Does America have the world's best health care?

[mooncliff]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Frontline briefly explains the health care system in other major industrial countries.

Basically, the US nominally spends double but has the worst outcome, so if we take the outcomes into consideration, the US spends say four times as much?

Click on
Watch the Full Program Online
then click on a box.
Each segment is about 10 minutes long.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...roundtheworld/

Over the next decade, many patents for drugs will run out. These drugs work nearly as well as the newest patented drugs, and will be really cheap out of patent, so whether you have drug coverage will be less of an issue except for really complicated things like chemotherapy.

A pill containing low-dose aspirin, B vitamin, and low dose cholesterol and blood pressure lowering drugs out of patent costs about 10 cents a day and would drop stroke and heart attack by about half or so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7971456.stm

Vitamin D supplement also costs near nothing and can have a huge effect for the large part of the population that is deficient.

If we can slow the rate of aging, perhaps we can postpone most problems by a decade, so that we will have a longer functional lifespan (and will be forced to keep working until we are 75, ha ha!) and a relatively short decline at the end.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200907105

You can get glasses online for 10-20 dollars instead of 200, so eyeglass coverage is much less of an issue already. I did this, and they are OK, and I saved me, friends and relatives 1,000 dollars so far for spare pairs. 10-20 is actually how much the optometrists pay, but they charge 200.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=89576384

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Frontline briefly explains the health care system in other major industrial countries.

Basically, the US nominally spends double but has the worst outcome, so if we take the outcomes into consideration, the US spends say four times as much?

Click on
Watch the Full Program Online
then click on a box.
Each segment is about 10 minutes long.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...roundtheworld/

Over the next decade, many patents for drugs will run out. These drugs work nearly as well as the newest patented drugs, and will be really cheap out of patent, so whether you have drug coverage will be less of an issue except for really complicated things like chemotherapy.

A pill containing low-dose aspirin, B vitamin, and low dose cholesterol and blood pressure lowering drugs out of patent costs about 10 cents a day and would drop stroke and heart attack by about half or so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7971456.stm

Vitamin D supplement also costs near nothing and can have a huge effect for the large part of the population that is deficient.

If we can slow the rate of aging, perhaps we can postpone most problems by a decade, so that we will have a longer functional lifespan (and will be forced to keep working until we are 75, ha ha!) and a relatively short decline at the end.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200907105

You can get glasses online for 10-20 dollars instead of 200, so eyeglass coverage is much less of an issue already. I did this, and they are OK, and I saved me, friends and relatives 1,000 dollars so far for spare pairs. 10-20 is actually how much the optometrists pay, but they charge 200.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=89576384

Nice work and contribution, maybe even good enough to justify its being posted twice.

[mooncliff]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Oh, sorry, the reason I reposted is that it seemed that the thread branched a lot, and at the end of the branches, this question was left dangling. I tried to put it at the ends of main branches so that people following different branches would be more likely to stumble on the info about the Frontline program.

[touchring]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Take the $450 quote and $180 for getting your pulse and BP checked. With an insurance that might be reduced to ~two-thirds allowable at their paying 80% (after deductible is met) with the rest to you, which still approaches the ridiculous. With Medicare it might be reduced to 25% (that is the cost my "toll" for seeing MD now annually for continuing prescription for hypertension). So what should be the actual charge to all-comers? My guess is that at tops 50% of $630, and that cost still on average outweighs the value of the time spent and intellectual expenditure by the doctor if things were as you described, and there would be exceptions no doubt..

High BP is a symptom, it means that the heart needs to work much harder than it should to push blood around the body. Taking medication without addressing the underlying cause will only 'cure' the symptom. Doctors won't tell you this, as they don't earn money if you get cured eventually.

I've got hereditary high BP, my dad was on hypertension medication at the age of 30 with an average weight, my grandmother had stroke when she was 60, my brother has moderately high BP even though his BMI is 21.

I had 'moderately high' BP, 130-140 range two three years ago. After losing a few pounds, changing to a low fat diet and regularly drinking american ginseng tea, my BP has dropped to 110-120 for the last one year. No medication needed.

[*T*]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Link to Guardian article

It was July 2007 and Potter, a senior executive at giant US healthcare firm Cigna, was visiting relatives in the poverty-ridden mountain districts of northeast Tennessee. He saw an advert in a local paper for a touring free medical clinic at a fairground just across the state border in Wise County, Virginia.

Potter, who had worked at Cigna for 15 years, decided to check it out. What he saw appalled him. Hundreds of desperate people, most without any medical insurance, descended on the clinic from out of the hills. People queued in long lines to have the most basic medical procedures carried out free of charge. Some had driven more than 200 miles from Georgia. Many were treated in the open air. Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements.

