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Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

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Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#81

Post by earh »

krapp wrote: post #53
meowface wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not actually defeated, but if a Republican wins the next election (which is possible) and the senate and house can achieve a Republican majority, it will almost definitely be repealed.

The next election, or the election after that, or the election after that... As soon as they can, even if it takes then twenty years, they'll stab it in the heart with jubilant rapture. They're still attacking Roe vs. Wade, after all.

1. Roe vs Wade is a court ruling, not a law.

2. There is a theory that Roe vs Wade is such a good campaign issue that no one wants to actually "accomplish" any changes.

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#82

Post by bencollier49 »

ippisl wrote: post #56
Symmetry wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason that the military is able to do a relatively good job providing healthcare is that they can do a lot of sensible cost-saving things that are illegal in most places. Like using nurse-practitioners instead of MDs where appropriate.

Nurse practitioners are used in many countries with great results. Why is using them illegal ? of course it's because of regulatory capture and the general power doctors hold, which is probably the biggest reason why healthcare is so expensive(and also not very good). You see it in million places: The limited number of medical schools, The lack of nurse practitioners doing the simple routine jobs in most specialties(…

Number 3, absolutely. That's true in the UK too. In fact, if AI consulted the patient, it would catch a lot of things which doctors miss, simply by asking enough pertinent questions.

When I have challenged doctors about this, they tend to say "Ah, but you're focused on data, we focus on diagnosing the patient", which is basically gibberish.

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#83

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #70
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: It has been (correctly) pointed out downthread that I have helped hijacking a very personal post for political point scoring - which I think is fair. However we lack a decent history function in HN so I leave it here otherwise the thread will read strangely. Thank you - as a Brit I read this too. I cycled through emotions - fear and sympathy for the diagnosis, hope as some of our best professionals consider new…

The UK has notoriously poor cancer outcomes. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560849/UK-cancer-sur...

[deleted]

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#84

Post by fixxer »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63
mixmax wrote: post #49

While this is a great and heartbreaking story that makes me proud to be an active member of HN it's also a symptom of the totally broken US healthcare system. From wikipedia: The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990. Of 17 high-income countries studied by the Natio…

Edit: It has been (correctly) pointed out downthread that I have helped hijacking a very personal post for political point scoring - which I think is fair. However we lack a decent history function in HN so I leave it here otherwise the thread will read strangely. Thank you - as a Brit I read this too. I cycled through emotions - fear and sympathy for the diagnosis, hope as some of our best professionals consider new…

So long as you're not poor, health care in the US is good. If you live in a major city and are diligent about who takes care of you, it is great.

I've had three MRIs. All were scheduled the same day they were prescribed. I've routinely scheduled appointments with renown specialists and waited less than 2 days to get in. My double hernia surgery was performed by the same guy who treats the Chicago Bears. My old chiropractor/kinesiologist used to be Andre Agassi's.

To clarify: "not poor" != "rich". At the time of these expenses, I was making a good salary, but nothing unattainable by HN definitions.

However, if you're on Medicaid... you. are. fucked.

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#85

Post by tptacek »

DanBC wrote: post #76
tptacek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has notoriously poor cancer outcomes. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560849/UK-cancer-sur...

You understand we've done a lot since 2007, right? EDIT: specifically, "survival rate" is just "how many people lived for 5 years after diagnosis". Thus, you detect a lot of slow growing prostate cancer and your survival rates go up, even though nothing has been done to reduce the incidence of cancer, or stop any more people from dying of cancer. When you look at US cancer mortality rates they look pretty good, until…

Can you provide a link to a study that shows UK cancer outcomes exceeding those of US outcomes in populations under 65?

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#86

Post by wozniacki »

wozniacki wrote: post #52
Nursie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure us Brits still get a claim on the empire thing. Pretty sure...

He meant the benevolent kind of empire. Since the US doesn't annex territories for itself and keep them as colonies as part of some Commonwealth Realm. Although the US could have if it tried, with the slightest flex of a myoblast, in the last great war. It still can. Pretty sure that's what he/she meant.

