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Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

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Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#101

Post by anigbrowl »

carbocation wrote: post #20
anigbrowl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, spurious comparisons and anonymous blog posts - is there nothing you can't obscure? The US spends considerable amount of money aggressively attempting to treat what would otherwise be considered stillborns. I regret to inform you that this particular meme is without foundation. I have had extensive discussions with UK and Euro obstetricians about it and the story that there is some massively divergent standard of…

Listening to just the Euro OBs seems no better or worse to me than just listening to the US OBs. I was initially going to suggest that you also speak with US OBs, but then realized that it's not really possible to just decide to do it one morning without purchasing expensive tickets, etc. But I do hope that you'll agree that the pitfalls of one-sidedness apply to both sides. Regarding standardization, it does not see…

I was initially going to suggest that you also speak with US OBs, but then realized that it's not really possible to just decide to do it one morning without purchasing expensive tickets, etc.

I live in the US. I meant to point out that I had talked with euro and UK OBs in addition what I know from living here. More in my other comment.

Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

cwan wrote: post #13
anigbrowl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, spurious comparisons and anonymous blog posts - is there nothing you can't obscure? The US spends considerable amount of money aggressively attempting to treat what would otherwise be considered stillborns. I regret to inform you that this particular meme is without foundation. I have had extensive discussions with UK and Euro obstetricians about it and the story that there is some massively divergent standard of…

Not sure what you're calling spurious or anonymous by way of blog posts but do you have any references with respect to UN definitions? According to Wikipedia - depending on how reliable you consider them to be ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality ): "The exclusion of any high-risk infants from the denominator or numerator in reported IMRs can be problematic for comparisons. Many countries, including the Un…

Not sure what you're calling spurious or anonymous by way of blog posts

Your first paragraph, which compares apples with oranges (ie 'don't look at that graph, look at this completely different one instead) and your third paragraph, from someone identified as 'Sachi X'.

As for the reporting requirements, if you go look at the actual CDC report (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.htm) you'll see that not only do these (minor) differences have much impact on the overall life expectancy statistics - even when corrected for, the US still lags - but the main reason for the skew is the much higher rate of preterm birth in the US - children are much more likely to be born prematurely in the US, with all the medical complications that usually entails.

In short, the CDC report you refer to still concludes you are medically better off being conceived and born in Europe than the US, and does not support your contention that the inferior standing of the US in tables of life expectancy or infant mortality is the result of statistical abuses by scurrilous foreigners.

As for your additional data point on life expectancy, this is interesting and indeed I agree that some of the US mortality differences have more to do with lifestyle than healthcare; however, 'using death avoidance as the sole criterion' conveniently ignores what this thread is about, namely the abysmal cost-benefit ratio of American healthcare.

Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#103

Post by nostrademons »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #89
potatolicious wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing, I'm a Canadian who's living in the USA. Canada has much lower health care costs - but our dietary patterns are much the same. In fact, I really have not changed my feeding habits at all since coming to the USA. Yes, unhealthy dietary choices weighs the system down - but it weighs all systems down, and to say it accounts for the majority of the discrepancy is IMHO missing the gorilla in the room, whi…

Canadian diet patterns are significantly different from those in the US. As of 2004, Canada had an obesity rate of 23.1%. The corresponding rate in the US (circa 2005) was 34%. The big difference here is probably racial. Table 3 of my first link suggests white Canadians are only a little thinner than white Americans. But blacks, particularly black women, are considerably fatter than average. They make up about 12% of…

That wouldn't account for it. Even if every single black person was obese and every single white person was not, a 2%->12% discrepancy in black population could only account for a 10% swing in obesity rates. The rates you cite differ by more than that.