For Potter it was a dreadful realisation that healthcare in America had failed millions of poor, sick people and that he, and the industry he worked for, did not care about the human cost of their relentless search for profits. "It was over-powering. It was just more than I could possibly have imagined could be happening in America," he told the Observer

Potter resigned shortly afterwards. Last month he testified in Congress, becoming one of the few industry executives to admit that what its critics say is true: healthcare insurance firms push up costs, buy politicians and refuse to pay out when many patients actually get sick. In chilling words he told a Senate committee: "I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick: all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

High BP is a symptom, it means that the heart needs to work much harder than it should to push blood around the body. Taking medication without addressing the underlying cause will only 'cure' the symptom. Doctors won't tell you this, as they don't earn money if you get cured eventually.

I've got hereditary high BP, my dad was on hypertension medication at the age of 30 with an average weight, my grandmother had stroke when she was 60, my brother has moderately high BP even though his BMI is 21.

I had 'moderately high' BP, 130-140 range two three years ago. After losing a few pounds, changing to a low fat diet and regularly drinking american ginseng tea, my BP has dropped to 110-120 for the last one year. No medication needed.

Can you aver that the only things that have changed in your lifestyle in the past two to three years ago are the three you mentioned?

You suggest a damning point with regard to some doctors, damning from the perspective I choose. The derivation of the word "doctor" is from "teacher." How many healthcare doctors even know that would be a good question. I recently had lunch with two board certified general surgeons and I brought it up. One didn't know the derivation. I don't know that the derivation of doctor carries with it some burden for doctors to actually make a serious effort to educate the patients with regard to whatever illness or health they may have, but to my standards one sign of a good doctor is to what degree he/she strives to educate those he encounters as patients.

[Spartacus]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

First, each health care system seems to produce some outcome better than others. I've forgotten which ones, but some are really good at acute injury/trauma (cuts, burns, etc ...) someare really good at specific types of cancer, etc. ... .

This may have more to do with the genetics of the served population, the societal makeup, and other factors than health care per se.

Second,

You have to know who's making the claim.

It's like when some United Nations committee said Canada has the highest standard of life in the world.

This meant, when it happened, FOR EVERYONE. Women, children, white adult males, recent immigrants (IMHO Canada doesn't do enough for this last group). As I understand it, Japan was bumped in that instance because minorities and women have fewer rights as a persisting historical/sociological circumstance.

But if you're a tall white handsome male with sales (aka BS) skills, doesn't make sense for you to move to Canada. The US is the place for you (read Eric's "Jocks vs Geeks" article of yore).

To answer your specific question, the US's seems best system
1. for the rich
2. for anyone with insurance whose provider will not seek to cancel the policy if they get sick
3. for the insurance industry
4. .... I'm sure there's many more ...

I'd like to know where so many folks get this idea from?

If you base your arguments on such false assumptions then our health insurance / care system will never get reformed.

Blows my mind that Americans think they have great health care!

America is way down the list by any measure and if you measure it in terms of overall "population health" as I do - USA is practically a developing nation.

The great American Health Care System At Work: Imagine if this was in Canada or the UK - Fox News would run a week long special on it.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/wai...ath/index.html

In terms of the human development index, the United States has fallen from second place in 1990 (behind Canada) to 12th place. This decline continued through both the Clinton and Bush administrations, with the US falling to sixth in 1995, ninth in 2000, and 12th in 2005.

In certain respects, the decline is even worse. The US is 34th in infant mortality—with a level comparable to Croatia, Estonia, Poland and Cuba. US school children perform significantly below their counterparts in countries like Canada, France, Germany and Japan, and 14 percent of the population, some 40 million people, lack basic literacy and number skills.

Of the world’s 30 richest nations, which comprise the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States has the highest proportion of children living in poverty, 15 percent, and the most people in prison, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the whole population. With five percent of the world’s population, the US has 24 percent of the world’s prisoners.

The report notes: “Social mobility is now less fluid in the United States than in other affluent nations. Indeed, a poor child born in Germany, France, Canada or one of the Nordic countries has a better chance to join the middle class in adulthood than an American child born into similar circumstances.”

In overall life expectancy, the United States ranks an astonishing 42nd, behind not only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all the countries of Western Europe, but also Israel, Greece, Singapore, Costa Rica and South Korea. The US spends twice as much money per capita on health care as any of these countries, but its citizens live shorter lives.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul200…

The reason is pretty obvious for any non free market fundementalist. In a lot of area's and certainly healthcare the for profit motive does not lead to the best results. When it benefits the whole society it's nothing but pure logic to organize products and or services together. Socialism is not about "big government", it's about people working together and understanding people should not serve the system but the system should serve us.

