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Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

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Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#111

Post by rayiner »

orwin wrote: post #101
rayiner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality is at least as big of a problem, if not bigger, in blue states than red states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... . New York is the most unequal state in the country. I don’t know about gerrymandering. In the most recent Texas house election (Texas being one of the major ACA holdouts) republicans won a 12-point seat margin with a 7-point popular vote margin. The governo…

Income inequality isn't an issue, wealth inequality is. I find it perfectly fine to earn 8 time as much as my artist best friend does as long as we are in a market-based system. What bothers me is that I do not pay enough taxes, and could pay even less by declaring my donations.

I strongly suspect that blue states are even more unequal measured by wealth than by income.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#113

Post by xyzzyz »

burkaman wrote: post #110
xyzzyz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well the driving part doesn't matter, the thing we care about is how hard it is for someone to get to a place with affordable healthy food, however they get there. Can’t be much harder than it was 100 years ago, when everyone was extremely poor by today standards, and visiting a grocery store was often a whole day trip, no? Obesity didn’t seem to have been a problem at that time. Seems like it really is not about l…

> visiting a grocery store was often a whole day trip, no? I mean, no. 100 years ago was the 1920s. Not really sure what you're referring to and this is not a useful comparison anyway, obviously many many aspects of the US food system and economy have changed in 100 years. I don't really know how to respond to this. > To reiterate, your argument is that drivers are less obese than people who are too poor to drive. Is…

> Not really sure what you're referring to and this is not a useful comparison anyway, obviously many many aspects of the US food system and economy have changed in 100 years. I don't really know how to respond to this.

It is extremely useful comparison, and this is why you don’t really know how to respond to it. Your theory hinges on the fact that worse access to fresh food makes people more obese, but 100 years ago (and 150 years ago, even more so) most people had even worse access to fresh, healthy foods, but nevertheless obesity was not a problem at all. This is a problem to your argument, which is why you are lost for words.

> Rich people tend to have more cars and eat healthier food because it's more accessible. Here's a study:

The graph you linked shows that men with a car have higher BMI than men with no cars. Thanks for supporting my argument with evidence, I guess? In any case, this is just purely correlational study, which does not even attempt to answer whether access to car causes lower obesity. You might as well show me a graph of square footage per person against BMI and argue that small houses make people fat. On the other hand, it is perfectly consistent with the theory I elucidated above, which is that conscientiousness causes people to both be wealthier, and less fat.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#114

Post by notacoward »

xyzzyz wrote: post #103
orwin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality isn't an issue, wealth inequality is. I find it perfectly fine to earn 8 time as much as my artist best friend does as long as we are in a market-based system. What bothers me is that I do not pay enough taxes, and could pay even less by declaring my donations.

[flagged]

Well yes, since others not paying enough taxes is part of the tax system being unfair, someone who actually cares about fairness would be bothered by it and them personally paying more doesn't fix that. Do you not care about fairness? "You could pay more yourself" has always been more of a snide low-effort attempt to shut down conversation than to engage in it. Please try to do (and be) better.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#115

Post by dumbotron »

SilasX wrote: post #58
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frontline did an episode a while back were dentists were performing unnecessary major dental work on poor people when the government had a program to pay the dentists for such work. Frontline was outraged at the dentists, but did not seem to recognize that this is the inevitable result of incentives the government set up.

Whoa whoa whoa, I'm the first one to call out perverse incentives in government programs, but even I would assume that dentists had meaningful ethics codes and enforcement that would largely mitigate this kind of abuse. OTOH, if the "unnecessary" there just means "not satisfying the platonically correct cost/benefit analysis", and there's still some net benefit to the patient, and the government program didn't ask th…

The best part about over-treating as a dentist is there's no evidence, and the patient might never know.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#116

Post by dumbotron »

mrguyorama wrote: post #77
w1nst0nsm1th wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man.. It's Nazi Germany level of evil.

