US Death Rate Rises, Health Officials Aren't Sure Why (nbcnews.com) 607
New submitter Ungrounded Lightning writes: According to The New York Times, the U.S. death rate has risen for the first time in more than a decade (or several decades if particular). The rise is across the whole population, though whites, especially the less educated among them, were recently (and separately) documented to be particularly hard hit. The article speculates about drug abuse (prescription as well as illegal), suicides, and Alzheimer's, though it notes that heart disease -- which had been consistently dropping -- has also risen. No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect. The aging of the population was mentioned, though the rise is present even within particular age groups. The National Center for Health Statistics shows the adjusted death rate went up from 723 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014 to nearly 730 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. We do know that the suicide rate in the U.S. has surged to its highest level in almost three decades.
Recession is really a depression (Score:4, Interesting)
Look at the labor participation rate, not the widely reported unemployment figure. The participation rate is dismal and reflects a lot of white, working class men who don't fit into the modern work force.
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Sure, U6 is dismal, but that doesn't define a depression. The trick there is that BLS keeps redefining "the basket" of goods for the CPI calculation. The CPI doesn't go up because while the price of beef has tripled, the price of LCD TV's has fallen by 10x, so the BLS considers that to even out (I kid you not)
Holy cow, I was looking at refrigerator prices the other day. I last bought a top-of-the-line unit (no icemaker because I'm not insane, but otherwise high-end) in 2002. The prices today are more th
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Informative)
For example, the price of beef has NOT tripled: http://www.statista.com/statis... [statista.com] - it went from $2.09 per pound in 2006 to $3.05 in 2015. That's annualized 3.2% price growth rate - quite in line with the official inflation.
And if you don't believe BLS then there's an alternative: http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ [mit.edu] - they collate prices from multiple sources (literally more than a billion price points a day) and compute their own inflation measurements. And it's in agreement with BLS.
Anecdotes like "BLS changes stuff to hide the TRUTH" are totally and ALWAYS a complete bullshit. Always. No exceptions.
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Recession is really a depression (Score:3)
Where the hell are you getting beef for $3.05 a pound?
Re: Recession is really a depression (Score:4, Informative)
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4 years ago I could buy a lbs of beef for $1.99, it's around $5.99-7.30lbs these days. Top that out with 94m people not in the labor force, you've got a recipe for people popping themselves off. Past trends show that as well regardless of what the government says the unemployment rate is, especially unemployment rates where you simply fall off after several years.
Re: Recession is really a depression (Score:3)
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You can not. There's no such data. And it looks like you're the prime reason for the article - it's just another step for the cognitive dissonance to become unbearable and cause a suicide.
Really? So you're saying that the $6lbs for ground beef isn't really $6, or are you saying that wages haven't decreased(in the US on average by $3-5k in the last 6-7 years) and in turn it's all just a figment of imagination.
Let me give you some help: You've seen food, energy, general goods all increase. You make the statement that this is simply due to inflation, as a reminder inflation isn't calculated against all items in an economy(hint: most of those data sets are using the "core inflation number").
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You make the statement that this is simply due to inflation, as a reminder inflation isn't calculated against all items in an economy(hint: most of those data sets are using the "core inflation number").
You can check the general inflation. It's called "headline inflation" and is tracked separately by BLS: http://www.advisorperspectives... [advisorperspectives.com] - same result.
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What kind of beef are you buying and how are you buying it? Seriously I don't know what it costs in stores as I get my beef from directly from a processor and purchase the fraction of the animal from the farmer directly but unless it is some of the ultra prime cuts it shouldn't be costing that much. If that is for ground beef, chuck roast, or round steaks quit shopping at Whole Foods in San Fransisco or New York, if that price is for tenderloin then quit your bitching.
That's lean ground beef, bought at your local supermarket in places like Florida and Ontario(Cdn). More expensive in Ontario as you might expect, but no that's not at Whole Foods and so on. It can actually be more expensive from a local butcher, anywhere from $0.50-$2/lbs for medium to lean, depending on the company. see post here [slashdot.org] and the attached imgur link, that's from the winn-dixie(used to be called sweetbay) that I shop at down there, it's actually a bit cheaper this week then last week.