If you just thought it were Ireland, Wales And Scotland that have an often uneasy relationship with England, you'd be surprised to learn who else bows to the English Crown.

(And yes Scotland has an upcoming referendum in 2014 on the issue of independence from the UK.[1] This is widely believed to be a losing proposition.)

Commonwealth Realm Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu

Crown dependencies: Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man

British Overseas Territories: Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendu...

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#87

Post by ScottBurson »

raganwald wrote: post #21
nwenzel wrote: post #11

Great story of compassion and triumph. So... How do we make it scale? Is it mandatory insurance? Insurance doesn't make everything affordable, but it probably wild have been helpful. Though maybe the co-pay would have been $50k. Universal tax-payer funded insurance? The term "tax payer" is interesting because politicians and pundits forget that we're all tax payers in one form or another. Granted some pay more, some…

Single-payer or government provided healthcare? Pretty sure that no one would identify the government as the picture perfect example of efficiency. Plus, putting elected officials or their appointees in charge of handing out goods and services doesnt seem to be sustainable. It seems odd to me that so many Americans seem pessimistic about their own government. I could understand if the attitude was, "We could make uni…

What's even more bizarre is that we have a single-payer system that's wildly popular among the 48 million people it serves and has demonstrated an excellent ability to control costs. It's called Medicare. It's currently restricted to those over 65 and certain people with disabilities, but expanding it to cover everyone would be a relatively easy task, it seems to me, compared to the gyrations we're going through trying to fix the private insurance system.

It's not just that many Americans have been persuaded that a single-payer system works for the old and disabled, but for some reason isn't right for everyone else. Rather, many Americans have been brainwashed into simultaneously supporting Medicare and opposing a generalized single-payer system, with equal fervor, without noticing the contradiction.

(Yes, really. I saw a photo a year or two ago of a protester at a rally carrying a sign that said "NO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE / DON'T TOUCH OUR MEDICARE", or similar language.)

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#88

Post by kallekalle »

tptacek wrote: post #70
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: It has been (correctly) pointed out downthread that I have helped hijacking a very personal post for political point scoring - which I think is fair. However we lack a decent history function in HN so I leave it here otherwise the thread will read strangely. Thank you - as a Brit I read this too. I cycled through emotions - fear and sympathy for the diagnosis, hope as some of our best professionals consider new…

The UK has notoriously poor cancer outcomes. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560849/UK-cancer-sur...

From those top tens for females and males, five out of ten are countries with populations less than 12 million each. It would be interesting to see the US statistics by state.

Smaller networks (small population of a country, or by state) could be a factor here.

Could you find the original study?

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#89

Post by refurb »

mixmax wrote: post #49

While this is a great and heartbreaking story that makes me proud to be an active member of HN it's also a symptom of the totally broken US healthcare system. From wikipedia: The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990. Of 17 high-income countries studied by the Natio…

I know I must sound like a broken record, but life expectancy is a poor proxy for quality of healthcare. There are many factors which impact life expectancy which have nothing to do with healthcare. For example, if you correct for the number of car accidents (which is high in the US due to the number of cars on the road), the US comes out near the top in terms of life expectancy.

The other thing is that to say that the US ranks 50th in life expectancy is useless without showing numbers. From what I've seen, the #1 country and the #50 country difference by less than 3 years. So is the number 50 ranked country really that much worse than the #1 country.

Re: Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks

#90

Post by refurb »

fixxer wrote: post #84
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: It has been (correctly) pointed out downthread that I have helped hijacking a very personal post for political point scoring - which I think is fair. However we lack a decent history function in HN so I leave it here otherwise the thread will read strangely. Thank you - as a Brit I read this too. I cycled through emotions - fear and sympathy for the diagnosis, hope as some of our best professionals consider new…

So long as you're not poor, health care in the US is good. If you live in a major city and are diligent about who takes care of you, it is great. I've had three MRIs. All were scheduled the same day they were prescribed. I've routinely scheduled appointments with renown specialists and waited less than 2 days to get in. My double hernia surgery was performed by the same guy who treats the Chicago Bears. My old chirop…

Really? Medicaid outcomes are actually pretty dam good considering the population that is being treated!
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