Slashdot Mirror
US Death Rate Rises, Health Officials Aren't Sure Why (nbcnews.com)
New submitter Ungrounded Lightning writes: According to The New York Times, the U.S. death rate has risen for the first time in more than a decade (or several decades if particular). The rise is across the whole population, though whites, especially the less educated among them, were recently (and separately) documented to be particularly hard hit. The article speculates about drug abuse (prescription as well as illegal), suicides, and Alzheimer's, though it notes that heart disease -- which had been consistently dropping -- has also risen. No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect. The aging of the population was mentioned, though the rise is present even within particular age groups. The National Center for Health Statistics shows the adjusted death rate went up from 723 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014 to nearly 730 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. We do know that the suicide rate in the U.S. has surged to its highest level in almost three decades.
Look at the labor participation rate, not the widely reported unemployment figure. The participation rate is dismal and reflects a lot of white, working class men who don't fit into the modern work force.
As many people as possible are trying to die in order to avoid having to choose between Trump and Clinton. Ironically, more dead people than ever are voting.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
As opposed to the policies that led the country into multiple wars. Oh wait, all those deaths and the very creation of ISIS are on conservative cock sucker heads. Fuck you you fascist fuck.
The stresses related to being poor.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Too many fucking fatties jamming as much lard in their faces as they can.
730 vs 723 is not even 1%. The thing is, thanks to medical progresses mainly (and food supply...) life expectancy tended to get longer, i.e. a whole generation (seniors) who would have died earlier otherwise, is given a few years more. But everyone dies eventually, and we are maybe just witnessing the "older generation who was the first to benefit from those progresses" starting to die.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
"She lost the will to live."
While that may sound mawkish, isn't it possible that many more folk are falling into depression, given the long-term downturn in the economy, the bleakness of the foreseeable future, and just a sense of "Man, nothing we can do will fix this?"
I'm sure I'm projecting a bit here, but... I'm also sure a lot of y'all are thinking exactly the same thing. There's an ugly mood about America right now, and the media and politicos are trying to paper it over.. but it's there. The numbers are lying. We're not as well as they tell us we are. To me it feels like the mid to late 70's did. Ugh, that was ugly. I was 10 going into 1980, and I could sense it was ugly.
So what I'm saying is.. maybe more people are dying off because things have been rotten for a couple of decades, and there's no end in sight?
Could just be me, though. I'm a pessimist by nature and by training. Meteorology and then IT? Yeah. Expect the worst, always =o)
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Not sure, but after purchasing a new macbook pro last year and feeling being ripped off big time, suicide may sound like an option. That may explain the suicide rate.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Obamacare just dumped 15 million people into the medical system who were not there before 2010.
Do you think that the medical system suddenly accommodated enough highly trained and new medical staff to support all those new people?
Or do you think that doctors are spending (even) less time with patients while sketchy urgent care practices are being set up to fleece these 15 million new moneycows?
I'll let you guess which outcome capitalism would favor more. Hint: It's probably the one that generates a higher death rate.
I'd rather say the avoided deaths of nearly 15m people formerly without health care should more than even out the effects you propose. You also don't need 'new' medical staff as there were enough layoffs before.
"puppet socialist hellpits" What? You mean places like the USA? "SHOW YOUR PAPERS, CITIZEN!"
hypocrisy knows no bounds, but the US isn't yet nearly as bad as the soviet union was.. Give it a few more decades..
The people, especially whites, are being punished for the failed social doctrine to which they have been subject. They are too hard to please; they need more resources to do work than immigrants from the third world. They expect a quality of life that "they don't deserve" according to our leaders and people who don't have any real problems in their lives in general ("they're not me so fuck them" syndrome).
The situation boils down to the simple fact that we have incompetent leaders that are incapable of mobilizing our human resources because they live in a bubble and can't relate to anything they don't have first-hand experience in, which is not much. They are used to having people do all of that for them, but their social doctrine has seen that all of those people have disappeared.
They've milked the cow too dry: the worst aspect is that the world wars damaged the population severely by disrupting the traditional transference of knowledge, habit, and experience; too many kids grew up without fathers and the media failed to pick up the pieces.