Re: Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Funny)
Pfft, you pampered kids these days. I grow my own grass to raise my own cows, which I created by breeding wild cattle over many generations to optimize for muscle weight and docile behavior. I forged my own cleavers from a handbuilt kiln fired by locally sourced wood coal and a bellows made from cow stomach. How did I get the cow stomach without first having a cleaver, you ask? Good question, if you're a fan of dumb questions. I used flint, of course. In order to find the flint, first I familiarized myself with geological maps of the area (which I had created back in my cartographer days), then I searched everywhere: in plowed fields, in the gravel of creek and river bottoms, construction sites, under bridges and eroded roadside ditches. Most of the flint was of poor quality, or too small for a blade, but eventually I found the perfect sample. Anyway, once I had my cow stomach and my bellows and finished forging my cleavers, I could process my own meat almost effortlessly on my hand-built processing line, and let me tell you, I've saved a ton of money this way. Why spend money when you can spend lots and lots of time, I say? Time is free and there's an endless supply! Anyway, my 80th birthday is coming up soon, so I think it's about time I start dating. First, I need to make myself some nice clothes though. Don't want to scare off the ladies with my cow-hide panchos. Mama didn't raise no fools!
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the parent modded as "insightful"? It's full of bullshit.
The parent didn't articulate his point as well as he might have, choosing a poor example with the price of food. However, even with the commodity example he's not wholly wrong. In the decades since 1978, increases in productivity in the US economy have gone overwhelmingly to the top income quintile and since the Great Recession of 2008, which accelerated these trends, to the top 10% and top 1% respectively. Wages have stagnated as generations of ordinary working people have shared little in these gains for 37+ years now. Moreover, the cost of key goods which many middle class people buy, including health care and college education, have skyrocketed. The result is a shrinking middle class which feels increasingly pressured, squeezed and pinched by high costs and incomes that haven't kept up, even though multiple family members are working harder and more hours than ever before. You cannot deny that this is an issue, the evidence is overwhelming. Indeed, all of the 2016 presidential candidates are talking about it. They may disagree on what to do about it or how to fix it, but almost nobody questions the existence of the problem.
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Interesting)
Government has some reason to help the poor, but business really doesn't. They don't have money, and the fact that they're poor mean they're more available, replaceable, and exploitable as labor. They don't have the capital to set themselves up in some sort of business, even for the entrepeneural ones.
So, assume that you're a poor man with a wife and two kids, barely scraping by. You have no money to take courses to improve your lot, or time for that matter, since you're working two part-time jobs and have travel time. In the absence of government intervention, how are you going to get your share of improving productivity?
If you're a business owner, in the absence of government regulation, what incentive do you have to spend a dime on pollution abatement? These are practical questions. While you say you don't want pollution, grinding poverty, or social Darwinism, I don't see how your ideology leads you to ways to avoid them.
Certainly, if you can label what you like "socialism" and point to North Korea (totalitarian), China (totalitarian), Greece (devastated by EU bankers), and Venezuela (screwed up) as the inevitable endgame, I can label what you like "anarcho-libertarianism" and point to Somalia. I'd rather stick to more productive arguments, myself.
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I am just going to link to some of the previous discussions, so that this one does not take place in the vacuum.
What discussion? There doesn't seem to be one, since you've merely linked a shit-ton of other pages and didn't actually put forward any claim.
WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking of biased writing...
No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect.
Equally, a less Obamacare-dead-horse-beating person could have written, "No mention was made of whether the disastrous foreign policy blunders of George W Bush or the unprecedented obstructionist Congress-paralyzing politics of Mitch McConnell had some effect."
