Americans Are Seriously Sick 1519
jd writes "A study by US and British researchers on frequency of illnesses shows that even when you compare like groups in the US and the UK, people in the US are considerably sicker than their counterparts in the UK. This is after factors such as age, race, income, education and gender were taken into consideration. The most startling conclusion was that although the richest Americans were better off than the poorest Americans, they did no better (health-wise) than the poorest of the English. Previous studies of the entire population had shown similar results, with America placing around 25th amongst industrialized countries on chronic disease prevention, but it had been assumed that minorities and economics were skewing the results. This study suggests that maybe that isn't the case."
Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt many other people are going to write in talking about "fat americans" being the problem - and its true that nutrition in America is a serious problem, but the comparison is to England, [bbc.co.uk] so not the cause of the differences.
Personally, I work on average 8 months a year and spend the rest of the time travelling - I am rarely stressed and almost never sick.
Universal Healthcare? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps she's being a little unreasonable, but then again, if the Democratic Party continues to be ineffective, and impotent, perhaps we should be looking towards a party that does have the courage to stand up to the Republicans and actually get things like universal healthcare into the running for issues.
Assumed by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't believe that was assumed by most public health experts, and certianly not ones outside the US. The US does not just have greater socioeconmic differences, but since thay have no proper pubic heathcare, those differences matter a lot more. And even if you belong to the group that can afford proper care, you still have to go get it; there is little follow-up by default. It would really be quite shocking if the US system resulted in high a level of public health as the more proactive systems found in western Europe. Now, I know that there are varying opinions on what are the responsibilities of society and of the individual, and I'm not going to go into that. But of there are effects. I assume that most of those against public healthcare accept those consquences as a fair price (for someone else) to pay, but if this result came as an unwelcome suprise, I would call that a tad naïve.
Re:This is a trash study (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich, and I'm proud to pay my taxes towards the NHS that provides top notch treatment to EVERYBODY.
I'm guessing you're one of the lucky ones with private health insurance. Try living on the povery line and making a choice between getting that lump looked at or eating for a month. I know what most people are forced to choose in your so called land of the free...
New Research Concludes With Startling Results (Score:0, Insightful)
Call me a pessimist... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Not a supporter of socialist programs in general, but healthcare is too important to be trusted to human greed.)
I am incredibly healthy (Score:2, Insightful)
However, my brother smokes, eats lots of junkfood and never exercises more than going for a walk. He gets a flu or some other bug maybe five or more times a year!
A simple change in lifestyle will make you much healthier.
Re:This is a trash study (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't think what's right for you is right for everybody.
I know you'll shake your head at it like everybody does, but the typical vegetarian gets no cancer, never gets influenza (yes your flu last year could be avoided if you dumped meat) and will never have the depression, bowel disease, heart problems and overweight that inflict meat eaters!
My mom's cousin has been a vegetarian since childhood. She died two years ago of breast cancer.
Fast food (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently went out to stay at a friends house for a weekend, and on the first day we ate McDonalds in the evening. The next day I was feeling pretty sick. All I ate about two burgers and some chicken nuggets.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I too am a vegetarian & that yes, overconsumption of meat is indeed one of the causes of the US's chronic health problems.
However, go and look in your mouth - see the canines there? The notion that humans are not well adapted to an omnivorous diet is a stupid one.
Also - saying "going against nature" (whether said by people like you or people arguing that eating meat is 'natural') makes no sense in this day & age - the life you lead is no more natural then the life of a bird in a cage.
free as in beer (Score:5, Insightful)
Rates of smoking are similar in the US and England but alcohol consumption is higher in the UK.
There you have it, folks, DRINK!
(I am only half joking)
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a trash study (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the NHS with it's endless 'performance targets', NICE reviews, and Local Trust bureaucracies is actually doing a better job of making people better than the largely private US system, with it's deeper pockets, and strong-arm tactician pharmaceutical companies?
Per Capita Healthcare Spending (Score:2, Insightful)
"The United States spends about $5,200 per person on health care while England spends about half that in adjusted dollars."
So you lot are spending twice as much to get worse results? Great system guys. It's shameful that in the the richest country in the world people are suffering and dying because they can't afford to see a doctor.
Re:Assumed by whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Universal Healthcare? (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, as cool as universal healthcare would be, TFA really isn't bringing that issue up. Rather, I think it alludes to the hire levels of stress or maybe more generally the unhealthy ways we Americans live. Universal Healthcare can't make you sleep 8 hours every night or eat all your vegetables, and I think that's really the point that should be driven home by the article... as Americans, we just aren't living healthily (and no amount of healthcare can make up for that.)
Re:Per Capita Healthcare Spending (Score:3, Insightful)
The point here in the US (with our wonderful for-profit system) is not to make people well. That went out the window years ago.