If throwing money at the problem by making an exaggerated effort to solve it with whatever devices happen to be lying around doesn't work immediately, as was the case with the media, our leaders find the problem to be impossibly difficult to solve. The quality of true innovation has escaped them from generation after generation of soft living; they completely rely on others that they can entice with wealth to do everything for them. They have inherited a system that they very barely can keep track of and have completely forgotten how it was made. They have lost the characteristics that allowed their ancestors to make it to begin with.
If they can't solve the puzzle, then, like the spoiled rotten idiot children they are, they start attacking it. See: the recent "recession". It is simply the rich robbing everyone who isn't working in the industries with the most growth. Squeezing people dry until there's nothing left to shed but their very lives. This ensures that people are living day-to-day and cannot organize to do something to help themselves (against their leaders' interests), like enact a revolution (like the German Third Reich).
Real sysadmins work as root
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Maybe the reason is that the USAians are working harder and longer than before, and because of the always-present stress about making ends meet.
Perhaps some unions or welfare system would be nice to have?
Obamacare just dumped 15 million people into the medical system who were not there before 2010.
So you're saying had these 15 million people not been given access to medical services, more of them would still be alive now? ie Better medical services killed them?
Because that sounds like what your saying, and it sounds a whole lot of crazy.
I'll let you guess which outcome capitalism would favor more. Hint: It's probably the one that generates a higher death rate.
So the "socialist" system is killing people, but a "capitalist" system also prefers to kill people too? Under a managed system, either socialist or capitalist, a living person generates more income to the state than a dead one. So this all sounds a bit whacko...
Finally! I really thought this thread would get by without someone coughing "Obamacare" into it.
But I have to admit, your reason why giving people who didn't have medical insurance one should lead to more deaths is at least creative. Dumb, but creative.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder how the increasing lack of privacy may psychologically impact indirectly the death rate, and more specifically the suicide rate. The amazing revelations from Snowden, the recording of whatever / whenever, the increasing ability to flag any light wrongdoing, or being reachable at any time and place are all factors that add their small amount of permanent stress.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I'm working on the assumption that after a few years under that rule, his followers will be too dumb to find other countries on a map.
Actually, statistically, that's correct. There have been a few occasions, due to strikes or disasters, when communities have lost access to hospitals. Death rates in those communities have gone down.
If you're really sick then a hospital can save your life. If you're not, hospitals are dangerous. And most people who go to the hospital don't need to be there.
The AMA is actively working to reduce the numbers of doctors. They think there's enough. Thousands of "qualified" people are rejected from medical school every year.
Learn to love Alaska
Studies have shown that 100% of all people BORN, will eventually DIE :)
Increased birth rates will necessarily lead to increased death rates somewhere down the line.
USA! USA! USA!
The thing about making absolute statements is that it only takes a single counter-example to absolutely disprove them. So here you go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But it's not Andalusia of today that is interesting, it's Andalusia as it existed between 1920 and 1939. Andalusia the land of plenty while the rest of the world were living in the great depression. Absolutely socialist and completely anarchist - had no government whatsoever (let alone a totalitarian one). Orwell fought on their side in the Spanish civil war - he called Andalusia the closest thing to a Utopian society that has ever existed. A society that had no poverty, starvation or suffering at all - and more personal liberty than any other in history before or since.
That pissed off everybody else - nobody liked to see people governing themselves, without poverty or hunger, in a functioning industrial society. Other country's citizens may get ideas... so they faced a two-front war. Capitalist and communists (they may despise each other but not nearly as much as they despised anarcho-soialists. The Capitalists hated both the anarchism and the socialism and the communists REALLY hated the idea of a working socialism without an autocratic state) actually formed an alliance to wipe Andalusia off the map and after almost 2 decades they finally overwhelmed them.
But economically, politically and socially it was an astoundingly successful society. Democracy's greatest success. Unfortunately nobody can stand forever against a sustained war on two fronts by extremely powerful forces, even so it took two decades to defeat them.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Another article, another lack of error stated in quoted figures.
What is the standard deviation on those per 100,000 figures? A change from 723 to 730 deaths per 100,000 sounds like it could be heavily made up by the (perfectly understandable) random fluctuations in death rates for each type of illness.
The good news is that, by inference, the resurrection rate has risen.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
35 years of widespread use of statins are showing their results. Depression, Alzheimer's, and generally worse health in old age.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
You guys really need to dig deeper for political talent. We in the outside world are getting worried about you if the current crop of clowns is the best you can find!
