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This topic is not about the American Invasion of Iraq. Stop. - Page 23 |
On March 31 2012 06:52 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2012 02:51 Defacer wrote:On March 30 2012 20:07 DoubleReed wrote:
The BMI 'obese' thing is really stupid. BMI has been shown again and again to be a terrible indicator of obesity and unhealthy lifestyle. Please don't cite that as an indicator that Americans have horrible lifestyles.
Do you actually have sources for the rest of your claims? Because I don't believe any of that, but I'll be glad to be proven wrong. Statistics all from the OECD.org (Organization for Economic Cooporation Development), an international organization that has been tracking these kind of stats globally since the 1960s. They have a statistics website (http://stats.oecd.org/) where you can compare countries across all kinds of health and economic indicators from as early as 1960. Of course I didn't collate this information. I'm referencing other people's work. http://247wallst.com/2012/03/29/countries-that-spend-the-most-on-health-care/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/obesity-rates-rising-developed-fattest-world_n_1294212.htmlOh yes, I'm wrong about smoking. Europeans smoke far more than Americans. Put down that hamburger for a second and see the obvious .Obesity is an indicator of poor lifestyle, and increases your chances of heart disease, diabetes and even minor issues (like back and foot problems) which can require ongoing medical attention. Some people are genetically disposed to being fat. But some people just eat way too fucking much and exercise too little. Which is preventable. Edit: I encourage all of you to check out http://stats.oecd.org/
I'm not a statistician but it's an amazingly cool resource. ...my problem with your post wasn't that "obesity is ok, and is not a problem." It was that BMI is a terrible gauge for obesity and being overweight. It's literally just height and weight. There are much better indicators, like % body fat and such. You completely ignored my main criticism of what you said and talked about the issues of obesity. Oh yeah, and you told me to "put down that hamburger" because you're just such a classy human being.
The definition of obesity is a BMI > 30. Definition of being overweight: BMI > 25.
So you can't blame someone for using BMI to show that on average Americans are pretty fat.
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Have you guys seen this image? First time I saw it, it blew my mind.
Maybe universal health care can help to fix this?
![[image loading]](http://blogs.ngm.com/.a/6a00e0098226918833012876a6070f970c-800wi)
(source: http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html )
Edit: the graph would be even more interesting if, instead of dollars spent per capita, it would show percentage used of GDP per capita.
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Holy shit. Japan is killing it. And I can't help but consider how different their diet is from Americans. That has to be a factor.
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Yeah I watched the documentary "King Corn", it's about all the corn sugar that's in the food. No wonder western countries are so fat...
Other documentary "Food Revolution" is pretty interesting too.
But the UK is also overweight, and they spend a lot less on health care than the US.
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Healthcare, private or government-run, isn't going to help people who eat themselves to death unfortunately. It might save you from your first heart attack but your overly obese body is going to die faster than a healthier one. This is one reason life expectancy is lower in the US at least. We have this fake health craze where people think one small thing is going to make them in better shape and general wellness is thrown out the door. 
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Wait, we spend a lot on it, but we never visit the doctor? And we die quicker?
Jesus. I don't understand why we demonize socialized healthcare so much. It has issues, but our healthcare system is such a mess.
I'm not convinced privatized healthcare makes sense. There's something wrong with giving incentives to people to deny healthcare to people. It's just not the way it should work. I'd much rather healthcare companies not try to turnout profits but instead focus on taking care of their consumers. But that's just not the way the capitalism works.
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Well, I am convinced that there is something funky about food in this country. From my own experiences where me and my ex-wife would eat once a day in the US and gain weight, and return to Italy and eat 10x as much in quantity and lose weight (and regain skin tone according to everyone over there). Anecdote perhaps, but hard to deny it.
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Obamacare is actually GOPcare because they wrote the bill, not Obama.
Also, some Americans are gonna defend GOPcare and their current system no matter what. It's American and therefore the best for America. Stats about other countries and other systems have no meaning to them. They still believe US systems are best, even the current one. They really believe if the US had the same system as Switzerland, it would be more expensive than the current one with worse results. They really believe that no matter what.
People of the US, you deserve better than Obamacare. If it doesn't get repealed nothing fundamental will change and you will have another status quo for a few decades.
