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The Amish health care system

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Re: The Amish health care system

#191

Post by watwut »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #177
markdown wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same in Fiji. We have universal health care, but anyone is of course free to forego that and pay (or use their private insurance) for a private room rather than a ward, or just go to a private hospital instead. I don't understand the debate about this in the US. It's as if the rich assume that things will change for the worse for them if universal health care is enacted.

The big difference between the two camps that I see is that one side recognizes the cost benefit of their position and the other side doesn't. Price controls on healthcare (socialization) has positive and negative impacts. The positive impact is universality. Everyone gets approximately the same basic level of care. In some countries you might be able to pay for a nicer room, or quicker service, but generally speakin…

1.) Your theory assumes that the cost difference at the hospital goes toward innovation. It ignores role of public money that goes into research. It is also not analyzing where the money are actually going.

2.) With this theory, if it is true, you are basically volunteering American patients to pay for innovation worldwide. That is quite a bad deal for quite a lot of American people.

3.)

> My speculation is that the rich people you refer to are more likely to be trained in economics (formally or otherwise) and are more likely to have a long term mindset regarding cost benefit tradeoffs.

They have also different interests. Good cost benefit tradeoffs for one group is often very bad deal for another group.

Re: The Amish health care system

#192

Post by cmendel »

triceratops wrote: post #182
cmendel wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are speaking from a place of ignorance. The prerequisites needed to take the courses that you mention alone are >1 year, yet alone all of the material needed to become a doctor. Where I went to Uni, you didn't take biochem until you were a senior. The reason for this is because before you take biochem you need General Chemistry 1 & 2, Organic Chemistry 1 & 2, and some smattering of Biology. You have to take these…

> You are speaking from a place of ignorance You're right, I hold my hands up. I don't have any medical training. > Where I went to Uni, you didn't take biochem until you were a senior. The reason for this is because before you take biochem you need General Chemistry 1 & 2, Organic Chemistry 1 & 2, and some smattering of Biology. You have to take these courses sequentially, they build on each other. You obviously kno…

My apologies, I didn't mean to come off harshly, it's approx 3 am here so I'm not exactly a ball of sunshine.

Do doc's need to spend 4 years doing an undergrad before med school? Maybe. There are a lot of things that you need to learn before you can learn what you need to be a doctor. Do you need to know physics? Eh, only kind of.

I'm not terribly familiar with the system in the UK, but at least where I went to school, most of the folks who were planning on going to med school studied either Chem, Biochem or straight Biology. In fact, it was something of an issue because the Chemistry courses tended to be weed out courses, i.e. you had to pass Organic chem 1 & 2 with a (3.0+)/4.0, or you didn't have a ghost of a chance of getting in to med school. I, personally, didn't know anyone who was planning on going to med school who was studying anything outside the STEM umbrella.

>Pretty sure med students have time to take ethics courses if they do a 5/6 year medical degree. Reasonably. I was really only picking on this point because of, what I had thought was, a dismissal to the usage of the humanities as a doc.

Re: The Amish health care system

#193

Post by int_19h »

pmiller2 wrote: post #104
bmelton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as if the rich assume that things will change for the worse for them if universal health care is enacted. Well, it depends on the implementation, but Bernie Sanders has been on record numerous times as stating that his Medicare-for-All proposal would absolutely ban private insurance. Elizabeth Warren is another Democratic front-runner who indicated that she's on board with that, though her proposals didn't nec…

It's a slight misstatement to say that any of the M4A plans would have "banned private insurance." None of them prohibit supplemental coverage that would be secondary to Medicare.

This doesn't apply to procedures that are covered, though, does it? Like, a private plan that provides higher-quality / reduced wait times for all services you'd normally get from the public system.

Re: The Amish health care system

#194

Post by watwut »

julianapostate wrote: post #169
Balgair wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797804404/investigation-into-... The Amish are insular and unique, but they are humans just like the rest of us. Working hard and using electricity, or not, is independent of human nature and all it's failings.

im curious how either of those links prove anything, the first seems like a smart rite of passage and the second is meaningless without context... you can generally find familial Sexual Abuse in any part of the world.

The second article is not just about that abuse exists. Article is about what happens to those who report abuse. Whether it is at least theoretically possible for them to escape abuse or not.

Second, how often abuse happens is different in different parts of world.

Re: The Amish health care system

#195

Post by int_19h »

pasquinelli wrote: post #159
specialist wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bulk of the (public) opposition is from people who like their employer provided insurance. We'll soon learn if the mood changes, due to pandemic induced high unemployment.

It doesn't matter if the mood changes. Democratic voters are in the mood for medicare for all already and biden is the democratic candidate. This is america, the public mood isn't a factor.

