News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Given that the US is on par with most industrialized nations in spite of significant non-healthcare problems, I think that the life expectancy rate in the US is actually more of a tribute to healthcare here than a detraction thereof.

I would blame the US medical problems on big ag, big pharma and big med. We Americans are consuming too much fructose (e.g. high fructose corn syrup), too much processed light oils, too little healthy fats, too much junk food (most of the stuff in grocery stores I call junk), too many chemicals in our food and water, too many drugs (I mean the prescribed and otherwise legal pharaceuticals) and getting medical care for our chronic illnesses that maximizes profits rather than health. Our so called representatives in Washington, DC no longer represent us.

[Rajiv]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Here is the same data on gapminder

I would have embedded with iframe -- but the data looks good on full screen

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Here is the same data on gapminder

I would have embedded with iframe -- but the data looks good on full screen

Awesome! Thanks, Rajiv.

[Ghent12]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Out of curiosity, do you personally think that there is nothing wrong with US health care and its associated costs?

Of course not. I would certainly be in favor of a carefully-crafted plan to help address the current problems. Since there is no hope of that coming from Washington, it's really a non-issue.

Then again, it's not like the problems were not foreseeable. The baby-boom generation (the worst generation in my opinion) is getting into the substantial-increase-in-healthcare-needs age range, and this glut of demand was not adequately prepared for a decade or so ago when it could have mattered.

[Rajiv]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

On gapminder, shift the scale to linear, and then press play - and then look at the US and South Africa -- Both of them really stand out -- for different reasons!

[chr5648]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

As I see it, human life is cheap (supply >>>> demand), medical care in the US isn't cheap or in some cases affordable except for the very rich because of entrenched problems with the system.

What would happen to the Pole if he were an American without insurance or with inadequate insurance? Whatever the decision regarding his life, it seems unlikely it would be a bureaucratic one.

Its pointless arguing with you because after reading many of your posts in the forum about how you value the human life. No is going to change your mind, and I sure as hell ain't gonna waste my time trying.

-have a good day

[chr5648]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

I would blame the US medical problems on big ag, big pharma and big med. We Americans are consuming too much fructose (e.g. high fructose corn syrup), too much processed light oils, too little healthy fats, too much junk food (most of the stuff in grocery stores I call junk), too many chemicals in our food and water, too many drugs (I mean the prescribed and otherwise legal pharaceuticals) and getting medical care for our chronic illnesses that maximizes profits rather than health. Our so called representatives in Washington, DC no longer represent us.

BUT, they do subsidize the farmers and corn production, which causes over production and lower prices which leads to lower relative prices of junk food to healthy food. You can figure the rest out yourself.

[HisHighnessDog]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Nice graphics but is life expectancy an apples to apples comparison of the quality of health care? I think most people with regular jobs leads lives that are far more stressful under a lot more pressure here in the US than anywhere else in the world. I think this has a huge negative impact on overall health and absolutely brings down life expectancy.

Our per person expense may be sky high but lets not write it off as total crap unless we can make some adjustments to those numbers.:confused:

I've lived in 4 other nations (working in dozens more) and I can tell you that the stress levels and work demands in Japan, Korea are very, very high.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

On gapminder, shift the [horizontal health spending] scale to linear, and then press play - and then look at the US and South Africa -- Both of them really stand out -- for different reasons!

(The other linear/log option is already linear (lin) on the vertical life expectancy axis.)

Also run the Play button, lower left, and observe how aggressively the U.S. has raced to the right in just the last 15 years.

We're going to H*** in a Hand Basket, we are, we are!

[Rajiv]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Also what happened to South Africa? Life expectency went from 61 to 50 in 15 year?

[Ghent12]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

Also run the Play button, lower left, and observe how aggressively the U.S. has raced to the right in just the last 15 years.

Do the same playback with China selected, and you'll see they have done a very similar thing. A very slight increase in slope.

In fact, similar results come from numerous nations, including the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and so forth. Germany and Austria have better slopes, as does Brazil. Interestingly, Russia took a step backwards in cost per person, but did not suffer much of a decline in life expectancy (though did decline some).

A very interesting data display, indeed!

[Rajiv]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

SOUTH AFRICA: Life expectancy drops

JOHANNESBURG, 21 November 2009 (PlusNews) - South Africans are dying younger and in greater numbers, and HIV/AIDS is to blame, according to a report released this week by the South African Institute of Race Relations.

Average life expectancy declined from 62 years in 1990 to 50 years in 2007; it is projected to fall even further by 2011, to 48 years for men and 51 for women, according to the Institute's annual South Africa Survey.

The authors note that among 37 developed and developing countries, South Africa is one of only six where life expectancy fell between 1990 and 2007, with only Zimbabwe showing a steeper decline.

Of South Africa's nine provinces, those with the highest HIV prevalence rates also had the lowest life expectancy - KwaZulu-Natal at 43 years, followed by Free State and Mpumalanga, both at 47 years. The leading causes of death were tuberculosis (TB), influenza and pneumonia, all common opportunistic infections associated with HIV/AIDS.

