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Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

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Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#191

Post by 5trokerac3 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #184
5trokerac3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States currently has the highest 5 year survival rate for all cancers combined. I think it's a fair question to ask if that would continue to be the case in a MFA system for 300 million patients. Considering what a disaster the insurance marketplace was, I'm very skeptical. Edit: what I mean by "disaster": when it launched, the site completely crashed for over a month and then, when it finally came back up…

5 year survival rate is poorly correlated with treatment efficacy. It's mostly correlated with how early a cancer is diagnosed. In most cases it's a good thing to detect cancers early, but saying a country is good at detecting cancers is not near as strong of a statement as saying that a country is good at treating cancers. And this gets complicated by prostrate cancer -- many would argue that mass screening for pros…

So then it can be argued that, due to long wait times in MFA, the cancer survival rate would go down due to later diagnosis.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#192

Post by [deleted] »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #133
cletus wrote: post #34

In Australia the Leftist government of Gough Whitlam introduced health-coverage-for-all in 1975 with a scheme called Medibank. In 1984 after a couple of governments, Bob Hawke's Leftist government created the Medicare scheme (Medibank became a government provider of private health insurance), which exists to this day. The most interesting stat I ever heard about Medicare was this: prior to Medicare the number one cau…

The United States currently has the highest 5 year survival rate for all cancers combined. I think it's a fair question to ask if that would continue to be the case in a MFA system for 300 million patients. Considering what a disaster the insurance marketplace was, I'm very skeptical. Edit: what I mean by "disaster": when it launched, the site completely crashed for over a month and then, when it finally came back up…

[deleted]

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#193

Post by 5trokerac3 »

dontreact wrote: post #186
5trokerac3 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are "health outcomes"? "5 year cancer survival" is a definable metric. "Health outcomes" is very vague. Is there a scoring system? Are different illnesses/conditions ranked?

Lifespan Deaths due to preventable causes On both of these the US is somewhere in the 30s in terms of rank among countries. But we are #1 in terms of cost per capita :) 5 year cancer is too low level in my opinion to give an overall picture

And how much of that is due to the obesity epidemic in the US and has nothing to do with the healthcare system?

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#194

Post by emddudley »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #133
cletus wrote: post #34

In Australia the Leftist government of Gough Whitlam introduced health-coverage-for-all in 1975 with a scheme called Medibank. In 1984 after a couple of governments, Bob Hawke's Leftist government created the Medicare scheme (Medibank became a government provider of private health insurance), which exists to this day. The most interesting stat I ever heard about Medicare was this: prior to Medicare the number one cau…

The United States currently has the highest 5 year survival rate for all cancers combined. I think it's a fair question to ask if that would continue to be the case in a MFA system for 300 million patients. Considering what a disaster the insurance marketplace was, I'm very skeptical. Edit: what I mean by "disaster": when it launched, the site completely crashed for over a month and then, when it finally came back up…

It sounds like you are implying that cancer survival rates are affected by the way Americans pay for healthcare. What specific mechanisms do you think are the cause? Total spending, ability to see doctors, insurance company approval of certain treatments...? Or something else?

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#195

Post by onion2k »

refurb wrote: post #125
onion2k wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertion that "most" treatments aren't available outside of the US is nonsense. Here in the UK some expensive and experimental treatments aren't provided, but things with proven efficacy usually are available to all, and if you have money you can pay privately for most other treatments (just like the US).

It's not the UK, but... "It's crazy that I live in Canada, but now I'm looking at having to sell my house for coverage of my medication." "Then I found out that this other country — which I thought had a healthcare system that was so superior to the U.S. — doesn't test for the tumour marker that saved my life, and doesn't cover this drug that is responsible for pushing my cancer into remission after traditional chemo…

One person's cancer was missed in Canada.

Meanwhile, millions of people in the US who have cancer but can't afford health insurance, and therefore won't get any tests, will have their diagnosis missed.

I'd rather live in Canada.

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#196

Post by throwaway5752 »

tmaly wrote: post #181
cletus wrote: post #34

In Australia the Leftist government of Gough Whitlam introduced health-coverage-for-all in 1975 with a scheme called Medibank. In 1984 after a couple of governments, Bob Hawke's Leftist government created the Medicare scheme (Medibank became a government provider of private health insurance), which exists to this day. The most interesting stat I ever heard about Medicare was this: prior to Medicare the number one cau…

We still cannot get a price list of medical procedures in the US thanks to the antitrust exemption provided in McCarran-Ferguson Antitrust Act of 1945. I think repealing this would be a good start. All other industries are required to provide price lists. My friend went to the ER recently for a sprained thumb. They wrapped it in some bandage and he got a bill for $14,000. His insurance is covering 80% but he is still…

Why did he go to the ER?

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#197

Post by dontreact »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #193
dontreact wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifespan Deaths due to preventable causes On both of these the US is somewhere in the 30s in terms of rank among countries. But we are #1 in terms of cost per capita :) 5 year cancer is too low level in my opinion to give an overall picture

And how much of that is due to the obesity epidemic in the US and has nothing to do with the healthcare system?

I don’t know for sure what the breakdown is.

Right now our overall system does little to discourage the obesity epidemic, but in a universal coverage system there would be massive financial incentive to fight it (either the government or insurance companies being forced to provide coverage for all)

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#198

Post by chimeracoder »

flexie wrote: post #182
chimeracoder wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cancer and other life threatening diseases rarely bankrupt Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Japanese etc. Sure, but they're also dramatically less likely to survive the cancer than Americans are at a population level. There have been multiple long-term studies on cancer survival rates that have demonstrated this.

The US is barely in the top among developed nations, and it's not much better than the next 10-15 countries: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer... And it's notoriously difficult to compare. If cancer is registered as "discovered" early, because a for profit doctor starts treating it early, but the government hired doctor maybe doesn't, the early treated will statistically appear as living lo…

> The US is barely in the top among developed nations, and it's not much better than the next 10-15 countries: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer....

First, you're posting data that isn't relevant: that's the rate of cancer incidence, not the survival rates. That says nothing about how well the cancer is treated.

Secondly, it's nonsensical to compare aggregated cancer statistics between countries, because the demographics vary drastically, many cancer risk factors are highly hereditary, and the survival rates for different types of cancers vary so dramatically.

If you look at the actual survival rates, once adjusted for racial composition and type of cancer, the US comes out far ahead. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18639491

Re: Cancer Complications: Confusing Bills, Maddening Errors And Endless Phone Calls

#200

Post by mruts »

asark wrote: post #153
mruts wrote: post #126

This is unfortunate, but what do you want to do, have the government pay for it? Maybe there are a lot of people with cancer who will get better and live for X number of years. But many people are going to die in a year or two and we would just end up spending millions of dollars on them, essentially wasting the government's money. How much money would you spend to increase someone's life by a minute, an hour, a day,…

What do other wealthy states with populations who generally prefer their healthcare system to one like ours (the US) do? That'd be a good place to start looking. Plenty of examples. Like, all of them, pretty much. > The solution isn't free healthcare for everyone. I mean....

it’s not a coincidence that the US is much wealthier and home to much more innovation than socialist European countries.

Clearly our system is bad, but there are multiple ways to skin a cat.

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