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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: Our Government is Inept
Thread: Our Government is Inept This thread is 10 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV / NEXT»
Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted August 08, 2009 04:50 PM
Edited by Corribus at 15:50, 10 Aug 2009.

Well Mytical, I give you some credit for trying.  I'll get to your metrics in a moment, but first I'd like to point out that now that you have your variables (assuming they're good ones), you have to combine them all into a single ranking.  How do you weight them?  I hope you can see that it's not as easy as it looks and even if we agree that the various criteria are objective, the way you combine them to arrive at a single index is not.  

Quote:
Quality of care given.

What is "quality of care"?  You're going to have to put a number to this- intrinsically hard to do with a "quality" of something.

Quote:
Accessibility for ALL of the countries population.

What is "accessibility"?  Does that mean that everyone can go to a hospital whenever they want for anything and pay nothing?  Does it mean that hospitals have to be within driving distance?  

Quote:
Cleanliness of the facilities (this is important for health care facilities)

Ok, but again this is hard to quantify, particularly in any global fashion.  

Quote:
Success rate of first visit (ie do the people have to return for the same problem, because the diagnoses was incorrect the first time which falls under quality, but should have a category of its own).

First, there's the difficulty of defining what "success is", but this isn't a good metric at all.  Let's say a hospital defined its own quality of care by this metric.  It would encourage doctors to just get patients out the door and not schedule follow-up appointments.  A hospital that did this would then be able to say it has quality health care.  In addition, I think it's sort of an unreasonable expectation that people will be automatically cured after a single visit.  Rarely is a diagnosis or method of treatment simple, and even the best doctors make mistakes.  There are also often multiple interpretations for data and second opinions are desired.

Quote:
Knowledge of the professionals inside that health care system.

How do you rate knowledge?  Anyway, I'd say results are more important than knowledge, though they'd clearly be correlated.

Quote:
Affordability (Falls under Accessibility, but again a category of its own, a sub category if you will)

What's "affordable"?  Too whom?  I assume that you are implying an inverse proportionality here, where more costly health care leads to less of a "quality health care systems".  If that's true, than you could simply increase the quality of your health care system but cutting costs and, by implication, services.  I.e., we can make it more affordable to everyone, but we'll have to cut services to do it.  According to your formula, then, a quality health care system will have cheaper costs, even if it provides less services.  The absurd extrapolation is that the best health care system is the one that is free and provides no services at all.  See?

Quote:
Life expectancy of the people in the nation.  Generally good health care leads to longer life expectancy.

Most indexes of health care don't directly use a direct life expectency.  The use what's called a DALE.  I don't remember what it stands for, something like disability adjusted life expectancy.  This is because just because you live long it doesn't mean you have a good quality of life.  For instance, if you are injured in an accident at age 20 and become a cripple, but you live another 80 miserable years in pain, with no mobility and no quality of life at all, and the health care system does nothing for you, then that's not really a good health care system, is it?  So they've figure out how to incorporate this into the life expectancy equation. I think it reflects basically the average number of years a person lives "in good health".  There are some problems with doing it this way - not the least of which is trying to figure out what constitutes good health".  Another one is that if your health care system just let cripples and old people die, it'd improve their DALE score.  That doesn't really sound like a good health care system to me, and I don't know why these indexes continue to use the DALE scores for this reason.

Quote:
Doctor/patient ratio.  May seem not important (and part of accessibility) but the lower the ratio the more time doctors can spend with patients to get to know them for better diagnosis.

(I think you meant to say "the higher the ratio", not lower.)  Anyway: Ok, so if we lower the medical licencing standards to inflate the number of doctors, there will be more doctors per patient.  The average skill of a doctor will go down, but there will be more of them.  But, according to your metric, the quality of the health care program will increase.  Well we know that's not the case.  You want more good doctors, not more doctors.  I don't have to point out that by de-privatizing health care in the US, you're going to LOSE doctors, not gain them.  