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On the charts that show Life Expectancy at Birth... what you want to see is something that takes out automobile deaths and murders.
Once you get past 24 or so, and have outgrown the window where you are likely to either get drunk and die in a car crash, or shot in a drug deal...all country's numbers tighten up as far as life expectancy.
Below sort of explains what i mean :
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/09/natural-life-expectancy-in-united.html
If you've sorted the data in the dynamic table, you find that without accounting for the incidence of fatal injuries, the United States ties for 14th of the 16 nations listed. But once fatal injuries are taken into account, U.S. "natural" life expectancy from birth ranks first among the richest nations of the world.
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The whole "infant mortality and life expectancy are good indicators of health care quality among developed nations" has been debunked a thousand times. If you pay close attention, almost everyone that offers this information isn't really interested in the healthcare debate or all that knowledgeable about the healthcare debate. It's just a popular argument that has apparently made an impact on them so they pop into a thread to repeat it.
btw, that's true for almost all threads of any kind. The majority of people that post in a thread only make 1 post to give their 2 cents. The people having back and forth discussions are the minority, but eventually they make up the majority of the posts as they continue to discuss after everyone else has left.
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But once fatal injuries are taken into account, U.S. "natural" life expectancy from birth ranks first among the richest nations of the world.
Hey now, we aren't looking for facts and data, we want shocking pictures and graphs. Clearly the lower life expectancy can only be attributed to capitalism and corn. Why are you trying to demonize socialized medicine?
/sarcasm
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On March 31 2012 12:49 liberal wrote:Show nested quote +But once fatal injuries are taken into account, U.S. "natural" life expectancy from birth ranks first among the richest nations of the world. Hey now, we aren't looking for facts and data, we want shocking pictures and graphs. Clearly the lower life expectancy can only be attributed to capitalism and corn. Why are you trying to demonize socialized medicine? /sarcasm
Why are you trying to make excuses for America's obesity, propensity for fatal injuries, or lack of cost effectiveness? As if these things can't help explain why your healthcare system is about 2 or 3 times more costly then it needs to be?
But hey, I'm sure if you got rid of all people under 24, all the cars, all the immigrants*, all the unemployed, your Healthcare would be perfectly sufficient for your country! You fixed healthcare!
/end sarcasm
*liberal, made an early argument attributing poor infant morality rates to the hetereogenity of America's population.
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The fact that doctors have to carry insanely expensive malpractice insurance has a lot to do with high healtcare costs. As is the system could use lots of changes, but doesn't need to be socialized, especially on the federal level.
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On March 31 2012 14:16 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2012 12:49 liberal wrote:But once fatal injuries are taken into account, U.S. "natural" life expectancy from birth ranks first among the richest nations of the world. Hey now, we aren't looking for facts and data, we want shocking pictures and graphs. Clearly the lower life expectancy can only be attributed to capitalism and corn. Why are you trying to demonize socialized medicine? /sarcasm Why are you trying to make excuses for America's obesity, propensity for fatal injuries, or lack of cost effectiveness? As if these things can't help explain why your healthcare system is about 2 or 3 times more costly then it needs to be? But hey, I'm sure if you got rid of all people under 24, all the cars, all the immigrants*, all the unemployed, your Healthcare would be perfectly sufficient for your country! You fixed healthcare! /end sarcasm *liberal, made an early argument attributing poor infant morality rates to the hetereogenity of America's population.
The argument that was presented had nothing at all to do with the cost of health care. It was about how life expectancy relates to the health care system. I guess you missed that point...
If you want to talk about reducing costs, perhaps here is a better place to start than the examples you sarcastically offered:
WASHINGTON — The official in charge of Medicare and Medicaid for the last 17 months says that 20 percent to 30 percent of health spending is “waste” that yields no benefit to patients, and that some of the needless spending is a result of onerous, archaic regulations enforced by his agency.
The official, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, listed five reasons for what he described as the “extremely high level of waste.” They are overtreatment of patients, the failure to coordinate care, the administrative complexity of the health care system, burdensome rules and fraud.
