all demographics of society."
Only the rich are found deserving of health care in America. See: idiots bringing guns to town hall meetings to try and prevent universal health care. See; idiots re-electing anti-health-care-reform Republicans to House majority. See: Fox News.
Just going to throw this out there... there's a difference between appreciating that there's something very wrong with our healthcare system, and thinking that Obama has the solution.
Each of those nations has had serious problems with their healthcare as well. Much of this has to do with money. It's a difficult question, and there is no "right" answer.
And what's the abortion rate in other countries -- not just partial birth, but all abortions (especially if medically motivated)?
If you break the stats out for other factors, how do they measure up? How many 40 year olds on fertility drugs who give birth to premies that otherwise would [should] have been aborted? How many multiple births were abortion selection could [should] have been performed end in more premies? What's the immigrant premie rate? Drug user? ...
Looking just as premie stats by themselves doesn't tell you anything useful.
As for the infant mortality rate, it's been well documented that the US comes out behind because the US does something crazy when it comes to counting live births - they actually count all babies that are alive when born. Now, you'd expect all countries to do this, right? Wrong - the rest of the world fudges the numbers to make themselves look better. It varies by country, but the generals are if a baby is more than X weeks premature and dies after birth, they don't count it. If it's under a certain weight and dies, they don't count it. If it's under a certain age (some countries as high as 90 days after birth, which is when most infant deaths occur) they don't count it.
Lower life expectancy is, no surprise, because American's are a bunch of fatasses who hate exercise and love double bacon cheese burgers. That's why as American fast food is becoming more popular in other countries, they've been seeing a decline in the health rate and increase in obesities rates in countries that have usually been better than the US for life expectancy, obesity, and overall health.
The per capita expense is actually a very bad statistic to look at. With some areas, such as GDP, it is useful to look at GDP per capita because it's a relatively normal distribution. However, people getting sick is horribly skewed and one person with a very expensive to treat disease makes it appear that the average is much higher than it is. It would be much more useful to look at the mean, median, and mode for health care costs in countries. Only when we use truly useful numbers can we accurately compare cost and have a legitimate discussion on which system is more expensive for the average person.
As for your comment about this changing people's mind about government run health care? I don't think it would, because health has nothing to do with government run care - it's about people's rights and personal responsibility. If you are an adult, then you are responsible for yourself - no one else is responsible for you. After you turned 18 and moved out of mommy and daddy's house, they stopped paying your bills because you're an adult and have to take care of yourself now - you don't get to decide that someone else should be forced to pay your bills. It doesn't matter if it's bad decisions or bad luck that cause you to not be able to pay your bills, they're still your bills and yours lone. There are all sorts of things where bad luck or bad decisions leads people to have severe financial hardships - yet for some reason health care is the only one where people think it's ok to force someone else to pay your bills (well, some people think it's ok to do it with education too, but that's a much smaller group). You have the right to your property. You would be furious if the government kicked in your door and took your possessions to give to someone else, so why is it ok for them to forcefully take money from one person to pay another person's medical bills? People have developed this mentality of "if it benefits me, it's good" (well, the mentality has always been around in a minority, it's just that it's becoming quite popular these days), and they use that to justify stealing to pay their bills.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Government insurance is also "cheap" because they just don't pay doctors anything resembling the cost of treatment. I know a few doctors and they don't even bother filing Medicare or Medicaid forms because it would cost them more to pay someone to do the paperwork than they'd get from the government.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I can freely and safely state that the UK sucks. I've been to several countries, and I've never had worse food, less interesting night life, or a more conservative and stodgy society. This is a country where a fist fight breaking out doesn't bat an eye, and seems expected, but if you do "The Worm" (an incredibly harmless and stupid dance move) security will threaten to call the police. This is a true story by the way. The OP has been modded funny, but it's not funny. The UK is god awful. Everything is expensive, the food is really, truly horrible. The only good meal I had there was at an INDIAN restaurant in Scotland. I also had a $30 burger (with the exchange being what it was) that made me physically sick. Oh yeah, and at one restaurant I ordered breakfast, and it came with several LARGE chunks of broken glass in it. I'm dead serious. I'm only happy I noticed before biting into one of them!!!
Also: cameras EVERYWHERE. I mean literally everywhere. It is clear that the privacy and well being of the populace is very low on the priority list for that country ranking probably 200 slots down from the security of the rich and powerful. I go to the UK for one reason and one reason only now: a quick layover to get to a country WORTH visiting, like Ireland or Germany or really any damned country, even Mexico. The UK is AWFUL. Anyone who says otherwise either hasn't been to the UK, or hasn't been outside of it.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Luckily it was stillborn, but one of the features of Hilliarycare was that doctors receiving federal funds would be prevented from receiving either private insurance or people paying out of pocket. The doctor was either 100% working for the feds or 100% not working for the feds.
Who knows what's in Obamacare.
Actually since life expectancy is better in the UK I suspect that since they only look at older people there is a filter effect in that those without healthcare are less likely to make it to the age they start the survey at. However those with healthcare probably do better than in the UK because there are far more resources available per patient simply because access is limited and the expense is higher. I also suspect that the far higher murder rate in the US will not not help since, while only a tiny fraction of the population, the age of death is far lower which will magnify the statistical affect on average life expectancy.
And in other news, both groups were found to have a 100% mortality rate over the long haul!