Last I looked at the polls - before coronavirus stole all the attention - Democratic primary voters were split roughly evenly between single payer (M4A) and public option, in polls where the distinction was highlighted.

Re: The Amish health care system

#196

Post by empira »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #177
markdown wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same in Fiji. We have universal health care, but anyone is of course free to forego that and pay (or use their private insurance) for a private room rather than a ward, or just go to a private hospital instead. I don't understand the debate about this in the US. It's as if the rich assume that things will change for the worse for them if universal health care is enacted.

The big difference between the two camps that I see is that one side recognizes the cost benefit of their position and the other side doesn't. Price controls on healthcare (socialization) has positive and negative impacts. The positive impact is universality. Everyone gets approximately the same basic level of care. In some countries you might be able to pay for a nicer room, or quicker service, but generally speakin…

On the other hand, right now, only the rich, or those with good enough medical insurance (if your co-pay is more than you make in 6 months, are you really insured ?), have access to the expensive treatments. On a universal heathcase system, whatever the form it may take, more people would have access those expensive options. Is it better to sell your treatment to more people but at a smaller price tag, or to fewer people at a bigger one ? I guess the economics depend on each treatment.

Fostering innovation is of course important. Which is why you can deduct a lot of your R&D expenses from your taxes. Again, each country has its own tax code, so generalization might not be possible, but in a lot of cases, the hard work of finding new drugs is funded by the citizens, through tax breaks or research grants. The public sector, via universities and public labs, is a major player (although not the only one, of course) in the medical field.

Let's not forget that forcing people to stay with their employer to maintain insurance coverage is also a way to stifle innovation. How many of those workers could have and would have started a business, if not for the fear to loose everything in case of medical issues ? Surely the republicains would love to remove those kind of barriers to worker movement and innovation, wouldn't they ?

The universal healthcare system obviously isn't free. Altough some studies, and real life examples elsewhere in the world, showed it wouldn't be the money pit some imagine, it certainly doesn't run on love and compassion and fresh water only. The taxes in my country can show you that. But the social benefits and the peace of mind I enjoy are, in my very own and somewhat biased opinion, worth the cost.

Re: The Amish health care system

#197

Post by kwhitefoot »

One of the most striking things in this article for me was the remark about Amish women having five to ten children. If this is the case and if all women have children then the Amish population should be increasing rapidly. Is it?

This page: https://amishamerica.com/how-fast-are-the-amish-growing/ says that the doubling time is about 19 years.

How do they find enough suitable land to practice their way of life?

Re: The Amish health care system

#198

Post by sonthonax »

jpab wrote: post #54
bluejekyll wrote: post #12

“ The Amish have had a life expectancy in the low 70s since colonial times, when the rest of us were dying at 40 or 50. Since then, Amish life expectancy has stayed the same, and English life expectancy has improved to the high 70s.”

I found that curious. Why were the Amish living so much longer than others in colonial times?

Humans would frequently live beyond 70 years in preindustrial societies. If you look at ages when colonial aristocrats died in colonial America you'll see a similar trend.

What pushed life expectancy down was infant mortality, and communicable disease. Amish would have likely lived for longer than average simply because they didn’t live in cities.

There’s also the obvious problem of the methods of old statistics, did it include infant mortality and childbirth deaths?

Re: The Amish health care system

#199

Post by barry-cotter »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #197

One of the most striking things in this article for me was the remark about Amish women having five to ten children. If this is the case and if all women have children then the Amish population should be increasing rapidly. Is it? This page: https://amishamerica.com/how-fast-are-the-amish-growing/ says that the doubling time is about 19 years. How do they find enough suitable land to practice their way of life?

Agricultural land is cheap and plentiful if you don’t want to live within commuting distance of a major city. The US is really big and comparatively empty. Wyoming is bigger than the United Kingdom and has less than 600,000 people and there are plenty of other states with an abundance of farm land.

Re: The Amish health care system

#200

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

dehrmann wrote: post #170

> This is how I feel about the Amish belief that health insurance companies are evil, and that good Christians must have no traffic with them. That's not really what they believe. Here's a better description[1]: > Amish commonly believe that commercial insurance plans undermine the religious duty of community accountability They don't pay social security tax (really, an insurance premium_ for the same reason, and wer…

> Amish commonly believe that commercial insurance plans undermine the religious duty of community accountability

As an atheist I find the Amish's religious view quite attractive. Ignoring god, it becomes plain humanitarianism and about helping each other.

Aside: I suppose one could well argue that non-commercial insurance plans would be just a formalisation of community accountability. Edit: and that's pretty much exactly what's described in the article, only without calling it insurance.

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