Nation falls further behind peers in terms of health care, report says
Pay more and get less. Is that the American way?
Pay more and get less. Is that the American way?
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U.S. health care lagging
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Openmind
Well-Known Member
It sure will be if the GOP gets its way!
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Only if one is a biased group that creates bogus measures of health care.
Openmind
Well-Known Member
Can you demonstrate those "bogus" measures with facts?
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
For starters every measure on that survey is based on telephone surveys:
"The Commonwealth Fund's study has other problems. It was based on telephone interviews with patients and doctors. So it grades nations on people's perceptions without controlling for their expectations. Yet patients who live in a country with long waits for medical care and bureaucratic inefficiency may have low expectations."
Secondly it uses circular reasoning, saying that since national health care is better then countries that have national health care will be scored higher.
lastly it admits that of the five areas measure the US raniks first in the only one that actually matters: this measure they labeled "right care' and basically it means that patients were given effective treatment for what they have.
So yes, according to the Commonwealth survey the US gives the best care in exactly the thing you mentioned in this post of yours to which I am responding.
There are other reasons why the Commonwealth survey is a bad instrument but those are the three I choose to mention
http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/another-bogus-report-card-for-u-s-medical-care.html
And an even better more detailed source:
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/230340/commonwealth-fund-rags-u-s-health-care/avik-roy
Openmind
Well-Known Member
How often have you (or your children) experienced the care given in other countries? And what makes you think you can judge from YOUR EXPERIENCE what other countries offer or how satisfied THEY should be with their health care versus how satisfied you are with yours?
As I said before, I am in a pretty unique position of having experienced health care for several years in several countries. . .including 4 US States and 3 (4 if you consider Italy) European countries and Australia, if you consider that my son and his family are depending on Australian health care since they have lived there for the last 8 years.
I know, not only through "studies," but through my own (and my children's) experience. You have NO PROOF that other health care are not truly better than the US health care. . .but you do have a proof that we pay 2 to 3 times more for what we have, and that many people are uninsured.
You can keep your illusions (I guess, it would be too painful to realize you've been wrong all these years), but it doesn't make your illusions REALITY!
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Nothing I said was based on my experience so my lack of experience would in no way be a liability. The survey that was quoted in the Op did base their finding on the experiences of people in different countries. No doubt many of them did not have experience in multiple countries so your criticism is really an additional criticism of the survey.
The study in the OP gave the evidence that the US health care was better than other countries when it ranked the US number one on the only meaningful measure they had. I would personally reject their claim but if you accept the study yourself then you would have to conclude that the US is #1 in providing effective care.
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
You asked me to demonstrate that the survey used bogus measures and then when I did you completely changed the subject and addressed several things that are not even a part of this thread.
Is this a language barrier or something else? Either way it is frustrating to me and makes me question your integrity as a person who should want to engage in honest discussion.
I like that you are on this forum since you bring a new perspective, but in truth when you told me you were quitting and explained your reasons I thought that you could just as easily have been complaining about yourself rather than complaining about others and thought that in some ways the forum would have been better off without that particular style of posting. Do I dream that you would stay but change your style? Yes, but to paraphrase someone (you) here sometimes I feel like you are from a different universe.
Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Preventable causes are almost always those things that people bring upon themselves through lifestyle choices like smoking and drinking and bad eating. You are right that this is the area where the US does not fare as well as other countries. Maybe the gov should force people to make better choices?
Ir is hardly appropriate to judge a health care system based on the bad choices of the people who live in a country.
Given that in non-preventable disease treatment the US does better than just about every other country we should really be amazed that our doctors do as well as they do in treating a bunch of lazy fat violent self-abusive slobs as us.
"Preventable causes" refers to diseases and injuries. "Non preventable" causes of death would be those causes that medical science can not cure. We're talking about causes of death, not causes of disease.
The number one "lifestyle choice" cause of diseases is smoking. Americans are a long way from being the heaviest smokers.
What we have is the most expensive medical care in the world, more deaths from preventable causes than other advanced nations, and an ideology that won't allow so much as a rational discussion of meaningful health care reform. When the problems with our system are pointed out, we get responses like, "Oh, it's just our lifestyle", or "Other nations are lying about their costs", or just a chant: "socialized medicine, socialized medicine!"
There is no evidence that I know of showing that our higher death rates from diseases and injuries that could be cured and healed is due to "lifestyle choices."