The point is to find a way to rule regular conditions (like an allergy to pollen during the springtime) as a sickness, and find a way to rake in a few dollars from it as a result.
I maintain that Americans are not actually more sick than residents of other countries, but that routine conditions that are regular and normal (colds in the winter, allergies in the spring, headaches, etc) are paperworked into being 'sick' and treated medically, because there is more profit in doing so.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wanna talk suicide rates?
TWW
Re:Call me a pessimist... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fast food (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, just a thought (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't help but wonder, do you think these two things might have something to do with each other?
Sweet tooth & work stress (Score:3, Insightful)
"Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English, 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of the English."
I am dutch, but have been to the states a lot as my parents have lived there on several occasions. My impressions:
Higher diabetes rates could well be explained by the large amounts of sugar in lots of food products in America. Even the bread was very sweet to my senses, let alone the rediculous amounts of soft drinks consumed( "would you like a refill for that half-a-litre of coke you just drained?" ).
Higher blood pressure: higher work stress. I don't think I need expand on this, it's a well known fact that Americans work more and have less holidays/vacations.
Also less physical exercise will not help either conditions.
But the higher cancer rates quite baffle me. Strange stuff.
Re:Michael Moore's new movie about health care (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:free as in beer (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the absense of those refined pills, a vegan diet will kill you in the long term. Clear evidence that a vegan diet is NOT natural.
Re:ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lack of exercise and bad food (Score:4, Insightful)
Add the rotten food to the car culture and you have a disaster. The UK is sure to follow this trend although it is much easier here to live close enough to work that you don't have to drive (I cycle). Just 30 mins exercise a day would make a world of difference (I try to get an hour in) and there is no reason why you should pay to get it at a gym. Heck, even if you do drive try parking 15-30 mins walk away from work and go the rest of the way in on foot. When I do have to use my car I do that and I still get in quicker than I would if I tried to drive the last couple of miles.
One more point: poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
Spot on, poster. One point you missed though: despite the long hours and few vacation days in the US, there are more Americans in poverty now in real terms than at any time since the Great Depression. For tens of millions of Americans, despite all the work they are still dirt poor. This is for several reasons:
- Minimum wage is not tied to any meaningful cost of living index.
- The official 'Poverty Line' is similarly not based on any meaningful cost of living index (it is uselessly taken as 3 times the cost of food; food is dramatically cheaper now than even 25 years ago, and much less healthy, so this metric is positively retarded).
- Rent on property has gone sky high as the economy has grown, meaning the cost of even the crappiest housing is essentially unaffordable for a minimum wage worker.
And lastly, Employers are becoming increasingly exploitative, harkening back to 19th Century labor practices. Labor is less organized now and unions are weaker (where is a Wal Mart workers union for their 900,000 employees?). With so-called 'unskilled' jobs, employers encourage high turnover so they don't have to give pay increases with all sorts of draconian practices.
On this last point, culpability falls largely on the government. Without regulation, unbridled capitalism is taken America steadily in the direction of Asian sweatshops. Supply and demand in the labor market defies all textbook economic logic because workers have no time to shop around for the best jobs, or to switch jobs when a better one becomes available and because they have no access to information about what other jobs might be available. Sure, you might get a dollar an hour more somewhere else, but if they withhold the first weeks' pay there, you can never switch because you won't ever be able to pay the rent or buy food if you miss a week's wages. Millions of people are that close to the edge. And so without rules - without government regulation - keeping companies from fucking low-wage workers, guess what? Those workers get fucked.
So the point you missed is that millions of Americans are in a state of profound poverty. Sure, the US has pretty good general public infrastructure - roads, water, electricity - so it doesn't seem like poor people are living in the same poverty and desperation that exists in places like India, but in many instances they are. The toll on a person's health from the stress of poverty alone probably outweighs the toll of long working hours and few vacations. Bill Gates works 80-hour weeks, so I hear. He probably doesn't have the kind of stress-related health problems that a single mother holding down two jobs has, even if she only works a 60 hour week.
Be sure to read Nickel and Dimed for more information about the impossibility of surviving in America on minimum wage.
There are few things coming to mind.... (Score:4, Insightful)
These are mentioned in article but not enough to explain it entirely.
Obesity.
Unhealthy food.
Lack of exercise.
Stress.
These are not mentioned in the article...
Air pollution from cars and power plants.
Chemicals that can cause health problems, dumped to environment getting to people.
Look at the cancer rate its double in US, so there must be something that causes that problem. And its probably the attitude towards environment biting back. When nobody cares if they pollute their neighbours habitat the result is that all get pollution in their environment. And in the end just like wild animals we humans get affected by the pollution we put in our environment, and we all get some health problems because of that.
