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US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

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101–110 of 134 posts

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#101

"To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population." The U.S. has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic health conditions... and the highest obesity rate... I think they are seriously missing something. Obesity…

Obesity is mostly about food, its quality, the amount of sugar, and how accessible/affordable healthy food is. Physical activity is a secondary culprit but nowhere near as critical as food and drinks.

The healthcare industry isn't the only one that needs a massive, aggressive check in the US.

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#102
post #8

This isn't at all surprising, for multiple reasons. The entire insurance industry existing is a big one. That we are all overweight is another. I'm generally a very conservative person. But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it? I've not met a single person completely against it, mostly just people against people abusing emergency rooms. Certain big media and politicians are agains…

In US there are two useless armies of administrators sucking money out of providing patient's care -- one army employed by insurance industry to deny a claim whenever they can, the other one employed by hospitals and healthcare providers to fight back. It doubles the waste and unproductive work in the best tradition of "bullshit jobs".

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#103
post #8

This isn't at all surprising, for multiple reasons. The entire insurance industry existing is a big one. That we are all overweight is another. I'm generally a very conservative person. But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it? I've not met a single person completely against it, mostly just people against people abusing emergency rooms. Certain big media and politicians are agains…

  > But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it?
Anybody who has ever had to deal with Medicaid?

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#104
post #11
post #8

This isn't at all surprising, for multiple reasons. The entire insurance industry existing is a big one. That we are all overweight is another. I'm generally a very conservative person. But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it? I've not met a single person completely against it, mostly just people against people abusing emergency rooms. Certain big media and politicians are agains…

The Insurance industry is a bug vampire squid sucking money out of the system, and ironicly stopping many from getting the health outcomes they need.

You understand that if the Insurance industry didn't exist we would just re-create it right? I mean, if you tell people they can spend any amount of money on healthcare they will bankrupt whatever pot of money is available. You're just suggesting we go from saying the Insurance industry is terrible to saying whatever Government agency is running healthcare is terrible.

Read about how doctors and patients talk about Medicaid, Medicare or Tricare. If you say they're popular I'd agree with you - but you need to see what people say when they're asked if they like their own private insurance; generally that's popular too. Most people like whatever health insurance they have most of the time because insurance only pinches in edge cases - not when I'm healthy and only in the subset of sick case called "I want a treatment that my insurance won't pay for." Those cases are always going to happen and sometimes it will be for legitimate reasons.

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#105

"To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population." The U.S. has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic health conditions... and the highest obesity rate... I think they are seriously missing something. Obesity…

That is why the problem is intractable. The very way of life, the lot sizes houses are on, the paved earth in all 4 directions are at the root of the problem, and there is no fixing that on a US wide scale. And people like that lifestyle, they like their individual, huge cars and huge (relatively) houses and huge parking lots and huge roads and huge food and drink portions. Trying to fight that in a democracy will ta…

> And people like that lifestyle, they like their individual, huge cars and huge (relatively) houses and huge parking lots and huge roads and huge food and drink portions.

Do they like it or have they simply never had any choice in the matter and have never experienced anything else? The extremely high housing prices in the few dense walkable places seems to imply there is more demand than supply for such developments, so at least some prefer them.

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#106
post #24
post #8

This isn't at all surprising, for multiple reasons. The entire insurance industry existing is a big one. That we are all overweight is another. I'm generally a very conservative person. But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it? I've not met a single person completely against it, mostly just people against people abusing emergency rooms. Certain big media and politicians are agains…

It's a fallacy to claim US healthcare is not "government funded". Aside from that, Canadian wait times for surgery are substantially worse than the United States (even before they stopped necessary surgeries during lockdown). [1] The amount of Canadians who visit the United States has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, many of which seek services which are simply not available at all in Canada -- such as…

> The NHS in the UK, commonly cited as the golden child of government-run healthcare

Except for government clowns, the ones that still claim Brexit was a splendid idea, and people with vested interests absolutely nobody claims that.

At least not since 2008 and austerity when the Tories started wanton destruction of the NHS.