Quote:
How would you quantify it Corribus?

I wouldn't even try, and that's sort of the point.  I admit, what I gave you was a trick question meant to illustrate how useless it is to try to rank something as complex and qualitative as health care systems.  It'd sort of be like lining up ten individuals, all of whomo have children, and trying to decide which one is the best parent.  How do you do it?  The first difficulty is just deciding what factors constitute a "good parent" and even if you could do that, you have the additional difficulty of figuring out how to combine those factors into a single value (you need a formula, in other words).  Worse, with each factor you specify, you have the difficulty of quantifying something that isn't really a numerical value.  It's just layers upon layers of difficulty.  While you can artifically come up with a number and then rank the parents, does the ranking really have any meaning?  What does it mean to say that Jenny is a better parent than Josephine?  I don't know - it could mean anything.  Same with health care indexes.  All they show is the bias of the person who made the formula.  

That's not to say you can't learn anything from them.  But the problem is, you're boiling down something extremely complex into a single comparative value, and those values (rankings) are published, and the idiotic rank and file take those numbers as god-sent without considering where they came from.  Newspapers will publish "The US has the 37th ranked Health Care in the world, but they have the highest cost!"  That sounds pretty bad, particulrly if you spin it that way, and it will whip people up into a frenzy.  But none of those people take the time to see how that number was generated, and if they did, they'd find the number was meaningless in any absolute sense.  
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted August 10, 2009 10:59 AM

I kind of disagree with that, Corribus. It's sort of a general hammer of a point to smash everything into pieces. Those statistics are NOT meaningless, the question is whether the label is right or not and how the relations are.

"Health care" (like crime) has basically two sides:
1) PREVENTION of diseases/illnesses/accidents
2) TREATMENT of diseases/illnesses/accidents

The second part is over- and the first part is underrated. A good system of "health care" will try to PREVENT a lot of things from happening. Vaccination is an obvious example, but it goes a lot deeper.
An anti-aids campaign (i.e. "don't have unprotedted sex with people you don't know anything about") is part of that as well, as is detecting and defining the risks of certain professions and taking precautions; for example, people who work sitting most of the times will get back problems later, if they don't start compensating early and if their workplace isn't arranged well.
Stress is important as well. The more cut-throat competetion there is to make a living the more ruinous for general health that is.

Now, it is clear that less prevention means more actual cases of treatment and vice versa.

Another thing which is clear is, that people are generally less inclined to spend money for preventing hypothetical things than to spend it on things that actually have happened.

I find it pretty easy to make certain conclusions from certain facts, and the basic facts are:
1) How much money a country spends on health care
2) How old people get

If, like in the US, people spend an extreme amount of money for health care, but life expectancy isn't as good as it should be, then it doesn't say something about the quality of the health care as such (docs, hospitals, medicine, cures and so on), but it speaks volumes about the unhealthy state the society is there in general and the fact that there is not nearly enough money spent on PREVENTION.

Bad food (overweight); the unholy trinity of professional stress, smoking and coffee; general pollution; no exercise... and... and... and, all that is costing public health dearly, resulting in millions of disease cases.
So the question is not about the

QUALITY

of a given system of health care, but about

EFFICIENCY.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

If you find yourself nodding about the sense PREVENTION makes, it's clear that this has to be orchestrated somehow, and who would be in a better position to do that than the government? So this is one of the reasons the government should have a lot of control about health, because preventive measures, campaigns, public education, even laws and so on, all have a massive impact on general public health, and should obviously be a TASK for any government as well. What is right for vaccinations, cannot be wrong for other things:

It is better to invest in prevention of diseases instead of waiting with the treatment until they break out.

The problem is, that not enough money is put into the prevention side of things.

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Binabik
Binabik


Responsible
Legendary Hero
posted August 10, 2009 11:29 AM
Edited by Binabik at 11:36, 10 Aug 2009.

JJ, I didn't read your entire post, but maybe you missed the point of Corribus' post.