Re:free as in beer (Score:2, Insightful)
Being a home brewer, I have learned that it is very hard for any kind of disease-causing bacteria to survuve in beer. Moreover, drinking is a depressant, which often causes you to relax and "let loose" (unless you are trying to "drown your pain"). On top of that, wine is supposed to help with keeping arteries clean, and beer (as pointed out a few months back on
So one can only conclude that moderate drinking is good for your health... Drink up!
BTW: slashdot captcha words are often disturbing.
The Japanese work long, not hard (Score:3, Insightful)
However, in The States they really make people work hard, especially managers. And there are always PLENTY of managers in the work place.
I guess it is because managers can legally be made to work crazy hours with no compensation.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
i guess a diet of fish and rice and ninja skills really pay off vs bacon and eggs and TV remote skills...
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
And I'm not saying this is exclusively American. I'm just saying, that in America this is more more dominant than anywhere else.
Re:Per Capita Healthcare Spending (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyone with chronic allergies (i.e. not just a couple of weeks of hayfever each year) should get desenstizing injections. They can really change your life.
Re:Fast food (Score:1, Insightful)
The difference is, we have people who eat junk whereas in many cases, America has people who eat *giant portions* of junk. Last time I visited the US, I got full up eating the starters let alone the main course. Order a pie for dinner and get *two* on a giant plate with enough chips/french fries/freedom fires to sink a battleship.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
In Praise of Idleness (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems this is the only thread going today.
Anyway, I thought I should mention a great essay of Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness [panarchy.org]. His argument takes the extreme view that we should only need to work for four hours a week. Empirically, the argument derives from the experience of Britain during the second world war when most of the productive capacity of the country was spent on maintaining the war. And we didn't starve.
Of course, Russell is being a little toungue-in-cheek by calling his essay In Praise of Idleness. He doesn't really mean that we should watch TV for the remaining 108 hours of the (waking) week. Rather, he imagines a regime in which we need only do 'unpleasant' work for four hours to earn our income, and the rest of the time could be spent wisely on whatever might suit our tastes. Partially, this seems to be the ethos of Google labs, where a third (I think) of developers' time is given over to their own projects.
Emphasising posts above (Score:3, Insightful)
I think those people (and the soldiers (etc) of WW1) had put their lives on the line for society, and had a right to define which way it should go.
I'd rather live with their vision, faults and all, than that of assorted isolationist fat-cats.
The Best Healthcare in the World? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Michael Moore's new movie about health care (Score:1, Insightful)
How could that happen? Moore, like Limbaugh on the right, preaches exclusively to his choir: there is nothing whatsoever he could say that would make him remotely credible to those who oppose him, there is no ridiculous extreme he could go to that would convince his fanatical followers that he's exaggerating one whit, and the majority of people care neither way, either find his work amusing or don't bother watching it at all, and know exactly how big a pinch of salt to take his claims with.
So he might as well go on being as inflammatory as he can, because that's what everyone wants: his supporters want to enjoy his hyperbole, and his opponents want to enjoy nitpicking him on factual errors. The more extreme the movie, the more money it makes. And that's what the American dream is all about, isn't it? Doing what you're good at, and making a fortune out of it.
Moore is the perfect American -- and making a fair and balanced documentary would be the worst possible mistake he could make.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly, the idea that a completely unregulated market is going to bring lower prices to the consume is a fairy tale. Without legislation to forbid collusion (which doesn't even work when it exists), businesses are just as likely to cooperate to get the best profit as they are to compete until they're all making razor thin margins and on the verge of starvation.
Re:Nationality (Score:3, Insightful)
Um. Tell us how much you pay in taxes every year and then try to write these two sentences again.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, I thought the free market and privatization was supposed to make things cheaper? While state-run systems like the British NHS were supposed to be horribly inefficient and expensive?
Any economists care to explain what's going on here? Is the free market a failure, or is this the way it's supposed to be? Are those extortionate health costs translating into increased prosperity for America in some way?
Markets work very well where prices are elastic; that is, a change in price causes demand to change. Healthcare, by its very nature, is inelastic. The number of broken legs that need to be serviced each year is roughly the same and changing the price to fix a broken leg will not change the demand for the service appreciably. The same goes for Heart Disease, Cancer or just about any other ailment.
The upshot of this is that free market will raise the prices indefinitely, as we have seen in the United States. In fact, in America it's got a whole lot worse because companies are providing healthcare for their employees. The fact that companies have much bigger pockets makes the inflation problem so much worse.
There are also other economic disadvantages to the American set-up. The chief one being purchasing power. The NHS can buy ten million flu shots in a go and can pass these savings on the tax payer. In the mean while, a person doesn't have the same clout. Moreover, you generally need drugs when you're sick and you're going to be prepared sacrifice a lot more in order to get the drug than you would for most products. Not a lot else matter if you're dying of cancer: You either buy the drug or you die.
The best way to run a health service is through "market inspired" communism. That is not as much as an oxymoron as you might think it is. The NHS is a prime example of this.
