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Kasz216 on 11 March 2010
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TheRealMafoo said:
highwaystar101 said:

Your reform suggestions will help sort out many problems to quite some extent though, as you said.

But I'm afraid that I see healthcare as inherently problematic in the USA. It is behind many first world systems and to compete it needs to adapt.

Kasz has done a good job replying to most of your article, so I will just reply to this last line.

Healthcare cost will be behind other first world countries even if we make it the model of efficiencies for one simple reason. We are the most unhealthy country in the world.

Until we find a way for that not to be true, it's just the way it's going to be. This is the reason why we need to allow insurance companies to reward healthy behavior. It's the best way to improve the health of our people.

Well, most unhealthy first world country in the world.

It would take more then healthcare companies rewarding healthy behavior for that to change that though.

The culture of the US is just unhealthy in general.

There are few higher stress countries then the US, in addition we have very low family connections throughout generations (seems to show a correlation with healthcare when you have multiple generations living under the same house,),  general beat yourself to death an exhaustian work ethic that's greater in a lot of places... etc.

In general a lot of the positive things seen about the US are it's greatest health downfalls.

We're a society of hard working, high stress people who smoke and drink away the stress and eat fastfood, ramen and other premade meals because we're always pulling extra shifts... even when we're in a good place financially because we always want to do more, do better and have more and genarlly low on sleep.


The US works itself to death in a lot of ways even among those who try and do things the "right way".  Few people really seem to take the time to enjoy life.  Even people who take care of themselves the right way seem to exhibit a crazy nervous energy.

If you'll notice, those people who lived forever doing the wrong things often had a "i don't give a crap" attitude.   They worked hard, but also... didn't really give a crap about a lot of stuff... if that's understandable.