Maybe when you move out of your mothers basement you will have more sympathy for human life, you prick.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I wish I had mod-points. Thanks for this post.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Religions, reward after death religions, have to be like this. Else you get mass suicides.
I think it's mostly the other way around. People have survival instinct. Therefore they need to rationalize why they must keep on living, even if death would lead to a paradise of some sort. And this survival instinct reflects on religions.
But you're right otherwise of course, with clarification of any religion that lasts any significant amount of time has to be like that. A religion can certainly endorse mass suicide, it just won't last very long then.
you have a weird definition of efficiency.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
You fail at basic knowledge. French health care is regularly billions in the red every year.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Correction.
Private system that changed the rules of the game during Nixon administration now is less efficient.
The reason it is less efficient is because it is designed to be exactly that. There is no market arbitration for prices and the insurance is supposed to cover all doctor visits, like NHS.
Clearly when private insurance is used to do what NHS does, it will cost more, because it is private, so there are obviously extra costs associated with that.
But the entire point is that before Nixon, private health insurance in USA was precisely insurance and not NHS.
It was possible to cover a family of 4 people for $25/year with $500 deductible and covering up to $50,000/year.
$50K/year was 2.5 times the amount needed for the most expensive cancer treatment available at prices of those years by hospitals, which was $20K/year.
Of-course doctor visits were cheap. $5/visit. Medications were cheap. The reason was simple: market was the deciding factor for prices, not gov't intrusion and controls and subsidies.
So market was doing a good job at providing health coverage (that was mostly done out of pocket) but also very cheap insurance, which still was insurance (like your car insurance, you don't use your car insurance to put fuel into your gas tank every time it empties, you don't use your car insurance to change tires and buff some scratches out etc.)
Insurance companies and hospitals/clinics and pharma dealers decided they wanted to make much more money, they approached Nixon and he changed the rules. He framed it this way: "we have 10% uninsured people, we'll make sure nobody goes without insurance".
Obviously the same 10%-15% of people were still uninsured 30 years later but the difference became this:
Insurance became sort of an NHS program, it was still private and doctor visits now were covered by it (and Medicare, which is another disaster). This provided a very clear opportunity to raise medical and drug prices.
It's very simple: The market worked and there was competition, prices were low. Gov't together with big business colluded and destroyed the market. People suffered, but more money was put into pockets of executives and more money was given to politicians as kick backs. Politicians don't care, they are all on public system, so no problem.
Also note, that this made cost of employing people in US go up, because the medical insurance became an expectation from employers, which is another idiocy and part of the cost of doing business in US, and partly responsible for jobs moving out of the country.
--
But as a libertarian, my solution is this: forbid the gov't from mixing with business.
Forbid the gov't from making economic decisions, from being able to change economic outcomes for corporations or unions or private individuals.
Stop the gov't from destroying economy.
You can't handle the truth.
this is irrelevant: this only means that the money earmarked for the system falls shot and that money needs to be transferred from other parts of the budget.
This is completely orthogonal to the amount of money actually spent on health care: half of what the US spends, for better outcomes.
Well done with your non-sequitur as an example of non faulty knowledge!
We live longer and have more health problems...
1) most of our good doctors are not leaving for practice in India.
2) We get diagnosis of diseases months (sometimes years) quicker than England.
3) We get treated for problems, months (sometimes years) quicker than England.
4) We survive hospital stays (or, if the case may be) and dying on sidewalk after being declare 'well' or other problems, more often than in England
(All of the above have been in the media, not generally available to the Americans, in their contrived press)...
Lastly, and unfortunately, We will soon enjoy the same benefits as England, since We will gain at least the equivalence of NHS under BHO
Obama Care hasn't kicked in yet. We'll be dying at the same rate soon enough and it'll all even out. Spread the sickness by dividing the wealth I say.
I think it's more likely that the metric used to measure health is a poor predictor of life expectancy. In fact, the article actually demonstrates as much. This could be because, say, the ability to run a few miles or the number of days spent with a cold each year might indicate good health, but doesn't mean you won't come down with a bad case of cancer or something else that may actually kill you. I suspect Americans are in worse overall health because they're less active and more overweight, wheras brits consume a whole lot more alcohol.
Even if the metric is a good predictor, the conclusions are still bogus. The medical system is not the "cause of death", so attributing death rates without considering the causes is silly. The UK has 36,700 more deaths in winter than in summer, mostly among the elderly. (Your blood thickens when you are cold and you are more likely to have a heart attack or stroke.) So the most likely cause of the difference in death rates would be that US homes are better insulated, being generally newer, and have better heating. I'd guess social factors also have a big impact. The elderly in the UK probably have less contact with the community than in the US (social breakdown is a bit of a problem in Britain at the moment), with impacts like "you didn't have friends looking in on you every day, so nobody told you you should really see a doctor about that."
WTF?
shorter: business got the right to fuck up the market which it did. This proves government intervention is detrimental.
a) Markets for health make no sense: your granny is sick, how much is her life worth to you? How many other grannies will you price out of the market?
b) Saying that the "NHS provides the same thing for a lower price" as an argument in favour of the free market makes no sense. Saying it further proves government intervention is detrimental is silly.
c) In a free market, all products for which people will pay for are available. Notably insurances, this is a requisite for a perfect market, BTW. Thus people will pay for insurance which covers doctor visits. This is desirable from a public health perspective: prevention is cheaper than cure. However, because there are no regulations on a market which cannot function properly (health) because of asymmetries of information, and because as I said above, a transaction in this market is legalised mugging, is fails horribly. Big surprise.