Lets break this down...
Infections are a real problem but why ? Consider that in America providers cannot operate long at a loss. With socialized medicine, that is not a factor. When the income dries up the work stops. Of course they simply delay service to accomodate the money supply but the point remains. How can providers address the need for efficiency when everyone seeks to pay them less ? Fraud of course is one way, another is, to put it politely, haste. How many more procedures have to be squeezed into a day now ? Maybe we need a few more minutes to mop up ? Just a thought...
Cancer screening ok might help but are there reasons why cancer happens ? Nobody knows for sure but we read all the time that this thing or that impacts the odds. I suspect that in more than a few instances lifestyle choices come into play.
Diabetes clearly a lifestyle issue. Its Type II thats epidemic and totally preventable as well as part and parcel of the great American lifestyle.
Complications from surgery see infections. Same issues. But also a result of lifestyle choices (diabetes, heart disease, hypertension etc). We had this Indian guy at work who was "portly" and it occurred to me that he was the firwt large Indian person I'd seen. I asked my Indian colleague is that was more common in India and he said it was unusual there. Its anything but unusual here (and I admit that I do resemble that remark).
Just food for thought.
We pay more, yet have to hastily mop up after surgery, and risk more infections? If we pay more, why don't we get better service?
Socialized medicine is the system they have in Spain, where doctors are actually state employees. Most of the nations we're talking about (Canada, Australia, most of the nations of Western Europe) do not have socialized medicine.
If there is some reason why Americans get cancer more often than others, then we'd better do some real research and find out what that reason is. I've never seen any evidence that is so, but maybe.
Type II diabetes is often a result of inactivity and obesity, true. Americans tend to be obese more often than most other nations, true. That could explain a small part of why we have higher health costs and worse outcomes, but let's not use that as an excuse just to sit back and say, "It's all lifestyle choices, nothing wrong with our health care system."
It is anything but unusual here, true. It is a giant health problem. Smoking is another, even bigger problem. Neither obesity nor smoking leads to infectious diseases as far as I know.
Yes, and I've added some more. Feast.
people expect to get treated here when they need it as opposed to when the government can afford it. I can get my car fixed much cheaper if I can afford to wait until a moonlighting mechanic has time, it costs more at his day job where there is overhead, regulations, taxes, bureaucracy etc.
semantics aside it still boils down to the same thing, the govt is paying and you wait till they can afford it.
they study this every day. eating fish helps in Japan they say, less cow in other places, vegetarian in India, aluminum cookware, etc etc etc. I see reports issued all the time (some conflicting of course) but they ARE trying to sort it out
why ? docs cannot MAKE you eat better or MAKE you more active. the govt (surgeon genreral plus all the health ins companies) has been trying to promote healthier living for generations. its only gotten worse. and its not like people don't know, they just don't care. gimme a pill and leave me alone. up until they hear that they are going to lose a foot due to infection and their diabetes. sorry, not willing to hang this one on our health care system
I think this got a little out of place. lots of reasons behind infectious diseases from overuse of antibiotics to (some say) over use of anti bacterial everything (allows our auto immune systems to get lazy and less effective). one could pin this on our demands to just 'gimme a pill'.
yum !
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Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
I would suggest that you have your definition wrong.
Preventable includes anything we could do to prevent a death that would be unexpected. Improving lifestyle would be something we could do just as would not giving patients infections in the hospital.
In fact the commonweath study that started this thread specifically says:
"In health care, "prevention" can mean different things, from encouraging overall healthy lifestyles to avoiding certain diseases, to using medical checkups and screenings to catch disease early"
It then goes on to make the bogus statement that:
"..as many as 80 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, which means they have little access to a regular physician, checkups, preventive services, affordable prescription drugs, dental care or screening tests."
There is no reason for a person to lack in most of those (see the thread on the guy who went to jail to get care and see the rebuttal that proved that he had access to multiple sources of care). Dental care is the one exception.
Here is an actual scientific article on the subject:
The Preventable Causes of Death in the United States: Comparative Risk Assessment of Dietary, Lifestyle, and Metabolic Risk Factors
Here is the conclusion:
Conclusions
Smoking and high blood pressure, which both have effective interventions, are responsible for the largest number of deaths in the US. Other dietary, lifestyle, and metabolic risk factors for chronic diseases also cause a substantial number of deaths in the US.
Here is the link:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000058