He was merely giving several examples to show the difficulty in quantifying something like this.

Statistics and quantifying almost always give you useful information, but even when you are VERY careful and make the best attempt to be unbiased, it can still lead you astray. No matter how much you try to think of every possible variable, it's virtually impossible to think of every one of them.

I'm very tired, but if I recall he was giving examples of possible variables. Once you identify the variables, you have to then determine how likely they are to affect things. The key words here are "possible" variables and "likelihood" of affecting things.


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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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posted August 10, 2009 11:44 AM
Edited by JollyJoker at 11:53, 10 Aug 2009.

Binabik, if you answer to posts, shouldn't you read them fully?

My point is simply, that it's "Death's tactics" with an area as complex as health to field the argument that a clear and concise definition of the field and identification and weighing of factors is impossible. That is self-evident. You could, for example, argue about the evaluation of the single disciplines within the sport of the decathlon as well, but that doesn't mean evaluations and statistics are worthless.

Which is what I said. It is not desputable that on the field of average life expectancy the US are ranked 37th or something, while they clearly lead the field in the per-head expenditures for health care.

It depends on your definition of "health care", and your defintion of "quality". It is obvious that with those figures something is going wrong, and I've tried to sketch what IS going wrong.

EDIT: ok, an example to make my point clear.

Let's say you have the best hospitals and the best docs in the world. They are really good in bringing clinically dead people back, repairing damage and so on. If they just do that with a failed suicidal, there will come the point when they have him on their slab again and will NOT be able to bring him back: saving a suicidal, but not caring fow him to help him solve the problems that made him do it, is INEFFICIENT. It will cost a lot of resources, but accomplishes nothing or not much.
Which means, the best system in the world can operate extremely ineffecient.

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Binabik
Binabik


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Legendary Hero
posted August 10, 2009 11:55 AM

Quote:
Binabik, if you answer to posts, shouldn't you read them fully?


Not at 6:00am with the sun coming up soon.

*wonders if he'll get by with such a lame excuse*


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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted August 10, 2009 03:46 PM
Edited by Corribus at 15:50, 10 Aug 2009.

Quote:
but that doesn't mean evaluations and statistics are worthless.

I'm sorry, but where did I say that evaluations and statistics are worthless?  If that's what you took from my post, then clearly you didn't get what I was trying to say.  Statistics have value, but only when they are put in proper context.  More critical: statistics have limitations *and* anybody who knows a lick about statistics knows that you can get numbers to reflect what you want them to without just a casual bit of manipulation.  Unfortunately, most people don't understand this because they don't know a lick about statistics.  

I'm not sure why you think I'm resorting to "Death's tactics", whatever that means.  Mytical stated a few pages ago that the US's health care system was recently ranked 26th in the world (then corrected it to 37th, something that should be rather telling) despite having the highest health care cost in the world.  My point in responding to Mytical was to show that such numbers have no intrinsic meaning and are highly subjective, particularly when they are just regurgitated without any understanding of how they are determined.  It was pretty clear that Mytical had no idea where the number came from, or what it is supposed to mean, and I wager Mytical is not alone - people read these things in the news and then just spew them back out in an argument when it meets their agenda.

The point of my exercise was to get Mytical to understand that there's no such thing as a true and absolute formula to calculating health care quality.  And because the method of calculation is by necessity subjective, the rankings that result from any such calculation are in turn necessarily subject to a large degree of bias and interpretation.  That's not, again I stress, to say that the rankings are useless.  But they ARE useless if you don't know where they come from, and anyone who takes them as some sort of absolute objective truth is liable to make huge mistakes when basing policy decisions upon them.

(Also, just for the record, I'm not making this argument out of disagreement with the US's low ranking here.  I'd make the same argument if the US health care system had been ranked #1.  I do think the US health care system is much better than indicated by WHO's 2000 rather subjective ranking.)  As for the cost, I've already posed solutions earlier in the thread, and in any case a lot of that cost goes into medical research, and you should be glad we spend as much money as we do.  Most of the worlds medical technological innovations, cures for diseases, and charity come from US health care spending.  Don't be so quick to impugn what you benefit from every day.)