Libertarian ideal make for good science fiction, but terrible public policy decision.
Also, the thing about refreshing ideals with the blood of patriots was not meant to condone stupid policies that cause the death of innocent people: Freedom is not Moloch, despite what the Libertarian priests would have you believe.
The EU's member states have a combined population of over 500 million people, yet there's plenty of health care going around.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I am a libertarian priest then to you, I've been preaching libertarianism for over 20 years, how much more does it take to turn one into a priest?
shorter: business got the right to fuck up the market which it did. This proves government intervention is detrimental.
- correct.
By forbidding the gov't to change economic outcomes, the incentives to attempt and subvert gov't are removed. Sure, you can try, but if gov't is expressly disallowed from changing anything in economy, than any amount of money spent on a gov't would be a waste, it'd buy nothing of use.
For any corporation and individual it totally makes sense to lobby their gov't IF gov't is able to change the economic outcome for them. So it is rational to try and subvert the gov't to provide yourself with an unfair advantage provided by gov't force, since gov't has the ability to compel by threat of violence, the result is that any advantage provided by gov't immediately distorts the market.
a) Markets for health make no sense: your granny is sick, how much is her life worth to you? How many other grannies will you price out of the market?
- your granny is not my problem obviously, but my point is that your average granny could AFFORD to pay for doctor visits and could definitely afford health insurance for serious medical conditions with very little money.
Since the gov't screwed up the insurance system and turned it into NHS, fewer and fewer people remained that could actually afford their treatment out of pocket, because gov't intervention distorted the market and provided a great reason for medical and drug providers to raise prices.
Clearly this is a vicious cycle - the more money medical treatment costs, the more money NHS will cost and the more money NHS takes in (because it will keep raising premiums because it can due to gov't regulations forcing employers to provide health insurance) and due to medicare costs rising, the medical treatment will continue costing more and so will insurance and medicare in a circle. Obviously any new 'solutions' from gov't only make things worse, thus the new health bill will only ensure that prices go up faster.
Saying that the "NHS provides the same thing for a lower price" as an argument in favour of the free market makes no sense.
- Oh yes it does.
The gov't provided medicare and other types of insurances will also drain the system of money, not as fast as 'private insurance' turned into NHS, but it will. Clearly this is what's happening in Europe and in Canada as well, the prices are going up, the amount collected in taxes is going up, but because many of these countries don't produce anything and have a negative trade balance (US has -50B/month now) they end up borrowing and printing the difference.
Clearly printing and borrowing is even worse than collecting taxes, with collecting taxes there is a limit on how much can be taken before gov't is forced to stop.
With printing and borrowing there is no limit. The US gov't is constantly raising its debt ceiling, the idiots in senate and the white house and the evil of the Fed and the morons on TV are saying this: if gov't can't raise the debt ceiling, the result will be a global economic crash.
This obviously is moronic on at least 2 levels:
1. Anybody in their right mind who lent money to US should listen to this and understand that USA is saying it cannot pay the money it owes back at all. More than that, not only it won't print the money, it'll cause a global crash if it's not given more money!
Give us money or else?
2. Anybody in their right mind should understand that USA will end up in a hyper-inflationary depression the way things are going.
The Fed just came out with QE2. They'll print 600 Billion over the next 7 months.
Ironically, that's the amount the US gov't is planning to borrow before June. That's right, the Fed is now the official lender of last resort to US gov't.
It's done.
It's not libertarians who live in a fantasy world, it's the world of Keynesian economics and politics that is fantasy and it's unraveling.
I am amused by it.
You can't handle the truth.
Shorter: I don't believe in progress, thus I believe a policy of disguised mass murder is expedient and fair. I have rarely seen a Libertarian so ready to admit to its bloodthirsty instincts.
About the debt ceiling: any value given in absolute numbers is temporary and absurd. Enough damage has been done because it was thought that the T-word would be too frightening.
If I could borrow at the rates the US can, I would, because an investment which brings more than 2% is easy to find. In fact, it would criminal of the US gov not to borrow as much as it could given the current circumstances: people are literally paying to carry US debt.
About the trade imbalance (there, you give another meaningless number: %GDP, or you are talking out of your fear-mongering ass), pray tell, if we were all to export, to which planet would that be?
Also, you do realise that if the US pays down its debt, on a global level, there is less money to go around? It is impossible for everyone to simultaneously wind down debt, unless the economy expands by the amount of the wind-down. Which is highly unlikely (in fact impossible), because everyone winding down is strongly contractionary. I'll let you think about that.
>>Yes, government *insurance* is very efficient. See a comparison of Medicare v. Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is one of the most inefficient programs we have. We basically subsidize private insurers to do what Medicare already does more cheaply.
>>Government health-care? That's a different ball of wax.
You got it backwards.
Medicare? Medicaid? Cheaply? Only in the sense they underpay for certain services, which means that hospitals compensate by overusing the services they make a profit on, and fucking the taxpayer in the process. If Medicare worked efficiently, it could run on half the money it does know (and incidentally help balance the budget - crazy notion, I know!) Up to half of this - our biggest federal expenditure - goes to waste and fraud.
