Americans Less Healthy, But Outlive Brits 521
An anonymous reader writes with this intriguing snippet: "Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower death rate than similar people in England, according to findings published in the journal Demography."
Well, duh (Score:5, Funny)
The UK is more depressing what with its annual 4 hours of sunshine and the best looking women maybe rating a 7. Who can forget the warm beer, bad food and lovable totalitarian government?
I'm not kidding. You don't think all of that stuff can have a negative affect on a persons psyche, perhaps affecting their health? Especially the warm beer...that's especially depressing.
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one of my clients is a life assurance company - the actuaries are saying that the first British woman who will live to 120 years old has just retired this year. i.e. for her 40 years of work she'll have to fund 60 years of retirement. that's news that will be enough to kill anyone off.
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Informative)
It's called ale, and it's supposed to be served warm (room temperature, as opposed to chilled). It actually tastes of something. It has substance. That's why we like it. In fact, this reminds me of a joke.
Why is American beer like sex in a canoe?
Because it's fucking close to water.
It's funny because it's true. ;)
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True, nowadays, and in big cities or nice trendy towns like Portland. When I lived in rural Mississippi in the late 1980s, you had a choice of Bud or Bud light. (Even in the so-called Irish bar. Honest! No Guinness in an Irish bar.) The "fscking close to water" joke dates back to that era, if not to an earlier one.
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Earlier. It was used in WW2. It may have been used still earlier.
When it wasn't used was the 19th century, when Budweiser and such were made by immigrant Germans, and it was really pretty damn good. Enough so that it was winning international awards.
Sad where it's gone since then - I blame Prohibition, myself.
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Sad where it's gone since then - I blame Prohibition, myself.
Prohibition is the reason that Americans perceive that beer should be served very cold. Back then, people were glad of any beer that they could get, so speakeasys sold really cheap crap produced in someone's back room. Chilling it deadened the taste buds and removed the horrible yeasty taste. By the time it got back to room temperature, it was completely undrinkable.
In contrast, a decent ale is still very nice at that temperature. There are some really good beers in the USA (I particularly like some of the amber ales, which are very hard to get on this side of the pond), but massive advertising by the crap beer companies have reinforced the notion that beer should be served at a temperature that prevents you from tasting it, so they're hard to find.
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I doubt that's the entire explanation, Americans like all their drinks cold, they serve water with ice even in the middle of winter.
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REAL American beer is done in microbrews.... like here in Portland, Oregon.
That doesn't really compute. How are those microbreweries supplying the whole of the USA, which is quite a large country? I think if you look into the data, you'll find that the vast majority of American beer is supplied by the "macrobreweries" like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors. What makes them less authentically American than the microbreweries?
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Neither company you mention is American owned. The largest American brewer is Sam Adams.
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Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Informative)
They are not less authentically American, just less authentically beer
Real Ale vs. Keg Beer (Score:3, Interesting)
Real ale is fresh living beer that undergoes a natural second fermentation in the cask. Like any natural live product, the beer will mature age and ultimately go off. Real Ale must therefore be drunk within a strict timescale. Real ales requires proper handling on its way to the pub, and care within the pub to bring it to condition for serving. However, real ale can reach its full flavour potential, without chilling, filtration, pasteurisation and added gas.
Keg Beer, mass produced, often pasteurised, dea
Yay, Portland (Score:2)
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Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Insightful)
REAL American beer is done in microbrews.... like here in Portland, Oregon.
... and not served chilled. The whole point of chilling beer is so that it numbs your tastebuds so you can't taste how nasty it is when it's badly made.
Budweiser's "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" adverts were pulled by the ASA in the UK, because fresh beer does not, in fact, taste better. It tastes like yeasty rat piss until it has had time to mature a bit.
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
But what you call cheese could kill a rhino at ten paces.
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Fortunately, we have a trade agreement with Europe that gives us good cheese :)
American grocery store cheese is almost not worth eating, Whole Foods being (sometimes) the exception. No co-incidence that they are the largest purveyor of cheese in the US. I get my cheese in a small cheese shop on the edge of the city, an sometimes there's even a good American-made cheese in the mix.
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No. Not even close. Japan has the world's worst cheese. I went to a fancy restaurant and noticed they had a cheese plate. This is such a rare occurrence in Japan that I thought I must be dreaming. So I asked the waitress, "What kinds of cheese are on the cheese plate?". She replied, "Processed and cream".
