Slashdot Mirror
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."
Instead of bowing down to a King and Queen, we decided to grow testicles instead. "As for attractiveness of women - which country has the worst obesity problem?" - Fat tits are better than crooked teeth. Oh, and BTW, why do you call us Red Necks, when your 'royal' 'family' is more inbred than we could ever be?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
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.
My father just had a heart attack on vacation and was in critical care in a Canadian hospital, one of their best. We're Americans. After 72 hours in a medically induced coma they told us he had suffered massive brain damage and would never live independently. They pushed a DNR order and removal of his breathing tube for the next 2 days. Hard. I recorded the interactions with the doctors on my cell phone.
My sister and I fought the entire medical team for two days, after which he regained slight signs of consciousness. Two days later, four days after they had written him off, he was walking. The long term effect has been loss of feeling in his right heel. He's now at home and doing fine and will get to spend some extra time with his grandchildren. He's only 72.
I am absolutely convinced if we were Canadians we would have buried him. They treated us like we were insane for wanting to keep him alive for another two weeks to observe any changes. All the healthcare professionals we spoke with in the US said 72 hours was way too soon.
So I'm damn glad I didn't "throw in the towel". All I wanted was to wait a few more days for his condition to stabilize before pumping him full of morphine and yanking his life support thank you very much.
That's not unfamiliar, I've spoken to plenty of people from Canada and the UK who talked about how horrible the medical care was. I also recall something on the news say a year or so back about a woman in Canada pregnant with multiple babies and when she went to the hospital due to premature labor, they told her that they wouldn't take her and she should've made a reservation. It's also not unheard of for government run health care to say "You're too old for society to get any benefit from the cost of treating you".
Several years back my grandmother had a heart problem and by odd coincidence, a friends grandfather had the same heart problem. The difference? His grandfather lived in Canada. Now, if we follow popular myth, you'd assume that his grandfather was promptly treated and my grandmother died while jumping through paperwork from the evil insurance companies. Couldn't be farther from the truth. My grandmother was diagnosed with a problem on monday, saw a specialist on tuesday, and had surgery on friday. My friends grandfather was diagnosed, four months later he was able to see a specialist, and then another 3 months after that he was able to finally have surgery. Expecting someone to wait 7 months for an important heart surgery is utterly absurd. Then I also know friends in the UK who, despite loving the fact that (since they're young and have yet to ever have a job) don't have to pay for their health care, hate how it's run because of the whole "This is your government assigned doctor and if you don't like it, go fuck yourself and die" policy. So they've had doctors refuse to treat them for things and they CAN'T go anywhere else in the UK for it due to the NHS.
But you know, it would be beneficial for the US to change to that type of system.... I think the real reason the rest of the world is eager for the US to go (more) socialist is that old saying "misery loves company".
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
No one is arguing what the number is -- which is the item peer reviewed. There is plenty room for debate about what the number means.
But thank you for mentioning right wing think tanks and ignoring left wing think tanks. It says more about your bias than theirs.