The problem is not political talent, but the ability to rule wisely and well. Our institutions, unfortunately, do not optimize for selection of a person with that skill set. And our press and population are, unfortunately, more interested in outrageous stories that generate lots of clicks and outrage than they are in reasonable discussions of issues which would recognize the interests of stakeholders and strive to develop meaningful plans.
Most people probably do not encounter a single meaningful expert panel discussion on any policy issue even once in their lives. Our presidential debates are like children throwing sand in the sandbox when held against those.
Real lawyers write in C++
Death by Complacency.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Maybe the US finally increased spending on science, space, and technology?
Why bother going on?
It seems like a crisis with antibiotics was planned. It's a problem with "side-effects" of hygiene as much as bacterial evolution, and our immune systems are kept weak not only from "hygenic" practices but from the lack of exercise resulting from unnecessary antibiotic use.
Perhaps the antibiotic resistant crisis was engineered to ease the pressure on society of having so much surplus "labor resources".
"Hygiene" was originally necessary to keep up economic efficiency in cities where different ethnic groups were co-mingling by keeping them from infecting each other with each others' germs and to stop them from getting at each others' throats for smelling differently.
The solution was simply to burn the flora off the skin completely (with lye soap, chlorine, et c.), which eventually results in extinctions in the digestive tract, respiratory system, and the rest of the body.
Simply put, there is supposed to be a circular relationship between all of your natural flora that is completely disrupted by "hygiene". Yes. The flora from your feces is supposed to spread on your skin and into your mouth and nose and eyes and ears. Not only your own, but that of the people around you.
The only time this becomes a problem is when people get too crowded and the system of flora gets overwhelmed with too many variants. Especially when many different people with quite different populations of flora from different lands and ways of life meet up.
This has all been well-understood for a long time; for some aspects even since ancient times. Absolutely none of this is mysterious to any ranking health official.
The implications of all of this seem quite predictable. People will get sick. Not just once in a while, but chronically. This will become more and more pervasive as generations go on and more and more species of flora are extincted.
Meanwhile we are given antibiotics.
Evil is hiding in the "muddled" issues. More often than not some one knows exactly the truth of the matter and is using it to control everyone who doesn't know. This is the nature of our form of civilization. Probably about time to put an end to it, or accept your extinction.
It was science that got the death-rate this low and life expectancy this high. For years we've warned that the anti-science movement risks undoing those gains. The anti-science movement has only grown stronger over this time. Surely we should consider the possibility that this is that prediction coming true. That the blame for this belongs with the anti-vaxers and the homepaths and if so - perhaps that other rabid anti-science group so prevalent here on slashdot who think that cause and effect somehow doesn't apply to the climate should heed the warning...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Not sure, but it might be related to healthcare. People going later to the doctor when they are sick. This will add up and on a large enough scale it will have an influence.
Is the amount of doctors visits the same or has that declined as well? Going to the doctor often is also prevention, not just trying to get a cure.
e.g. you do not feel well and you do not go till you are really sick. That might mean the difference between a cold and pneumonia. The latter will be a little bit more deadly than a cold on a long term.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Speaking of biased writing...
No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect.
Equally, a less Obamacare-dead-horse-beating person could have written, "No mention was made of whether the disastrous foreign policy blunders of George W Bush or the unprecedented obstructionist Congress-paralyzing politics of Mitch McConnell had some effect."
LOL
Although maybe I am being too quick to say that the above are all equally preposterous to mention as having had no effect. Because in fact, I can imagine a reasonable argument being made that expanding medical coverage to include millions of Americans who previously had no insurance could quite likely have led to a REDUCTION IN THE DEATH RATE such that without the introduction of Obamacare the rise would have been larger.
Which is why I find is so suspicious that the post ridiculously and spuriously includes this bias-ridden sentence:
No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect.
Equally, a less Obamacare-dead-horse-beating person could have written, "No mention was made of whether the disastrous foreign policy blunders of George W Bush or the unprecedented obstructionist Congress-paralyzing politics of Mitch McConnell had some effect."
LOL
Although maybe I am being too quick to say that the above are all equally preposterous to mention as having had no effect. Because in fact, I can imagine a reasonable argument to be made that expanding medical coverage to include millions of Americans who previously had no insurance could quite likely have led to a REDUCTION IN THE DEATH RATE such that without the introduction of Obamacare the rise would have been larger.
So you're saying had these 15 million people not been given access to medical services, more of them would still be alive now?