Simon.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) To have a free market is to make money (not saying this is bad), but reality is that you can't make money with health care. Fixing a broken bone can be made profitable because it is a known science. Fixing a disease is not profitable and costs quite a bit of money. In your proposal where people "save" the money, ha! Diseases are a loss!
2) In a private system there still would be paperwork. Paperwork exists to create accountability! In a private system people will want accountability.
As much as I like free markets, health care and free market do not go together. Healthcare is a societal issue because health care from a profitability factor is a money looser. Healthcare is not like a car insurance. With a car you can try and avoid an accident, you can stop speeding. Accidents do happen, but there are ways to reduce them. Car accidents are human errors! Diseases on the other happen and there is nothing we can do to avoid them. They are a fact of life. You can diet, excercise, and lead a healthy lifestyle, but you can still be hit with cancer or some other disease! You can try to avoid them, but they will always hit you!
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet proper diet and exercise and vacations can dramatically reduce your chances of getting cancer or other diseases. I would say the car insurance analogy is better than you thought.
Re:This is a trash study (Score:3, Insightful)
Hear Hear! And don't forget food. What good is the right to health care without food? While we're at this, how about a right to guaranteed housing, a good job, and happiness!
I agree with you on the guaranteed food and housing, Mr sarcastic social darwinist. A good job and happiness are things that you can take at your own pace once you know you're not going to die of hunger or exposure.
Re:Nationality (Score:2, Insightful)
You will see a lot of statistics out there which are based on figures taken only from England and Wales, because Scotland does not have the same set of laws / conditions / spending. England and Wales are essentially a single administrative and legislative unit.
For example, there exists a smoking ban in Scotland, but not in England and Wales. Fox Hunting was banned in Scotland in 2002, but not until 2004 in England and Wales.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever wonder why country people, especially farmers and people who do physical work, always seem healthier?
Ah... that explains the cheap food (Score:2, Insightful)
The truth is, there are only two markets in the US that consistently see greater than inflation price increases: medicine and education. Please note both markets are broken by government action. Every other market you care to point to either
a) Has seen declining prices and increasing quality.
b) Involves trade in a finite commodity (think land, even gas goes up and down with the commodity price, which goes up and down with supply and demand).
I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business.
Re:ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:1, Insightful)
Spoken like somebody who has never lived in Japan. Yes, they eat a lot of fish, which they "flavor" with pounds of salt. There aren't that many vegetables at all and the majority of calories comes from noodles. Lots of noodles and salt. That's my experience (months worth) with Japanese cuisine.
Green tea is another sign you've not lived there. The majority of Japanese seem to drink coffee, often with condensed milk because it's sweet. Go to the station on any morning and you can count on one hand the number of people drinking green tea. Coffee is the drug of choice there as it is here.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, an agenda? Provide links proving eating meat poisons the bowels, chum. Me, I think you're lying.
Re:Poverty already accounted for (Score:3, Insightful)
You may find my lack of faith in the power of statistical 'compensation' disturbing, but it seems to me that poverty is a bigger problem in a country with dramatically fewer government-provided support mechanisms for citizens. The NHS, for all its problems, offers vastly greater security - both physical and psychological - to impoverished British citizens than the level of security (or lack thereof) that poor Americans without healthcare have to endure. I have no doubt there may be other factors in the US environment (physical, chemical, biological, etc) that make Americans sicker than Brits. But I have no confidence from the information in TFA that this study was even remotely successful or comprehensive in isolating those factors from the overarching social and psychological factors at work which include, but are not limited to, poverty.
So, the claim that poverty is irrelevant is at the very least shortsighted and naive, though it is more probably just plain moronic.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the fundamental problems with the free market model for health care. Remember Dicken's "A Christmas Carol", when tiny Tim was going to die because they couldn't afford a doctor? That's true free market health care.
The question is whether human life is intrinsicaly valuable, and our economic systems are there to best support and enrich life, or whether the economic system is the most valuable, and human life is something that needs to be fit into it.
It's not a trivial question. There have been many societies throughout history where human lives where less valuable than the material needs of others. (Again, see Dickens, American slavery, the roman empire, etc.). It's an actual choice. And most Americans would come down on the side of the value of human life.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's take cancer. People don't know where cancer comes from and think that some habits are better than others. Yet we all can get cancer, regardless if you excercise, etc. We think that certain habits will increase the liklihood, but we cannot say, "Excercise and you will not get cancer".
Let me give you an example; Lance Armstrong, incredibly healthy and a great athlete, yet he was on the brink of death due to cancer. Or how about Andres Galarraga? Or how about Scott Hamilton? How about Mario Lemieux?