EDIT: I have slightly edited my post at the top of the page, in case a phrase here and there were a source of confusion on this point.
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Elodin
Elodin


Promising
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Free Thinker
posted August 10, 2009 04:19 PM
Edited by Elodin at 16:21, 10 Aug 2009.

The way things are measured have a huge effect on statistics obviously. European countries and the US are not measuring things they same way.

Take infant deaths. Many European countries don't count a birth as a birth if the child is born dead and below a certain length. The US counts all births. Also, there are more abortions done because the doctor thinks the child may be born with a defect. In the US there is a greater push to try to save every baby.

It is interesting that so many rich people flock to the US for health care from around the world if the US has such poor health care.

Now for the topic of ineptness of government. Yes, it is inept. The bigger a government is the less efficient it will be. There are too many beurocrats who are not accountable to the people. They are not elected. Government should be done as much as possible on the most local level as is possible. The $5,000 dollar hammers (or whatever) is a result of this ineptness. The beaurocrats don't really care how much of the taxpayers' dollars they waste.

Oh, and the legistature often makes itself immune to the laws that it expects everyone else to live under.

The founding fathers had the concept of the federal government having very little power and authorized it to do very little in the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment severely limits the power of the federal government but that amendment is not being observed.

There are a number of states that have begun a "States' rights movement" that is seeking to restore the power the states are supposed to possess. I think that no matter who says "Change, change, change" until the people in power are replaced there will be no restoration of power to the people.

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
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posted August 10, 2009 04:43 PM

Quote:
As for the cost, I've already posed solutions earlier in the thread, and in any case a lot of that cost goes into medical research, and you should be glad we spend as much money as we do.  Most of the worlds medical technological innovations, cures for diseases, and charity come from US health care spending.  Don't be so quick to impugn what you benefit from every day.)


What?

Now you are mistaking horse and rider. You in the US spend so much money because you need so much treatment, treatment that is expensive, and you buy so many pills. The organisations and corps who do research cures for diseases don't do it out of philantropy, but because there is money to be made with it. And if they do find something, they CHARGE people for it, and HEAVILY. Health, or better, relieving the sick is expensive. Psychologist and Psychiatrists are expensive, hospital care is expensive, surgeons and their teams are expensive.

If you want to introduce the US health care as the foundation on which the health of the world is resting you are certainly way over the mark.

About your statistic interpretation, I did understand it the first time, but I still disagree fundamentally. Of course you are right when you point to the general difficulty in determining the defining factors for "quality of health care", but you are mistaking quality with efficiency, which is what I try to communicate.
Those statistics are not dealing with quality of medical services, they are dealing with the efficiency of the healt care system overall, and efficiency is not that difficult to determine since it links the efforts with the result.

If you'd come to the conclusion that you had the best health system in the world with the best docs, lowest error margins, best medicines, densest hospital net and so on, but Americans would just getting sick so often and so early, explaining the high costs and the comparatively low life expectancy, you would only see the TREATMENT part of the health system, but not the PREVENTING part of it, and it's the PREVENTION part the US health care is obviously suffering from.
I think I explained that part in my posts.

So, I guess your problem with the WHO ranking comes from defining "health care" too narrowly. Being ranked #37 doesn't mean your docs are bad or your hospitals are careless or whatever. It does mean simply that your life expectancy could be higher and SHOULD be so with a look on spendings.
That is not so difficult to see, and the reason that it's not, is certainly not that the US health care system is giving to the world.