To compare with the VA system, Medicare/Medicaid costs about $10k per patient covered, including patient contributions. VA, $2,500 per patient covered, including money from third parties. This it's a perfect comparison for a lot of reasons, but it does help show how badly run Medicare/Medicaid is.
(Medicare Advantage is a whole 'nother issue entirely.)
Shorter: I don't believe in progress,
- there is no progress in your ideas.
We disagree on even the definition of progress, how much shorter can this get?
To me progress is what industrialization was through capital formation that was then applied to labor and caused revolutionary changes to the entire world, allowing its population to grow by a factor of about 7 since 1800.
That same capitalism allowed quick development of sciences required to maintain the necessary inflow of information into the engineering problems the world was met with. At the same time the ability of capitalism and industrialization to move 95% of people out of agrarian society and into urban environment created the framework for having all that time that was freed up from farming and harvesting to be directed at other pursuits, which gave us huge advancements in all aspects of life, from leisure and pursuit of arts to sciences and development of better understanding of biology and ability to fight disease in unprecedented manner to any earlier human history.
Now THAT is progress.
What you are for is destruction of the vary base of the economic system that provided the success story that the last 200 years were and clearly 19 century was more successful is the difference it provided from the beginning of the century to the end of it in terms of quality of life.
Beginning of 19 century:
3 staple foods, maybe 1 time a day, expensive and often bad quality. Expensive clothing and energy and housing. No indoor plumbing. No machines to help at home.
Beginning of 20 century:
Plenty of various cheap food and clothing. Safe food due to market inventions like refrigeration and canning. Cheap energy. Cheap housing. Accessible medical attention - cheap.
Indoor plumbing. New medical advancements. Washing machines, sewing machines. New materials.
I am for progress. I am for progress that works.
You have an agenda that is incompatible with a working economy, an agenda that destabilizes economy and destroys it.
Of-course you will lose this agenda. China now is more free in terms of doing business than US is! It's unfortunate and it's true.
China now is the economic powerhouse and USA will go bankrupt and cause a hyper inflationary depression, which will take decades to recover from, but it will recover sometime in the future, but it's not going to be easy and it will take the return to sound economy and monetary policy.
Hopefully this will not cause too much bloodshed, but it might.
thus I believe a policy of disguised mass murder is expedient and fair.
- that's just nonsense disguised in a number of fallacies.
I have rarely seen a Libertarian so ready to admit to its bloodthirsty instincts.
- "its". Good luck with where you are going, it's not going to be pretty once the reality shows you what a desperate gov't is capable of. Now THAT is going to be bloodthirsty.
About the debt ceiling: any value given in absolute numbers is temporary and absurd. Enough damage has been done because it was thought that the T-word would be too frightening.
- I see that you can't even comprehend that US bonds are no longer bought but by US itself.
If you can't understand that simple fact, you are hopeless, it's going to ram right through you and you won't know what it was even then.
If I could borrow at the rates the US can, I would, because an investment which brings more than 2% is easy to find. In fact, it would criminal of the US gov not to borrow as much as it could given the current circumstances: people are literally paying to carry US debt.
- blind person. Very blind. US is lending to itself.
Which part of that is so hard to understand? At this point the Fed is going to lend to itself.
Also those 2% rates... Have you ever heard of teaser rates? Have you ever seen a foreclos
You can't handle the truth.
No, the 19th and 20th centuries were essentially the same in terms of wealth creation:
actual history of the increase in wealth in the US over two centuries
You seem to fear hyperinflation. Worry not, the US will end up like Japan: high debt, high unemployment, no inflation. Of course, it will be worse, because the social safety net in the US is much weaker. But hey, you approve of that, no?
You seem to think the gold standard is a good idea. It is not. There are no reason whatsoever to think that the availability of an ore can be magically adjusted to fit the economy's need.
You seem to think China is a freer market than the US: HAHAHAHAHA. Seriously, person.
For your edification, imagine the following. A tiny universe. it has a bank, a central bank and a worker.
The worker needs one unit of credit to produce two units of value. He starts off with nothing, and goes to the bank to borrow the unit. The bank has nothing and goes to the central bank to borrow the unit. The central bank prints the unit and emits one unit of debt. the bank lends the unit to the worker, who produces. He puts the product in the bank, who does not reimburse the central bank, but rather buys the debt, and uses that to further borrow something to lend to the worker, who produces. Note that the net of the two banks is 0, the worker has produced four, two of which went to the bank. The money in circulation is 4, only two of which were printed. There was no inflation, which is not desirable -- but hey :)
This is how value gets created out of nothing (actually, out of work and creativity). because in the end, money is created as the economy grows, and it doesn't matter. Only the actual goods and services produced (and consumed -- the system breaks down if the worker's work is not used up: a demand shock). Debt is irrelevant: in this example, riches are added to the system at the same rate as debt, but the ratio of debt to riches is constant.
Money is just a convenient counter for value. Nothing else. Fiat money is so much more flexible and convenient than gold it's not funny. Why would you want to prevent the amount of bills to grow with the economy rather than with the production of gold? This makes no sense.
No, they assign it more money and it still fails to operate in the black. Socialized health care does not work on many fronts, financially is just one of them. Look at the excessive taxes that UK and Canada have for their (flailing) systems. Sickening.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Why Americans always compare with Brits?