I think that potatolicious's addendum hit the nail on the head though: Americans eat too much food. When I cook for myself or eat at Google, my portion size is about 2/3 the typical restaurant portion. Doggy-bags have always been normal when my family ate out - it's not unusual for a restaurant meal to generate at least another couple lunches and sometimes another dinner. We're not fat. I suspect that a lot of Americans don't realize that restaurant portions are sized to accommodate the biggest conceivable person eating there (serving too little food is far worse than serving too much), and that the typical person shouldn't be eating anywhere near that much.

Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#104

Post by revorad »

kadavy wrote: post #48

This is a great infographic with a high data-to-ink density.

False. The data in this "infographic" is really best represented as a scatter plot, using much less ink, as shown in [1] and similar other blog posts. The lines are unnecessary and misleading.

It's good that Tufte has made concepts like data-to-ink density popular. But I urge you to actually evaluate that value when you look at a graph and refrain from using it to merely signal your knowledge of the right buzzwords.

[1]http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009...

Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#105

Post by yummyfajitas »

nostrademons wrote: post #103
yummyfajitas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian diet patterns are significantly different from those in the US. As of 2004, Canada had an obesity rate of 23.1%. The corresponding rate in the US (circa 2005) was 34%. The big difference here is probably racial. Table 3 of my first link suggests white Canadians are only a little thinner than white Americans. But blacks, particularly black women, are considerably fatter than average. They make up about 12% of…

That wouldn't account for it. Even if every single black person was obese and every single white person was not, a 2%->12% discrepancy in black population could only account for a 10% swing in obesity rates. The rates you cite differ by more than that. I think that potatolicious's addendum hit the nail on the head though: Americans eat too much food . When I cook for myself or eat at Google, my portion size is about…

True, blacks alone would not account for the disparity. As I mentioned, white Canadians are less obese as well.

But the disparity is much larger for blacks. I mentioned blacks mainly because I could quickly find statistics for them.

Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#106

Post by sailormoon »

Alex3917 wrote: post #97
sailormoon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is an imitator makes it easier to diagnose, because a competent doctor will test you for it whenever you have unexplained symptoms. That is a very unfair thing to say, IMO. You cannot just do unlimited blood tests for everyone who might possibly be at risk of $something. Lyme disease is notoriously hard to diagnose and also very rare. It is unfortunate that the case you referred to turned out the way…

"Lyme disease is notoriously hard to diagnose and also very rare." It's probably one of the most common, if not the most common, systemic diseases. Any time you have multiple symptoms that can't be explained, lyme is pretty much the first thing a competent doctor would test for. Sorry, but any doctor who heard the list of shooter's symtoms and doesn't instantly think lyme is incompetent. And it's really not that rare…

I can think of five friends who have gotten it, and those are only the ones I know of.

According to Wikipedia, "the ratio of Lyme disease infection is 7.9 cases for every 100,000 persons". So either you have a staggering number of friends, live in some kind of hot zone ground zero for the disease, or there's some other factor at work.

any doctor who heard the list of shooter's symtoms and doesn't instantly think lyme is incompetent

You talk like Lyme is a solved problem. I do not believe this to be the case. There is a lot of controversy over the condition and it is one of those diseases that people seize upon to explain symptoms they believe themselves to suffer, regardless of medical fact.

Have a read of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/magazine/17LYMEDISEASE.htm...

Re: Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy

#107

Post by shughes »

shughes wrote: post #76
shughes wrote: post #63

I think we should show a chart of each country's health care costs relative to how much their lawyers make on health care related malpractice cases. Because in America, it's out of control, and probably the largest reason health care costs so much. Honestly, a good first step in taming the health care and health insurance costs should be to cap how much lawyers make on malpractice cases. Why do people rarely talk abo…

Really, why was I down voted? I'm not sure what was wrong with the comment. I think anyone would agree with the idea of tort reform, just like anyone would agree with the idea of health care reform. But even if you don't, I thought that with Hacker news, you only down vote people when they aren't insightful or off-topic. So, a differing opinion also accounts for down voting now? Like on Digg?

Sigh..
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