Seventy percent of people diagnosed with TB in South Africa were co-infected with HIV, and "it is thus reasonable to assume that at least 70 percent of observed mortality from tuberculosis, and by extension a comparable percentage of deaths from influenza/pneumonia, also has HIV and AIDS as an underlying cause." Nearly half of all deaths in 2008 were thought to be HIV/AIDS related - up from a third in 2001.

Gail Eddy, a researcher at the Institute, commented that although neither the public health system nor the government's antiretroviral (ARV) treatment programme were reaching all those in need, particularly in rural areas, a slight decrease in mortality rates in the last two years may be the result of ARVs gradually becoming more widely available.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic contributed to a 43 percent reduction in population growth between 2001 and 2008; a fall in birth rates also played a role.

Although fewer children are being born, HIV/AIDS is creating an increasing number of orphans: of the estimated 2.5 million children who had lost a parent by 2007, more than half were orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS. According to the survey, by 2015, 32 percent of South African children will have lost one or both parents to the virus.

Eddy noted that the government's social grants programme was not addressing the need of orphaned children for psychosocial support. NGOs were attempting to fill the gap created by a chronic shortage of social workers but many were underfunded. "There's a need to strengthen government/NGO partnerships," she said.

The report was released amid mounting controversy over mortality figures quoted by President Jacob Zuma during a speech on 29 October. He said that 756,000 deaths had been recorded in 2008 - an astounding 30 percent increase from the previous year.

He attributed the increase to the AIDS epidemic, an admission that the AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign, welcomed as "the ushering in of a new era", after a decade of government denial about the extent of AIDS by former President Thabo Mbeki. However, a number of researchers have questioned the figure, reportedly supplied by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Eddy confirmed that the figure was significantly higher than the one provided by the Actuarial Society of South Africa, on which the Institute based its calculations.

"I think it was really a miscalculation," she said. Estimating HIV/AIDS deaths in South Africa is particularly problematic because the disease is not notifiable.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

SOUTH AFRICA: Life expectancy drops

In my estimation, blaming this on AIDS is a monumental fraud. Quoting myself from an earlier post at The question of Climate chage IS OVER!!:

There is an excellent report that I find educational, compelling, detailed, and depressing on the sad episode of AIDS. See Fear of the Invisible, by Janine Roberts. AIDS is not caused by some HIV virus, and the main person credited with "discovering the AIDS virus", one Mr. Gallo, was a pathological psychopath (diagnosis mine, not Ms. Roberts).

Ms. Roberts book examines the alleged epidemic of AIDS in Africa and finds that it is an epidemic of TB and related illnesses due to poverty, malnutrition and inadequate sanitation, not AIDS.

P.S. -- See further from Ms. Roberts website:

• AIDS is to be diagnosed with different symptoms in Africa,
• Silenced Voices, and
• Massacres to Mining.

[Master Shake]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

What's happened to healthcare costs that are not covered by insurance and which the government does not force hospitals to perform, such as cosmetic and laser eye surgery?

Perhaps the high cost is related to third party payers and the government forcing hospitals to provide service to anyone who shows up at an ED?

[Rajiv]

Re: News: US healthcare is totally fucked up as is the US.

From Kaiser - U.S. Health Care Costs

Overall, a good article

Health care costs have been rising for several years. Expenditures in the United States on health care surpassed $2.2 trillion in 2007, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 1980. Stemming this growth has become a major policy priority, as the government, employers, and consumers increasingly struggle to keep up with health care costs. [1]In 2007, U.S. health care spending was about $7,421 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries. Total health care expenditures grew at an annual rate of 6.1 percent in 2007, a slower rate than recent years, yet still outpacing inflation and the growth in national income. Absent reform, there is general agreement that health costs are likely to continue to rise in the foreseeable future. Many analysts have cited controlling health care costs as a key tenet for broader economic stability and growth, and President Obama has made cost control a focus of health reform efforts under way.

Although Americans benefit from many of the investments in health care, the recent rapid cost growth, coupled with an overall economic slowdown and rising federal deficit, is placing great strains on the systems used to finance health care, including private employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and public insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Since 1999, employer-sponsored health coverage premiums have increased by 119 percent, placing increasing cost burdens on employers and workers. [2] With workers’ wages growing at a much slower pace than health care costs, many face difficulty in affording out-of-pocket spending.

Government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, account for a significant share of health care spending. Public health expenditures made up about 46% of the health care dollar in 2007, with the remainder split between private and out-of-pocket spending (42% and 12%, respectively). Medicare spending has grown at a slightly lower rate, on average, than private health insurance spending, at about 9.0 vs. 10.1% annually respectively between 1970 and 2003. [3] Medicaid expenditures, similarly, have grown at slower rate than private spending, though the current economic recession is likely to increase the number of enrollees in Medicaid and therefore increase Medicaid spending.[4]

How is the U.S. health care dollar spent?

As shown in the figure below, hospital care accounts for the largest share (31%) of health expenditures. Physician services are the next largest item, comprising one-fifth of the national health spending. Prescription drugs, while accounting for only 10% of total expenditures, have been one of the fastest-growing segments.

National Health Expenditures, 2007

Total = $2.241 Trillion

Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group.