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Kasz216 on 30 April 2011
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Gnizmo said:
Icyedge said:
 

 

Are we talking about Amazon gift card or credit card? If credit card, are you sure they arent asking for identification number of verifiable source like drivers license or health insurance*? It just dont seem realist to me that you can get a credit card by giving your name, adress and date of birth. But if your sure of that, fine, im glad that its at least verified here in Canada. I had people refused because of false identity. I also had the agency faxing back a demand because the identification number wasnt good and when you would check back with the customer youd notice that you had in fact, written a wrong number on the demand.


Credit card. Driver's license shouldn't be required as not everyone has it. The best you have for a universal identifier for USA citizens is the SSN. The amount of accidental SSN fraud in the USA is actually quite staggering, so intentional would be a breeze really. Fear of being identified solely as a number (due to left over WW2 concerns) when the system was implemented intentionally crippled yhe ability to use it as an identifier.

* Health insurance as a means of identification? You Canadians are so cute. People in the USA are super tough and never get sick, apparently. Consequently our health care system sucks ass, and there is no way to use it to verify anything.

You'd be surprised actually about the US Healthcare system.  In actual medical treatment it does quite well for itself vs other countries.  The only reason it's ranked so bad in international studies is because they tend to use indirect variables rather then direct ones.

For example, Life Expectancy... which CAN be indictive of healthcare, but isn't really because it doesn't adjust for things like violent crime, propensity of illness, lifestyle choices of the general public etc... and even then the US life Expectance = UK's.

Then a bunch of unrelated factors that tend to cause confirmation bias.  For example, how socialized your healthcare system is, is usually one of the factors. 

The only actual healthcare statistic that's usual provided is infant mortality rate.  However, it's unstandardized.  The US infant mortality rate standardized is right in line with Europeon numbers, however in reports it's usually reported as much higher... because in the US Infant Mortality Rate = Any Infant that has born and died.  It is a measure of exactly what it says.  Infant Mortality.  While in most other developed countries "Infant Mortality = Number of infants who have died after meeting certain weight or length requirements."

It's more of a "How many babies that should live... die." type of measure.

Really the big issue with the majority US healthcare is considered to be over treatment.  US patients actually see doctors more often, have tests persrcibed more often etc... cancer is caught much sooner, operations are done faster, there is less of a wait and see approach on things like cancer.

I mean, consider the UK and the US.   Similar life expectencies... the same on the last report I saw in fact.  Yet the US has more cases of chronic diseases like high cholesteral and diabetes, lower stress, less crime, though granted higher smoking.  How does that make any sense?

Then you have the VERY underrated cultural factors.  Which I refer to the book Outliers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/outliers.htm

Also one issue is, I think the US likely has more talented doctors even if you do take the system as deficient.  Afterall, you can make a much better life as a doctor for yourself here.   Also, despire recent failings in public schools, the US is still considered to have the best universities system.