Free market fundementalism stands in the way of reforms to change the American health system that is not unsucsesful in the logic of how it's set up. The goal is to make money and a lot of money is indeed being made. Most people would agree that should not be the goal of a good healthcare system but still shy away from drawing the logical conclusions or are easily persuaded by right wing demagogy about socialism.

Going into an American hospital is as scary as hell, if feels like your are going into a meat processing plant with lawyers hovering over you at every corner, doctors taking 30 seconds a day to visit, bankruptcy waiting down every hall, paperwork about to get lost at every turn, a new shift of overworked nurses 3 times a day, nurse's assitants many of which do not speak english ...

I highly recommend to ANYONE that has a family member enter a USA hospital overnight to NEVER, EVER leave them alone in there and question EVERYTHING TWICE, THREE TIMES, FOUR TIMES, ...

Living close to the border, I travel up to Canada for dental care (I pay cash) because the general care quality is SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER than in America.

Most of these numbers I believe apply to minorities. Blacks & Mexicans. There does not appear to be enough political will to include them into the mainstream.

And the mainstream can convince themselves the system is "the best" (excluding those few people that don't really "count" anyway)

[K Carlson]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

I'd like to know where so many folks get this idea from?

If you base your arguments on such false assumptions then our health insurance / care system will never get reformed.

Blows my mind that Americans think they have great health care!

America is way down the list by any measure and if you measure it in terms of overall "population health" as I do - USA is practically a developing nation.

The great American Health Care System At Work: Imagine if this was in Canada or the UK - Fox News would run a week long special on it.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/wai...ath/index.html

In terms of the human development index, the United States has fallen from second place in 1990 (behind Canada) to 12th place. This decline continued through both the Clinton and Bush administrations, with the US falling to sixth in 1995, ninth in 2000, and 12th in 2005.

In certain respects, the decline is even worse. The US is 34th in infant mortality—with a level comparable to Croatia, Estonia, Poland and Cuba. US school children perform significantly below their counterparts in countries like Canada, France, Germany and Japan, and 14 percent of the population, some 40 million people, lack basic literacy and number skills.

Of the world’s 30 richest nations, which comprise the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States has the highest proportion of children living in poverty, 15 percent, and the most people in prison, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the whole population. With five percent of the world’s population, the US has 24 percent of the world’s prisoners.

The report notes: “Social mobility is now less fluid in the United States than in other affluent nations. Indeed, a poor child born in Germany, France, Canada or one of the Nordic countries has a better chance to join the middle class in adulthood than an American child born into similar circumstances.”

In overall life expectancy, the United States ranks an astonishing 42nd, behind not only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all the countries of Western Europe, but also Israel, Greece, Singapore, Costa Rica and South Korea. The US spends twice as much money per capita on health care as any of these countries, but its citizens live shorter lives.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul200…

The reason is pretty obvious for any non free market fundementalist. In a lot of area's and certainly healthcare the for profit motive does not lead to the best results. When it benefits the whole society it's nothing but pure logic to organize products and or services together. Socialism is not about "big government", it's about people working together and understanding people should not serve the system but the system should serve us.

Free market fundementalism stands in the way of reforms to change the American health system that is not unsucsesful in the logic of how it's set up. The goal is to make money and a lot of money is indeed being made. Most people would agree that should not be the goal of a good healthcare system but still shy away from drawing the logical conclusions or are easily persuaded by right wing demagogy about socialism.

Going into an American hospital is as scary as hell, if feels like your are going into a meat processing plant with lawyers hovering over you at every corner, doctors taking 30 seconds a day to visit, bankruptcy waiting down every hall, paperwork about to get lost at every turn, a new shift of overworked nurses 3 times a day, nurse's assitants many of which do not speak english ...

I highly recommend to ANYONE that has a family member enter a USA hospital overnight to NEVER, EVER leave them alone in there and question EVERYTHING TWICE, THREE TIMES, FOUR TIMES, ...

Living close to the border, I travel up to Canada for dental care (I pay cash) because the general care quality is SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER than in America.

I, too, hop across the border for the best dental care I've ever received.

[touchring]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Can you aver that the only things that have changed in your lifestyle in the past two to three years ago are the three you mentioned?

At the beginning, I tried drinking green tea and exercising, brisk walking 20-30 minutes everyday, it helped cleared my mind but the drop in bp was temporary and moderate - perhaps a few hours after the walk.