I'll give an example to make that even clearer:
Let's say you have no laws to prevent polluting of water and very lax guidelines for purity of drinking water. The result will be people getting sick often and early. Treatment of those may be the best in the world (which would result in a veryhigh "quality" of medical services), but the overall result, life expectancy to cost effort, would still be rather poor.
The point here is, that clean drinking water CLEARLY and OBVIOUSLY is part of the area "Health Care" - it's the PUBLIC part and the PREVENTION part, and that part costs money as well: as soon as you realize that the purity of drinking water is essential for an overall good health it becomes a matter of Health Care, and if that is neglected, you invite sicknesses.

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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted August 10, 2009 05:02 PM

Quote:
You in the US spend so much money because you need so much treatment, treatment that is expensive, and you buy so many pills. The organisations and corps who do research cures for diseases don't do it out of philantropy, but because there is money to be made with it. And if they do find something, they CHARGE people for it, and HEAVILY. Health, or better, relieving the sick is expensive. Psychologist and Psychiatrists are expensive, hospital care is expensive, surgeons and their teams are expensive.

Oh, really? I did medical research funded by the NCI at University for 6 years, and I certainly wasn't doing it for money.  Sorry, but regardless of motivation, most of the world's medical technology* comes from spending (a large portion of which is, sorry to say, from charitable sources) in the US.  An overwhelming majority of nonpharmaceutical technology comes from nonprofit organizations like Universities, which are funded through charitable donations and public spending.  Thus, your generalized statement is ludicrous and clearly prejudiced.

* TECHNOLOGY, meaning: not just drugs or products.  I'm talking BASIC SCIENCE.

Quote:
About your statistic interpretation, I did understand it the first time, but I still disagree fundamentally.

Then you're just another person who sadly has no understanding of statistics and statistics-based studies.  Don't worry, you have a lot of company.

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angelito
angelito


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proud father of a princess
posted August 10, 2009 05:49 PM

Quote:
Also, there are more abortions done because the doctor thinks the child may be born with a defect. In the US there is a greater push to try to save every baby.
For which european countries do you talk here? For sure not for Germany, because abortion here is AGAINST the law!...In opposit to the States it seems:

Abortion

So it may be a good thing to not use the phrase "europe" when it comes to laws...The only laws which seem to get european standard are rules about trading. Everything else is far away from being even similar.
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Elodin
Elodin


Promising
Legendary Hero
Free Thinker
posted August 10, 2009 06:26 PM
Edited by Elodin at 18:28, 10 Aug 2009.

Quote:
For which european countries do you talk here? For sure not for Germany, because abortion here is AGAINST the law.


Are you quite certain abortion in Germany is illegal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Germany
Quote:
The two laws had to be reconciled after reunification. A new law was passed by the Bundestag in 1992, permitting first-trimester abortions on demand, subject to counselling and a three-day waiting period. The law was quickly challenged in court by a number of individuals - including Chancellor Helmut Kohl - and the State of Bavaria. The Federal Constitutional Court issued a decision a year later maintaining its earlier decision that the constitution protected the fetus from the moment of conception, but stated that it is within the discretion of parliament not to punish abortion in the first trimester, providing that the woman had submitted to state-regulated counselling designed to discourage termination and protect unborn life. Parliament passed such a law in 1995. Abortions are not covered by public health insurance except for women with low income.


If abortion is not punished in the first trimester it is legal. The site appears to say abortions for poor women are paid for by tax payers.

That information is also confirmed on this site, which also tells about abortions in other European countries:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6235557.stm

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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
posted August 10, 2009 06:34 PM

Quote:
Quote:
You in the US spend so much money because you need so much treatment, treatment that is expensive, and you buy so many pills. The organisations and corps who do research cures for diseases don't do it out of philantropy, but because there is money to be made with it. And if they do find something, they CHARGE people for it, and HEAVILY. Health, or better, relieving the sick is expensive. Psychologist and Psychiatrists are expensive, hospital care is expensive, surgeons and their teams are expensive.