This is why I say healthcare is a societal issue because healthcare saps money and is a money looser! With a spin on the car insurance ananlogy. When a driver has an accident we as a society don't mind charging that driver more or not giving him car insurance. If a person gets cancer can we say, "No you can't get coverage, you are on your own?" This is exactly what private healthcare providers do. I know, my mother survived breast cancer, but the private healthcare providers are refusing to cover her for cancer. If she gets cancer again she is on her own. This is wrong! But it is business because she is a "problematic" person.
Re:Ah... that explains the cheap food (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you say "tulips"?
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any economists care to explain what's going on here? Is the free market a failure, or is this the way it's supposed to be? Are those extortionate health costs translating into increased prosperity for America in some way?
Its an easy answer, a very easy answer.
Westernized countries with socialized medicine have better across-the-board health than the USA, and spend 8-9% of their GDP on health care. In the USA, we spend 15% of the GDP on healthcare, and fully 1 out of 6 people have no health insurance.
Our health system fails miserably compared to socialized medicine in terms of cost (even when normalized by GDP), and most measures of how healthy you are. The common straw man is that the [Canadian][UK][French] system won't work, but there are a dozen different socialized medicine models out there, and some of them look quite good at all levels compared to the USA.
You'd have a hard time making an argument that health care in the USA is better than Cuba, if you used normal markers of health, like life expectancy, infant mortality, sick days, etc.
Re:This is a trash study (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's begin with you.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes you have no choice, there's only one place to walk and it's on a busy road without a sidewalk. There are lots of times, however, when I see people walking down a dangerous road only inches from traffic, when a perfectly good sidewalk (or quiet access road) is only ten or twenty feet to the right. That sort of thing frustrates me to the point I might consider honking, since if that person had taken a moment to look around their environment, they would have found a perfectly suitable place to walk.
Pedestrians (and bicyclists) need to educate themselves about the environment in which they want to travel. For example, at first glance it may look like I need to ride my bike along a rather busy road to get from my apartment to downtown. But if I take a second to research my route, it turns out there is a wonderful paved bike trail that snakes along the river the entire way, saving me time without risking my life.
Like I said, sometimes you have no choice. But I think everyone (pedestrians and motorists alike) are better off researching their routes ahead of time.
Who competes for the ill? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no such thing as competition for the insurance dollars of the sick and that's why private health care will never be effective. Universal single payer health care is the best option because:
1) It provides a large pool of people paying into the system, thus making sure sick people get covered but that healthy people don't pay too much
2) It makes everybody overall healthier because poor people can get treatment for communicable diseases quickly rather than avoiding a doctor and spreading it to everybody
3) It's a national security benefit, see also, #2 plus the communicable disease being something suitable horrible like weaponized ebola (doesn't exist so far as I know, but theoretically it'd be bad)
4) It reduces the waste that's a fundamental part of private health care. That is, eliminating profits and the need to pay lots of people to try to weasel out of paying your bill. A publically heald insurance company was recently getting grief for paying out 80% of it's intake because it wasn't profitable enough. 80% efficient and it's getting grief for it.
Re:Eat fish. Not other meats (Score:3, Insightful)
Eating cow, pig, and chicken is tasty but the amount of fats, hormones, and various anti-biotics (plus bad feeding practices) tend to make mass farmed animals unhealthy to constantly eat.
If you do want the occasional steak, you should really put up the extra money and buy organic or range raised. You know... The ones that aren't fed other cows and live on open ranges and they can eat grass and not be in unsanitary farm factories.
Heck... They even taste better.
Re:Ah... that explains the cheap food (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, BTW, that cheap food? Government handouts to agri-business. Cheap clothes and electronics? Massive externalising of real-world costs and systematic control of worker populations. TANSTAAFMarket.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've also travelled quite a bit through Europe with tour groups and I have always noticed that while people from other countries embraced the cultural differences and wanted to sample new foods, the Americans generally couldn't wait to go trotting off to the McDonalds or KFC. Some of my richest experiences while travelling were during times when we sampled the local cuisine and got to know a little more about the culture around us. Most Americans really don't care about this much.
Add these proclivities to the fact that we do not generally receive nearly as many paid holidays as the rest of the Western world and it's no surprise that we on this side of the pond 'just don't get out much'. You could also make a strong argument that this phenomenon leads to our tolerence and even support of some disastrous foreign policy in recent years (and I'm not just talking about the current administration).
The article actually SAYS it's not socialism (Score:2, Insightful)
Both said it might explain better health for low-income citizens, but can't account for better health of Britain's more affluent residents.
Marmot cautioned against looking for explanations in the two countries' health-care systems.
"It's not just how we treat people when they get ill, but why they get ill in the first place," Marmot said.
It's the food supply, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not eating what you ate 20 years ago - that's no longer available. And that's why America is getting fatter and sicker faster than any other nation.
you're complete wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government-run health care institutions and programs are the most efficient in the nation, handily beating private health care systems in terms of cost, overhead, and at least equalling it in quality. And I believe if you looked into it, you'd find the same for education. Both health care and education have been broken by the market.
