Slashdot Mirror
Rural Americans At Higher Risk From Five Leading Causes of Death: CDC (cbsnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Americans living in rural areas are more likely to die from five leading causes of death than people living in urban areas, according to a new government report. Many of these deaths are preventable, officials say, with causes including heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory disease. Approximately 46 million Americans -- about 15 percent of the U.S. population -- currently live in rural areas. According to the CDC report, several demographic, environmental, economic, and social factors might put rural residents at higher risk of death from these conditions. Rural residents in the U.S., for example, tend to be older and sicker than their urban counterparts, and have higher rates of cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity. People living in rural areas also report less leisure-time physical activity and lower seatbelt use than their those living in urban areas and have higher rates of poverty, less access to health care, and are less likely to have health insurance. Specifically, the report found that in 2014, deaths among rural Americans included: 25,000 from heart disease; 19,000 from cancer; 12,000 from unintentional injuries; 11,000 from chronic lower respiratory disease; 4,000 from stroke. The percentages of deaths that were potentially preventable were higher in rural areas than in urban areas, the authors report. For the study, the researchers analyzed numbers from a national database. The CDC suggests to help close the gap, health care providers in rural areas can: Screen patients for high blood pressure; Increase cancer prevention and early detection; Encourage physical activity and healthy eating; Promote smoking cessation; Promote motor vehicle safety; Engage in safer prescribing of opioids for pain.
I came here to complain about how this would generate divisive and callous political snarking, and guess what the first two comments that beat me to the punch are?
You people are thoroughly disgusting. You're the reason people outside The Six Cities That Matter don't trust liberals, and the reason true leftists like Bernie can't ever make any headway. If you keep this shit up, you're going to bring this country to the point of civil war. Good idea, I say: this side has all the guns, so we can push all you fuckers into the ocean.
Let's see - I have gigabit internet, satellite TV, 4G cell service, acres of land and a house that would cost you millions, and no traffic or crime in this rural American lifestyle as you call it.
I actually know my neighbors, the mayor of the town, the sheriff, and I participate in my community. My kids go to decent schools with normal people and not the psychotics that live in major cities. Despite the article above we have good health care and actually know our doctors who even make house calls. We grow a lot of our own food and have easy access to hunting. When the shit hits the fan you will be starving.
So no thanks. Keep your city lifestyle.
Just wait until you have to actually foot the bill for the services you use, mooch.
The urban centers provide the tax dollars to make your life possible. Roads, electricity, telephone lines, etc are mandated by the government and without that you'd have nothing.
It wouldn't be too hard to create a more efficient public healthcare system that makes actual sense. The current one is heavily compromised by the politics behind getting it passed to begin with.
To start off, don't rely on private insurance providers or push any responsibilities out to individual states.
This kind of attitude is why you got Trump.
"They" provide fuel, food, and electricity because "we" pay them money for it. And, by the way, "They" are large conglomerate farms, refineries, and power plants owned by people who live in NY/Chicago/SF/LA and who hire inbred hicks to do the actual work.
The problem is that the focus is on the wrong word. You even used the word. The word you used was "healthcare." The problem is that the word being used when the law is being worked on is not, "care," it is ,"insurance.
The emphasis remains to provide insurance, with the assumption that care will follow. The focus needs to be on healthcare.
If it cuts out a huge slice of profit for a small number of people employed in health insurance, that must be viewed as the cost of increasing national efficiency in providing health care.
While I agree with everything you just said, both of your proposed solutions are the exact opposite of the Republican platform on healthcare reform. That isn't hyperbole, the core of their plan is to increase reliance on private insurance and push more responsibility to the states.
Indeed, the Republican platform is to funnel even more money to private insurance. In fact, Paul Ryan's Medicare "reform" plan is to push all Medicare recipients onto private plans (but still paid for by the government, via vouchers) so that the private companies can make even more profits. According to this article, Medicare administrative costs are about 2% of operating expenditures while private insurance runs about 17%. This doesn't include marketing or profits for the private insurance, with those items the overhead is 20-25%. So up to a quarter if the money paid for insurance to these companies doesn't even go to actual care and Ryan wants to push our our seniors into that environment, while the rest of us pay for it (or don't, just run up the debt some more). Ryan's plan would be a huge government handout to the insurance companies, even larger than Obamacare, which was a MASSIVE insurance company handout. As this article observes, the Republican base are the exact people who would benefit most from lower-cost healthcare but for some reason in every election they manage to vote against their own self-interest. It's just mind-boggling, it seems like they would be willing to set their own world on fire rather than see a single person get something from the government that they didn't "deserve".
Enigma