To be fair, in Hokkaido they make some excellent camembert style cheeses. Japanese people don't seem to eat it though, which is too bad. I crave cheddar cheese, though. I'll even take the tasteless
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to talk reality, forget beer comparisons, try cheese.
Disclaimer. I was born and raise in Wisconsin. In fact I still live here. I went to London for a year for school and married a French women. I've spent lot of time in France, a country that prides itself in cheese. In the US, Wisconsin prides itself for it's dairy products, including cheese.
America is home to the worlds most disgusting cheese.
I wouldn't go that far. It's certainly not as good as Europe, but there are reasons for the lack of variety and therefor flavor in cheese.
And they try to give me some Wisconsin cheddar which admittedly is not awful
That's because it's not awful, it's good. The problem is that cheddar simply is a bland cheese. Of course, you do have to find the good stuff. What cheese lover really gets existed over *chedder*?! lol It can go great on burgers (I still prefer swiss) but it's simply a dull cheese and that's not Wisconsin's fault. It's just as bad in Chedder England.
I don't know what it is.
It has to do with milk pasteurization laws. It prevents a lot of cheeses from being made. Lots of them goat cheese. That's why goat cheese in the US is always the same terrible crappy stuff and why you never see the variety of cheese you have in Europe. It has really grown to be a cultural thing.
But likewise, these same laws are the reason you don't see boxes of milk on store shelves, outside of refrigeration units. I was confused the first time I was in France at my wife's house and I had some cereal for breakfast. She had me pull a box of milk from the pantry. I thought all milk had to be kept refrigerated. Then we talked with the shop owner of Nalaa's cheese in Green Bay. He explained the pasteurization laws and why we can't get the good variety of cheese here and how he was limited on what he could import and sell.
American's who haven't spent much time outside of the US simply don't get exposed to what's out there. And those that do, might not be brave enough to ever try it because some of that cheese simply smells like a rotten skunk carcass in the Texas heat, but tastes like the heavens. But many people won't get past that smell. Case in point, we've turned many of my friends onto Rachlette cheese. That's not as pungent as some goat cheeses, but some had some real reservations of ever trying it. It smells up the kitchen when cutting it (who cut the cheese? There's a reason for that phrase).
Of course, one of the biggest complements at my recent wedding (in France) was the fact that we had a cheese buffet. A table with over 30 types of cheeses on it. You've never seen American's so confused and pleased. I shocked one of my friends to go and eat every kind of cheese he could find.
It really is a cheese repression.
Now, beer. Microbrews have really come a long way to pass by the basic Miller and Bud products we have. You can find some pretty good tasting beer in Wisconsin. New Glarus, Leienenkugels, Capital Brew, etc. are good beer. It's also much more expensive and in a place like Wisconsin where quantity can seem more important than quality, you'll find people still turn to Miller or Bud Light. And when you're use to drinking bland for so long, having something with flavor becomes too much of a shock.
I think the UK has a better quality average, but the US also suffers from gimmicks. There's a billion beer makers with a billion private label beers each trying to sound like their beer is something new or different. This one has LIME! This one has LEMON! This one is called "Fat Squirrel", this is "Moose Drool", oh, look, a Monty Python branded beer! Here's a Pumpkin beer!
*sigh*
It's complicated.
Point is, Wisconsin doesn't have crap for cheese. What they do make is good, but what they do make really isn't good cheese to begin with. You can thank US laws and now US culture as it
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The problem is that cheddar simply is a bland cheese.
You're doing it wrong :-)
Cheap cheddar, poor-quality cheddar, "mousetrap" cheddar is bland. Good, well-made, mature cheddar ranks up there with the best of them.
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But likewise, these same laws are the reason you don't see boxes of milk on store shelves, outside of refrigeration units. I was confused the first time I was in France at my wife's house and I had some cereal for breakfast. She had me pull a box of milk from the pantry. I thought all milk had to be kept refrigerated.
Actually, ultra-high temperature pasteurization [wikipedia.org] makes the milk go sterile enough that the expiry date is at least three months ahead, at room temperature. There's still regular refrigerated milk, of course. Wikipedia says the reason it's generally not US stores is simply that consumers are uneasy about non-refrigerated milk.
Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Funny)
(Besides, spray-on-cheese is not primarily for eating.)
Then what on Earth is it for? Self-defense?
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Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I the only one who read the article? Ah yes, this is Slashdot. So this article is written by finance people and someone who works for RAND which is funded partly by the health care industries in the US.
So no fucking shit it finds that US healthcare industry provided healthcare is better than a socialist model.
Or have I missed something?
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA is consistent with the observation that 90% of American health care dollars are spent during the last few months of the patient's life.
If USA health care invested more money in early and preventive treatment, people might not live any longer, but they would be in better health until old age problems caught up with them. That is clear from TFA when viewed within the context of the differences between USA and UK health care delivery systems.
But USA health care is profit oriented, and there is more profit to be made in selling cures and disease treatments than there is in preventing diseases. Not only does preventive health care lack as much opportunity for profit, it reduces the market for such money makers as AIDS drugs, cancer therapies, antihypertensive agents, and antidepressants.
The USA needs a major reform of health care. Even if the recent legislation is put fully into effect, it won't go far enough; it will be band aid approach to broken bones. There needs to be a break-up of the current system. Prohibiting the sale of health insurance for profit would be a good place to start.
follow the money (Score:3, Interesting)
But USA health care is profit oriented, and there is more profit to be made in selling snake oil than there is in treating diseases.
There, fixed that for you. Seriously. I talked to a guy with high blood pressure recently. his doctor wants to put him on drugs, but he's not so sure.
I commented that well over 1/2 of the population doesn't get even the RDA of magnesium in their diet. high blood pressure is usually related to stress, and how can one relax if they don't have enough of the relaxation mineral in their diet?
I did some more reading, and the "life extension" people (Pearson & Shaw) say that potassium bicarbonate [life-enhancement.com] can help wi
Re:follow the money (Score:5, Insightful)
If the stuff you're pushing worked the way you say it would, the doctor would be recommending it.
However, as it turns out, the research on whether or not magnesium helps with high blood pressure is inconclusive; this [about.com] article seems to have a reasonable layman's summary of what's going on. Therefore, the doctor cannot in good conscience recommend that the guy take magnesium pills, as they may or may not work (for the same reason why doctors can't prescribe placebos, despite their occasional effectiveness).
Furthermore, look at the "Should I take oral magnesium supplements" and "What are good dietary sources of magnesium" sections - dietary magnesium supplements just don't work, you need to get it as part of your food. What food contains magnesium? Healthy food. What part of the doctor's recommendation are you leaving out? A diet change. No doctor would just prescribe blood pressure pills without also including a dietary intervention, that's only treating the symptoms without treating the underlying problem. This is actually something alt-med people love to accuse doctors of, probably because everyone just hears "pills" but doesn't pay attention to the "and here's how you should improve your diet, and some exercises you can do" bit. Either you or your friend didn't pay attention to the part where the doctor recommended lifestyle changes, because he certainly did (and if he didn't, he is being remiss in his care).
So why recommend blood pressure pills in the first place, if the real treatment is going to be a change in diet and exercise? Because high blood pressure is a danger now, while diet and exercise will cure the problem later (if at all - to be quite honest, few people manage to make permanent healthy lifestyle changes. It's really sad, but that's the way it is). Ideally, your friend would start taking the blood pressure pills immediately, then start in on changing his diet and getting more exercise and eventually wean himself off the pills once his blood pressure gets to a normal level.
As for potassium bicarbonate, the Cigna page [cigna.com] on it says that you should tell your doctor if you have high blood pressure and intend to take it, as there may be side effects. The only study on its effects that I could find was this one [ahajournals.org], which had positive results but was little more than a pilot study (14 people). Further research is needed before a doctor can really recommend supplementation with potassium bicarbonate (especially when just eating more fruits and vegetables already has a significant effect, which is probably why there's been little research in this area - there's no need to recommend expensive supplements when the patient can just eat better).
There is something I don't understand in your post, though: you say that taking these alternative supplements is good, because it deprives the pharmaceutical complex of years of income (despite the fact that ideally you'd stop taking the blood pressure pills at some point) - but as your alternative, you recommend taking magnesium and potassium bicarbonate supplements. Do those poof into existence from thin air? No, they're sold by the "supplemental" complex - and you're recommending giving them years of income for treating high blood pressure, despite (again) the fact that the real treatment lies in a lifestyle change. You're basically saying "don't buy stuff that we know works from those guys, buy stuff that may or may not work from these other guys".