I'm sorry, Adam Smith's invisible hand works almost everywhere, and frequently when it doesn't, it's failure is because of government, not big business
Adam Smith's invisible hand has a long list of preconditions to work, preconditions on the numbers and sizes of competitors, on information available to competitors and buyers, on the kinds of goods being exchanged, etc. Claiming that it "works almost everywhere" is just completely wrong and demonstrates an utter unfamiliarity with economic principles.
For health care and education, several of the preconditions are violated and therefore a free market approach doesn't work; the current failures of the US health care and educational system are a direct consequence of that (however, aspects of both health care and education can be left to the market--it just requires careful planning and design).
The free market works wonderfully when its preconditions are satisfied. It's the purpose of our government to ensure that free markets exist in as many goods and services as possible. It is also the purpose of our government to ensure that the small subset of goods and services the free market cannot supply efficiently are provided in some other way.
People like you, who have an irrational and factually wrong belief in the universal applicability of free market economics are at the source of a lot of our economic ills. It's adding insult to injury that after wrecking our health care and educational systems, you then turn around and blame the government for the mess you made through deregulation and privatization.
Insufficient economic motivation for that (Score:2, Insightful)
In a simple but extreme example, economically it doesn't make sense for me to set aside enough cash to save myself if I get into a bad car accident or my house burns with me in it. I could never afford it and anyway, I don't have to -- emergency care will be provided regardless. Another poster noted that Americans seem to have too much respect for human life to let me die at the emergency room door.
Less obvious but, I suspect, also true: there is insufficient economic motivation to invest in preventive care. Getting a regular checkup and a prescription for $100 might avoid a $1000 emergency room visit, but that $100 pays for a lot of food and clothing and shelter that are clearly needed today, and society isn't willing to let me die at the door of the emergency room anyway, so my motivation to pay the $100 now isn't enough, and I end up costing everyone 10 times more.
Relying on that emergency system is not an efficient way to pay for health care, but as long as that system is in place, just giving workers cash means people _will_ rely on it. There are just a lot more obvious needs for that cash in many people's lives. Preventive care that might avoid the emergency room visit, and insurance to cover that visit if it happens, definitely look like luxuries in a lot of budgets.
Having employers automatically enroll employees in a health care plan takes many workers out of this wildly inefficient emergency care system and puts them into the slightly less inefficient semi-privatized insurance system. Also really not a great system for the reasons you mentioned, among others. Time to consider alternatives like a national single-payer system.
-Scot
Re:Michael Moore's new movie about health care (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ENGLAND IS NOT BRITAIN (Score:2, Insightful)
I won't argue because I don't really know the difference. I do know this: Your point would have been better taken if you explained the difference. You might have thrown 'UK' in on your explanation as well. As it is, many American readers still don't know the difference and will continue to use 'England', 'Britain' and 'UK' interchangeably (mostly UK when writing because it's shorter). You don't think anyone read your post and subsequently bothered to go study up on their English history, do you? Or would they study up on their British history... UK history? See what I mean?
Don't take it personally. Most Americans also don't know the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. Hell, you might be surprised to find out how many don't know the difference between Switzerland and Sweden. At least misunderstandings about the identity of UK/Britain/England don't usually involve confusion with other countries. So... what IS the difference between England/UK/Britain? As far as we can tell from your post, you don't know either, just that England != Britain... and that we're all idiots for not knowing (or caring).
Mike: Hey look! A lion!
Tom: That's not a lion. That's a tiger.
Mike: Oh. I've never seen a lion. What does a lion look like?
Tom: Well,... a lion is not a tiger, you idiot!
Mike: Wow, you're so smart. Hey look! A lion!
Tom: That's not a lion. That's a Puma.
Mike: Oh. I've never seen a lion. What does a lion look like?
Tom: Well,... a lion is not a Puma, you idiot!
Mike: Wow, you're so smart. Hey look! A lion!
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason we don't have a free market anymore is become a small number of corporations have grown to dominate each area of the market. This includes all segments of healthcare. These entities used to compete, now they collaborate in many areas and compete in others. They do this to maximize profits. This occurs in healthcare, artificially inflating prices at every step of the game. Overflated prices are charged for drugs because all of the drug companies have agreed it is in their best interests to inflate prices. Medical supplies and equipment fall in the same category. Healthcare is a vital resource; ALL the major supply companies feel that way and therefore they charge what they can extort (it is either pay them or die after all). Charges for education and medical school are again extraordinarily overflated because the students have a high earning potential. Again all the schools agree this should be the case and therefore don't compete in an area that could affect profits. Doctors and hospitals are then left with the burden of all these inflations and expenses, even a portion of the drug inflation. Do they eat them and let them reduce their 300k+ annual salaries? Of course not, they pass them directly to the consumer, so that no matter what you pay, they still get their 300k+! Doctors are not blameless in all this, like some would make out. A union composed of individuals in the top 10% income bracket because they aren't making enough money is a ridiculous concept. Except in OUR free market. In our free market, doctors uniting and price fixing because competition between them was starting to reduce prices is a pretty typical move. As I mentioned before, it happened with all the other industries, why not the docs too?
