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U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

latimes.com

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Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#91

Post by tdfx »

dtkuhn wrote: post #55
npsimons wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is health interesting to anyone? Viewed in a more hackish light: here's a problem; how can we fix it?

(1) Help Medicare track cost-effectiveness of tests/procedures involving really expensive technology (development of which will only get more & more expensive); (2) Teach Medicare patients how to become actual consumers of health care (how to shop for price/compare treatment options) -- i.e. help transfer some of the burden of reducing cost from payers to patients w/out causing mass hysteria

I don't think #2 will work without reforming the system to incentivize that kind of behavior. My grandmother goes to the podiatrist to have him cut her toenails (diabetes). There's barely any risk of her doing it herself, but he charges $200 every week for this treatment to Medicare. With her supplemental insurance, she pays nothing for these visits out of pocket. Why wouldn't she go?

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#92

Post by onetwothreefour »

tptacek wrote: post #43

Worth remembering some things here: * The US is thought by some economists to have an artificially high infant mortality because the US is more rigorous about reporting live births than other countries which might write up the same events as stillbirths. * Outcomes in the US for chronic serious illnesses are at or near the top of the rankings. * Life expectancy figures in the US are anchored down by suicides and, mor…

None of what you said is either backed by facts or is actually worth remembering if you're trying to fix the problem.

I always read your replies to threads about health care in the US and I'm always left with two thoughts: "what does that even mean and how does it further the conversation?"

If you bothered to actually follow the link to the data (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/CPOP/DBASSE_080393), you'd see that none of what you said is accurate. The US is either at the end or, sometimes, in the middle of the rankings for everything. The Violence graph is particularly interesting.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#93

Post by tptacek »

grecy wrote: post #87
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be shocking if the US had infant mortality rates that were apples-apples close to Sweden. Sweden has just 9 million people, and they're very homogenous. The lede on stories about US infant mortality isn't that Sweden outdoes us. It's things like "the US ranks alongside Qatar and Croatia". Those are the assertions I think we need to be more careful about.

> Sweden has just 9 million people, and they're very homogenous. The population has no impact when we're looking at per-capita statistics. Canada and Australia have the highest immigration rates in the world, so their homogeneity is going down, yet statistics like these are not going up.

That's silly. Compare Sweden to Washington State, which is similarly sized, more diverse, and has the second best infant mortality stats in the US.

The point is that Sweden is a cherry-picked comparison.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#94

Post by tptacek »

onetwothreefour wrote: post #92
tptacek wrote: post #43

Worth remembering some things here: * The US is thought by some economists to have an artificially high infant mortality because the US is more rigorous about reporting live births than other countries which might write up the same events as stillbirths. * Outcomes in the US for chronic serious illnesses are at or near the top of the rankings. * Life expectancy figures in the US are anchored down by suicides and, mor…

None of what you said is either backed by facts or is actually worth remembering if you're trying to fix the problem. I always read your replies to threads about health care in the US and I'm always left with two thoughts: "what does that even mean and how does it further the conversation?" If you bothered to actually follow the link to the data ( http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DBASSE/CPOP/DBASSE_080393 ), you'd…

It would be helpful if you could be clearer about which of those points "isn't backed by the facts" and which are "not worth considering", assuming those are disjoint sets.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#95

Post by tptacek »

pcurve wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pat way to dismiss any ranking of countries for health outcomes. If you want to come up with a way to produce a low rank for the US on some holistic indicator, you will not have a hard time doing it. Are we the "healthiest" country in the world? Certainly not! We don't even have mandatory military service. The issue here is that we need to be clear on what lessons we're trying to draw from the rankings. Peop…

Is it better to have a nation with 2.5% diabetic population than 6.5% population, if it meant that the nation wouldn't have the best (but still very good) diabetic treatment outcome? Is that a good trade-off? Probably. I replied, because often apologists for American healthcare (I'm not saying you are one) neglect to mention why we have a good treatment outcome for certain conditions.

See this is the problem. If you're making a list of "most diabetic countries", sure, stick the US at the top of the list and start thinking about public policy to reduce diabetes and obesity. But don't blindly try to use that ranking to make policy decisions about how we provide health care, which you imply by saying people are "apologizing" for US care, because making doctors and hospitals more accessible won't make people eat better.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#96

Post by tptacek »

grecy wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not help at all that we have overseas military commitments at a scale no other industrial country would match. The suicide rate for veterans is wildly higher than for civilians.

The US has a lower "active military per capita" than lots of OECD countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

Do you not see the difference between "active military" and deployed troops?

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#97

Post by maxerickson »

roc wrote: post #90
maxerickson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most health care systems are grappling with costs and the demand for care outstripping the supply. It isn't a solved problem.

They're grappling with costs because their professional ethics require they treat people who can't pay, yet their business obligations require they don't treat those people until it's serious and likely expensive. So because X number of people get X-Rays that will never be paid for, providers have to try to find some amount they can charge those who do pay, to cover the difference. And the trick with that, is that in…

I meant national health systems. Costs are going up everywhere (or at least, spending) and lots of places are having some issues providing enough treatment.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#98

Post by grecy »

tptacek wrote: post #93
grecy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sweden has just 9 million people, and they're very homogenous. The population has no impact when we're looking at per-capita statistics. Canada and Australia have the highest immigration rates in the world, so their homogeneity is going down, yet statistics like these are not going up.

That's silly. Compare Sweden to Washington State, which is similarly sized, more diverse, and has the second best infant mortality stats in the US. The point is that Sweden is a cherry-picked comparison.

> The point is that Sweden is a cherry-picked comparison.

Choose any other OECD country then. The results are the same.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#99

Post by grecy »

tptacek wrote: post #96
grecy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has a lower "active military per capita" than lots of OECD countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

Do you not see the difference between "active military" and deployed troops?

Of course, but I can't find statistics for that per country per capita.

I would be very surprised if countries like New Zealand and Australia do not have more deployed troops per capita than America does.

Re: U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says

#100

Post by tptacek »

grecy wrote: post #99
tptacek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not see the difference between "active military" and deployed troops?

Of course, but I can't find statistics for that per country per capita. I would be very surprised if countries like New Zealand and Australia do not have more deployed troops per capita than America does.

Not counting the Navy, the US has at least double the per-capita rate of deployed troops. But that's misleading too, because most of New Zealand's deployments aren't hostile; a US soldier is far more likely to see combat than an NZ soldier.
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