Sounds like Pak comparing with India.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Ha ha ha, you are showing me graphs by people who set inflation level at 0% from 1972 to almost now and that's AFTER the US got off the gold standard to be able to print even more money there were printing while on gold? People who are also showing improvement in various school achievements in US over time, like in Math? And would you look at their GDP numbers. That's straight from gov't website. So they are are as reliable as the GDP and CPI numbers from US gov't.
The growth of wealth in US in 19 century was done in a free market capitalism, so prices were consistently DROPPING. There was consistent price decrease. So cost of products went down over that time because there was no gov't inflation while at the same time the life clearly improved by supplying more and more variety of everything, from food and clothing to energy and machines and indoor plumbing.
The 20th century became the expensive century after 1913, thank the Fed for that.
You seem to fear hyperinflation. Worry not, the US will end up like Japan: high debt, high unemployment, no inflation. Of course, it will be worse, because the social safety net in the US is much weaker. But hey, you approve of that, no?
- you are a joke. You don't understand how much of a joke you are.
Japan's problem was very stupid: their gov't followed the path of self-destruction by inflating their money but they had production.
Japan had production, they produced but they decided they will subsidize the US consumer and so they devalued their own currency so that USA could buy Japan made products. It was a terrible disaster. What they should have done is allow their manufacturers to restructure and instead of shipping to US they should have been building for themselves.
You think US consumer is god sent - US prints paper and sends it abroad, so that goods can be shipped back to US. That is lunacy and it's about to stop.
USA is nowhere near Japan. Both, USA and Japan print money, but USA prints much more money because it's so much easier to dilute the USD since it's 'reserve'. Saddam got killed partially because he was going to go off the USD and start trading in Euro and other currencies for his oil.
The US economic collapse will be worse not because of gov't social programs, of which there are plenty.
The US economic collapse will be worse because USA is not producing nearly enough to satisfy either its own demand or to return its debt in goods. USA is not producing much of anything except weapons on its own soil anymore, and it is turning around and biting US in the ass. And the reason for this jobless state is gov't and regulations and income/payroll taxes and subsidies of monopolies and destruction of free market and of competition.
You seem to think the gold standard is a good idea. It is not. There are no reason whatsoever to think that the availability of an ore can be magically adjusted to fit the economy's need.
- you are a joke. Gold standard is not a good idea? Sure, it's not a good idea if you want to inflate your money so that you can tax everybody's actual net worth, not only income.
You think the US gov't is going to announce that there will be no tax hikes and that's the truth? They don't need to tax your miserly income, they are printing money, they are taxing everything you own by printing money. Gold standard is unnecessary if gov't is not printing money, if monetary supply is not being inflated without some form of backing of the fiat currency.
However what history clearly shows is that every gov't ever printed and prints money when in fact what it must do is cut spending.
The US had a recession in 1920. The US gov't actually, amazingly enough, cut spending by some huge number over 70%. That's right. They cut spending, they didn't print money. That recession was over in 1 year. That was the last time a sane decision was made in terms of fighting a recession. The next recession, which was caused by gov't printing
You can't handle the truth.
Fact: France and the UK spend half what the US spends on health, they get better outcome. Their systems might be inefficient, but compared to the US version, they are crazy good...
And since these are more or less the alternative, I think it is clear what works best.
Magical thought reigns. Someone who does not understand the difference between price and utility explains his view of the world. And of course it makes no sense.
I always thought that the people who wanted to go back to the 19th were absurd strawmen. Clearly not: you guys exist.
Oh and The Government Lies To Us ('cause disturbing facts must be lies).
Think: Japan has debt of 200% its GDP, prints lots of money, borrows at nearly 0%, and regular bouts of deflation. How is that possible in your world?
And yes, utility is born from nothing: just imagination and work. Money is just a token representation of it.
I expected something short and sweet a response there, with absolute denial of the facts though reality is staring you right in the face.
Here is a setup for you:
5 guys fall onto a desert island. 4 Chinese and one American.
First Chinese goes fishing, second goes hunting, third goes building a house and finding fuel and fourth goes finding some edible vegetations.
At the end of the day they come back and also cook the food.
Then they feed the American, because clearly, without him all of their labor would have been pointless, somebody has to consume the fruits of their labor, right?
--
It's time they kick the fat lazy American off the island, and you know what, the American found a printing press and starting printing dollars, 'buying' actual things produced by the Chinese with these printed papers.
For some time Chinese took the deal, whatever the reasons are. Eventually they'll recognize that in the economy, the American is not useful at all. If Chinese wanted pieces of paper to exchange with, they could also print them.
But in your deluded reality, the most important function is the function of the American - eating.
Japan has production. Japan had production all through nineties and now. Japan was destroying its own wealth by giving up the fruits of their labor to the fat, overeating American.
Japan would have never lost the decade in the nineties if it just kicked the American off the island.
--
Oh, and by the way, kicking the American off the island would also benefit the American, he'd have to learn to work again, so he could participate in a real economy.
But you think utility is born from nothing, maybe it's even born in the lost corridors of gov't offices.
Good luck to you.
---
here are some REAL numbers, as opposed to the ones you eat up from the gov't:
October 1 2010
Gold: new high
Silver: new 30 year high
Gold stocks hit 52 week high
Oil: strong day and strong week
Dollar: dropped 13 percent from peak 3 months ago
September is done, media says: this is best September in 71 years. Dow gained 7.7%, S&P gained 8.8%.
However this month of September.