LOL
Although maybe I am being too quick to say that the above are all equally preposterous to mention as having had no effect. Because in fact, I can imagine a reasonable argument being made that expanding medical coverage
Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know more people who have lost their healthcare as a result of Obamacare than who have gotten health care who did not have it before. Then again, I know more working class folks than non-working who can get the biggest subsidies.
That's just anecdotal of course.
Less anecdotal is that health care costs have risen considerably, and that even if one has insurance under Obamacare, the cost of getting sick is high (look at deductables and out-of-pocket maximums of the various tiers).
Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention the high number of people who have subsidised coverage, but with deductibles so high that it is the benefit is unusable.
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Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Here where I live, the state exchange is functional, and you can get good plans for reasonable prices. There are lots more people with decent health insurance than there used to be. The ACA is working just fine here.
Of course, I wouldn't expect it to work nearly as well in states where the governments did their best to undermine it. That was predictable. That's a typical Republican tactic: do your best to screw up government programs and blame them for not working as they should.
Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another anecdote: I have a rare and very serious autoimmune disease called Poly Arteritis Nodosa. I lost my health insurance after the Maryland high risk insurance program was transferred to CareFirst. They "lost" all the records from the previous management company and failed to renew my insurance. Once I lost my insurance I had a "preexisting condition" and was ineligible for coverage. Unfortunately Federal law makes it nearly impossible to sue a health insurance company. Even if they commit outright fraud, even if their actions cost you hour life, you have little recourse.
Remicade cost about $90k per year so I had to take out a home equity loan to pay my medical bills. After I blew through my savings I lost access to medication I desperately needed. Multiple visits to the Maryland State House and television interviews were not sufficient to get CareFirst to remedy their error.
I am alive today for two reasons. The first is that Abbot Labs provided me with Humira for free. Thanks to the drug company's donation my doctors were able to stop the progression of the disease. Ultimately I did regain the use of my left arm and partial use of my vocal chords. I have since lost the use of my left shoulder but it has minimal impact on my ability to function.
The second reason I'm alive is due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA required insurance companies to accept patients with pre-existing conditions. I have since been able to get coverage and have kept the disease in remission. In fact, I just got the good news that the disease is in complete remission and for the time being I no longer need to take any medications to control it.
Now on to evidence that is not anecdotal. Many people don't know that, or if, they are benefiting from the ACA. Health expenditure per capita in the US as of 2013 was $9000 per person. For a single person that's $9k. For a family of three that's $27k. I pay about $6k per year and I'm grateful for the subsidy I receive. How many people, how many family's are paying their share?
The cost of health insurance does continue to rise. But since the reform act it has risen at a slower pace than it did before the reform. Between 2000 and 2010 the cost of coverage rose on average by 7.1 percent. Between 2010 and 2014 it rose by 5.2 percent. In 2015 it rose by 4.2 percent. When you consider those cost increases you should also consider that a lot of very sick people are getting treatment today.
Personally I had misgivings about the ACA. I had concerns that reform would reduce incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs. I also had concern that the ACA was so complex that it would collapse. Health finance companies simply act as a middle man taking a cut of every transaction. If you're going to reform I think the financial management of health care should be nationalized. But so for the ACA has not collapsed. Millions of people are getting medical care who did not have access before 2010.
Re:WTF with the spurious Obamacare reference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obamacare hasn't helped anyone. The "millions of poor people" who supposedly benefited from it qualified for medicaid to begin with. The only thing this disastrous plan has done is drive up the cost for those of us who actually have to pay for it out of pocket and force people who decided that they can't afford it to pay out the nose anyway. Do you remember when Obama was running for President and we were all shouting how he didn't have the experience he would need to properly pass a bill through congress? This is exactly what we were talking about. Anyone with a modicum of foresight would have expanded the program that was already in place to help these people instead of managing to screw things up worse then they were.
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Obamacare hasn't helped anyone. The "millions of poor people" who supposedly benefited from it qualified for medicaid to begin with.