I wonder who is treating the symptoms here, and not addressing the causes?
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Informative)
It also reflects a different culture. In the UK when an older person gets cancer or another terminal disease, they're more likely to opt for palliative care to maximize the quality of their remaining while in the U.S. they're more likely to opt for intensive treatment that adds time but subtracts quality of life. None of that reflects at all upon the quality or adequacy of the health care systems.
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Who can forget the warm beer, bad food and lovable totalitarian government?
I never had a warm beer in the dozen or so pubs I visited while in London a couple years back. And if you don't like a good banger, then that's your problem. :-P
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I thought the reason you chill beer is to kill the nasty taste....
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Name one well-known American chef. How many well-known British chefs can you name?
America has the worst food in the world, all bland greasy meat covered in cheap hot sauce.
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I bet you don't have warm beer. :p
Re:Well, duh, it's when Medicare kicks in! (Score:5, Insightful)
Canadian life expectancy = 80.3 years, UK ife expectancy = 78.7 years, and US life expectancy = 78.0 years (in 2007) according to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html [infoplease.com] and that's because Canada and the UK have life-long public health care.
But when medicare starts to cover US citizens at age 65, suddenly US citizens have a much better outlook. US citizens lucky enough to survive until age 65 and receive medicare coverage have a longer life expectancy than their British peers.
Actually, if you go back and study the data at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html [infoplease.com] and http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf [oecd.org] you'll discover that the US has both higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy than Canada and almost every developed European democracy (even Germany who absorbed the disaster known as East Germany a few decades back). For what its worth, the US also pays much more per capita for their lower life expectancies. I wonder if this data would change anyone's mind about the benefits of health care reform...
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Yes, government *insurance* is very efficient. See a comparison of Medicare v. Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is one of the most inefficient programs we have. We basically subsidize private insurers to do what Medicare already does more cheaply.
Government health-care? That's a different ball of wax.
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>>Yes, government *insurance* is very efficient. See a comparison of Medicare v. Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is one of the most inefficient programs we have. We basically subsidize private insurers to do what Medicare already does more cheaply.
>>Government health-care? That's a different ball of wax.
You got it backwards.
Medicare? Medicaid? Cheaply? Only in the sense they underpay for certain services, which means that hospitals compensate by overusing the services they make a profit o
Re:Well, duh, it's when Medicare kicks in! (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is that the US health system costs 10 points of GDP more than socialised systems with better outcomes. So as far as efficiency goes, experience shows public health care is massively more efficient than private one.
And this is obvious: you cannot ask someone to decide objectively how much to spend on their health when their life is on the line. This is exactly equivalent to legal mugging.
Basically, you are arguing that 10% of US GDP (way more than the average deficit even with the Bush madness) is well spent just because instead of staying in the pockets of the people, goes to line the pockets of private companies? For no benefit to the public at all? Because you are not getting better outcomes, you are not getting better innovation, you are not getting more employment. You do get better catering, but if you think hospitals should be run as glorified hotels you need to look up on what is expected of a hospital.
You fail at basic logic and basic knowledge.
Re:Go home and die (Score:5, Insightful)
Without specifying what precise ailments she was suffering from, it's impossible to judge whether or not the NHS failed in that situation. The problem is, we never want to let our loved ones go, even when no medical technology can save them.
Last night, I was talking to a nurse who'd spent some time working in Dubai, and who had regularly encountered a particularly common form of cognitive disfunction: the belief that money can solve every problem. He was regularly confronted with people who thought that the reason that their relatives were dying was that they hadn't offered enough money. That there was an infinite sliding scale of increasingly expensive treatments, and somewhere in there there was a magic pill that would save their loved one.
The truth is, medical science has come a long way, but it still can't fix everything. So there's a possibility that she was sent home because there was nothing they could do but prolong the agony.
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It's already rationed whether you like it or not. No country has an infinite amount of resources to fund unlimited medical treatment. The question is how to use our limited medical resources to treat people. It's hard to imagine how the US uses our resources more efficiently than other first-world countries (based on cost per person, life expectancy, etc).
Medicare is 'rationed' but is also more popular than any other private insurance program in the US and is one of the most popular government programs.
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I've talked to American and British surgeons at lectures and read their articles.
