Slashdot Mirror
US Life Expectancy Declines For the First Time Since 1993 (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source) -- a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States. Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death. The new report raises the possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider group of Americans. Its findings show increases in "virtually every cause of death. It's all ages," said David Weir, director of the health and retirement study at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Over the past five years, he noted, improvements in death rates were among the smallest of the past four decades. "There's this just across-the-board [phenomenon] of not doing very well in the United States." Overall, life expectancy fell by one-tenth of a year, from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.8 in 2015, according to the latest data. The last time U.S. life expectancy at birth declined was in 1993, when it dropped from 75.6 to 75.4, according to World Bank data. The overall death rate rose 1.2 percent in 2015, its first uptick since 1999. More than 2.7 million people died, about 45 percent of them from heart disease or cancer.
Crybaby liberal. Actually, it is no surer than the HRC coronation was. My first thought on reading this was "Obamacare, direct cause and effect" (was just talking to another friend who lost his family doctor to the "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor" lie). There are things in Obamacare that could explain the drop. Trump could drive the numbers back up.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
RETARD ALERT! RETARD ALERT!
That's not how it works at all. You wouldn't have to haggle. All you have to do is look at a few providers and choose the one you like best. No different than the effort you put into any other free market service. Providers automatically bring their prices down to attract more clients. Basic economics. I swear, slashdot users are 5 internet years behind free speech sites like 4chan and funnyjunk.
I can not even begin to tell you how dumb this idea is. Are you seriously going to haggle with the emergency staff, as they're about to treat your heart attack? What about when your s.o. finds a lump in their breasts/chest? What are you going to tell your kid, when they get lymphoma? "Sorry sweetie. You deserve the best, but we can only afford to send you to that guy that operates out of a dumpster."
The extremes do not an argument make. You can "prove" anything if you use only the extremes or outliers in your analysis. No one is talking about negotiation and/or haggling.
The problem with a hidden "pay-via-indirect-intermediary" trade is the lack of information at the point of trading. The market cannot reach any optimum if the $BUYER purchases and consumes $PRODUCT without knowing at the time of purchase how much $PRODUCT will cost. This is an advantage to $SUPPLIERS, as they can jack up prices and know that $INTERMEDIARY will, one way or another, get that price from $BUYER.
If $BUYER has to directly see the price at point of purchase, even if they do not negotiate, then it's likely that they'll avoid that particular $SUPPLIER in the future. This has the effect of driving down price to what the market will bear. If $BUYER only sees the price a month later, disconnected from the act of actual trading, they do not connect particular $SUPPLIER to that price, and hence do not choose a different $SUPPLIER the next time around.
This means that if all the $SUPPLIERS want the price to stay at the same level, they have to collude. With the intermediary, there is no need to collude - they intermediary ensures that the price will be paid, and the $BUYER does not change intermediaries.
So, it's not a matter limited only to healthcare, but simple market economics that would apply to any commodity available only via an intermediary.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.