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Originally Posted by Scrappy Jack
(Post 817840)
Really? Turning the USA in to a third world country? So, you wash your clothes in a river and butcher your own animals after having toiled all day in the fields? You time your electricty use with the continual blackouts? Collect rainwater and live in a one-room hut with dirt floors?
Is the income of an average citizen rising as quickly as the cost of living? All the costs of energy, food, housing, transportation, etc? The downhill slope is not looking at a leveling out, and if it doesn't, what will be the outcome? Prosperity? |
Originally Posted by blaen99
(Post 817477)
And? They come over for the almighty dollar, Brain.
Why bother trying to fight symptoms? Go to the cause. Save money, get effective results. when they fill shitty jobs, it gives americans better jobs. immigration increases employment for citizens. |
Originally Posted by Braineack
(Post 817865)
when they fill shitty jobs, it gives americans better jobs. immigration increases employment for citizens.
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Find me a chart that excludes vehicular deaths and homicides in calculating life expectancy, and then I'll find it interesting.
Originally Posted by blaen99
(Post 817736)
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Originally Posted by FRT_Fun
(Post 817868)
You take that back. I hope this is sarcasm.
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1 Attachment(s)
Originally Posted by olderguy
(Post 817862)
Is the income of an average citizen rising as quickly as the cost of living? All the costs of energy, food, housing, transportation, etc?
However, please note that the trajectory of real median household income has almost never been a straight line up and to the right. For the past 40 years or so it has been an instance of higher lows and higher highs. The past 10 years that is not the case. Let me see if I can find a good graphical representation of this... [Edit: See attachment] Cliffs: Low or negative inflation-adjusted household income growth over the past ~10 years is not a good thing. It's also not completely unheard of in the history of the USA, much like other elements of business cycles. |
Originally Posted by Scrappy Jack
(Post 817840)
Really? Turning the USA in to a third world country? So, you wash your clothes in a river and butcher your own animals after having toiled all day in the fields? You time your electricty use with the continual blackouts? Collect rainwater and live in a one-room hut with dirt floors?
The average Chinese or Indian citizen would see a huge increase in their standard of living by moving up to the average Mexican's standard of living, which is still well below the average American's. Again, take all of those comparisons with a tablespoon full of salt. Health care reform is a particular topic of interest for me and I have several books on my shelf waiting to be read on the subject. We have already discussed the differences in definition/measurement of statistics like "life expectancy" between countries. The average spending also has to take in to account the availability of certain health care. For example, some of the drugs and procedures available in the USA might be wildly expensive and not available in other countries (or not performed as successfuly). Thus, Person A with some life-threatening disease might spend a large sum of money in the USA and the Person B in other nations might either be denied access to those procedures or they might not be available. That would translate to the USA having a higher average health care spending per person. Likewise, that table includes all public and private health care spending - including hospitals and infrastructure. If you compare the Winnie Palmer facility to a brick hospital from the 1800s, that will also skew the results. As in certain people of the very rich go to Cuba rather than deal with our system. And yet, check out Cuba's budget. |
Originally Posted by blaen99
(Post 818006)
Except that Cuba has world class facilities. At least on par with the US's by any measure
As in certain people of the very rich go to Cuba rather than deal with our system. And yet, check out Cuba's budget. Don't believe everything you see in Sicko. EDIT: http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm |
Originally Posted by mgeoffriau
(Post 818012)
Considering my statement is not from Moore or Sicko and uses independent third party numbers as well as numbers from the WHO...Cuba is superior to the US in about as many criteria as we are to Cuba, and we tie in numerous statistics in the WHO and third party reports. On a medical budget of less than 1/20th the US's per person. Part of the secret, as elaborated in the linked article? Preventative care. |
Originally Posted by blaen99
(Post 818017)
Part of the secret, as elaborated in the linked article? Preventative care.
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Originally Posted by mgeoffriau
(Post 818060)
Also: fewer McDonald's.
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Here's an interesting tidbit while you're pondering healthcare costs:
Why is it that, over the last century in America, the population has tripled, while the number of medical schools has actually dropped by about a quarter? |
why did Lindbergh fly across the ocean when others died trying?
