Posted on 11/24/2011 8:45:20 AM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
It is LIFESTYLE!
NOT substandard healthcare!
Poor diet, lack of exercise, drug & alcohol abuse....
One of the many problems with our healthcare system is the government is deeply involved in all aspects of it....which drives up cost
Anybody on medicaid runs to the hospital or clinic with a running nose or less because it's not on their nickel....
Government refuses to reform tort laws so doctors do multiple expensive tests to simply CVA on insurance costs or lawsuits
Get government out of the picture and costs will be driven down...
That's my guess and there's where I blame the Republicans for not doing more about that when they had the numbers. That opened up the way for Obamacare later.
Sounds right; I would love to see these figures adjusted demographically, so that apples are compared to apples.
If you think back, healthcare costs were rising with inflation. But they didn’t really take off until clinton got into office. He didn’t manage to push hillarycare through, but they did manage to regulate and force a lot of extra expenses into the system.
For one thing, it was cheaper just to pay your doctor than it is to have forced insurance. Back then, it was just between you and your doctor. Now, it’s between you, your doctor, the insurance company, the lawyers, and the government regulators, and all those guys need to get paid. Doctors are getting paid less, and insurers more.
I couldn’t help noticing all those shiny new insurance buildings going up all over the place in the clinton years. Who was paying for that, and for all the expensive workers sitting in those offices?
That’s basically why healthcare has become unaffordable. As to the death rates, I suspect that someone is cooking the books.
In many cases the life expectancy discrepancy can be attributed entirely to voluntary choices.
And it only costs $50,000 a pop. But don't worry, Medicare pays for it, so its free.
This has been reported on ad nauseum, and the true answer always gets comes back out.
You are right about lifestyle.
Or, more precisely, deathstyle.
Fat addicted welfare losers wallowing on the couch.
Big Farm and Big Pharma. Telling us what to eat and what to “cure” us when when we get sick from what we eat.
My general point is that statistical comparisons like this are nearly pointless because they don't take into account the meaningful differences from one country to another. Some countries, for example, have very low health care expenses because they simply don't pay for non-critical medical prodecures (and by this I mean these procedures help address a medical condition but don't necessarily extend someone's life) that we consider "routine" here in the U.S. Another Freeper made an excellent point about joint replacements, for example.
We also do a lot of medical procedures in this country that have nothing to do with treating a medical condition (most cosmetic surgery, for example).
And I'd point out that life expectancy figures -- even if they are accurate -- do not necessarily correlate directly to a country's quality of medical care. High mortality rates among young people due to accidents and crime, for example, will diminish overall life expectancy even in a country where it is common for people to live well into their 80s in a state of pretty good health. A young person who dies under these circumstances could very well end up in a morgue without ever setting foot in a hospital or doctor's office after the age of 5. So this type of unfortunate situation has almost no bearing on measuring the quality of medical care they received.
When the American statistics are normalized to reflect European ancestry, educational attainment and life-expectancy rates run almost identical to Europe’s. But I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about it.
We have certain high-risk groups, namely, blacks, rednecks and queers. The first murder one another, the second smoke and drink themselves to death, and the third pass noxious diseases amongst their kind.
This has nothing to do with health care. It has everything to do with lifestyle and diet. Many Americans are far less active and walk far less than those in other countries.
It does correctly state though, we do very well against cancer - and we also score high for heart attacks too.
Our costs are high for other reasons (medical insurance, fraud, etc.). In general though, the fact that we don’t live as long has nothing to do with “health care”.
Americans fall into two camps, generally. Those who worry doctors with every ailment and those who do not go to the doctors until it is too late.
I’m fixin to wait till its too late.
Most of it is how we document birth deaths. Most countries don’t count them until after a few weeks while we count them before birth. Just more junk agenda driven science.
Pray for America
I checked into life expectancy of minority Americans and was surprised to find that Hispanic Americans live longer on average (80 years) than white Americans. So if we have a segment of Americans, Hispanics, who supposedly are some of the least-wealthy Americans, living lives that are on average longer than socialist medicine-operating European countries with little minority populations, wouldn’t that prove the superiority of the American medical system? According to the nitwit European socialists it should.
35 years ago a doctor told us to not eat any food with more than 5 ingredients. We are both 85 and use zero medications.
Stay away from processed foods, read the labels. How can a frozen food with 20 or more ingredients be good for your body. For every drug there is usually a natural product or products to help with the problem. The internet is a valuable source for health answers. Look up “Deaths by prescription drugs, both correctly prescribed and not, the numbers are huge. Eat right and stay away from medication as much as possible.
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