Doesn't mean they got it. One of the big things Obamacare did was expand medicaid so those people that qualified actually received healthcare. Everyone's beef was using the individual mandate to make it happen (ask congress for $100B to give more poor people insurance? yeah that would have worked out so much better). Sure it needs some work but its not like everything was roses under the status quo. I assume you're firmly dug in to your opinion on it but if you look at some of the data that is rolling in, O
Arizona changed the rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Arizona changed the rules (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obamacare has nearly tripled my insurance premiums. While the great recession didn't bother me much, I do find increased costs bothersome.
I can absorb it. I expect most others cannot and they will have to make compromises or do without.
You can trust any bill in Congress to do the opposite of it's name.
Re: Recession is really a depression (Score:4, Interesting)
I bought a dorm fridge this year for about $150 and it is quite energy efficient, $30/year electricity use. It is really nice - separate door for the large pizza capable freezer, main compartment light, better temp control. No idea how durable, but it carries a nice warranty and with the energy savings I can afford a new one every other year and still save money and resources..
In my case fridge prices have dropped considerably as they have gotten better.
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Look at the labor participation rate, not the widely reported unemployment figure. The participation rate is dismal and reflects a lot of white, working class men who don't fit into the modern work force.
I don't think that's it at all. Two very close relatives of mine had decent paying jobs when they committed suicide, and hell I've thought about it myself plenty of times, and even thought about how exactly I'd carry it out a few times. Right now the income I make is a LOT for just one person, I don't have any debt, flawless credit, and no drug addictions of any kind. Yet I'm really not happy with life at all. Why? Couldn't say, to be honest. Tried lots of different meds and therapy, and nothing has worked.
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't know why you aren't happy, then change.
Nothing like a person who knows nothing about depression giving medical advice.
Like telling a dead person to "walk it off".
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Depression is not a disease, it's a syndrome: A collection of diseases (possibly unidentified) that share the same symptoms.
When I was depressed the root cause was social isolation. Of course, the depression made it harder to deal with the social isolation, but after a decade or so I managed. This doesn't encourage me to recommend my approaches to other people.
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As opposed to the black or hispanic working class men, who are doing wonderful, right?
Yes, that is right. Blacks and Hispanic men are doing relatively better. They still aren't doing as well as whites, but their economic conditions have been improving, while working class white men have been stagnating. This explains why blacks and Hispanics are more likely to support Hillary Clinton, the "status quo" candidate. The status quo is actually working pretty well for them.
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Interesting)
This is absolutely true. Hispanics and blacks, and really all non-whites, with a few exceptions here and there, are generally extremely socially conservative compared to white people. White people are the most socially liberal worldwide, with the possible exception of Thais. Think about it: in what parts of the world is it legal for women to walk around topless or nude? In what parts of the world is it socially acceptable for people to have casual sex with multiple partners? What countries/places have legalized marijuana? What places are the most irreligious? What places are the safest and most accepting for homosexuals? I'll tell you which places aren't on this list: any place in Latin America, any place in the Middle East, China, Philippines, India, Russia, and the American South which is heavily populated by African-Americans. Black people in the South are famous for being extremely religious and conservative, and Hispanics are famous for "family values" and being Catholic and having a lot of kids. These are not traits of socially liberal people.
Now of course, there's plenty of ultra-conservative white people too, particularly in the South and the Midwest and the "heartland" and also Utah. Also in Russia, where the Russian Orthodox church has become very powerful after the fall of the USSR.
But you're exactly right: these minorities are generally rather conservative. They only vote Democratic because the Republican party panders to white racism and blames them for the nation's ills, so they happily vote for right-wing Democrats like Hillary who insist that "marriage is between one man and one woman" (up until it's too politically expedient to change that opinion), and who are completely against legalizing marijuana, and who take "campaign contributions" from the private prison industry and payday loan industry.
Re:Recession is really a depression (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump doesn't know shit. He is just making it up as he goes along. He has one trick. Rile up angry white racists, and have no shame. I don't think even he realized how successful this idiotically simple strategy would be. I don't think the leaders in the Republican party realized just how many assholes were in their own party until now. The other republican candidates seemed to share the delusion that their party was not about racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, jingoism, etc, but it turns out they were wrong. That's exactly who they cultivated, and who they are.
