201–210 of 278 posts
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To be fair, it's much easier to separate "food" from "not food" than to have to qualify whether any particular product is "good" or "junk" food. Can you imagine the additional bureaucracy needed to classify (and enforce) the use of food stamps on a more granular level?
They seem to do just fine with the WIC program. Make food stamps just like WIC.
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Government regulates and manipulates health care to such a degree that its hard to even suggest a free market is anywhere close to what is observed.
So why do the countries with even more heavily regulated "socialist" healthcare (most other developed countries) deliver the same quality at half the price? To front-run the complaints, "same quality" does depend on specifics. The USA really does lead the world in breast cancer and diabetes treatment. It is in the middle or back of the pack at nearly everything else, though, including cost, which is >double, even for…
They don't. They offer different services at lower overall cost. Cancer survival rates are the highest in the U.S., mostly because people don't like to die, and the U.S. is (by and large) stinking rich. Here in Ontario, I got a double ear infection (from swimming in lake Erie a few days before symptoms started), and was prescribed a combination eardrop. I'm under 25, and do not have private supplemental insurance, but I expected something like this to be covered by OHIP+; turns out they decide not to cover it unless you've been experiencing symptoms for almost a full month.
I ended up paying (it wasn't so bad, honestly) out of pocket for it, since my jaw was almost completely seized up at that point.
Now, you expect something like this to be covered, but these particular drops (I guess the doctor assumed I had supplemental insurance, or knew I would prefer this product [it worked very well and was easy to administer]) are not covered except as a last resort.
In the U.S. system, the majority of people pay for the privilege of at least partial coverage of more convenient/effective (but more expensive) medical products and services. The U.S. market produces high demand for medical products and services, and by-and-large has more disposable income, so prices can be higher.
The decrease in life expectancy observed is being largely driven by people on the middle to lower portion of the income spectrum. It's very unfortunate that it is happening and so many people are struggling. Hopefully our country can come up with solutions to help out people who are struggling with addiction and poor health.
But, it's important to remember that if you are not in that demographic, you are still likely to live a very long life and need to plan for that.
Native Americans on reservations have free health care from IHS https://www.ihs.gov/ https://www.ihs.gov/forpatients/faq/
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> people don't go to a doctor when they should or too late I saw this when travelling in the US for work. (I am Canadian). Striking up conversations in restaurants I met staff that worked while sick because they couldn't afford to take sick days, or worked with chronic conditions because they couldn't afford a visit to a doctor. Even worse are the major chronic diseases from our lifestyle (hypertension, diabetes, etc…
Many people are just too stubborn to go to the doctor. And many people go, knowing they can’t pay, because they’ll just never pay the bill and will dodge the bill collectors. Plenty of people receive free healthcare in the USA by virtue of never paying, but getting treated. It’s the middle class who pays their huge bills. Insurance doesn’t cover why these days and deductibles are insanely high. The poor get treated a…
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> people don't go to a doctor when they should or too late I saw this when travelling in the US for work. (I am Canadian). Striking up conversations in restaurants I met staff that worked while sick because they couldn't afford to take sick days, or worked with chronic conditions because they couldn't afford a visit to a doctor. Even worse are the major chronic diseases from our lifestyle (hypertension, diabetes, etc…
Many people are just too stubborn to go to the doctor. And many people go, knowing they can’t pay, because they’ll just never pay the bill and will dodge the bill collectors. Plenty of people receive free healthcare in the USA by virtue of never paying, but getting treated. It’s the middle class who pays their huge bills. Insurance doesn’t cover why these days and deductibles are insanely high. The poor get treated a…
What's your proposed solution? Just murder the poor to balance the system? Which is, after all, what we already do, we just disguise it as "choice".
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The big change relatively recently is that suicides in rural areas are now far higher than urban. Have you been to a rural area in the US recently? Most have been completely hollowed out - there is no hope in a lot of these places. The despair there is real.
Can you be more specific than just 'rural'? I've been through middle Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas and those areas seem mostly fine to me. Is it because rural farming is still ok but other rural like appalachia or rural Montana isn't doing well? Specifically where is hollowed out?
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>used to be lashed to religious moorings, which provided some sense of purpose and moral grounding, as well as fending off pesky questions like "what happens to me when I die?" I don't buy this for a second. There is a notable, consistent correlation with economic viability (lack thereof) and perceived/real economic inequality and the negative effects these have on a population. Drug use, mental illness, even infant…
> and they don't have a "purpose." I guess I didn't state my case clearly. My point was (in part) that religion can provide purpose if people lean into it the right way, and that having a purpose can stave off the desire to be numb - emotionally and physically.
There isn't evidence that being involved in a religion alleviates or negates any of the effects/correlations that were presented earlier.
It might seem reasonable to suggest that religion gives people purpose, but again, it actually doesn't really affect what we're talking about. There are extremely religious communities who have extremely high drug use and mental issues per capita. There are extremely religious communities who do not have those issues in the same significant manner. The main factor setting them apart is the economic environment.
The only things (relevant to the current discussion and context) that help out with these issues tends to be economic stability and viability.
The decline is mostly the product of an increase in drug overdose deaths and suicides (likely also related to drug abuse[1]). Cancer mortality is continuing to decline which is nice to hear: "Earlier this century, the steady and robust decline in heart-disease deaths more than offset the rising number from drugs and suicide, Dr. Anderson said. Now, “those declines aren’t there anymore,” he said, and the drug and suic…
CDC wonder[1] has data from 1999-2016, when I plotted the appropriate ICD-10 codes[2] I found this is a misleading way of describing the data: https://i.ibb.co/N9Fqmxd/CDCmort.png
You can clearly see that deaths attributed to these codes in those age groups have been increasing since well before 2015, basically since the data became available.
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> Then there is the widespread obesity because of corn syrup being a heavily subsidized food ingredient You forgot to mention that the US Gov't also subsides the other side via food stamps, which poor folks use to purchase corn syrup and cheap grain foods, further exasperating the obesity epidemic. It's true insanity.
Are you arguing that poor people would live longer if they had less money for food?