Oh, really? I did medical research funded by the NCI at University for 6 years, and I certainly wasn't doing it for money.  Sorry, but regardless of motivation, most of the world's medical technology* comes from spending (a large portion of which is, sorry to say, from charitable sources) in the US.  An overwhelming majority of nonpharmaceutical technology comes from nonprofit organizations like Universities, which are funded through charitable donations and public spending.  Thus, your generalized statement is ludicrous and clearly prejudiced.

* TECHNOLOGY, meaning: not just drugs or products.  I'm talking BASIC SCIENCE.

Quote:
About your statistic interpretation, I did understand it the first time, but I still disagree fundamentally.

Then you're just another person who sadly has no understanding of statistics and statistics-based studies.  Don't worry, you have a lot of company.


You are getting offensive now, and you do it without a foundation.

Your first point about the development of medical technology is irrelevant, because it blatantly ignores that it's not the development that is making the costs within the system of health care, it's the USE of the technology that is CHARGED. So in effect, you are saying that part of the RESEARCH is done by non-profit organizations like universities, but of course the mass production of that technology is done by medtech corps who sell the stuff to hospitals and so on who charge patients for it.

The second point is just imprudent clipping of quote with a snippish half-insulting comment, bordering on arrogance.
Your point about statistic is irrelevant, because the point you are making is irrelevant for the WHO tables and statistics. The tables are simply tables, and the conclusions you can draw from them are certainly open to interpretation. As I said a couple of times life expectancy is not dependant on the quality of medical services alone; medical services are only part of the whole system of Health Care, and nowhere says the WHO that the US are ranked #37 in "medical services".
Of course that point applies to Mytical and his interpretation as well.

The WHO is a pretty big organization and should be trusted not to publish nonsensical tables assembled idly in mysterious ways by a couple of overpaid idiots who have no idea about statistics. To suggest that is frivolous to begin with. If you DO suggest that, you should have more that vage hints on "WHO is a European organization" and "statistics are pliable". That is just... well, it's ludicrous and prejudiced, to quote you, because it sounds like some conspiracy theory.

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Elodin
Elodin


Promising
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Free Thinker
posted August 10, 2009 06:46 PM

The following cip is quite informative about health care:
Glenn Beck

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Mytical
Mytical


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
posted August 10, 2009 07:13 PM

Quote:
Mytical stated a few pages ago that the US's health care system was recently ranked 26th in the world (then corrected it to 37th, something that should be rather telling) despite having the highest health care cost in the wor


Yeah it tells you Mytical has a horrible memory (remember this came out in 2000 ).
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Corribus
Corribus

Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
posted August 10, 2009 08:11 PM

@Mytical
Quote:
Yeah it tells you Mytical has a horrible memory (remember this came out in 2000 ).

It tells me that many people - in general - base their beliefs and opinions on facts and figures which they don't understand and which often aren't even accurate to begin with.  I'm not trying to single you out, Mytical, but it's a pretty fine example of how bad information is easily propogated because people don't take the time to check the accuracy of their information, let alone the time to understand what it actually means.  They just see a number, see that it seems to agree with their preconceived conclusion about the issue at hand, and then throw it out wherever convenient.  

Information is only as useful as our capacity to understand it.

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angelito
angelito


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proud father of a princess
posted August 10, 2009 08:15 PM

Quote:
Quote:
For which european countries do you talk here? For sure not for Germany, because abortion here is AGAINST the law.


Are you quite certain abortion in Germany is illegal?
...

As you already pointed out...there are only 3 exceptions to this law (btw, it is the §218 in germany):
- pregnant due to rape
- possible life threat
- inbetween the first 12 weeks if the woman can prove she looked for professional help (There is a special german word for that: "Schwangerschaftskonfliktberatung", but I didn't find a proper translation)
Those 3 exceptions are named in the paragraph 218a, while in general (§218), abortion is against the law.

