World's richest woman says poor should have less fun, work harder. Calls for lower minimum wage and tax cuts

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Kasz216 said:

binary solo said:

pezus said:

HappySqurriel said:

pezus said:

mrstickball said:

pezus said:
^I don't know about you, but I'd like to go to a dentist for free

Its not free.

You always pay for it, one way or the other. The question is if the system that you are in is efficient or not.

Meh, I prefer hidden costs that are distributed evenly rather than paying an outrageous amount each time I go for a checkup.

So do all the people who abuse the system ...

When you involve a third party payer into the system doctors and patients have no incentive to control the costs of health care (including dental care) and the number of unnecessary tests and procedures dramatically increases. As a result, rather than paying $300/year for the dental care you use, you pay $3000 for unnecessary dental care used by other people.

Explain the bold. If the doctors can control how much money they make directly, I am sure they will try to do as many unnecessary tests as they want.

That cannot be explained because:

The USA spends more per capita* on healthcare than any other "western" country in the world that has a public health system, and

far more as a % of GDP* than any other "western" country in the world that has a public health system, and

has a higher infant / young child mortality rate* than any other "western" country in the world that has a public health system, and

has a higher adult mortality rate (under 55 years)* than any other "western" country in the world that has a public health system, and

has a lower life expectancy* than any other "western" country in the world that has a public health system.

*based on 2009 data (i.e. pre-Obama's non-socialised "socialised" health care act)

So US non-single payer health care system has worse bang for buck than all countries with mixed single payer public health + private insurance systems.

Uh.   The US had a third party payer system before Obama put in Obama care.

And unlike other countries.  It didn't ration healthcare like other countries do.

 

Also, don't use life expectancy, it's such a gigantic sham figure to try and use for it has tons of other factors.  See what happens to US Life expectancy when you remove car accidents and violent crime.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/11/23/the-myth-of-americans-poor-life-expectancy/

This isn't a perfect graph or number either since it doesn't account for the severity of the accident, so it's possible the US could be not saving some people it could have who face violent injurites...(Also it's adjusted mathmatically based on these numbers rather then a full reading hence why some countries life expectancy go down.)  but I hope you'll realize it's informative value here.

Afteralll if you are worried about is an illness or disease?   Looks like there isn't a better country in the world... no?

That's 13 year old data. And it seems to have some oddities, how come Aussie LE goes down? Does that mean it's ll the oldies having car accidents and criminal violence? I can see LE going up for many countries when being controlled for fatal injuries but how does Japan drop by over 2 years? "standardised" means there's been a bit of statistical data manipulation and you'd have to understand the manner and reason for manipulation to know whether those manipulations have created artifacts. I'm no statistician so I can drill down into the maths to know what's going on there. But seeing Japan drop by 2 years when taking our fatal injuries looks counter intuitive. It's also a progression since 1980, so there's no indication of whether countries have started lower than the USA then overtaken, but averaged out to the same / less. The data I'm referring to is the LE in 2009

But note I also mention infant / young child mortality and adult mortality (under 55) also being higher in the US compared to other countries. Adult mortality for each country is also split male/female (male always higher mortality) so this controls for the generally more violent and more accident prone men. The adult female mortality is higher in the USA.

So across all 4 measures of mortality: LE, IM, AM (FM / MM) the USA comes out worse than all the countries with some level of UHC. If nothing else it means the huge expense that's happening in the USA on healthcare doesn't seem to be leading to the US keeping pace with comparable countries.