There's a massive drive to private healthcare for those that can afford it and the rest is welcome to eat shit.

Or to wait 25 hours for an ambulance while lying on the floor with s broken hip.[0]

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/ambulance-wait-wal...

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#108
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why the problem is intractable. The very way of life, the lot sizes houses are on, the paved earth in all 4 directions are at the root of the problem, and there is no fixing that on a US wide scale. And people like that lifestyle, they like their individual, huge cars and huge (relatively) houses and huge parking lots and huge roads and huge food and drink portions. Trying to fight that in a democracy will ta…

> And people like that lifestyle, they like their individual, huge cars and huge (relatively) houses and huge parking lots and huge roads and huge food and drink portions. Do they like it or have they simply never had any choice in the matter and have never experienced anything else? The extremely high housing prices in the few dense walkable places seems to imply there is more demand than supply for such development…

Sure, some of them. But nowhere near the critical mass of voters needed to redirect entire infrastructure budgets away from prioritizing cars and large indoor spaces, to prioritizing public transit/walking/cycling and denser living. And this transition would take decades and cause a lot of pain in that time for eventual benefits the voting populace will never see, so it is a nonstarter.

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#109
post #8

This isn't at all surprising, for multiple reasons. The entire insurance industry existing is a big one. That we are all overweight is another. I'm generally a very conservative person. But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it? I've not met a single person completely against it, mostly just people against people abusing emergency rooms. Certain big media and politicians are agains…

> I'm generally a very conservative person. But even I am for government funded healthcare. Who in the hell is against it? I'm European but there are major issues with waiting times, terribly low wages, strikes, ambulance provision, etc. in almost every country I've lived in. Overall I think public healthcare is well worth it - in theory you can save a lot with one central purchaser, and even moreso if the government…

In US there is also major issues with waiting time. Like months for anything non-emergency. And emergency is just partially covered by an insurance anyway, so it doesn't really count. Also an Uber instead of ambulance.

Not sure about the wages and strikes though. But considering the fact that our neighbor doctor is a member of a yacht club, and the landlord who is another doctor had invested in a bunch of apartments that he lost the track of them, I guess they are fine.

Re: US spends most on health care but has worst health outcomes

#110
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would ass a fourth reason: health is a very much a public (as in collective) issue, not a sum of individual medical problems. Something that is fundamentally at odds with the dominant ethos of how to deal with problems in america in the past 50 years or so.

That is what I was trying to convey on my second point, but perhaps I didn't do a good enough job at it. Yes as a European I see it as a mere "efficiency" thing. My (admittedly, very simplistic) thinking goes like this: > In a population of 1000 perhaps 10 will get a Really Bad Health Issue that requires Really Expensive Treatment that costs 100. So those 1000 people pool their resources up and each pays 0.1 so that…

A risk pool being split among multiple companies doesn't actually increase the average amount that each group would have to pay. For the group of 100 in your example, only one tenth of a person is going to have to get one tenth of the expensive treatment, so each one still has to pay 0.1. As long as each underwriter has a sufficiently large group to ensure that the average cost incurred by its members is sufficiently close to the population average, the relative sizes of those groups isn't going to affect their members' premiums. Insurance administration is not an economy of scale so competition in the marketplace would ensure downward pressure on prices. In contrast, a state provider would have little incentive to cost-cut or innovate since they wouldn't have to earn people's business, and any public option would necessarily be attempting to balance the interests of multiple groups (such as public sector unions/government employees, health care providers, and health care consumers) at the expense of the consumers whose interest would have been prioritized in a competitive market. Taking that into consideration, it's doubtful that the lack of shareholders in a public system would represent enough of a benefit to actually lower costs for consumers. Americans have enough experience with poorly managed government programs to intuitively understand that a socialized health care system isn't going to be an improvement over our current system.

And yes, since national defense and law enforcement are desirable services that can't be provided by a competitive market, we are fine with the government providing those specific services in a constitutionally-limited way. That preference is actually more ideologically consistent than your preference to socialize our healthcare system unless you're going to advocate for abandoning capitalism entirely.

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