No. Had those 15 million people not been given access to medical services, more other people would still be alive now. The system already couldn't handle the strain of the patient load, which has been increased without increasing the number of medical professionals sufficiently or even substantially, thanks to the AMA.
Also, medical misprescription is one of the biggest killers in America. It's in the top three. It's grossly underreported because if your doc fucks up and stops your heart with a bad drug combo it's most likely to be reported as a heart attack and stop there. They don't have time to get your prescription right, they certainly don't have time to figure out what killed you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I root as real sysadmins work...
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Global warming is killing us. Scientists all agree. The discussion is over.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Not sure why" is hilarious. When Sarah Palin became the first major politician to use twitter, the Democrats laughed at her. When she said that Putin, if not thwarted, may eye invading Ukraine, they laughed at her. When she said she didn't read any one newspaper for her news (as anyone who looks at news aggregators doesn't), they laughed at her. When she said Obamacare would destroy the quality (not access, but quality) of medical care in this country, they ridiculed her. Well, keep laughing, ass holes.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Obamacare reducing the quality of care (not access, but care) has a direct effect on the rising death rates.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Citation please.
Look at countries without healthcare, or even counties in the USA. The death rates are not lower than more urban or industrialized nations.
Because it was always going down until Obama care was passed. And it's being going up starting a few years after its passage. They are looking to find excuses anywhere they can before the historical perspective sets in.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'd rather say the avoided deaths of nearly 15m people formerly without health care
Obamacare has 0% chance of doing that. The only people without care were the ones with lower medium income of less than advanced age. They didn't need medical care at that stage in their life other than emergency care (which they would receive without Obamacare). The only thing Obamacare did was reduce the quality of medical care for people who actually needed it (oh, and forced a lot of people to pay for illusion of care which they didn't need).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
More people spending money on insurance is not "more people with medical services". It's driving the cost of medical care and increasing wait times for procedures for people who actually need them. Everyone loses in the process. Doctors get paid less and have to fight with insurance companies more. Insurance companies have to find ways go delay care for people who actually have coverage in order to ration access (because more people who don't need it now demand it). Trial lawyers lose because insurance companies are the reason people are getting sicker and Obamacare indemnifies insurance companies for law suits. Patients lose because the quality of care is worse and more expensive. It's not a system which improves something at the expense of others. It's worse for everyone involved.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Thank you for posting this; clearly the subject deserves additional reading...
You conveniently left out the part about him being our brutal dictator.
Obamacare just dumped 15 million people into the medical system who were not there before 2010.
I very much doubt that most of those new people are actually using the medical system. Even where insurance rates are 100% paid for with tax money, the deductibles are generally still in the $3,000 - $6,000 range. They've gone up significantly in the last decade. Insurance helps some with prescription benefits, but do you think the people getting insurance for the first time are willing to spend $250 on a doctor's visit when they get a sore throat? It really only helps you if you have a major medical condition, of the kind most people only get once in their life.
I'd like to see some usage metrics... number of practicing doctors, patients per doctor, etc., trended over time.
He was our when he was fighting our enemies. He certainly was not ours when we removed him. In fact, he stopped being our when he turned from fighting our enemies to fighting everyone around him (including our friends).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Okay, a few facts. Population: It's larger. SIGNIFICANTLY larger. Of course there will be more deaths because of that. Even if your rate takes population into account, what it DOESN'T take into account is the impact psychologically on people in general: Worse tempers, fewer resources available, (especially to the poor). Also, every non-white ethnic group seems to have at least 1 (if not 3) advocacy groups working on behalf of the "oppressed" (some are, but not all and not everywhere;The one thing I agree with Senator McCain on is that Affirmative Action system in the USA is not only out of date but is a form of racism unto itself, and no I cannot be classified as white, or anything else I think, been offered preferential consideration due to my "minority" status which I politely refused). The protection of advocacy groups may reduce the death rate of these non-white USA folks as well although it may or may not be significant.
:D
We've all seen increasing food, housing/space, energy prices all of which is (in addition to greed), is supported by a larger population, increasing demand, reducing supply and making people more irritable as a result. Tempers flare (road rage seems to be on the rise where I am), we have more private/public police everywhere with more and more military weapons (but no proper military/unarmed training, which adds fuel to the fire flamed tempers and emotional discomforture.
