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"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" - old proverb
Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
11–20 of 90 posts
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#12[flagged]
Fit, healthy, people are dying left and right.
There are risk factors, but don't start thinking you're invicible for not having them. The adaptive immune system is slow, vaccines prime it to react faster with more specific antibodies.
Dying of pneumonia does not feel good. It makes grown men cry and beg. Strongly recommend against.
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#13This is a 14 year old article (pre ACA) from an associate professor in economics who doesn’t have a degree in economics. Sigh
Those aren't good reasons to reject an article. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? Note that they include: " Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " Also: " Don't be snarky. " Older articles and historical material are always welcome on HN, if they're interesting. Often they're more interesting than the latest $thing about $cu…
14 years old article is a good reason to take note of it as it shows it is not just some fad but important long-term issue.
I don't think the issue itself is controversial. I was taught at university that our life expectancy is determined roughly speaking one third by our genes, one third by our lifestyle and one third by healthcare.
And then it became apparent that most healthcare interventions (childhood vaccinations, antibiotics, most medicines) that have a big effect are relatively cheap. The most costly interventions have the least effect. We could easily cut the health budget in half with only a marginal decrease of actual outcomes. But it would be very hard to do due to politics, the structure of incentives etc. But we really need to critically examine and educate people that expecting more and more from healthcare despite progress in this field can only lead to diminishing results.
We cannot change our genes (yet) but we need to think more about our lifestyle (obesity, drug and alcohol use) which could provide considerable potential as well.
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#14[flagged]
Fit, healthy, people are dying left and right. There are risk factors, but don't start thinking you're invicible for not having them. The adaptive immune system is slow, vaccines prime it to react faster with more specific antibodies. Dying of pneumonia does not feel good. It makes grown men cry and beg. Strongly recommend against.
But those "fit, healthy" (the genuinely so, I'm not sure I even agree with the characterization for many of the mediatized cases), are OUTLIERS. Yes, you are never invincible, but it's 100% correct to characterize Covid as a disease of the metabolically dysfunctional. Sadly, this is a HUGE percentage of the population of the world nowadays, which seems to be the point of the article (disclaimer: in true HN tradition, I haven't read it)
Traditionnal post-downvote comment:
Covid affects those:
- on immunosuppressant medication most often for a PREVENTABLE "lifestyle" disease
- otherwise negatively affected by said disease, particularly in the vascular system, we know that Covid kills most those that have hypertension, long-term vascular damage from chronically-elevated blood sugar, etc.
- nutritional deficient / malnourished (low vitamin D, absence of sunlight, etc. etc.); this is also very common
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#15[flagged]
The US adult obesity rate is 42.4% [1]. To get to 75% of deaths being obese people, you'd need about a 4x death rate of obese people compared to non-obese people. Most obese people find it extremely hard to stop being obese and often fail despite immense effort.
Meanwhile, getting a COVID vaccine reduces the chance of death by >10x at a cost of [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#16(OP here) This essay set may superficially appear to be another repetitive salvo in the interminable US healthcare political conflict, but I recommend reading a bit deeper. I think the perspective these essays offer (that, at the margin, medical spending doesn't affect people's wellspan much, at least not in the US) is both quite important and underrepresented in most discussions of healthcare.
I mean, why would we expect it too? Spending is about profits accumulating somewhere, so why would that have anything to do with optimizing healthspan? Note, I'm vehemently critical of the modern medical establishment, and a health loon myself (by necessity, was hit with a though illness early on in my life).
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#17A lot of $ is spent on medicine because medicine works. Alternatives such as diet, exercise either are spotty in efficacy or do not work. Medicine offers a quick fix and in some cases the only fix. Someone who has cancer will need to be treated with medicine, not diet.
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#18A lot of $ is spent on medicine because medicine works. Alternatives such as diet, exercise either are spotty in efficacy or do not work. Medicine offers a quick fix and in some cases the only fix. Someone who has cancer will need to be treated with medicine, not diet.
this is such a strange comment for me, and I beg people not to reflexively downvote and instead join in for a discussion, but I'm part / have been part of communities where people ROUTINELY achieve remission from disease the medical establishment deems incurable
I can go in further details if people ask, but lifestyle intervention has DRAMATIC results for many people, myself included, and results not provided by drugs or any commonly available medical intervention
Let me give you an example, RE: cancer and diet, look up "Andrew Scarborough brain cancer" and you'll find a detailed account of someone treating incurable brain cancer with diet and lifestyle; and this is someone working in the medical field (actually, precisely in oncology)
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#19[flagged]
The US adult obesity rate is 42.4% [1]. To get to 75% of deaths being obese people, you'd need about a 4x death rate of obese people compared to non-obese people. Most obese people find it extremely hard to stop being obese and often fail despite immense effort. Meanwhile, getting a COVID vaccine reduces the chance of death by >10x at a cost of [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm
even bariatric surgery seldom produces thinness. It only makes a very obese person only mildly obese, optimistically. The diet and fitness industries are worth billions of dollars, with pitifully poor results to show for it. Biology is fighting all efforts to make humans thinner.
Re: Our main problem in health policy is overemphasis on medicine (2007)
#20Bring back fat-shaming!