Barack Obama in Iowa City talks about Amy and Health Care
Obama addresses the nightmare of America's health system and promises to do something about it. This is long overdue. Americans pay more than any other nation and yet rank around the seventeen mark when compared with other industialised nations in terms of life expectancy.
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Obama addresses the nightmare of America's health system
Given your health system, commenting on ours being a "nightmare" is amusing. May I ask what negative experience you've had with our healthcare system that causes you to label it a "nightmare"?
The answer is in the post:
"Americans pay more than any other nation and yet rank around the seventeen mark when compared with other industialised nations in terms of life expectancy."
There has to a better way than that.
So then you've paid too much for healthcare in the US and therefore find it a "nightmare"?
Americans pay more than any other nation and yet rank around the seventeen mark when compared with other industialised nations in terms of life expectancy.
This is what's called a logical fallacy. You are asserting that there is a connection between level of healthcare and life expectancy. There are far too many variables regarding life expectancy (diet, stress, working conditions, to name but a few) and level of healthcare is but one of them.
As you seem to have no personal knowledge regarding our health system, I would have to believe that you are not in a position to pass labels such as "nightmare". Having firsthand knowledge of socialized medicine (from the UK and military), and having firsthand knowledge of our system, I will personally take the US system over yours any day of the week.
Quite frankly, it is my belief that overall we probably have the best doctors, hospitals, and medical research and education facilities in the world.
Americans pay more than any other nation and yet rank around the seventeen mark when compared with other industialised nations in terms of life expectancy.
This is what's called a logical fallacy. You are asserting that there is a connection between level of healthcare and life expectancy. There are far too many variables regarding life expectancy (diet, stress, working conditions, to name but a few) and level of healthcare is but one of them.
No, that's what's called a statistic as other country's have all those other factors - diet, stress, working conditions - and yet their populations live longer on average than Americans.
Health care is only part of this, but it's one of the main parts.
Can you think of a better way to measure a health system?
No, that's what's called a statistic as other country's have all those other factors - diet, stress, working conditions - and yet their populations live longer on average than Americans.
That by the way is not a statistic, it's called a logical fallacy based on a faulty comparison and an improper conclusion. The "ranked 17th" bit is of course a statistic and I'm willing to accept that as valid for the sake of argument, but the rest of your statement doesn't pass any kind of logical test.
So let me get this straight, you do not believe that things such as stress and diet are variables that differ among different societies and cultures? I mean we can both agree on the obvious fact that indeed everyone does have a diet and some level of stress, but I thought it is fairly obvious that these factors among countless others are extremely variable based on society and culture.
Why can't you draw a correlation between how much we pay for medical care, the level of care, and life expectancy? I'm glad you asked. Take infant mortality as an example. One might think that infant mortality rate would be a great indicator of the level of healthcare in a nation. In fact, infant mortality rate is an often pointed to societal and cultural health indicator. Unfortunately that's not the case, and the reason it doesn't work demonstrates why your analogy is flawed.
For example, Cuba has a statistically lower infant mortality rate than the US.
The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category -- the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old.
Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality -- the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation.
How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive -- and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent -- that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.
In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.
This should clearly demonstrate how life expectancy statistics are not a definitive indicator of level of healthcare.
I notice that you fail to come up with a better way to measure the effectiveness of your health system.
How would you like to measure it's cost effectiveness against other country's systems?
As I noticed that you fail to address my statement that you have no basis in fact or experience with which to label our healthcare system a nightmare, and that your statement used to support that was not something that holds up under scrutiny.
The answer to your question though is that while it is convenient to pick and choose statistics and try to use them to make whatever point it is we're trying to make, simple statistics will not work in a case like this because of the number of variables, as I've already shown regarding infant mortality rates.
For one, the "healthcare system" is made up of various components. EMS is a compelling part of the healthcare system to use as a comparison since it is partially socialized in the US (local governments often run EMS and may or may not bill for service), however even then the best you could come up with is one EMS system being more effective than another EMS system, and still not answering the question for the entire healthcare system.
So the point is, other than picking and choosing certain statistics which seem to support you at a given time, you're not going to be able to quantify this with statistics.
As I noticed that you fail to address my statement that you have no basis in fact or experience with which to label our healthcare system a nightmare
Any health system that is not available to all of it's citizens free at the point of entry is, from my European perspective, "a nightmare".
The answer to your question though is that while it is convenient to pick and choose statistics and try to use them to make whatever point it is we're trying to make, simple statistics will not work in a case like this because of the number of variables, as I've already shown regarding infant mortality rates.
