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highwaystar101 on 11 March 2010
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Kasz216 said:
highwaystar101 said:
Viper1 said:
Well, that's the problem, Highwaystar. We would be replacing a problematic system with an even more problematic system.

Peruse this thread for our reasons why.

Namely if you consider how bad Medicaid and MediCare are, why suspect an even bigger medical program would be any better?

Don't worry, I've read the thread. The problem with Medicaid and Medicare is that they are fragmented and inefficient, to be honest for the good it does you might as well either scrap them and find alternative ways of providing healthcare to people who have no access or make a Universal system where a more dynamic approach is taken from the start to produce a better system... From what I can tell the current Universal system proposal isn't exactly as good as it could be.

Uh, highwaystar... did you actually read that paper?

There are a number of issues involved with it.

to start.

 

1) It doesn't take into account disease occurence.    It only accounts disease occurce versus total death.  For example... the Japanese have almost no IHD deaths?  Is this because the Japanese have REALLY great heart attack treatment?  No, it's because for some reason The Japanese NEVER get heart attacks.  Italians widely see their healthcare are broken... why is their healthcare so good?  Culture partially and they eat less fatty food.

 

2) Weird choices for diseases.    Ischaemia heart disease?  Why only that heart disease?  Could it be because many of the europeon nations actually have a higher prevelance of overall heart disease deaths?  

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_dis_dea-health-heart-disease-deaths

Is that also why that number was arbitrarily cut in half?   Also, because it's effected by diabetes?  A huge problem in the US? 

Treatable cancerse?  Explain treatable?  Is this yet another distinction made simply because the US actually has better mortality rates for cancer?

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/HCP/Details/health/mortality-cancer.aspx

They never explain why they  actually pick the diseases they do, and why they make the arbitrary decisions they do in measuring it.


How does this data jive with  the above in general?  Does this mean the US is just a lot better at somehow keeping old people alive?  Or is it general cherry picking of data being used?

Either one of those has to be the case, and either one is damning it my opinion.  It either means that healthcare like the UK is funneling money away from old people to young people... or well, the data was cherrypicked.

 

1. They were fairly transparent on this topic, as you said diets and other factors could give potentially skewed results. I'll put my hands up and say that's something which could give poor results.

2. Ischaemic heart disease is the most common cause of death in western countries, it would only make sense to count it. I see your point, the paper did state that figures ranging from 25% to 70% would be equally justifiable, although previous evidence suggested 50% was the most sound figure to go with, so the point was an educated guess. I wouldn't describe it as arbitrary exactly, but I see your point.

I disagree that they never explain why they pick the diseases they do, that is explained. The list of conditions came from a review of earlier work, which they explain. I don't think you can really accuse them cherry picking the diseases.