The only ones with an interest in reducing these expences are the insurance companies and the consumer. Insurance companies actually reduce the costs for the consumer because even doctors who move to cash schemes have to compete with their deductibles. Of course the insurance companies have their own union, in it they decide that they will univerally not accept pre-existing conditions or pay for experimental drugs and so forth. Insurance companies hardly have the consumers interests in mind either, the competition is merely a side effect of their existance.
Insurance (aside from self insurance), as a rule is a form of gambling. Paying an insurance company for anything is tossing your money away. You might get lucky and win a hand but you are playing the house and the odds are in their favor. That is why you have a point. You also have a point because these insurance companies are catering their terms to appeal to employers instead of to the people who are actually going to be getting the insurance.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can practically feel my blood pressure go up every time I have to drive near rush hour, since every other driver on the road is either an idiot or a maniac*. If I could ride a bicycle or use public transportation, I would consider it, but in Texas, it just ain't possible. I think the stress-relieving nature of the actual physical work also contributes to the lower stress levels - they go hand-in-hand.
*: Idiot (n): Person driving slower than the speaker. Maniac (n): Person driving faster than the speaker.
Re:Lack of exercise and bad food (Score:2, Insightful)
I remain rather unconvinced about salt. Apparently it can be a problem if your blood pressure is genetically sensitive to it, but other than that, unless you eat a veritable mountain, kidneys and sweat glands will take care of it, that's a big part of what they do, maintaining sodium balance. Time and time again medical common sense is proven to be wrong(ulcers, bloodless surgury), where's the research showing me how bad salt is for me?
Something to add to this (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I get myself on Google and discover that Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans. Well, that shocked me.
This is a place where I can't drink the water, and the beef looked pretty scary. It's certainly possible that the more expensive stuff we have available to us (more food, more highly processed food), the worse our health could be. I read once that in Rome the rich people had plumbing with lead pipes (it was a luxury) but it ended up killing them faster from lead poisoning. It's possible something similar is happening to us in industrialized nations right now.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
KFG
Re:Fast food (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming it was the food, I think maybe it wasn't so much that it was specifically McDonalds, it's that it was probably extremely high-fat compared to your normal diet. I know that I, for one, can get some pretty uncomfortable stomach issues if I suddenly knock back a big fast food meal, half a pizza, any very high-fat food, etc. after eating my usual home-cooked, partly organic diet for a while.
I'd never claim that McDonalds is health food, but all the people that live on healthy, low-fat diets that yell "OMG poison!" when they try a super high-fat burger out of the blue and make their stomachs feel like crap just annoy the hell out of me.
Re:It's the food supply, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
People eat crap, because people LIKE crap, and they are too lazy to stop. It isn't the fault of "market forces" that people eat crap, because the market has made it cheaper and easier than ever before to eat healthy.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never understood the (frequently American) mindset that when things are obviously broken it's socially unacceptable to fix it if someone is making money out of the status quo.
It's not just the doctors/CEOs that suddenly change. I recently saw someone I know on a respirator, having her lungs sucked out, for two weeks because "going to see a doctor" was too expensive (she was currently unemployed).
Re:Justify this (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem here is not that a person may die from a disease, but that someone could help, and won't, because it isn't profitable.
So justify it. And do so without emotionally charged arguments, because we all know it is a terrible thing when a loved one gets cancer. That fact has nothing whatsoever to do with forcing me to pay for her care.
You're asking a whole lot here, since we're talking about morality, a subject with no inherent underlying truth. I think it's difficult to justify why all society should pay to catch the person who murdered someone else's mother, without using emotional arguments, but that's standard practice in most countries, even when the murderer likely won't kill anyone else.
Here's a non-emotionally-charged argument, though. You don't know if you're going to get cancer in the future, nor do you know if your children or grandchildren will get cancer. When healthcare providers treat someone else for cancer, or spend research money on treatment, they get practice and knowledge, and are thus in a better position to treat you, or someone you love, in the (uncertain) future.
I understand your position that, if you don't care about your own possible future treatments, or the possible future treatments of those you love, you shouldn't be forced to pay for the current treatments of those you don't love, but I think that path leads to a governmental system close to anarchy (e.g., by analogy, if you don't know someone who was murdered, you shouldn't have pay for their capture, and if you don't use a road, you shouldn't pay for it's upkeep, and if you aren't worried about being attacked by another country, you shouldn't pay for defense, etc.).