CRB Index (commodities): gained 8.7% - beat DOW and just under S&P
Soy beans: up 9.5% - beat S&P
Copper: up 10% - beat S&P
Rice: up 10% - beat S&P
Oil: up 11% - beat S&P
Corn: up 12% - beat S&P
Silver: up 13% - beat S&P
Frozen concentrated orange juice: up 13% - beat S&P
Cotton: up 17.5% - beat S&P
Sugar: up 19.3% - beat S&P
Currencies:
Swiss Frank: up 4.6%
Euro: up 7%
Australian Dollar: up 9% - beat S&P
-
this is all inflation and the prices hikes will hit your local shelves too in not too distant future, your gov't is working on it.
You can't handle the truth.
You confuse your morals with economic mechanisms.
But you should follow you own advice, and buy lots of gold. In fact, you should borrow as many dollars as you can for that. Because if you are right, you will become a multi-billionaire in no time, due to the FED policy.
If you don't, well, that makes you a hypocrite. As if saying the market is right when pricing gold and wrong when pricing bonds was not ridiculous enough.
First of all my morals have nothing to do with anything.
You don't know my morals, they are nowhere in this discussion.
Secondly, my holdings are 50% gold and also some gold stocks. The rest are sunk in my business and some outstanding stuff is Asian equities.
I had a US business, I have a business in Canada, but I moved most of my business to Asia and Germany.
--
You, on the other hand, you should follow your own advice and stick to US holdings, see how well that works out for you with all the commodity prices going through the roof and US dollar being destroyed by Helicopter Ben and all that spending and borrowing that your gov't is set on continuing forever, until US is wiped out.
AFAIC US is on the path of imminent destruction. Enjoy it.
You can't handle the truth.
Meh. As a Brit I'll say this: America lives on hope - the American Dream. Hope is good, and keeps people cheerful when they shouldn't be. Despair and pessimism, the British normality, might actually be reality and accurate, but it certainly doesn't do much for life expectancy.
Live Longer Through Misguided Hope
Preventative care does not cost less, overall. And consequently, there isn't less profit (remember, fee for service). Preventative care does improve outcome (and should be advocated for on that merit), but it does not reduce cost. Just before the national healthcare reform debate, a long tail study was published by JAMA that showed that people receiving preventative care lived longer, and ultimately cost as much as people who received only heroic care in their final days.
46 & 2
Does childhood diet and nutrition have anything to do with life expectancy? Today's 65-75 year olds in the UK grew up in wartime and post-war shortages, limited diets, and lack of resources under rationing, whereas their counterparts in the USA probably had a different childhood environment. Does this affect lifespan?
It's always amused me that religions which (mostly) don't believe in evolution are fine examples of evolution themselves.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
You practise what you preach? Then good for you. You are wrong, but hey, one has to learn the hard way, I guess. And your morals clearly have everything to do with it, otherwise you would do away with the preachy lazy American talk. And the fetish about manufacturing (clearly India cannot grow: they are going the service route...).
Oh, the US is headed the wrong way, but mostly because of dismal infrastructure, poor social safety net, falling education standards (not higher education, though -- but the US citizens are not really the ones benefiting). In fact because of gov under-intervention.
For a hater of gov intervention, having businesses in Germany and China is hilarious. Clearly, you hate statists societies, but spend your life making them richer.
Hedging your bets, I guess. One of us has a consistent understanding of the world -- and it isn't you.
That's your reply, you douchebag? You can't refute anything I said because they are facts.
I hear medical tourism to Poland is all the rage. And Romania - I know if I get leukemia I'm going to fly straight to Romania!
Greece! Now there's a hell of a system for you!
Sorry, I'll take my high deductible plan where I can visit almost any doctor any time I want and pay the first $4800 myself then have insurance kick in. A hell of a lot better than paying $10k in extra taxes a year for mediocre state run healthcare.
That is a very good critique, however it actually cuts against the idea of less government intervention.
The VA is vertically integrated, which is why it is so incredibly efficient. They work of a managed care model, which is really the only other way to do health care/insurance other than fee-for-service. The British NHS is just like the VA and the NHS is among the most efficient socialized health care systems in the world.
Managed care has its own problems that are different from fee-for-service. There is no magic bullet; there are only trade-offs.
Quite frankly, I'm for some sort of socialized catastrophic-only coverage. Something close to our current HDHP+HSA system with a sliding deductible based on income would be great. I'd expect a public option available without any subsidy. Private insurers could offer coverage under that system similar to how Medigap plans do now.
There is no law requiring doctors to accept Medicare or Medicaid. They can refuse to take either. Refusing Medicare eliminates a whole host of regulations that doctors must abide by.
And if the doctor feels that Medicare reimbursement rates are not high enough, they can refuse benefit assignment and bill the patient the full amount allowed under the Medicare Fee Schedule.
It seems to me that if your doctor friends are rational, utility-maximizing actors they are only accepting Medicare patients if such patients are profitable.
You're paying 4800$ even with insurance? Seriously? I can go to any doctor I please, get most treatments (I can get uncovered treatments but of course that costs to the degree that it's not covered but the only times I had to pay so far was when I wanted something beyond what was necessary) and all I pay is a tenner per quarter in addition to the insurance. Then I get my prescription medicine for 5€ out of my own pocket, the rest is covered. Hospital stays? Usually 100% covered. Paying 100€ out of my pocket for a treatment is already a crazy high amount.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Yes, up to $4800 a year max out of pocket, and I pay for no insurance - my employer does there's no fee to me. That's out of an HSA (I don't pay taxes on it) and it's for a family of 3. And we can visit pretty much any doctor (at a discount) and spend the money on any kind of specialist I want.