Oh, and our news(Fox, NBC, ABC other American sources including most newspapers): Observe how it's primarily geared to the less educated white population (most of whom, unlike Donald Trump are poor and cannot use other people's money) and is specifically designed to stimulate fear. (see other foreign news sources, it's not just the content...it's the presentation). Fear sells and make submissive (well sort of...a cornered animal...). Fear/stress is clinically shown to reduces life expectancy (as well as provoke more violent crime). Let's all do the math now, turn off our mainstream news (which is often inaccurate/wrong anyway), stop munching on our junk food because are nervous, and go to a park (or as best we can in poor areas like Buffalo, Detroit or Flint), and read a good book by a non-American author. We'll live longer, happier and more informed.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Because, you know, death and taxes. Tax rates go up therefore so must death rates.
Hamburgers. Once upon a time a burger was considered an inferior good and although people enjoyed them, they tended to eat fewer as their income increased. Now people celebrate the things and it's hard to see how gourmet burgers are any healthier than Hardee's, McD's, BK, or Wendy's. They may in fact be worse since there's likely more beef. Interestingly, a minor mad cow disease outbreak might increase health for most of the first world.
It probably has nothing to do with the fact that nobody can afford health care anymore.
Yes, we in the USA are in fallout zone and got hit fairly hard.
Expect many more years of declining lifespan, unless you took steps to prevent inhaling and ingestion of various radio-isotopes from those meltdowns.
That's all for now, I don't want to start a flame war.
I remember reading that the national death rate in Belgium actually went down during the Nazi invasion and WW II.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Pesticides, GMO's, the face a hospital visit will bankrupt you, artificial sugars that cause cancer, all the damned drugs urinated into the water supply. This isn't fucking rocket science, america is fucked.
Minor correction to title..
Yeah, two countries run by dictators are totally comparable to the policies of liberals in America. Instead of...say...other countries that actually are similar to America and have already instituted those policies, like most of Europe.
In regards to cuba...what event happened 50 years ago, just by coincidence?
oh ya. the embargo.
but that's just coincidence.....
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
1. For Profit Health Care.
Can you make a profit if people don't get sick? Or, if they are already sick and you find a cure where will you profit from next?
2. Mental/Emotional Health.
Watch enough TV(or internet) news, trigger your fear/anger response, watch more TV (or internet) news, add to pre-existing fear/anger response (repeat until ill)
3. Poor Parenting
All babies are born a blank canvas with autonomic systems for basic function. Our jobs as parents is to program the correct pathways before neural pruning establishes the "defaults" which become our firmware. The basic emotional processing that is built in to everyone builds with an almost "Crazy Glue" stickiness which gives emotional weight to our memories. Bug Filled Firmware -> Bug Filled Person
4 Poor/Failing Society
All great empires in human history have failed. Once the failure is irreversible the values and morals are the first thing to go.
These are my top 4, if I continued the list... Environmental Pollution, and Splitting some of the above into more detailed points would be easy.
Sunny and Warm here by the Beach
Not interested in your conjecture. Because actually, as the post says, there was no mention of Obamacare in the report.
Also, no mention was made of whether the Flying Spaghetti Monster might have had some effect.
The point you are missing is not about Obamacare but about the fact that it is completely disingenuous and fallacious to report on a study and *ADD* your own pet project causes into the report that aren't there. If you want to implicate Obamacare, you either have to find a study that does it or run your own damn study!
Even if it were a correct data point, when all of those who are injured and require critical care or surgery go to a different county then no surprise that there are fewer sick people to die in your hospital/county.
Kodos: It's a two party system! You have to vote for one of us!
Man: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man 2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.
And if Krang wins we'll force you all to build a giant Ray Gun, erm I mean Wall!
Better to say that the Stalinists really hated the form of socialism/communism that existed in Andalusia. Things really went downhill when the Stalinists showed up and Orwell had to sneak out of Spain and was harassed for the longest time.
People like Bartles make the mistake equating socialism with Stalin-ism while even credit unions and co-ops are socialist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Savings, pensions or retirement nest-eggs have evaporated for a large swath of Americans, Throw the 30% of Millennials still living at home on top and the levels of economic stress has skyrocketed.