Ultimately I feel you need to be making an argument not based on generalities like "I don't want to pay for your mother's cancer treatment!" which frankly makes you sound like an ass, but rather based on the idea that more people would be better off in the long run under the system you propose. I think that's a much harder case for you to make (and a harder case for someone else to take issue with).
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, here's another figure to add to your collection. Nearly 50% of the taxes in the US are paid by the top 10% of the wage earners. The bottom 20% of the wage earners not only don't pay taxes but actualy MAKE money off the tax system. In otherwords, pick the nearest 10 people to you. One of them pays 50% of the taxes you all pay, 2 of them recieve money rather than loose it, and the last 7 divide the other 50% between you.
Re:POSIWID (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but descending into semantics and confusion over causality doesn't really help. If the reason I build a crosswalk at an intersection is to help pedestrians, and yet at least a couple of people are still killed by people running red lights... that does not convert my purpose for building the crosswalk into "a way to kill pedestrians."
The truth is that the vast majority of people who buy health insurance get exactly what they're buying: basic health care at tolerable prices, and the ability to undergo more substantial, rarer treatment (cancer, major car accident, etc) without automatically going bankrupt. Arguably insurance should only be about those more catastrophic situations, but the trend is to also use it more or less like a savings account... take a little out every week, and then only "pay" $10 when you visit the doctor for a checkup, etc. But that is "what they do." That's what they do for almost everyone that uses them. That is their purpose, and the people running those businesses make a living and pay back their investors while doing so. That's how it is on paper, and that's how it is in practice.
Of course, things are much more awkward now because everyone expects health care, as practiced by humans on humans, to be somehow perfect, and they're more than happy to take millions of dollars (with the help of a 30%-earning lawyer) from any practitioner or related institution under whose care things did not go perfectly. And, of course, we've now got million-dollar pieces of equipment that can do things no family doctor could ever have done a few years ago, and everyone just assumes that for a couple hundred a month for their entire family, that the machine that costs $1000/hour to operate should be at their disposal for every twisted ankle or playground bump on the head. Is it any wonder that insurance companies must play the heavy hand and try to reign it in... or, charge a fortune to actually cover the real costs.
Why people think that magically having the government provide all of these services will somehow make it cheaper is beyond me. It will just become another area of deficit spending... something insurance companies couldn't survive themselves.
Preventative care for diabetics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Justify this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Justify this (Score:2, Insightful)
United we stand, divided we fall.
It was simply taught, the teacher asked us to break some sticks individually then she tied another bundle together and asked us to take a shot.
UK has everything the US has, and more (Score:3, Insightful)
I know a few people whose entire choice of career has been dictated by the fact that they live in the US, and have a health condition which means that they must work for a large company or they simply can't get health coverage. I can only begin to explain how medieval that seems to the rest of the Western world.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Greed makes people compromise on their morals. It's an instinctual thing. The worst person to make dictator is usually the one who WANTS to be dictator.
At the same time, I doubt that greed is directly responsible via poor hospitals and doctors for the results of this study. More likely it's poor lifestyle coupled with lack of skills and inability to pay for both better lifestyle and health care.
How many US schools have mandatory home ec programs these days? How many US parents have the time to either cook for their families or teach their kids to cook?
The cold, hard, selfish argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright. You really want the cold, hard, rational argument for altruism. Fortunately, you've handed us one of the best cases for such an argument.
The costs for treating and curing cancer are enormous. Chemo costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend your life for a few years. Chances are really good that you can't afford those drugs as a sudden expense if you found out you had cancer today. This is true for many medical conditions. I had to have my gallbladder removed, and the total bill was $15,000 to my insurance company. An expense like that (due within a few months of it being incurred) would have killed me financially at the time.
So, it is in your best interest to pay a small fee every month to cover the costs of everyone else who is sick with the agreement that if you get sick, everyone else will cover your costs. This is the selfishly rational argument for altruism at its finest. You act as part of a group to help individuals face burdens that they cannot bear alone because they will be there for you should you face a burden that you cannot bear alone. It's why you help friends move; it's why you do weight lifting with a spotter; and it's why you pay for insurance right now.
That's right -- that's what insurance is at its core. You pay a monthy premium that amortizes the predicted average health costs you are likely to incur in your life which goes straight into paying for the care of others. Chances are that right now you aren't sick, but you're paying for the welfare of others. You do this because when your time comes around, others will pay for your well-being.
The average person will end up paying more into insurance than they will get back even with non-profit insurance. Many of us will die in a manner that is swift and incurable; we will not recoup the loss of money that went to pay for people put on life-support and expensive drugs. However, it's to our benefit to take the risk and put the money into the fund because there's always the chance that it will be we who are saved by a procedure we can't afford.
That's it: The rational argument for paying for others is at core that they will pay for you in a time when you cannot cover it yourself.
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Answer is easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Jedidiah.