Hitler claimed to have taken inspiration from how America treats its undesireables. A doctor who grew up in the heyday of eugenics could still be practicing medicine into the 70s. We literally gave black people syphilis behind their backs, and now we wonder why they are vaccine shy. We spent over two centuries with at least half the country openly espousing as policy that black people were a lesser race and the south…

We also set up concentration camps for Japanese-Americans.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#117

Post by antifa »

yibg wrote: post #45
EatingWithForks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're that fat you're statistically unlikely to lose weight without medical intervention of some sort, even something as basic as talking to a fucking nutritionist about portion sizes.

I sympathize with how hard it is to lose weight, but at some point personal responsibility kicks in right?

The optimal amount of helping hands and second chances are greater than zero.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#118

Post by xyzzyz »

maxerickson wrote: post #108
burkaman wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did exaggerate a little, I apologize. It's not just rural areas though, there are plenty of small towns without any grocery stores, and urban areas where the nearest grocery store is very far away, especially if you don't have regular access to a car. Here's one source that says 1.8 million Alabama residents don't have a grocery store within 45 minutes: http://humsci.auburn.edu/news/hunger_solutions_institute_awa..…

What makes things so bleak? My small county is somewhat below the national median income (so doing fine but not wildly wealthy) and like half of the people that live here live within 10 miles of 3 large grocers and multiple other grocers. The most concentrated population is within a couple miles, and the people that live further away are doing so because they want to live outside of town, they mostly aren't stuck the…

They are not bleak, it’s just you are responding to a narrative, not facts.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#119

Post by anonymouskimmer »

George83728 wrote: post #97
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just requires constantly feeling hunger pains. Along with bouts of lightheadedness, distraction, and things of that nature. There are a variety of reasons people get fat, and a variety of reasons people stay fat. Treating the specific reasons for the specific people is a lot safer, and easier, than just having people eat less. For me, I'm a stress eater. I need more money, and better credentials, and then I ca…

> No, it just requires constantly feeling hunger pains. No it doesn't, just eat more filling foods with lots of fiber. Veggies are cheaper than dirt, far cheaper than junk food, and far more sating. Junk food is engineered to leave you feeling hungry, to encourage you to buy more. Stop buying junk food completely; no more chips, colas or frozen pizzas. Buy vegetables, particularly the leafy ones, and eat as much as i…

I eat "double fiber" bread and take 4 tablespoons of whole psyllium husk per day.

The chips are a good idea, but my diet is already so limited to PB&J, hummus and cheese and mixed green sandwiches, and the occasional whole grain rotini + prego chunky garden (and mixed greens), oatmeal, apples, frozen blueberries, bananas, and the occasional frozen quinoa dish that chips and occasional ice cream or Italian ice are a nice change of pace.

I haven't had a soda or the like since, I think pre-COVID.

I just eat too much, and don't exercise enough. I could probably use more water, too, but I don't like using the restroom at work. I do find that when I'm working I can often not eat without feeling and hunger pains, but I usually make up for that by eating a lot at night when I get home.

Re: Many people living in the 'Diabetes Belt' are plagued with medical debt

#120

Post by Twounwhe »

WalterBright wrote: post #48
burkaman wrote: post #7

Related: ProPublica investigation on doctors performing unnecessary amputations on poor black diabetes patients, because they don't pay enough attention to the patients and also get paid more to amputate. https://features.propublica.org/diabetes-amputations/black-a... Another link if you are skeptical there is a racial issue: page 12 of https://data.dartmouthatlas.org/downloads/reports/Diabetes_r... . Among Medicare…

Frontline did an episode a while back were dentists were performing unnecessary major dental work on poor people when the government had a program to pay the dentists for such work. Frontline was outraged at the dentists, but did not seem to recognize that this is the inevitable result of incentives the government set up.

> Frontline did an episode a while back were dentists were performing unnecessary major dental work on poor people when the government had a program to pay the dentists for such work

I haven't seen this episode and so don't know what qualifies as "major dental work." However, as someone who has had government dental insurance, I wanted to chime in with a possibly irrelevant anecdote.

This dental insurance covered few things, one of which was having teeth pulled. When I was having major pain and other issues with a molar, the only covered treatment was to have the tooth pulled. Anything else would have to be paid 100% out of my own pocket. So the only viable option for most people in my situation would have been to have the tooth pulled, which certainly seems like "unnecessary major dental work on poor people", through no fault of the dentist.

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