And US has universal health insurance, while China doesn't
US does not have universal health insurance.
Isn't medicare de-facto universal?
China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
61–70 of 213 posts
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
in the united states, the means of control are hidden rather than apparent.
Case in point, the no-fly list in the US. No one publically knows if they're on it, there is similarly no means to appeal being on it. At least one would know if they held a poor Chinese social credit rating - though I don't know what resolution mechanism they might have for mistakes either.
How many innocent people are in those lists? Even if it were 100,000, that’s statistically meaningless.
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#63yes, China surpass US in a new sphere. When would those comparisons stop ??
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#64The US lifespan is decreasing due to opioid overdoses. Similar to Russia in the 90's with alcohol.
A quick google search would show this is untrue. Opioid overdoses kill 40,000 a year. 2.7 million Americans die per year. Even if you were talking about a decrease in healthy lifespan, Opioids do not generally cause a person to transition from healthy to unhealthy (they are prescribed to treat a preexisting condition). Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
That's not necessarily a disproof - if opioids are killing people who are disproportionately young, then they could have an outsize effect on life expectancy. Say life expectancy is 79 years. If a new cause of death occurs that affects 10% of the population and kills, on average, at age 78, then life expectancy goes down to 78.9. If a new cause of death occurs that affects 10% of the population and kills at age 29, then life expectancy goes down to 74. Same reason that infant mortality had a disproportionate affect on life expectancy: the numbers of deaths might be small, but the reduction in lifespan is large.
Personally I would bet on obesity being a bigger contributor to declining lifespans than opioids, but I'm just showing that raw numbers of deaths cannot automatically disprove the hypothesis that a decline in lifespan is due to opioids.
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#65Healthy and subject to a "social credits" system. I'd rather be morbidly obese than have the government force me to play a social status game.
Pretty much every single being on this planet is playing social status game, all China did is put a number on it.
????
So it's fine that one of the government's responsibilities is to track each citizens social score, instead of it being implicit in the judgement's of a person's peer-group?
Yes we all play some kind of "status" or "reputation" game, but the difference is that we can determine ourselves what is socially right by finding the right audience. In China's case, your only choice of audience is the government. You are forced to play instead of being a willing participant in your relevant social stratum.
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this functionally different than e.g. a criminal or financial record? If you can escape these, you can escape other government records.
To add to those examples: standardized test scores (like those for college admissions), education records (including collegiate degrees), health records, residency records, credit scores, driving records are all permanent records that are maintained by organizations that are either governmental or no better than a govt org. I'm not a fan of China's system either, but it's silly to act like it's something new. Nearly…
My SAT score doesn’t dictate if I can board an airplane. My credit score doesn’t affect me getting a passport. Comparing China’s social credit system to US records is completely off base.
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#67Healthy and subject to a "social credits" system. I'd rather be morbidly obese than have the government force me to play a social status game.
You realise China's current political system is merely a stage of its economic development, I hope?
That doesn't seem nearly obvious enough to take that tone without at least a little explanation.
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
But in the Chinese system, your number goes down if someone you're friends with on social media makes a post that the Chinese government deems politically unsavory
This is true in the west as well. Especially now in 2018, if someone you're even tangentially connected to does something deemed to be unsavory you are expected to immediately and forcefully disavow them or face the social consequences. Even then, you still may be tainted by association.
Uh, no? People who know you or the person associated may judge you negatively, but the US government will not penalize you and affect which public services you can use.
It's a tremendous difference...
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#69And US has universal health insurance, while China doesn't
Do you mean a penalty that one pays if they DON'T pay for some private insurance every month? Because that's actually what we have and it should not be confused with universal health insurance
Actually we don’t. The individual mandate was repealed.
Re: China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Hacker News Guidelines >What to Submit >On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. >Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or…
I posted a BBC article about mental health and it received complaints about being off-topic and it was removed.
Probably an article's involving the USA increases its perceived on-topicness. Although a large majority of people on here aren't from or in the USA, 'Americans' on here often talk as if it's a 99.5% US discussion taking place on US soil.