Pre-Obamacare single adults couldn't get on Medicare regardless of income. I have two friends with medical conditions that prevent them from working who used to carry around the letter telling them they were denied because they got tired of folks like you convinced that it was somehow their fault they didn't have the medicine they needed to stay alive. Telling yourself Medicare was taking care of these people might make you feel better but it doesn't make it true.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yes, that's the first thing my wife did on passage of the ACA: she became a shittier pediatrician. All of her colleagues did too. It was as if the ink on the President's pen turned her into an idiot.
Much like it apparently did you.
We may have the best doctors in the world, but we have a mediocre healthcare system. Both before and after the start of Obama care. Take a look at the statistics here. Basic measurements of performance are cost and health care outcomes. As to cost we are more than twice the average of other developed nations (OECD) and more than 60% than western European countries. These other countries have a broad range of health care systems including socialized, insurance mandates, private insurance, single payer, tax based and two-tier system. Yet they all perform better than the US for both cost and outcomes.. We have surgery and major test rates double other countries. And over prescription and patent laws drive our pharmacy rates to be double the rest of the western world. If we had great outcomes then I would be happy with the cost, but we have lousy outcomes. We have poor outcomes relative to other western countries as measured by any measure include life expectancy, asthma rates and infant mortality. So both before and after Obama care we have been paying twice as much and getting half the results. Much of this is indeed the system's fault such as the very high number of clerical workers in a US doctor's office to fight with the Byzantine insurance system, the perverse incentive that doctors get paid more for doing too much in a fee for service and the broken way we over pay for patented drugs. One the other hand we as a society have each have some responsibility. How many Americans really make any effort to drop that weight the doctor proscribed they drop? As consumer of health care far too many of us hector our doctors into over prescribing and over aggressive surgery decisions. We must be willing to accept that often the correct prescription is to make changes to our diet and not a prescribe a pill. The effects of the waning smoking epidemic is still working its way through the health care system and it would be interesting to see if the rise in deaths are these folks causing a blip or perhaps it is just the leading edge of the obesity epidemic or even the fallout from over prescribing opiods. I still see a candy jar setting on every admin's desk that gets paid for by the company that is paying for part of the health care cost - how crazy is that? One word of caution with the statistics, they are averages. We have a very uneven societies and this expensive health care is not spread evenly. In the US, the rich over consume health care while the poor put off preventive care until the cost of fixing what would have been a preventable/curable illness become massive. Drug costs for diabetes is a big chunk of health care dollars and most diabetes can be cured with weight loss. Again with an uneven society folks working 50 hours a week flipping burgers and no options for time off for a check-up are set-up to fail. Sure, IT and tech workers spend long hours at work and feel pressure, but few of us would be fired the first time we took an hour off to see a doctor. Yes, as others have said Obama care fixes access, not quality. That quality fix takes no small part of responsibility on our part.
What's the confidence interval on the death rate? Is an increase from 723 per 100k to 730 per 100k statistically significant or is it just random noise?
Really? There's a big difference between totalitarian socialism (colloquially referee to as "communism" in the West) and other forms of socialism/communism. There have been many highly successful group that would.have persisted, peacefully, indefinitely if it wasn't for the outside world interfering. I'd argue that socialism is the natural state for humans as they historically lived in smaller groups where labor and the fruits thereof were shared among members of the group according to need.
The elephant in the room is, of course, quality of life. Which has been going down for a large part of the population for a long time now. Enough years to use up whatever reserves existed.
The increasing class warfare against the poor and middle class is raising stress levels, causing depression, removing options for rest and recovery (holidays, days off, etc.) -- all things that cause health issues.
Experts are puzzled because there isn't one cause, there is a multitude of soft causes that are difficult to quantify and measure. I'm quite sure the experts aren't clueless, they just can't prove their suspicions so far because of these difficulties.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
are the witches brew that has made this happen, along with the opiate epidemic. If people suddenly realize they have nothing to live for, they won't.
Not that anybody in *real* power (i.e. the world's unelected wealthy) gives a damn. As far as they're concerned, it's just fewer cattle to feed.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Because it was always going down until Obama care was passed. And it's being going up starting a few years after its passage.
Just makin' stuff up are we? 2015 is the first and only year with an increase in the adjusted death rate since the 1990 recession.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Obamacare hasn't helped anyone. The "millions of poor people" who supposedly benefited from it qualified for medicaid to begin with. The only thing this disastrous plan has done is drive up the cost for those of us who actually have to pay for it out of pocket and force people who decided that they can't afford it to pay out the nose anyway. Do you remember when Obama was running for President and we were all shouting how he didn't have the experience he would need to properly pass a bill through congress? This is exactly what we were talking about. Anyone with a modicum of foresight would have expanded the program that was already in place to help these people instead of managing to screw things up worse then they were.
