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Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

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Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#61

Post by WeylandYutani »

tayistay wrote: post #42
Max-Limelihood wrote: post #17

Are the first 3 causes dying, aging, and poor health? As soon as you start allowing abstract concepts that contribute to a person's death to count as the cause of a person's death, this stops being an especially meaningful statistic. I'd much rather see a calculation of how many years of life are lost, an actually meaningful metric.

> I'd much rather see a calculation of how many years of life are lost, an actually meaningful metric. It's only a google search away! Looks like the rich live about 10 years longer than the poor in the US. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866586/

Tying healthcare to employment will only make this worse.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#62

Post by WeylandYutani »

TMWNN wrote: post #11
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

"Poverty, which the study defined as less than half the median U.S. income" I wonder how much of this can be attributed to medical bankruptcy. If you cannot afford insurance, get injured, can't afford treatment...pretty straightforward doom loop to an early grave

>I wonder how much of this can be attributed to medical bankruptcy. Only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0... >. A tipoff that [insert large percentage here] of bankruptcies aren't actually because of medical costs is that only 6% of bankruptcies by those without health insurance are because of that cause. The biggest cause of bankruptcies…

Health insurance is a nebulous concept.My basic plan for instance doesn't cover dentistry so I got a 500 euro bill.

This inspired me to donate to an NGO that provides oral healthcare for the poor.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#63

Post by WeylandYutani »

wskinner wrote: post #12
atdrummond wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don’t pay it. I wish I had been told this instead of flushing thousands upon thousands down the toilet in a futile attempt to keep the balance at $0. The system is designed to be adversarial and your best tactic as a patient is to delay, delay, delay and fight every single bill. I have had seven operations for Crohns, a back surgery, and treatment for ongoing Leukaemia. I have lived in a half dozen different jur…

What happens to the typical person’s healthcare costs when some people who consume extremely expensive treatments” just don’t pay”? What is the equilibrium here?

The idea in socialised medicine is that we all share the burden- each to their own ability.

Like any other income based tax.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#64

Post by Davidnkt89 »

This is a shocking and sad statistic. Poverty is a preventable and curable condition, yet it kills millions of people every year. We need to address the root causes of poverty and inequality, such as unfair trade policies, corruption, exploitation, discrimination, etc. We also need to invest more in social protection, health care, education, and other basic services for the poor. Poverty is not inevitable. It is a choice.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#65

Post by jacquesm »

refurb wrote: post #49
jacquesm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills That's not 'only'. In quite a few other countries that percentage is zero.

Such as? In Canada, with universal healthcare that cost $0 at the point of care, bankruptcies due to health issues is actually pretty high (15% for seniors). Why? Because a big driver of medical bankruptcy is not the medical costs, but the fact you can no longer work and any assistance you get doesn't cover your cost of living.

That's already indirect rather than direct. Canada has a lot of problems, this is one of them. On paper everything works but in practice lots of people fall through the cracks, I've seen this up closed (lived in Canada for many years).

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#66

Post by wang_li »

qgin wrote: post #16
monetus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extremes are what people will talk about most, for sure; I lived that experience in a state where medicaid wasn't expanded and have trouble shutting up about it. Most everyone around me avoided that experience, almost everyone in my social circles.

States without medicaid expansion are very rough. Most people don't realize that ACA plans have a minimum income to qualify. Medicaid was supposed to take over below that income level. If you're in Florida or Texas and are an adult who isn't currently pregnant (or have a legally declared disability), and make less than 150% of the federal poverty limit, there is literally no insurance you can get except paying full r…

The details vary but if you don’t earn much you usually qualify for additional cost-sharing reductions which cuts the costs of insurance plans under the ACA substantially.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#67

Post by prepend »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #24

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income Is this the same definition of poverty used by the federal government for all other poverty-related statistics? If not, it sure is interesting that the study would come up with it's own definition. Unfortunately the links study appears to be behind a Jama pay wall, I'd love to see how they came up with that and whether it was defined before t…

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income

This seems odd as poverty is a function of households, not individual income. Half the median for a single person is very different from half the media. For a single person with 9 kids. Or two people living together.

And why half the median? Why not first quartile or quintile?

This is pretty complicated to measure, so it seems unusual to not use Census’ Official Poverty Measure [0] that has many factors and is based on family size.

I would expect discussion around why they created their own measure and didn’t use Census.

[0] https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidanc...

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#68

Post by giraffe_lady »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #24

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income Is this the same definition of poverty used by the federal government for all other poverty-related statistics? If not, it sure is interesting that the study would come up with it's own definition. Unfortunately the links study appears to be behind a Jama pay wall, I'd love to see how they came up with that and whether it was defined before t…

The federal "poverty line" definition is notoriously arbitrary and based on a model of household expenses that hasn't been valid for at least a generation. It's almost completely useless for anything except punitively restricting access to aid.

> Also interesting that the issues here would still be categorized as caused by poverty rather than the pandemic and our pandemic response.

This is what they're doing. "The pandemic" is a human social and political phenomenon. So is poverty. There's not going to be a clear line between the two either broadly or in many specific cases. Someone who caught covid at work knowing they were immunocompromised but needed the money, did they die of pandemic or poverty? Someone who died of preventable covid complications but couldn't access adequate healthcare because of money?

Approaching it as "pandemic, mediated by poverty" is a useful lens and people are also studying it that way. But "poverty, mediated by pandemic" is also useful and in a different way and that's what this one went with.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#69

Post by giraffe_lady »

prepend wrote: post #67
flagrant_taco wrote: post #24

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income Is this the same definition of poverty used by the federal government for all other poverty-related statistics? If not, it sure is interesting that the study would come up with it's own definition. Unfortunately the links study appears to be behind a Jama pay wall, I'd love to see how they came up with that and whether it was defined before t…

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income This seems odd as poverty is a function of households, not individual income. Half the median for a single person is very different from half the media. For a single person with 9 kids. Or two people living together. And why half the median? Why not first quartile or quintile? This is pretty complicated to measure, so it seems unusual to not…

That's more precise but also requires much more information. Recently I ran through that with a few different scenarios and most of them did come out really close to half of median. I can see why they would go with that number for simplicity and to reduce dependence on specific data and avoid accounting for reporting error in the data.

Re: Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows

#70

Post by prepend »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #69
prepend wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poverty, which the study defines as less than half the median U.S. income This seems odd as poverty is a function of households, not individual income. Half the median for a single person is very different from half the media. For a single person with 9 kids. Or two people living together. And why half the median? Why not first quartile or quintile? This is pretty complicated to measure, so it seems unusual to not…

That's more precise but also requires much more information. Recently I ran through that with a few different scenarios and most of them did come out really close to half of median. I can see why they would go with that number for simplicity and to reduce dependence on specific data and avoid accounting for reporting error in the data.

Definitely, it’s harder to use. But I’d rather not do analysis than do wrong analysis.

If I can’t measure poverty correctly, then using a simple number isn’t useful to generalize and make conclusions. And I certainly wouldn’t want to target interventions.

There’s a reason why it’s complicated.

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