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U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

wsj.com

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Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#251

Post by StillBored »

tvjunky wrote: post #167
bluedino wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "middle class" you're referring to is literally everyone who has insurance. This has nothing to do with income. Non-payment is not the cause of the high prices. The system is broken in a number of ways. Premiums are a crazy percent of income, putting them out of reach for people who don't have employer subsidized plans. Even then, those employer subsidized plans get more expensive and provide less with each re-en…

Uh, despite what you have heard about the ACA (obamacare) it actually did do a number of good things. One of which is limit total yearly out of pocket. So if you have insurance (no matter how bad) your max out of pocket is capped.

For 2018 the individual limit was $7350,

https://obamacarefacts.com/health-insurance/out-of-pocket-ma...

Which granted is a _LOT_ if your making $30k a year, but its not the instant bankruptcy many people discovered themselves in after situations like yours where the out of pocket for "good insurance" could easily go over $100k for fairly limited hospital says.

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#252

Post by ashrk »

jogjayr wrote: post #172
rsync wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... which poor folks use to purchase corn syrup and cheap grain foods ..." This is true. It is truly insane that public food benefits can be used to buy soft drinks, sugar cereals and candy: "Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items"[1] [1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items

It doesn't seem insane to me, just a reflection of the reality that people sometimes buy unhealthy foods - for both legit and frivolous reasons. Sometimes your kid will only eat sugary cereals for breakfast, because children can be fussy eaters. Or maybe you want to kick back with a can of Coke after a hard day at work (or need the caffeine to wake up for work in the morning, and coffee is too expensive). Or you want…

> Sometimes your kid will only eat sugary cereals for breakfast

Present healthy food. Vary it day over day in case they really do have some strong dislike for something. If they don't eat it, they weren't very hungry. They will eat cereal every time you give it to them, no matter how hungry they are, which is part of the problem. Do not feed them crap because "that's all they'll eat".

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#253

Post by SilasX »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #248
SilasX wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>his too is much less of a thing outside of the US where pain medication tends to be very strictly regulated and not advertised every 10 minutes on TV. I've never seen a commercial for a pain medication or opioid, they're usually for some heart/skin condition, ED, STD treatment, or something related to aging.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-advertisin... This paints a bit of a different picture ... I imagine somebody cracked down on this more recently.

I meant within the last fifty years and on TV.

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#254

Post by SamReidHughes »

groby_b wrote: post #206
bluedino wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, you're right, goddamn poor trying to be healthy when they can't afford it. Only people with money deserve health! 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".

One of the problems is that it is expensive. More expensive than it has to be.

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#255

Post by hrktb »

brandonmenc wrote: post #188
jillesvangurp wrote: post #81

I can think of a few other causes like sickness being a potentially bankrupting event so people don't go to a doctor when they should or too late. This apparently is a risk, even if you have insurance because you are at the mercy of insurers not tossing you out over such whimsical reasons as pre-existing conditions or other bureaucratic tricks they use to kill their customers rather than getting them cured. There are…

> shameless advertising on products where products that contain obscene amounts of corn syrup are advertised as "fat free" And there are "low carb" products that contain an obscene amount of fat. If people can't count calories, that's their tough luck. It's not rocket science.

> It's not rocket science.

Yet there’s no reliable research that proves how all of that works in most people nor how the situation can be solved at large scale. I think it’s a way harder problem than flying rockets.

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#257

Post by daveFNbuck »

cpursley wrote: post #246
daveFNbuck wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do food stamps add to the craziness if they're not making things worse for the recipients?

They give the recipients the ability to get unhealthy food at the cost of the US taxpayer. This causes multiple issues that affect all taxpaying Americans in addition to the cost of the food subsidy, including adding to the cost of providing healthcare (pushing up premiums, etc).

It seems counterintuitive that having unhealthy food increases healthcare costs over not having enough food. How does that work? Is it because they don't live long enough to accumulate medical expenses? That still doesn't sound like a net win for taxpayers.

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#258

Post by arbitrary_name »

ams6110 wrote: post #151
bluedino wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's another group of people like me. I have a good job, with good health benefits. I haven't been to the doctor for myself in probably a decade. I just don't like doctors.

My dad is dying from a 20 cm tumour right now. He has insurance but put up with the pain of a growing mass in his pancreas and stomach for months because he didn't like going to the doctor. Had we picked it up early, they could have operated and put him on immunotherapy.

Please, go to the doctor early and regularly. It's not worth it, trust me.

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#259

Post by arbitrary_name »

briandear wrote: post #177
rhplus wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shameless advertising on products where products that contain obscene amounts of corn syrup are advertised as "fat free" Ah, yes. In the US, Twizzlers are a "Low fat snack": https://www.hersheys.com/twizzlers/en_us/products/twizzlers-... In Canada, just candy: https://www.hersheys.com/twizzlers/en_ca/products/twizzlers-...

Twizzlers are a low fat snack. That is 100% true.

It's also 100% misleading. I know people on HN love to be technically correct, but come on buddy...

Re: U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Further

#260

Post by pseudolus »

adventured wrote: post #68
mrweasel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The decline is mostly the product of an increase in drug overdose and suicides The US is pretty much also the only country where suicides are increasing.

Suicide rates in several other developed nations are either higher or compable to the US. Things must be really, really bad in Belgium, Finland and Iceland eh (you know, just three of the nicest countries on Earth). How could Sweden, France and Australia be anywhere near the US rate? Suicide rates in order per 100k: South Korea 20.2, Belgium 15.7, Japan 14.3, Finland 13.8, US 13.3, Iceland 13.3, France 12.1, Sweden 1…

One possible explanation is that Europeans are not killing themselves at significantly higher rates but that coroners in the US are less likely to classify a death as a suicide relative to coroners in Europe. There are a lot of cultural taboos in place. Again, however, this is just supposition.
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