“Much is done that does not help patients at all,” Dr. Berwick said, “and many physicians know it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/health/policy/parting-shot-at-waste-by-key-obama-health-official.html?_r=3&emc=eta1
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On March 31 2012 11:45 Miyoshino wrote:
Obamacare is actually GOPcare because they wrote the bill, not Obama.
Also, some Americans are gonna defend GOPcare and their current system no matter what. It's American and therefore the best for America. Stats about other countries and other systems have no meaning to them. They still believe US systems are best, even the current one. They really believe if the US had the same system as Switzerland, it would be more expensive than the current one with worse results. They really believe that no matter what.
People of the US, you deserve better than Obamacare. If it doesn't get repealed nothing fundamental will change and you will have another status quo for a few decades.
I hate calling it Obamacare because it wasn't really him that drafted it, but for the life of me I don't understand how you can call it GOPcare when essentially no GOP'ers voted for it. Also bringing up fringe arguments that are not common without any significant support isn't helping move this discussion along.
Based on legal experts seems like the health care mandate will be thrown out. To me it sounds like an additional tax anyway (simply a tax on the healthy more than the sick, as healthy individuals' premiums will increase by a larger margin).
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The root problem of the high cost of medical care in the US is the fact that the industry has become so detached from the free market that there are gross distortions in prices and billing practices. You'd laugh if you actually saw what medical providers charged for something as simple as OTC/generic medicine or incredibly basic and cheap medical supplies.
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Interesting comments. It seems noone is discussing the actual matter before the court, which is whether the Constitution allows the executive branch such broad powers. We should be weary of granting additional power (or allowing it to be seized) to anyone, no matter how much we think we will like that they want to do.
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I just read this:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g2c3w/iama_french_citizen_and_i_had_to_go_to_the/
I feel for you brothers of America. Really feel for you. A system that benefits for something like 5% of the population (the richest) is supported by at least 50% of the population. People fighting against their own interest. Amazing really. I mean what's the final goal of a civilized country?
For the constitutional thing, I don't know shit.
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On March 31 2012 10:37 Defacer wrote:
Holy shit. Japan is killing it. And I can't help but consider how different their diet is from Americans. That has to be a factor.
Well yeah you can't really go wrong with seafood now can you? 
Asian cuisine is quite light you see, sure they eat steak but its not a 500g piece with hot chips, it would be finely sliced small portions with a tiny bowl of rice and a simply sauce plus some greens.
Healthcare should be free but so much spending goes into the military, it's ridiculous, best option is to move abroad if you are American, only downhill from here it seems. I'm sure an American passport would be well received in Canada or Australia, 
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On March 31 2012 17:46 meatbox wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2012 10:37 Defacer wrote:
Holy shit. Japan is killing it. And I can't help but consider how different their diet is from Americans. That has to be a factor. Well yeah you can't really go wrong with seafood now can you? Asian cuisine is quite light you see, sure they eat steak but its not a 500g piece with hot chips, it would be finely sliced small portions with a tiny bowl of rice and a simply sauce plus some greens. Healthcare should be free but so much spending goes into the military, it's ridiculous, best option is to move abroad if you are American, only downhill from here it seems. I'm sure an American passport would be well received in Canada or Australia,
... Have you ever heard of the phrase "There's no such thing as a free lunch"? Also The US spends almost 50% of its budget on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and Welfare so a lot more of our funding goes to healthcare for the poor than to our troops. Thanks for your generalizations!
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On March 31 2012 18:03 Mordanis wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2012 17:46 meatbox wrote:On March 31 2012 10:37 Defacer wrote:
Holy shit. Japan is killing it. And I can't help but consider how different their diet is from Americans. That has to be a factor. Well yeah you can't really go wrong with seafood now can you? Asian cuisine is quite light you see, sure they eat steak but its not a 500g piece with hot chips, it would be finely sliced small portions with a tiny bowl of rice and a simply sauce plus some greens. Healthcare should be free but so much spending goes into the military, it's ridiculous, best option is to move abroad if you are American, only downhill from here it seems. I'm sure an American passport would be well received in Canada or Australia, ... Have you ever heard of the phrase "There's no such thing as a free lunch"? Also The US spends almost 50% of its budget on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and Welfare so a lot more of our funding goes to healthcare for the poor than to our troops. Thanks for your generalizations!
50%? The money gets lost at some point.
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EPT