One of the questions they always deal with is whether an operation will do more harm than good. That comes before they even get to the cost calculations.
A lot of major cardiovascular procedures have a surgical death rate of 3% or more. You don't want to take a 1/33 risk of death unless it's going to lower your subsequent risk of dying substantially more than that.
There are lots of people in their 60s who couldn't survive major
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My point is that it is easy to lie with statistics -- or to misapply them.
A common misconception.
Peer-reviewed publications require data to be submitted according to certain rules, because those rules make it difficult to lie with statistics.
The infant mortality statistics have been thoroughly reviewed. Their strengths and weaknesses are well known.
It's also well known that doctors who take the hardest cases have the worst outcomes.
It is true that it's easy to lie and misapply statistics in non-peer-reviewed publications, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, or in white p
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When to say enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
It has been my experience that Americans hold onto life harder than almost anyone else on the planet. There is no saying "Well, that's enough then." There is no accepting the inevitable. No matter how sick, how weak, how miserable a person is, in the US it seems that it's still better than throwing in the towel.
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I wonder if this has to do with the American Religious Right and the rather bleak picture they paint of the afterlife where the absolute best you can hope for is an eternity under a sadistic, totali
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Or, we can look for an answer that doesn't paint most of us as backwards hyper-religious hicks... I know that (especially from the outside) it certainly seems like we are from all the news coverage and wacky stories, but most people here who are religious follow a gentler, kinder, more accepting version.
The "religious right" is a fairly small minority, but a very vocal one with higher turnout numbers than average. Unfortunately, those of us who share [i]some[/i] views considered right wing (eg, my views on
Divide by number of pills swallowed... (Score:2)
I think they just spend more money on pills over the pond. Most Brits have an aversion to all things medical.
Even so! (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite all this clever wording, Americans do not outlive Brits in the vast majority of cases.
USA - Male life expectancy 75.6 years, female 80.8 years.
UK - Male life expectancy 77.2 years, female 81.6 years.
Notice how one set of numbers are larger than the others.
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Despite all this clever wording, Americans do not outlive Brits in the vast majority of cases.
USA - Male life expectancy 75.6 years, female 80.8 years.
UK - Male life expectancy 77.2 years, female 81.6 years.
Notice how one set of numbers are larger than the others.
This tells you a lot about statistics. It can be fudged.
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Re:Even so! (Score:4, Informative)
England - Male life expectancy 78 years, female 82.1 years.
Source. [statistics.gov.uk]
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The article doesn't speak about life expectancy at birth, it talks about life expectancy for people who are 50+ years old, those are two different things.
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If one is to assume that both TFA and the parent post are correct, then one must assume that either:
A) England and the UK as a whole have substantially different life expectancies (unlikely),
B) someone in the USA has a significantly higher chance of dying young than someone in England/UK (rather more likely)
or
C) There is a difference in how the two countries handle infant mortality statistics (no opinions on likelihood, though I have read that the USA classifies some things as "infant deaths" that so
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Indeed.
UK: Ranked 20th in list of life expectancy by country.
US: Ranked 30th.
And to imply that socialized medicine is the reason is disingenuous when you consider that Iceland ranks 3rd and has *no* private healthcare available (which is a very rare situation), and even Cuba beats the US (by one place).
Source [un.org].
Re:Even so! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even so! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do so many American children die young?
I would posit that all American children who die do so while young.
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Thats how the problem starts, and its all downhill from there (in the snow, both ways, with no shoes).
Re:Even so (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the British thinktank who instituted this are a right-wing one, no doubt plotting to destroy the NHS alongside the Tory allies. So they publish a non-peer reviewed piece of 'research' designed to conclude what they want it to conclude. Bullshit.
The Tories recently gutted NICE, the body that evaluates the cost effectiveness of drugs to see if they should be made available on the NHS. They were doing a fine job, but got nothing but shit because they prevented pharmaceutical companies gouging into the state healthcare providers ample budget. When retards in the US talk about 'death panels' they are usually referring to these guys, and they don't get much of a good press in the UK either.