It's completely fucking scary, but at least it's out in the open now. Trump is by far the must unfavorable presidential candidate in US history. Unfortunately the democrats seem unable to nominate a candidate that is better than the 2nd most unfavorable presidential candidate in US history.
Regardless of who wins this election, the loser will be American society as a whole. Whoops. Luckily the damage a bad president can do alone is limited to making good laws harder to pass and bad laws easier to pass, preventing the nominations of good supreme court justices, and starting shit with other countries.
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When you have a sample size equal to your population size, you have a confidence "interval" of zero and a confidence level of one. That figure has no "tolerance" to it, it has perfect significance, it gives the definitive answer.
You can ask "why" from plenty of angles, but you can't question the number itself in this case.
Campaign season (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Campaign season (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I think this is by far the biggest "douche vs turd" election I've ever witnessed, and I can't even fathom how it could possibly get even worse than this. Seriously, this year politics in America has probably hit rock bottom.
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Hulk Hogan is running third party... And is planning to fix the national debt by having the government advertise for Rent-A-Center as well as product placements and paid advertisements during congressional debates.
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That's only going to work if you also have wrestling matches between senators to find out which bill will pass. Maybe get a storyline writer in or two, to keep the whole shit interesting.
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Hulk Hogan is running third party... And is planning to fix the national debt by having the government advertise for Rent-A-Center as well as product placements and paid advertisements during congressional debates.
As the government never pays back the debt, we are getting more ripped off on what that debt bought than rent-2-own places scam you for -- they "only" charge net 2x what you should pay.
Re:Campaign season (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I think this is by far the biggest "douche vs turd" election I've ever witnessed, and I can't even fathom how it could possibly get even worse than this. Seriously, this year politics in America has probably hit rock bottom.
If I may speak for a second on behalf of everyone in the rest of the world...
America, you have just shy of 325 million residents. I don't know how many of those are natural-born residents eligible to run for US President, but I assume the percentage is fairly high. Let's say at least 275 million people. How is it that from such a huge number that these are the best people you could come up with???
You guys really need to dig deeper for political talent. We in the outside world are getting worried about you if the current crop of clowns is the best you can find!
Yaz
Re:Campaign season (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that easy. Out of 275 citizens how many can afford a political campaign?
If you are not rich or have backing of the rich, you don't count.
Re:Campaign season (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you can be like Bernie. Fuck, for once, there is a worthy, honest candidate, who really stands by his principles, who is not in a pocket of any corporations, who has a long history of doing the right thing, instead of going with the popular opinion of the time, and a lot of experience with politics. And he is still losing to Hillary because of the rigged democratic party (superdelegates) and a perceived "socialist" boogieman bullshit.
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Oh they did... but since they were the people who benefited from it they did everything in their power to ensure it remained that way. Nobody wants competition for his job - especially not from somebody more competent than himself, so Citizens United was the best thing to ever happen to a politician.
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How is it that from such a huge number that these are the best people you could come up with???
What? These are the people who are the most talented to become president. Having the most competent people to be president is another story.
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Yeah I think this is by far the biggest "douche vs turd" election I've ever witnessed, and I can't even fathom how it could possibly get even worse than this. Seriously, this year politics in America has probably hit rock bottom.
If I may speak for a second on behalf of everyone in the rest of the world...
America, you have just shy of 325 million residents. I don't know how many of those are natural-born residents eligible to run for US President, but I assume the percentage is fairly high. Let's say at least 275 million people. How is it that from such a huge number that these are the best people you could come up with???
You guys really need to dig deeper for political talent. We in the outside world are getting worried about you if the current crop of clowns is the best you can find!
Yaz
The problem is that the two major parties are broken.