And some more numbers:

Abortion rate in the world:
- World average: 29 out of 1000 women (normaly women between 15 and 44 are counted here)
- North america: 21
- Western Europe: 12
- Germany: 7
- France: 17
- Great Britain: 18
- Russia: 55

Lowest in Europe is Switzerland with 6,5

So as you can see, North America's rate is nearly twice as much as Western Europe, and three times as much as Germany...
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JollyJoker
JollyJoker


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Undefeatable Hero
posted August 10, 2009 09:42 PM

The WHO isn't ranking health systems anymore. They made the last one in 2000. It's just publishing their reports with the compiled data, which is a 149 pages report for 2009. The "rankings" are made by others then who put the information together.
IN any case, everyone can download the files from the site of the WHO. check statistics and make their own conclusions.

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Shyranis
Shyranis


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted August 12, 2009 09:38 PM
Edited by Shyranis at 22:13, 12 Aug 2009.

I live in Canada and I love the health care system here. I've never had to wait particularly long for anything that looked serious. People I know that do get anything radically life threatening are bumped before people who do not, it's a matter of needs being addressed first rather than the person with the most money getting in line first. Waiting lists are primarily for less threatening illnesses. Even then, Elodin mentioned people coming from other countries to get service with American equipment. At least in the case of Canadians, it's paid for by the government as well, not out of the person's own pockets. An also unlike what a lot of lairs tend to say, I get to pick whatever doctor I want. I can walk into any clinic and get checked out and not have to pay a cent, or book an appointment with any doctor, or bring my son to the Pediatrician (who I chose).

Doomsayers who work for the interests of private companies tend to use greedy doctors who moved to the US because they couldn't double-bill the government. We do admittedly have a shortage of doctors though, the pricks that couldn't give a hoot about a person dying in the street if they're not getting paid flock to America. There's also a story floating around about a lady not getting help with brain cancer. She's actually a liar. She has a minor cyst that is more of a slight inconvenience and decided to bash the health care system while also making some money and getting free trips around the USA. A real brain cancer patient gets bumped forward with treatment.

My husband's mom (breast cancer) and grandma (intestinal cancer) had cancer and they got treated right away. America spends a huge amount of its GDP towards healthcare compared to most other countries. People say that it would cost more to use a public option, but how come most countries with public health care (including Canada) spend so much less on health care (even paying private institutions for rare diseases).

I'm not sure I'd be alive without a public option. I don't think anybody who speaks against it has lived in poverty like I have (my dad had a stroke and couldn't work).

Private medical care just doesn't look out for the little person. It's the attitude of "You can't afford it? Go die in a gutter you piece of trash".

Glenn Beck says that surgeries are cancelled in Britain, I know little of Britain since I don't live there but I'm sure it would have been because the surgery would have at that point had no chance of working. That doesn't happen in Canada regardless. He also mentions that Americans were running from Social Medicine and the like. Socialism didn't even exist before America was created. Nor were any modern health care systems. He's essentially comparing pitchforks to waffles. He's also only talking to his audience of rich white people when he specifically mentions them fleeing Europe. I know my family came here because of war and famine, which I think is the most common reason for immigration overall.

P.S.
Isn't destroying money a federal offense? Glenn seemed to love ripping that dollar bill.

P.P.S.
We also don't make a big deal of Abortion typically, the rate fluctuates between 9 and 16%. It's still currently on a downswing. But it's about 10% less than the American rate.

No, Canada isn't better than the USA (no country is "better" than the other in every way, overall "better" is just way too subjective). But we're different and there are many things (like actually respecting Jesus' wishes of helping the poor) that can be improved in the US. My husband takes a huge interest in what happens in the US because he's distantly related to a couple of presidents and founding fathers.

And wow, look at all the comments in that linked GB article. Most people are disagreeing with Beck and calling him out for his distorted stats. I read somewhere that Canadians are much more likely to survive a curable disease than Americans. (you know even fevers can kill people right?) Also people do not get refused treatment by greedy insurance companies.

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Elodin
Elodin


Promising
Legendary Hero
Free Thinker
posted August 13, 2009 02:34 AM
Edited by Elodin at 02:37, 13 Aug 2009.