Basically, they talked to terminal patients to find out how much of their life they would be willing to give up to remain in good health for the rest of their life, and used this to calibrate a 'quality adjusted life year' which represented the value of a drug. Thus they could reject a hugely overpriced drug that added 2 weeks to the life of a late-stage cancer patient and spend the money saved on a drug that might allow a very sick child to reach adulthood. That second part *never* got a mention by the rightwing critics. When opportunity costs are being used to make the state healthcare system more efficient whilst forcing drug companies to charge realistic prices based on what their products can actually do, the right suddenly decides to reject economic language and talk shit about 'death panels' and NICE 'killing patients'.
Yes, we ration healthcare in this country - but up until now it has been based on how much extra life (across the whole population) that healthcare can give. The US rations healthcare too - based on how rich or poor you are. Our system is, frankly, better.
Healthcare and statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
How long old people still have to live heavily depends on medical treatment. Surprisingly (at first sight) bad healthcare can mean old people are more healthy. (It stops to be surpising if you consider that bad health care means only the healthy people live long enough to be old).
Thus you can get numbers that in the USA looking at the right age, you can get much longer life expectancy if you are black and poor than if you are rich and white.
Another nice paradox (numbers might not be totally accurate and mig
Politics (Score:3, Interesting)
I know some politicians will use a study like this to argue that single payer health care is a bad idea, but when you consider that this study looked at older citizens, who tend (in America) to be on Medicare (our single payer health care), it seems to suggest that that program isn't so bad after all.
Of course, you have climate, pollution, diet, genetics, and a dozen different factors that you can't control for when you compare Americans and Brits. So studies like this one are probably pretty useless.
It would be interesting if you could take a group of senior citizens and split them up three ways: no insurance, single payer (Medicare), and traditional health insurance. Then see who lives longest.
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It could even be that weaker genes and such get taken out before the comparison thresholds comes into play.
I would love to see the death rates for younger people.
And yes, climate could be a big issue. USA allows someone to stay within their nation while having a ski vacation in the rockies and a beach vacation in florida or california. How many elderly in USA ups and moves south once they hit retirement?
How about health care spendings per citizen ? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's according to OECD: http://tinyurl.com/cr9753 [tinyurl.com]
Re:How about health care spendings per citizen ? (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance the US spends more than twice as much on heath care per citizen as the UK
An alternative way of putting that however, is that the health care costs twice as much per citizen. Factually, the two statements are equivalent, but consider the different implications.
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For instance the US spends more than twice as much on heath care per citizen as the UK
An alternative way of putting that however, is that the health care costs twice as much per citizen. Factually, the two statements are equivalent, but consider the different implications.
True :)
Re:How about health care spendings per citizen ? (Score:4, Interesting)
While I accept that that is probably much closer to the conscious aims of American people, I think your original post captures the reality better. This isn't just a disinclination to help other people, it's a preference to spend more money, therefore disadvantaging yourself, in order to avoid conferring a gratuitous benefit upon someone else.
While I can respect the position that people should provide for themselves I find it very difficult to respect the position that it is always preferable to avoid paying for someone else, even if avoiding paying for others in fact makes your own life harder.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Informative)
Also bear in mind in the UK we now have a foaming-at-the-mouth radical neoliberal government, the type who says "Government is terrible! And when we get elected we are going to prove it!". They are intentionally gutting the NHS from the inside in order to make it look bad so they can move in after a few years and say "Socialised healthcare doesn't work" and sell the whole think off to their Eton/Oxbridge mates.
Expect more of these lies in the future.
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Also bear in mind in the UK we now have a foaming-at-the-mouth radical neoliberal government, the type who says "Government is terrible! And when we get elected we are going to prove it!". They are intentionally gutting the NHS from the inside in order to make it look bad so they can move in after a few years and say "Socialised healthcare doesn't work" and sell the whole think off to their Eton/Oxbridge mates.
I know someone working at the NHS who at some point had a manager who managed her and nobody else, who in turn had a manager who managed that manager and nobody else, and who in turn had a manager managing that manager and nobody else. So she was outnumbered by management three-to-one and was the only one doing any actual useful work. So I'd say there is quite a bit of cost saving possible without reducing the quality at all.
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I know some politicians will use a study like this to argue that single payer health care is a bad idea,
Clearly these deaths are due to the NHS death panels!
Not true actually (Score:3, Informative)
The article misses an important detail - the Yanks actually dieing earlier than Brits, it's just that all the extra preservatives they consume keep them in a state of animated death for a few extra years.
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See wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics
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Caveat: all statistics were fabricated from used banana skins).