I have absolutely no complaints and wouldn't trade it for any healthcare system in the world.
Now, when they jack up my taxes to levels at or above yours and enact policies that end my type of insurance/healthcare plan then I guess I'll have no choice but to take the lower level of healthcare service so the worthless slime who drinks and plays his PS3 all day from the slums can get better healthcare.
Man, that's one hell of a leap of logic.
What if other governments are simply more efficient than our government?
What about the fact that healthcare isn't really a free "private" market in the US since it is heavily regulated?
What about private implementations that actual allow for competition instead of "insurance company negotiated rates"?
What about differences in citizen lifestyle or country size?
What about any number of extraneous factors and countless variable that matter a whole hell of alot when judging a massive system?
This strange belief that you can make an apples-to-pink-elephants comparison of the US medical situation and another country's medical situation is one gigantic failing in basic logic. That's like saying "well, the Autobahn has no speed limits and the accident rate over there is clearly rather low, so naturally we should just be able to remove speed limits on all our roads here for an automatic win".
>What if other governments are simply more efficient than our government?
All of them? You guys must really suck.
>What about the fact that healthcare isn't really a free "private" market in the US since it is heavily regulated?
So? The system is still less efficient. More regulated systems are more efficient.
>What about private implementations that actual allow for competition instead of "insurance company negotiated rates"?
How would that magically happen? Insurances are going to become non-profit overnight?
>What about differences in citizen lifestyle or country size?
UK lifestyle is more unhealthy than US lifestyle (amazing isn't it? They eat as much junk and drink more). Country size is irrelevant, we are comparing GDP percentages. Note also that US GDP per capita is very high.
>What about any number of extraneous factors and countless variable that matter a whole hell of alot when judging a massive system?
That skew the result by a factor 2? Every socialised system is better. Every last one of them. And they are all completely different. So odds are, the common factor (they are public/socialised) is the explanation.
Also it makes sense, because private health care is exactly like legalised mugging (wanna live? pay up) so the alternative _has_ to be better, even for very large degrees of corruption and inefficiency (which experience tells us stays pretty low: doctors and nurses usually try to help people).
>>That is a very good critique, however it actually cuts against the idea of less government intervention.
Who said I was? Our largest expenditure in the United States is for health care for the elderly and poor, to a tune of $700B a year (federal+state contributions) to cover 70M Americans, so it's not like the government isn't or won't be involved in any realistic scenario. If we could go back in time, that's one thing, but we're sort of stuck with some sort of government health care now. I'm more concerned with it being done 1) right and 2) cheaply than worry about philosophical issues with it, since that train left the station a long time ago.
>>The British NHS is just like the VA and the NHS is among the most efficient socialized health care systems in the world.
Well, the VA runs on a lower budget than the NHS per patient, but as I said, it's an imperfect comparison (actually, I didn't say that, I had a typo. =) The VA counts everybody that it can treat as potential patients, even dependents of veterans that don't know they can take advantage of it.
The NHS serves 50M people at a cost of $160B per year, or $3500/person, (including the 8% additional being spent on private insurance). Again, this shows that we're doing it wrong. If we paid $3500 per patient, we could cover 200M Americans at the same amount we're paying for now, which is more than enough to cover all the people currently doing without insurance. Or we could cover everybody that needed it and save the rest to help balance the budget.
Health, SSN, and Defense together comprise the lion's share of our federal budget, and fixing Medicare seems to be the biggest opportunity for gain at the smallest price.
>>Managed care has its own problems that are different from fee-for-service. There is no magic bullet; there are only trade-offs.
True, but the numbers speak for themselves, I think.
>>Quite frankly, I'm for some sort of socialized catastrophic-only coverage
Yeah, I think that might be the best option, as it'd let the free market try to fix the horrendous mess we have right now. Have every hospital post on their front door (just like when you go to an auto shop) their list of prices for the most common, and inexpensive services. Or on a website. I've been pushing for that for years - you could probably dig it up from my old posts on here on /. - and while we have it here in California (I hear), I've never been able to find the website. Obama, I think, is on the same page as that, but it really depends if it'd work any better than the CA system.
The way HSAs work is kind of close to what you're talking about, though I wish it was a bit less cumbersome to deal with.
There is nothing in your post to refute, as it is devoid of informed or factual content. You are just a sad, pathetic human being who gets off spewing factually inaccurate hate on web forums. I stand by my initial assessment, you prick.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Don't you see that you've set up a major hasty generalization case here? You have nothing but correlation with no causation, and you're trying to use it as proof. On top of that, you're insisting on a "fallacy of the single cause" in that a single factor is somehow the only determining factor in a large, complex system.
Personally, I think a large part of the problem is insurance companies paying for every little thing, whether life saving or not, instead of this cost being reflected to the consumer. As a US health care consumer, I have very little say over who provides my health care (since it's tied to employment), I almost never see the true costs of what things cost, and I can never get a price quote _prior_ to receiving care. How does this create a competitive market that I can shop around in and force price negotiation? It doesn't -- in that sense, this market is _not_ private/free. So I believe if you socialize health care and leave the insurance companies in the picture, costs will continue to rise.