In other words, like a true Bushite, you won't concede to any system of measurement.
The reason you say that statistics won't work in this case is because every set of statistics undermines your argument. So like a true Bushite, you wish to dispense with statistics, or facts, and make everything simply a matter of opinion. It's no wonder that Gore describes what Bush supporters like yourself do as an assault on reason.
Thankfully there have been studies conducted on this, one of which was released by the Commonwealth Fund in New York.
It found that:
Although U.S. political leaders are fond of stating that we have the best health-care system in the world, they fail to add an important caveat: It is the best for those who can afford it. For the rest of the population, disadvantages far outweigh the merits.
This new study not only confirms the findings of previous Commonwealth Fund studies but also that of a World Health Organization analysis in 2000: that the overall performance of the U.S. health-care system ranks 37th among all countries included in the analysis.
Presidential candidates will be asked to justify the costs (15 percent of GDP and estimated to reach 19.6 percent by 2016) of such a disadvantageous system that also fails to insure a sizable portion of the population. The most notable way in which the United States differs from other developed countries is in the absence of universal coverage. But it is also last in terms of access, patient safety, efficiency and equity.
The other five countries considered spend considerably less on health care — per capita and as a percentage of GDP. The U.S. spends more than $ 6,000 per person annually on health care, almost double that of Australia, Canada and Germany, all of which achieve better results on health status indicators. This suggests that the U.S. health-care system can and must do much more with its substantial investment in health.
And, according to this study, I was being over generous when I said I thought you ranked about seventeenth in terms of life expectancy:
Americans' average life expectancy of 78 ranks 45th in the world — behind Greece, Bosnia and Jordan.
Indeed, the most scandalous thing about your health system is how many of your population fall outside it.
The U.S. lags behind all industrialized nations in health insurance coverage. The most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that 46.6 million Americans (about 15.9 percent of the population) had no health insurance coverage during 2005, an increase of 1.3 million over the previous year. It is no wonder that medical bills, overwhelmingly, are the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the U.S.
I suppose the fact that the most common reason for bankruptcy in your country is unpaid medical bills explains why no other country on Earth ever attempts to emulate your medical system with former Soviet states who broke away always emulating the European systems.
I can well understand why you will feign that there is no way to adequately compare the respective systems of the US and the rest of the world, but this is not because statistics can be manipulated or whatever other half arsed reason you dredge up, it is because your system is vastly over expensive and ignores large swathes of your population.
So you see, there are comparative studies on this subject, you simply don't like what they've found.
And I stand by what I said before. Your system is a nightmare.
Did you even watch the video before posting your comment? Do you think it's right that a cancer sufferer's family should pay 40% of their income to health insurance?
In Europe such a system would not be tolerated. Members of the richest country on Earth should have the right to free medical treatment paid for by all through taxation.
If we can achieve that in Europe, at a lower cost than you spend per head of capita in the US, then there is no reason why the US can't adopt such a system. It's only the greed of the rich - moaning yet again about paying some of the lowest income tax in the world - that prevents America from acknowledging that the health of it's citizens is a political issue that should be taken up by the state.
And as you currently rank 37th among all countries included in the analysis, I can well understand why you - as a supporter of this inequitable system - would seek to render statistics useless.
That's simply because all comparative studies destroy your argument.
So then you feel that what's important in a healthcare system is that it's cheap.
So we pay a higher percentage of the GDP on healthcare. What do we buy with our higher percentage of GDP? How about a better survival rate for things like cancer? How's the UK doing with cancer? Yeah, let's not bring actual health statistics into the conversation.
Given the choice between high quality and expensive, or cheap and low quality, I'm happy to pay the extra cash.
So then you feel that what's important in a healthcare system is that it's cheap.
It's simply laughable that you reduce the whole argument above to that pathetic point.
I never argued that cost should come into medicine, the only point I made regarding cost is that your system is over expensive and doesn't even cover all of your citizens.
Given the choice between high quality and expensive, or cheap and low quality, I'm happy to pay the extra cash.
But your system isn't "high quality and expensive". That's the point. You come in 37th. That's not high quality.
How about a better survival rate for things like cancer? How's the UK doing with cancer? Yeah, let's not bring actual health statistics into the conversation.
You're a riot Jason. You ignore screeds of statistics when it doesn't give the answer that you wish - saying that when it comes to health statistics aren't useful - and yet have the nerve to hold up one set of figures that you've found to support your argument?
Get outta here!
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