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Originally Posted by Wired article
Despite a 50-year trade embargo by the United States and a post-Soviet collapse in international support, the impoverished nation has developed a world-class health care system. Average life expectancy is 77.5 years, compared to 78.1 years in the United States, and infant and child mortality rates match or beat our own. There’s one doctor for every 170 people, more than twice the per-capita U.S. average.
Not everything is perfect in Cuba. There are shortages of medicines, and the best care is reserved for elites. But it’s still a powerful feat. “In Cuba, a little over $300 per person is spent on health care each year. In the U.S., we’re spending over $7,000 per person,” said Drain, co-author of Caring for the World and an essay published April 29 in Science. “They’re able to achieve great health outcomes on a modest budget.” |
Originally Posted by Scrappy Jack
(Post 818084)
The bolded portions involve either statistics we have repeatedly discussed as being flawed for apples-to-apples comparisons.
Again, focusing on spending without controlling for outcomes seems ludicrous as a measure of the quality of healtchare in a country. I bet Rwanda has REALLY low per capita spending on healthcare... You know, because people die of dysentery and cholera there. |
Come on. Are you even reading the responses? It's well noted that they have a certain number of excellent facilities for those who can pay for it.
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Originally Posted by mgeoffriau
(Post 818094)
Come on. Are you even reading the responses? It's well noted that they have a certain number of excellent facilities for those who can pay for it.
/Not srs, but srs at the same time. Are people seriously not realizing the intentional parallel that I'm trying to draw? |
So you're trying to argue that, in the US, unless you can pay out of pocket for the best care (or have the political/social connections to gain access), you're likely to end up in a facility that doesn't have running water or even rudimentary sterilization techniques? Are poor people in the US often subjected to surgical procedures conducted without painkillers?
Is that the intentional parallel you're trying to draw? |
Originally Posted by mgeoffriau
(Post 818105)
So you're trying to argue that, in the US, unless you can pay out of pocket for the best care (or have the political/social connections to gain access), you're likely to end up in a facility that doesn't have running water or even rudimentary sterilization techniques? Are poor people in the US often subjected to surgical procedures conducted without painkillers?
But if you are arguing for a statistically insignificant minority that is oft-cited by those opposing single payer, hell, we have people who inject home depot silicone into breasts using maybe $50 worth of stuff from home depot. Are poor people in Cuba subjected to such medical procedures? No? Is that the intentional parallel you're trying to draw? Our poor are frequently faced with a choice of health care or bankruptcy (62% of all bankruptcies are caused by health care costs, see previous thread with sources on this). You claim Cuba's poor are faced with a choice of such poor medical health conditions that infection and disease would run rampant - but if this were true, then the numbers from the WHO would reflect it. Are you saying the WHO is lying? And you know what? If we went to single payer overnight, everything staying exactly the same in this country, not a single thing changed except for the change to single-payer... We'd see a 30%-45% cut in costs immediately. That's how much in administrative overhead in billing we have. Seriously, I am not ------- with you, overinflating numbers, or playing word games. These are based in hard numbers. I can provide as many sources as you want confirming this. |
You're impossible. Here's an excellent example of why any statistics about Cuban healthcare, regardless of who is collecting them, are fraught with problems:
According to Katharine Hirschfeld, criticizing the government is a crime in Cuba, and penalties are severe. She noted that "Formally eliciting critical narratives about health care would be viewed as a criminal act both for me as a researcher, and for people who spoke openly with me". According to Hirschfeld the Cuban Ministry of Health (MINSAP) sets statistical targets that are viewed as production quotas. The most guarded is infant mortality rate. The doctor is pressured to abort the pregnancy whenever screening shows that quotas are in danger. Once a doctor decides to guard his quotas, patients have no right to refuse abortion. [...] After spending nine months in Cuban clinics, Katherine Hirschfeld asserted in her paper "My increased awareness of Cuba’s criminalization of dissent raised a very provocative question: to what extent is the favorable international image of the Cuban health care system maintained by the state’s practice of suppressing dissent and covertly intimidating or imprisoning would-be critics?" Trying to isolate positive aspects of the Cuban healthcare system for application in American society is akin to examining their political system, and then recommending that we install more palm trees in American government buildings. |
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