So why did your Prime Minister go to America for treatment? And why do rich Europeans go to America for treatment?

Which of Beck's statistics do you claim are wrong, and please provide links.

You complain about doctors leaving Canada and call them "pricks." But isn't the Canadian government the "prick" for not compensating them fairly? Why not call the government "greedy" instead of the doctors? If they gave them their free market fair value they would stay put. Doctors go through many years of intensive study and should be compensated well. Otherwise they might as well take a job that requires less education and is less stressful. So I guess you should contact your parliament and ask for a higher tax rate so the doctors can be fairly compensated.

Yes, it is true that those who left Europe could not have been running from socialism. But they were running from an oppressive government that thought it had the right to control every aspect of their lives, like socialism.

You say America spends a huge amount of GDP on health care. That may be true. But America also treats for free a huge number of illegal immigrants and also has a higher cure rate than European countries in a number of different cancers and such. And of course in America there are the welfare voters who are slaves of the socialist party. Exchange votes for money confiscated from others.

Quote:
I don't think anybody who speaks against it has lived in poverty like I have (my dad had a stroke and couldn't work).


Untrue. I grew up poor. But my father taught me to work and that society owed me nothing. And work I did. Oh so many hours. I did not want to stay in poverty. I have worked my butt off to become relatively prosperous. I give tons to charity. But don't demand that I give anyone anything or say anyone has a right to what I earn. It is not fair to use a politician to steal from me and it is no different from sticking a gun under my nose.

Quote:
Private medical care just doesn't look out for the little person. It's the attitude of "You can't afford it? Go die in a gutter you piece of trash".


That is simply untrue. In America it is illegal to turn a patient away from the emergency room if he needs treatment. I've never seen anyone dying from a disease in the gutter.

Beck is not the only one to talk about surgery being canceled in Britain You can find many example if you search the internet.

There are also lots of stories of rationing in Canada. Are you saying rationing does not occur? Do you think people in the US get quicker treatment or people from Canada?

Clicky

Quote:
Private for-profit clinics are a booming business in Canada -- a country often touted as a successful example of a universal health system.

Facing long waits and substandard care, private clinics are proving that Canadians are willing to pay for treatment.

"Any wait time was an enormous frustration for me and also pain. I just couldn't live my life the way I wanted to," says Canadian patient Christine Crossman, who was told she could wait up to a year for an MRI after injuring her hip during an exercise class. Warned she would have to wait for the scan, and then wait even longer for surgery, Crossman opted for a private clinic.


Quote:
Private for-profit clinics are permitted in some provinces and not allowed in others. Under the Canada Health Act, privately run facilities cannot charge citizens for services covered by government insurance.

But a 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Quebec opened the door for patients facing unreasonable wait times to pay-out-of-pocket for private treatment.



Quote:
He's essentially comparing pitchforks to waffles. He's also only talking to his audience of rich white people when he specifically mentions them fleeing Europe.


Beck's radio program is the third most listened to program in America. Do you think there are that many rich white people in America?  I think not.

Oh, he is dominating the ratings in his TV show though he just recently moved to a different time slot and network. Clicky

Oh, he has a number one best seller too. Yeah, his audience is only rich white people. Meanwhile the uber leftist stations like MSNBC are plummeting in ratings.

New York Times

Yeah, only rich old racist white men listen to him, huh?

Quote:
I know my family came here because of war and famine, which I think is the most common reason for immigration overall.



I think the the most common reasons were religious, political, and economic freedom. So in a word, freedom.

Oh, Beck didn't tear an actual dollar bill. That was just a clip of the show. On the show itself he showed that the dollar came from a copying machine.

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TheDeath
TheDeath


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
posted August 13, 2009 02:38 AM

Quote:
So why did your Prime Minister go to America for treatment? And why do rich Europeans go to America for treatment?
Because capitalism rewards only the rich.
____________
The above post is subject to SIRIOUSness.
No jokes were harmed during the making of this signature.

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