Walking 20 to 30 minutes a day didn't help me lose weight, so I decided to go to the extreme, walking 5 miles a day (which was very time consuming and tiring) and everyone thought I was crazy, and at one time, I would even walked from the city back home, which took 2.5 hours with rests in between.

So my BMI fell from 27.5 to 26 within 4 to 5 months, but my bp remained moderately high, although I felt more alert and better than previously.

So I wanted to continue losing weight, but my walking regime was too time consuming and besides, I had injured my knee sometime back (nothing to do with my exercise), and besides my bp was still high, so the only thing I could do is to change my diet.

So to lose more weight, I started avoided deep fried stuff (fries, fish n chips,fried chicken) as far as I could. Half of my meals are soup based - not cream stuff, milk cereals (muesli). I take a lot of pasta and mediterranean style food at times (real med food, not american styled pizza). Milk was low fat. And also no food with excessive sodium - i find that salty food will increase my BP almost instantenously. I noted that many baked 'low fat' processed food come with double the sodium. Over time, because I have been taking bland food, I have become very sensitive to salt and will cringe even if there the food was just a little more salty.

I read somewhere that Diet Coke can make a person gain weight, so I also stopped drinking coke light - I suffered several months withdrawal symptom during the process (i didn't stop at once, but it was a battle, stopping and going back to it again)m had headaches, drinking more tea helped a little only, so whatever that is causing the withdrawal symptoms is not just caffeine, something more than that. :eek:

I've been drinking tea every morning, and switched to low sugar tea many years ago. To go further, I decided not to add sugar at all. english tea tastes bad without sugar, so over time I switched to coffee with milk only.

As for the amount of food consumed, I didn't force myself to eat less or go hungry - I still eat as much as I want but I won't discount the possibility that eating more soup stuff actually made me consume less calories. To eat less snacks and to solve my craving for sugar, I also stuff myself with fruits every meal (the less sweet varieties) and juices (carrot, celery).

For the past one year, I've also been taking adaptogens to deal with fatigue (and to cut down on caffeine - I now limit myself to only 1 cup of coffee a day), drinking a small amount of American ginseng in tea form on a daily basis (not pills or supplement, but real root).

I also tried penta tea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaogulan, another adaptogen, which is believed to be able to control bp and cholesterol, but tastes weird - slight bitternesss with sacharrin like sweetness, i couldn't bear it after 3 cups.

There are reports that anyone with hypertension should not take ginseng. My take is that adaptogens are good for maintaining bp (provided that bp is normal or close to normal), not for reducing chronic high bp and should not be mixed with medication. A note that anyone with immunity disorder such as lupus cannot take adaptogens, so maybe advisable to consult a specialist before taking any herbal cures.

[touchring]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Can you aver that the only things that have changed in your lifestyle in the past two to three years ago are the three you mentioned?

At the beginning, I tried drinking green tea and exercising, brisk walking 20-30 minutes everyday, it helped cleared my mind but the drop in bp was temporary and moderate - perhaps a few hours after the walk.

Walking 20 to 30 minutes a day didn't help me lose weight, so I decided to go to the extreme, walking 5 miles a day (which was very time consuming and tiring) and everyone thought I was crazy, and at one time, I would even walked from the city back home, which took 2.5 hours with rests in between.

So my BMI fell from 27.5 to 26 within 4 to 5 months, but my bp remained moderately high, although I felt more alert and better than previously.

So I wanted to continue losing weight, but my walking regime was too time consuming and besides, I had injured my knee sometime back (nothing to do with my exercise), and besides my bp was still high, so the only thing I could do is to change my diet.

So to lose more weight, I started avoided deep fried stuff (fries, fish n chips,fried chicken) as far as I could. Half of my meals are soup based - not cream stuff, milk cereals (muesli). I take a lot of pasta and mediterranean style food at times (real med food, not american styled pizza). Milk was low fat. And also no food with excessive sodium - i find that salty food will increase my BP almost instantenously. I noted that many baked 'low fat' processed food come with double the sodium. Over time, because I have been taking bland food, I have become very sensitive to salt and will cringe even if there the food was just a little more salty.

I read somewhere that Diet Coke can make a person gain weight, so I also stopped drinking coke light - I suffered several months withdrawal symptom during the process (i didn't stop at once, but it was a battle, stopping and going back to it again)m had headaches, drinking more tea helped a little only, so whatever that is causing the withdrawal symptoms is not just caffeine, something more than that. :eek:

I've been drinking tea every morning, and switched to low sugar tea many years ago. To go further, I decided not to add sugar at all. english tea tastes bad without sugar, so over time I switched to coffee with milk only.

