On the bright side, all these extra deaths of the poor and uninsured in the US means job openings for illegal aliens.
France best, U.S. worst in preventable death ranking
France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.
If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.
[…]
“I wouldn’t say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don’t, I think that’s the main problem, isn’t it?” Nolte said in a telephone interview.
Awake,
We don’t have THE most unhealthy population in the world, only the most unhealthy among developed democratic nations. Much of Africa is dealing with much worse I’m just trying to keep things in perspective. Otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly.
If you or I acted the way corporations do, we’d be hunted down and caged like dogs. For profit health care is like having your life ( And the lives of your loved ones!) in the hands of a sociopath.
What kind of a fucking IDIOT wants that? I don’t want “Health Management”, I want a goddamn DOCTOR!
As I’ve stated previously, the current medical care situation in this country is more morally repugnant than cannibalism.
#42 – GetSmart,
(aside)
Cannibalism is morally repugnant? I thought Soylent Green made it look like a perfectly good way to maintain the mass of humans at a constant level. We are just meat sacks after all. There’s nothing sacrosanct about human flesh.
Of course, having it drilled into my head from birth, I can’t eat human, but isn’t that just cultural?
(/aside)
Infant mortality operates on the same lines. Some countries’ cultures have a specific diet for pregnant women. Here we have crack babies.
There is the extra detail, depending on how you count infant mortality, that the high-tech US system may be saving more babies that in other countries wouldn’t survive to delivery. So now the US has extra baby deaths after or during delivery.
#35 – So who is entitled to health care?
Every human being.
The claim that we are simply unhealthy is bullshit. That way to simplistic.
Why are we unhealthy?
Does it have anything to with the fact that there is more profit in killing us than keeping us alive?
We in America think that we are getting healthy food just because the package says so. And nothing can be further from the truth. We allow the business-first people-second aholes at the FDA to tell us shit like that Fritos are healthy for you now because they are not fried in Margarine:
The final claim approved by the FDA states that “replacing saturated fat with similar amounts of unsaturated fats may reduce the risk of heart disease. To achieve this benefit, total daily calories should not increase.”
Source: http://tinyurl.com/2d3uxj
You read it right, straight from the FDA: replacing fat with fat may reduce the risk of heart disease. Never mind that you are eating 5500 calories a day.. they are not as bad!
It’s still friggin fat!
I have another claim: Replacing cyanide with sugar pills may replace the risk of poisoning.
#41 Ms Scott –
Saying that our health is not the worse is like saying that our education is not the worse… if we are proud that the average kid in the USA can beat the math scores of the average kid in Angola… our standards are pretty low for education. YES we do not have the worst average health of the whole world, but if our standard is countries where people can be expected to have good health, we are by far on the bottom.
My health care insurance will soon be more than my retirement. I will go negative next year probably.
If I’m lucky I’ll die.
>56% of the medicines…
Well do you want more health care or less?
Generally medicines are a cheaper alternative and good prevention too. It is suspicious that no one else uses so many though.
#48 – We in America think that we are getting healthy food just because the package says so. And nothing can be further from the truth.
Amen.
#48 – Awake,
#41 Ms Scott –
Saying that our health is not the worse is like saying that our education is not the worse… if we are proud that the average kid in the USA can beat the math scores of the average kid in Angola… our standards are pretty low for education. YES we do not have the worst average health of the whole world, but if our standard is countries where people can be expected to have good health, we are by far on the bottom.
Agreed. I was just A) playing devil’s advocate and B) being a seriously literal-minded geek.
#50 – MikeN,
Well do you want more health care or less?
I want better, not more. I want effective medical care, not a population of chemistry experiments.
Excellent conversation all around.
So, what do we do? How do we keep the monied interests from continuing to cause all of this misery?
Awake,
I hope the situation with your mother works out.
My advice would be to drop the tax credits for business providing health insurance. This is distorting the market, with all the focus on lowest price for businesses, and personal insurance plans are secondary. Expand health savings accounts.
Now we have people spending more of their own money for health care, and insurance becomes exactly that, INSURANCE, not an HMO.
With this, I would expect the costs to drop.
I think you guys have a point about subsidies for sugar changing the food supply. Get rid of those subsidies.
Also, expand outsourcing to bring medical costs down. This probably only helps with radiology, but who knows?
More visas for doctors.
#57==”With this, I would expect the costs to drop.” /// You know its illegal to smoke that, or are you just brain damaged?
Even if we suppose you mean the rate of increase will slow, you still miss the issues COMPLETELY.
There is no “market” for healthcare. There is no willing buyer. The seller has a government enforced monopoly. And on and on.
As long as healthcare is seen as a market instead of a basic service, the problems will remain much worse than they should be. Many analogies can be seen in those South American countries that have privatized WATER supplies. Yea==free market buffoons by corrupt financial self interest or libertarian/social darwinist mental defects.
#59–So you have good insurance and it doesn’t work, so this is your best argument that the main alternative is BS?
Can you connect your position with your reasons for us?
Get the “for profit” motive out of GOUSA health system, and you might get rational care?