Quote:
Originally Posted by dippin
Have you actually read anything at all that has been posted on this thread? It is not just life expectancy that the US does worse than other developed nations. It's infant mortality (not too many homicides there), it's number of doctor visits, it's hospital beds available, it's yearly mortality rates, it's adult mortality rates net of homicides and injuries, it's newborns with low birth weight, it's mortality by infectious disease, and so on and so on.
|
I did read the report. Regarding infant mortality, in the US the adolescent 15-19) fertility rate 41 per 10,000 compared to Canada's 14. A statistic like this can have an impact on infant mortality rates due to simply understanding or not understanding prenatal needs and not the quality of available health care. If a 15 year old girl is embarrassed by her pregnancy, hides it, and doesn't get proper prenatal care the odds of a healthy birth goes down. If she determines she is pregnant early, goes to the doctor, and follows doctors order the odds of a healthy birth goes up. All I have been saying is in order to come to correct conclusions, you have to drill down into the numbers.
Quote:
|
On one post you are saying that the US healthcare system is wonderful because you don't want to live longer anyways, on the other you are saying that all statistics are wrong....
|
In my living will, I want my family to pull the plug. I am more concerned with the quality of life not the duration. Why is that difficult to understand? If I get old and can not think clearly, have sex, eat what I want, function in society, control bodily functions, my wife has been instructed to leave a loaded gun within my reach.
---------- Post added at 03:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:58 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_dux
ace, I knew you would find a way to attempt to dodge and weave around this one.
|
I acknowledge the description "death panels" is inappropriate. I have no problem with living wills, or doctors being paid to assist people when they set one up. However, I have a concern outside of this primarily concerning how limited resources get allocated when I generally don't trust Washington bureaucrats. You and Obama can continue to dismiss this, but it won't go away.
---------- Post added at 03:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:02 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by dippin
How do differing rates of homicide explain higher infant mortality? higher mortality to infectious diseases? Fewer hospital beds per capita available?[COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]
|
I am not sure what "higher mortality to infectious diseases" stat you refer to, that leads to the conclusion the US health care system is inferior to other developed nations, can you clarify?
Fewer hospital beds per capita is interesting but what about doctors per 10,000 people in the report. The US has 26. Canada has 19. Canada has 101 nurses the US has 94. But the US has 177 "other health care providers", Canada did not show a number. So what do you conclude from that?
After reading the report I conclude that is takes an active imagination to conclude with any degree of real certainty that the health care system of any developed nation is materially better or worse than another.
---------- Post added at 03:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:09 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martian
You've descended into absurdity again. I have no idea what you could possibly be trying to say with this. It's just meaningless words.
I can only assume you're referring to the difference in homicide rates. No, I did not factor that in. Instead, I excluded the impact of homicide rates entirely from the US statistics, while not altering the statistics from any other country. It was a fairly simple subtraction problem. Given that homicide tends to be fatal, we can assume that the mortality rates in Canada and the UK are including murders in their numbers.
There is no possible way this data could be weighted more strongly in favour of the US, and the US healthcare system still comes out looking worse.
None of this is even slightly relevant to the discussion. Lifetime statistics are meaningless here, because you're not comparing directly to overall mortality statistics. Homicide rates amongst 18-25 year olds is relevant when viewed in the context of mortality in general amongst 18-25 year olds. It's not relevant when viewing the overall mortality rate. I have no interest in going through this age group by age group, although you're welcome to do so if you really think that will bear any fruit.
Homicide rates are higher in the US than in Canada, and I'm pretty sure they're higher than in the UK as well. I'd be glad to discuss the reasons for that in a separate thread.
None of this has any relevance whatsoever to a discussion regarding healthcare.
Let's move on. Please.
|
Just for fun, I created my own mortality table in Excel so I could easily do "what ifs". Population 10,000, maximum age 100, death rates systematically increase each decade for the population start with 1 death per year in year 1 ending with 925 deaths in year 100, but 200 deaths per year from 90 to 99. Life expectancy was 73.29. Then simply adding 200 homicide deaths in year 25 (meaning year 100 deaths went down to 725) the life expectancy dropped to 71.79. Homicide rates makes a big enough difference to "move the needle".
You can say "oh, you just made those numbers up", or "thats not relevant" or whatever - but again my point is I understand what I did and the assumptions I made. the WHO report is not clear and I challenge you to clearly explain how they made their adjustments to life expectancy and why.
---------- Post added at 03:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:20 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rekna
Ace's arguments sometimes reminds me of this:
|
LOL, This is more accurate:
I like to think I am cutting edge
---------- Post added at 03:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:32 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shauk
Also, I win.
|
Not so fast!