On top of that, American doctors tend to do _everything_ possible to keep a person alive, even if that means spending millions of dollars to gain a few extra days or weeks (this is not nearly as common in the systems you tout as perfect). While this is all well and good from a moral standpoint, it jacks costs _way_ up -- and since no one ever has to confront the bills personally (due to the aforementioned obscuring of bills), no one is ever going to turn it down.
How do you know Medicare isn't the cause? Half a trillion in subsidized medicine could very easily force costs to go up elsewhere in the system, which turns into higher bills for the rest of us.
Any of these aforementioned factors could be the driving factor behind high costs. Who knows? How can you take such an authoritative stance based on little more than correlation? For instance, we have a higher GDP than any country in the world -- does that automatically mean our economic system is the best system possible and that everyone should adopt all aspects of it? Because if the other countries had signed onto the "derivatives" concept, I'm pretty sure they'd be in worse shape than we are now. As another example, dictatorships tend to have the lowest crime rates of all countries -- does that mean dictatorships are the ideal solution to crime prevention?
In sum, you can't just make blanket statements about entire systems based on suppositions. You need facts.
False dilemma -- there are more than two solutions to reforming health care. Creating an actual market where the consumer can assess cost and either removing insurance companies entirely (or reducing their application to things like major operations and emergencies) would be a good example. This is how auto insurance works, and those rates certainly aren't through the roof -- I pay for my oil changes and maintenance myself and in the unforeseen event of a major catastrophe, the insurance company steps in.
Another possible solution would be promoting and/or funding preventative care to reduce costs farther down the road.
We didn't have this kind of health care disaster when I was a kid and the government _didn't_ have their hands all over it -- and back then a person could actually switch employment without the need to think about losing health insurance. And you want _more_ government? Every government solution I've seen yet has failed miserably and in many cases made things worse -- many time they slap another medical law out there and prices shoot up even faster.
You are wrong, but hey, one has to learn the hard way, I guess
- yeah, USD falling, gold rising, it's been a terrible investment for the past few years, just terrible.
And your morals clearly have everything to do with it, otherwise you would do away with the preachy lazy American talk.
- BS. I am for private American enterprise, I clearly think Americans have what it takes to fix this, and they fixed it in 1920, when gov't cut its spending by 70% and the US private sector moved US out of recession in 1 year. Then US had the 'roaring twenties'. You are full of shit about your 'analysis' of my position.
And the fetish about manufacturing
- Yeah, India takes your exportable services, rest of Asia and Europe takes your manufacturing. You still have Hollywood and weapons. That's all you can export for all the USD you are printing. Those movies don't cost 600Billion over 7 months and nobody needs that many weapons.
US is headed the wrong way, but mostly because of dismal infrastructure
- if your infrastructure was irrelevant enough when things were going well, then it's irrelevant now as well. Your infrastructure, good or bad, doesn't change your trade balance.
poor social safety net,
- you can't pay for your social net and the money you are paying out you are borrowing. You have no money in SS, no money in welfare, no money in EI, no money for Medicare or Medicaid or the latest Obama health insurance bill. It's all a joke, you have no money, you can only borrow. Borrowing to provide 'social safety net' from the Chinese?
So how does it feel, that "communists" are giving you soup money?
falling education standards
- your gov't created monopolies, while killing the competition, so your monopolies became huge enough to profitably move jobs out. Without the manufacturing jobs you only need a very limited number of actually educated people. Not too many at all and BTW, your fed department of education eats over 100Billion/year with what to show for it? But why would it need to show more results, who cares if you have ANY education?
In fact because of gov under-intervention.
over 100 Billion/year on this nonsense and it's 'under-intervention'? Interesting definition of 'under'. Nonsense from you, as per usual.
For a hater of gov intervention, having businesses in Germany and China is hilarious. Clearly, you hate statists societies, but spend your life making them richer.
- Yet in China and Germany (and Russia) the business is easier to do than in US and most importantly these are growing markets because of their policies (especially China) on capitalism, while USA is waning as an economy, has terrible outlook, it's moving itself out of capitalism and into dictatorship of central planning. Real money happens in real economies, not in fake ones.
USA now has a fake economy, so the choice is clear.
Hedging your bets, I guess. One of us has a consistent understanding of the world -- and it isn't you.
- you don't have any understanding of the world and of economy. You have no understanding of any single economic idea.
You see the numbers for inflation and still are saying: that's not inflation.
It's not that you are inconsistent, but being consistently absolutely wrong is not a good strategy.
You can't handle the truth.
You seem to think China is a freer market than the US: HAHAHAHAHA. Seriously, person.
Well, it might be at least equally capitalist (in the "stalinist libertarian" sense too) - your worth and possibilities are entirely determined by the capital you control.
(/me must finally get to the bottom of this story / debt creation and buying in it)
One that hath name thou can not otter
"...the disaster known as East Germany" goes too far - the difference in life expectancy was 2-3 years tops, infant mortality lower only after 1980 (and not by much). More a case of slower improvement from some point in time - in which diet, lifestyle, pollution or working conditions played a large role, too.
East Germany was generally very intermediate in most regards between "East" and "West"; it can be argued that it also experienced Wirtschaftswunder, but what amounted to long-lasting plunder by Soviet Union retarded things. It was still one of the nicest places behind the Iron Curtain, already very much "the West" as far as perceptions even from People's Republic of Poland were concerned (not to mention for Soviet citizens...)
One that hath name thou can not otter