As for the amount of food consumed, I didn't force myself to eat less or go hungry - I still eat as much as I want but I won't discount the possibility that eating more soup stuff actually made me consume less calories. To eat less snacks and to solve my craving for sugar, I also stuff myself with fruits every meal (the less sweet varieties) and juices (carrot, celery).

For the past one year, I've also been taking adaptogens to deal with fatigue (and to cut down on caffeine - I now limit myself to only 1 cup of coffee a day), drinking a small amount of American ginseng in tea form on a daily basis (not pills or supplement, but real root).

I also tried penta tea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaogulan, another adaptogen, which is believed to be a miracle herb that can control bp and cholesterol besides improving immunity and blood sugar levels like ginseng does, but the tea tastes weird - slight bitternesss with sacharrin like sweetness, i couldn't bear it after 3 cups.

There are reports that anyone with hypertension should not take ginseng. My take is that adaptogens are good for maintaining bp (provided that bp is normal or close to normal), not for reducing chronic high bp and should not be mixed with medication. A note that anyone with immunity disorder such as lupus cannot take adaptogens (life threatening side effects), so it maybe advisable to consult a specialist before taking any herbal cures.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

i find that salty food will increase my BP almost instantenously.

This is sometimes an indication of potassium deficiency. Sodium and potassium need to be in balance in the body, as described at Balance Sodium with Potassium for Good Health. Rather than trying to nearly eliminate sodium, it can be easier and healthier to increase potassium.

[touchring]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

This is sometimes an indication of potassium deficiency. Sodium and potassium need to be in balance in the body, as described at Balance Sodium with Potassium for Good Health. Rather than trying to nearly eliminate sodium, it can be easier and healthier to increase potassium.

Thanks for the link. That may explain why my carrot juice can help bp - http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/food...sium-foods.htm

[Rajiv]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Touchring please look at the following websites, and adjust your Blood Pressure norms for age. I do not believe that most doctors do this, and the suggested normals are for 20 year olds.

http://www.sturnidae.com/BPChart.php
http://www.disabled-world.com/artman...urechart.shtml







I ran a regression on the age data, and if older than 62, you may use the following equations

Systolic (age adjusted)

Average = 134 + (Age - 62)*0.3479
Max = 147 + (Age - 62)*0.3624
Min = 121 + (Age - 62)*0.3212

Diastolic (age adjusted)

Average = 87 + (Age - 62)*0.2109
Max = 91 + (Age - 62)*0.2109
Min = 83 + (Age - 62)*0.2109

[mickeyc21]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

It is hard to have an opinion about healthcare without genuine experience of the alternatives.
I have lived for long periods of time in the US, Australia and New Zealand and have experienced all three systems. As a hard wired free markets person this is hard to say but the "socialist" systems in Aus. and NZ are far superior without even taking cost into consideration.
I personally had a simple problem that was never the less very unpleasant to live with. I had been several times to one of the best hospitals in the US and their solutions did not work. These visits cost my unfortunate insurer huge sums of money. In Australia the specialist listed my options and told me the success rates of the methods I had tried were under 5% (he did not know at the time I had been told to use these). The specialist suggested minor surgery with a 95% plus success rate. The surgery came out of my pocket and cost $3,500 for the initial consult, nursing care, hospital visit and anesthetist! The problem was solved.
Over my life time I have had many other such interactions where the systems in "social" medicine simply works better. The American system - even at the high end where I experience it - does not provide the same quality of care as even the low end in Aus. and NZ.
The idea that there is something superior about US health care is pure marketing in my experience. For people that enjoy facts the dismal state of Americans health compared to other first world nations should be a clue that something doesn't add up. The truly shocking thing is that rich Americans health is bad - the cliche that this is a good country to be rich and in need of care is not borne out by the numbers.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Does America have the world's best health care?

Touchring please look at the following websites, and adjust your Blood Pressure norms for age. I do not believe that most doctors do this, and the suggested normals are for 20 year olds.

Are these Min/Ave/Max values measurements from some (unspecified) population, or goals established by some (unspecified) medical organization or corporation?

Dr. Graveline (whom I tend to trust for other work of his I've read on statins) has an interesting article on blood pressure at http://www.spacedoc.net/blood_pressure_heart_disease.htm. Here's a key quote from this article:

The Public Citizen's Health Research Group strongly advises consideration of age in determining whether or not treatment is justified, suggesting that in the elderly only pressures equal to or above 180/100 might be treated beneficially with drugs. In the 1970s the target limits for initiating drug treatment was 160/95. This has now become 140/90 with a large number of organizations listed as in agreement.