Wrong! Despite my intense dislike of the ACA, I'm quite willing to go on record saying that Obamacare quite literally saved my life. I had no insurance before the ACA, it was totally out of reach, and I don't qualify for medicaid (I know for a fact because you are forced to be evaluated before being given ACA credits). Within 2 weeks of signing up for a quite good silver plan that was also quite affordable (this was in the 1st year of Obamacare, it's much less good and affordable now) I came down with a rare disease that would have crippled or killed me without a doubt. I literally got my insurance ID number while on the way to the ER for the 2nd time in a week. Funny thing, now I had some insurance they decided to do an MRI "just in case," and discovered the infection. Without that MRI and subsequent diagnoses I would have been paralyzed or dead within days, and I have little doubt there wouldn't have been an MRI if I was still uninsured. As it was, I was hospitalized for months with the final bill well over a quarter million, which my silver plan promptly payed all but $500 of. Don't get me wrong, health care in this country is fucked and the ACA can't and won't fix it, but there's no doubt it saved my ass big time. So your facts are wrong, but your premise may be correct. We need to go single payer, the longer we put it off the harder it will be, and more people will die.
Very few political commentators understand this salient point. They believe minorities are mostly liberal, or just vote for the person that offers the most free stuff. If that were true Bernie would have dominated that demographic, yet the direct opposite happened.
Any proof/citations that "Obamacare would destroy the quality (not access, but quality) of medical care"?
So, doing the wrong thing is better than doing nothing at all? Just because you don't know what the right thing to do is, you don't just go out and do any old thing just to look like you're doing something. I voted for Obama. Twice. His plan was good. What Congress passed back to him was shit. He still signed it, and for that I blame him and only him.
For the record, he only got my vote the second time because there was no good alternative. I doubt I'll even vote this year, given the choices; there isn't one I wouldn't complain about, so I'll retain my right to bitch about whoever's elected.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Very true, but I didn't expect him to be able to understand the ideas to that level. The kind of people who see the world in stark binaries tend to be oblivious to the idea that there can ever be more than just two ideas in the world about anything - let alone things that exist in between without being at the extremes of either and that those in-betweens are frequently better than what's on the fringes.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
it's better than nothing. The right wing took over the state legislatures and used them to gerrymander Senate & House victories. After that single payer was dead. Our winner take all political system means you just need to get a small number of people out to vote and keep the rest away from the polls. I don't see how the left can win. We need to take back the churches. That's where the civil rights movement started. But there's no money. Maybe if things get a whole lot worse, but I think the 1% learned their lesson and they'll keep us in check this time.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
denying them and quoting the statute. My buddy used to keep the letter around so he could show his parents to prove he applied so they'd stop treating him like a lazy ass liar when he had to beg them for money to buy meds.
I'm using term loosely here because everybody else is but you don't actually get Medicaid unless you've been legally declared disabled. Which is a 6+ month long process that often involves a lawyer. Yes, cancer patients can get on it while they're in active treatment. As soon as they are in remission they're kicked off it and put on the State sponsored low income programs. In Arizona that's called AHCSS (pronounced "access"). It's right here. As long as the feds (read:Obama) are paying for it adults can apply.
It's not trivial. It doesn't fucking exist. Sorry, but I'm tired of people who've never had to rely on the social safety net telling me it's there. It's not. It's been gone for ages. The problem is folks like you think it's there. If you ever find out it's not it'll be too late. By then you'll be crushed by whatever disaster hit you. I've seen it happen a half dozen times now and it's really, really pissing me off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Also, medical misprescription is one of the biggest killers in America. It's in the top three. It's grossly underreported because if your doc fucks up and stops your heart with a bad drug combo it's most likely to be reported as a heart attack and stop there.
A citation would be good right about now. In my country, a death needs sign off from the state coroner, which is legally and politically liable for it's conclusions. The family can request an independent autopsy, so that scenario doesn't sound plausible to me.
You can't be socialist and anarchist. The definition of socialism is state ownership of the means of production. What you are talking about is a social anarchy.
Aren't you guys cute.
More people spending money on insurance is not "more people with medical services".