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This study warrants more indepth scrutiny (Score:2)
I would look to all sorts of things for differences between the two locations. I would look at what types of people were sampled from both populations. For example, did the two samples include impoverished people as well as middle and upper class people? Does it account for various [sub-]species of humans ranging from varieties of white and black to asian, hispanic/native american? There are far too many differences for this study to simply compare the two locations and draw a conclusion. (Yes, I know
Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is misleading. Brits, on average, outlive Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy [wikipedia.org]
This study compares the survival of people with similar diseases once they become ill.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Define "better" (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've used this sort of argument in the past to highlight your statement "keeping someone alive often comes with a price" as well; it's also one of the reasons that healthcare costs in the United States continue to increase.
Fifty years ago, there were a whole bunch of bad things that happened to older people that signaled they were nearing the end, and that their remaining time was limited. Many of these things have become treatable and correctable, extending life for many years, but often at a cost, not ju
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Effects of the war (Score:2, Interesting)
Must be the lack of death panels. (Score:2)
The Brits are just better at offing people by committee.
I'd certainly rather be healthier and die younger (Score:2)
Americans paying... (Score:2)
I'm not saying americans are more healthy (I find that really hard to believe), but is it possible they appear less healthy, simply because they are sent for more procedures because they are the ones paying for them?
Somewhat suspicious omissions (Score:2)
Poor ME (Score:3, Funny)
Here I am, deluded and home alone in the dark. I've never considered the death rate before. Too me the death rate for all mortals is 100%. Apparently I am misinformed.
What blows my mind... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, that works in reverse. The same people who say we should "trust the experts because we don't have degrees in this", will be first in line to question it.
Ahhh, partisan hypocrisy, may you never die.
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Shipman didn't "ethnically cleanse" He almost exclusively murdered old ladies who "wouldn't be missed", including the mother of one of my friends.
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But seriously, all modern day comparisons should be treated with caution. We're talking about people in their sixties here. If you want to compare the effects of health care in the different countries, you need to give consideration to the last seventy years or more. Or maybe it's just walking versus driving. The British walk more. A slightly more physically demanding life makes
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From TFA:
"The study also investigated the relationship between the financial resources of individuals in both countries and how soon they would they would die in the future.
"While poorer people are more likely to die sooner than their more well-off counterparts, researchers say their finding supports the view that the primary pathway between health and wealth is that poor health leads to a depletion of household wealth, rather than being poor causes one's health to decline. Researchers found that the substa
Re:clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
"While poorer people are more likely to die sooner than their more well-off counterparts, researchers say their finding supports the view that the primary pathway between health and wealth is that poor health leads to a depletion of household wealth, rather than being poor causes one's health to decline. Researchers found that the substantial changes in wealth that occurred in the years 1992 and 2002 in the United States through increases in stock prices and housing prices did not alter the probability of subsequent death."
Yes, that's exactly the part I was eluding to. It doesn't tell us anything about comparative differences between the countries as regards wealth. I.e. are the differences in health care between the two countries constant across different wealth demographics or are they different, e.g. we find the the US is ahead of the UK in heatlh care for the wealthy, but the UK is ahead in health care for the median earners or the poor. That's what would be really interesting to know if we want to start examining the role of health care in more meaningful depth and by the sounds of it, they collected data relevant to this, but it is missing from their conclusions. I find it highly unlikely that the difference in health care is constant across all demographics of society.
Re:clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that we're better than the brits. They just considering it unethical to prolong death in the ways that we do here in the US. We can keep someone alive an extra 6-18 months with modern medicine. Quality of life during those months ia really crappy, but as long as you have an estate or medicare to draw funds from who cares?
The concern in Europe is about making end of life care as painless and dignified.
It's one of the reasons health care costs less there.
Re:clearly (Score:4, Interesting)
The numbers are badly skewed by the fact that what happens earlier is highly significant.
Consider a previous study (in the 1980's I believe). It showed that Electronic Engineers in the US were far more likely than others to die in their 40's of exposure to PCBs. This lead to panic about Poly Chlorinated Biphenys, which are used in transformers.
