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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."
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?
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. When your country contributes as much to the overall progress of man as the UK and USA have then you count. And please, don't give us this crap about how evil they are. If it weren't for them almost all of us would be living 30 years less, under totalitarian rule speaking German, Russian, or Japanese. We wouldn't have democracy, human rights, rights for women, free speech, airplanes, cars, air conditioning, advanced medicine, television, or the internet your using right now. The list goes on and on. Sure, some bad stuff came along with those things, but not because they were bad or the people who gave them to us were bad, but because we were F'ing morons about how we used them. And if you want to whinge about some grievance you have with them from 100 or 200 years ago buy a d*mn time machine and go back and talk to the dead people your mad at, otherwise - grow up.
Perhaps the yanks and the poms would be a LOT less testy with the rest of us if we were decent enough to at least acknowledge the incredible things they have done on our behalf. After that we could stop crying every time they don't do something perfectly. We could finish up by putting on our big-boy pants and starting to contribute as much as they do.
So yeah, they do count more than the rest of us. Be an adult and deal with it.
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.
If that dying mother was justone story, I'd agree but there are lots of these stories where the UK Government Monopoly Care rejected patients. Like the elderly man who died in a waiting room on a gurney. The hospital claimed "not our fault" because he was "never admitted" even though he was on a bed in their lobby.
Or the 20 year British girl who wanted a PAP smear because both her grandmother and mother developed cervical cancer. In the US you just hand-over the cash and get it done, but this young lady was denied sefvice by the government monopoly. And again at age 21, 22, and 23. At 24 she developed cancer and died a short while later.
"Healthcare in the US will necessarily require rationing and withholding of procedures." - the new Health "Czar"
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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