So they don't get medical services? So what are they paying insurance for? And how does it increase the wait times, if people aren't using the services?
Your argument makes no sense.
It's interesting that in that whole wiki, the word socialism is never used, and the word socialist is only used once in refernce to an actual socialist political party. And if you were to go here The word socialist is only used in reference to the relationship the anarchists had with socialists. They were two separate and distinct groups. We've had this discussion before. You were wrong then, just as you are now.
I remember reading that the national death rate in Belgium actually went down during the Nazi invasion and WW II.
Ok that sounds like a load of shit. And a quick Google tells me 88000 Belgians were killed during the German invasion and occupation. Without even looking up the pre-war mortality rate, I'll bet my house that it wasn't anywhere near that level.
>You can't be socialist and anarchist.
Yes you can, and many socialists would argue you cannot be a true socialist and NOT be anarchist.
>The definition of socialism is state ownership of the means of production.
No it isn't. Who told you that ? The definition of socialism is WORKER ownership of the means of production. There is NOTHING in there about a "state". The idea of the state as a proxy for workers was introduced by Bolshevism but all the other forms roundly reject that. Worker-owned co-ops are socialist businesses. A country becomes socialist when the majority of workers own the businesses they work in. Argentina is technically the most socialist country in the world today since worker-owned coops are now by far the largest form of employment there (and the absolutely backbone of the economy contributing well over 80% of total GDP). Many anarchists reject the idea off a boss/worker relationship as being an unacceptable power-relationship - and find only socialist businesses compatible with anarchism. Many such socialists believe the idea of a government or state is an unacceptable power relationship and believe they should have a say in every vote they are expected to live under, just as they should have an equal say in every company decision that affects their livelilhood and an equal share in the profits they helped create.
>What you are talking about is a social anarchy.
It's had many names, anarcho-socialism, social anarchy, libertarian-socialism, left-libertarianism, anarcho-syndicalism, participatory politics and participatory economics are all essentially the same set of ideas. They have very minor differences in how they propose to handle specific aspects of implementation but the key features of all of them are exactly the same.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
And how does it increase the wait times
The same way "salami insurance for all" would increase wait times in the salami store. It creates a longer line in which people must stand before they can get to buy the salami and makes it impossible for people at the end of the line to get the salami even if they need it to save their lives. This is an abstraction. of course. But if you don't understand basic economics, then why do you insert yourself into this debate at all?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The crime and corruption in these 4 conspire to increase the death rate through sheer greed.
It is as simple as that - pay or die
Number of deaths per 100,000 is not the right metric. The correct metric is average age of person dying. If this is falling, we have a genuine problem.
Now try reading the wiki page for libertarian socialism. Where andalusia is specifically listed as an example. You are failing to understand the concept. Anarcho socialism has been around for centuries and dates back to philosophers like Proudhom. In fact the original meaning of 'libertarian' is anarcho-socialist. Its a French word that was coined to get around the Napoleonic ban on anarchist propaganda.
Among the most notable anarcho-socialists living today is Noam Chomsky. Try reading his works. You dont have to agree with the idea but you ought to at least understand it before you decide.
Or read the wiki page on participatory politics and participatory economics for a popular contemporary proposal on how an anarcho socialist society can be structured from Harvard.
People who spend their lives studying political and economic philosophy see no contradiction in the idea... but you do ? So either you are privy to some fact that has escaped every major philodopher for 500 years or you are wrong. Guess which one is more likely.
Or to put it otherwise. If you publish a paper proving anarcho socialism a logical contradiction without relying on the false definition of socialism you quoted before (because that would get you mocked) you would receive a dozen honorary phds in philosophy from the world's greatest universities for doing something even a rabid capitalist philosopher like John Locke could never achieve. It would be philosphy's greatest breakthrough in 500 years. I wish you luck but I will not be holding my breath.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The same way "salami insurance for all" would increase wait times in the salami store. It creates a longer line in which people must stand before they can get to buy the salami and makes it impossible for people at the end of the line to get the salami even if they need it to save their lives.
Do you even know how a hospital works? Hint: It's a little more intelligently managed than your local meat shop. Look up the word triage, then come back and appreciate your idiotic analogy.
Also look up preventive medicine, then tell me how this is relevant in the salami story. I won't hold my breath.
But if you don't understand basic economics, then why do you insert yourself into this debate at all?
To try and educate people like you who clearly have no fucking clue...