Once the panic settled down, it was discovered that polychlorinated biphenyls are only used in power distribution transformers (ie in substations), whihc most EEs are never exposed to at all. However, almost all EEs were exposed to Printed Circuit Boards. Statistical analyists were not exposed to neither, and could not the difference between a liquid and a solid. The reason for the discrepancy in the death rate was that EEs lived much longer than their peers because they were not sent to Vietnam, and were much more likely to die of health problems in the 40's because their peers died of gunshot wounds at the atge of ne-ne-ne--nineteen.
Moral: Trust statistics only after you personally have discovered how far you can throw them. (Chucking them into a WPB is a well proven strategy).
Re:clearly (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, this is quite possible.
You'll note that the "Rand Corporation" only collected data for this study from 2002-2006. That's when the life expectancy trend was really starting to show up.
Second, you'll note that for some reason, they compared the US to Great Britain. If they had used other countries with what you so quaintly call "socialized medicine" the results would show that the US was not doing quite so well in the health and life expectancy olympics.
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No, it's not.
Unlike "socialized medicine", Medicare does nothing to bring down the overall costs of health care. The government is still unable to negotiate with pharmaceutical customers to get lower prices, as is done in countries with universal coverage.
Plus, Medicare forces people without coverage to wait until they're 65 to get basic health care. By then, diseases which might have been easily prevented at age 45 or 50 have become symptomatic, which means th
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Possibly, you say.
In this I see more of the American emphasis on quantity over quality. You know: like their cheese.
What isn't included in this survey, I surmise, is that the sick Americans are kept "alive" longer, by bankrupting them on expensive medical technologies and pharmaceuticals. It is a life-extending technology that only kicks-in, once the damage has been done!
So, those last years are spent in drugged misery, draining the bank accounts and inflating the insurance-rates - leaving another generati
Obvious other cause (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's more likely that the metric used to measure health is a poor predictor of life expectancy. In fact, the article actually demonstrates as much. This could be because, say, the ability to run a few miles or the number of days spent with a cold each year might indicate good health, but doesn't mean you won't come down with a bad case of cancer or something else that may actually kill you. I suspect Americans are in worse overall health because they're less active and more overweight, wheras brits consume a whole lot more alcohol.
Even if the metric is a good predictor, the conclusions are still bogus. The medical system is not the "cause of death", so attributing death rates without considering the causes is silly. The UK has 36,700 more deaths in winter than in summer, mostly among the elderly. (Your blood thickens when you are cold and you are more likely to have a heart attack or stroke.) So the most likely cause of the difference in death rates would be that US homes are better insulated, being generally newer, and have bett
Re:...but Life Expectancy is better in UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's more of the dangers of the lifestyle in general. More people are killed from more reckless behavior in the US then in the UK. We do more stupid shit on a regular basis like give some types of guns to anyone over 18 based on nothing more then their desire to have them. We allow juveniles to handle loaded firearms and other weapons (Bow and Arrows) unsupervised for extended lengths of time (while hunting) and so on. We have one of the largest recreational boating populations in the western world, some of the largest lands allotted to motorcycle, quad-atv, and other recreational uses.
But probably the number one risk that would alter the life expectancy quite a bit would be cars. In the US, there is/was about 2.28 cars per household (in 2008) [autospies.com] while only about 1.1 cars per household in the UK (at about the time- from 2008 to 2009 [carbonindependent.org]). This means that more people are driving in the US then in the UK. Gas is also cheaper which generally means that more people are driving for recreational uses verses more restrictive usage like necessities and so on. But something that probably would make this skewed even more would be that in the UK, you typically have to be 17 to get a drivers license and even then, you are restricted to what types of cars you can drive until your 18 or 21. In the US, it differs from state to state, but in most cases, you can start driving at 16 years of age, there is no limits on the types of cars (or non-commercial trucks) and in some areas, with certain hardships you can get a drivers license at age 14 (Ohio is one).
A reflection of this is strongly shown in the UK traffic death statistics [statistics.gov.uk] in which they listed that in 2006, there were 5.4 road accident deaths per 100,000 population in the UK compared to 14.3 per 100,000 populations in the US. I don't car where you are, if you have almost three times as many people dieing from more or less random occurrences, the life expectancy will be lower and it won't be much on the grounds of health care provided Health care provided is equal in traffic fatalities because it's all either not in the equation (dead on the scene) or life threatening injuries in which not only does car insurance cover, it's illegal in the US for a hospital open to the public to refuse or limit emergency medical treatment based around the ability to pay.
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Well,