The Clinton and their apologists have captured the Democratic Party so thoroughly that Crooked Hillary! can literally commit felonies with classified data and still win the nomination, despite Sanders winning more votes from actual party members. And if you're naive enough believe for a second Crooked Hillary! didn't commit felonies with classified data: "If they can't, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure." - hrod17@clintonema [cbsnews.com]
Political Talent (Score:4, Interesting)
You guys really need to dig deeper for political talent. We in the outside world are getting worried about you if the current crop of clowns is the best you can find!
The problem is not political talent, but the ability to rule wisely and well. Our institutions, unfortunately, do not optimize for selection of a person with that skill set. And our press and population are, unfortunately, more interested in outrageous stories that generate lots of clicks and outrage than they are in reasonable discussions of issues which would recognize the interests of stakeholders and strive to develop meaningful plans.
Most people probably do not encounter a single meaningful expert panel discussion on any policy issue even once in their lives. Our presidential debates are like children throwing sand in the sandbox when held against those.
Re:Campaign season (Score:5, Insightful)
How is it that from such a huge number that these are the best people you could come up with???
We didn't come up with them. This is being done to us, not for us or by us.
Re:Campaign season (Score:5, Insightful)
So when do the armed people take to the streets and use their guns to take back power?
After missing three meals.
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>Make the pay a million a year (cheap in the government scheme of things) so it's not like jury duty.
Or, if you must have dedicated politicians and elections - make the pay minimum wage (and add a clause that minimum wages only apply to congressmen after 5 years so they can just jack that up to enrich themselves), make all campaign contributions flat out illegal and all paid-for advertising as well - everybody running gets a flat fee from public funds and must campaign with that and only that and make it
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Oh well, let's see? How about when you guys in the US elected Carter. That was a brilliant move, of course he did get beat easily by Regan then there's the Dole move. You must be pretty young, but luckily there are plenty of ye olde news paper archives online these days so you can see what an actual "worse then today" election looks like.
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It's a no-brainer choice here.
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It's a no-brainer choice here.
I agree completely. No brains to choose from at all.
Poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
The stresses related to being poor.
Re:Poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Poverty (Is it caused by Obamacare? Who knows) (Score:3)
Which is why I find is so suspicious that the post ridiculously and spuriously includes this bias-ridden sentence:
No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect.
Equally, a less Obamacare-dead-horse-beating person could have written, "No mention was made of whether the disastrous foreign policy blunders of George W Bush or the unprecedented obstructionist Congress-paralyzing politics of Mitch McConnell had some effect."
LOL
Although maybe I am being too quick to say that the above are all equally preposterous to mention as having had no effect. Because in
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The stresses related to being poor.
Being poor, or merely slipping from really rich into only slightly less rich?
On a global scale, even "poor" Americans are rich. #First World Problems...
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The stresses related to being poor.
Being poor, or merely slipping from really rich into only slightly less rich?
In the case of the US stratification of classes means there is only the ultra-rich and everyone else.
On a global scale, even "poor" Americans are rich. #First World Problems...
On a global scale that's 1% of the population with 40% of the worlds wealth and everyone else.
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Africa doesn't have to deal with special snowflakes, they have real problems. That's something different.
Go figures? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Go figures? (Score:5, Insightful)
... everyone dies eventually, and we are maybe just witnessing the "older generation who was the first to benefit from those progresses" starting to die.
But the death rate within each age group went up. Ageing population was already corrected for.
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Ageing population was already corrected for.
Ok, but ageing population death rate grew relatively more than the others, these are the raw figures [cdc.gov].
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It's not just about ageing skewing the death rate higher in the future, it's about medical improvements in general, particularly vaccination and antibiotics, which skewed death rates across the board; there would have been a dip in death rates around the 1960's/1970's which consequently introduces an equivalent peak around about now.
Maybe it's the same thing that whacked Padme (Score:5, Insightful)
"She lost the will to live."
While that may sound mawkish, isn't it possible that many more folk are falling into depression, given the long-term downturn in the economy, the bleakness of the foreseeable future, and just a sense of "Man, nothing we can do will fix this?"
I'm sure I'm projecting a bit here, but... I'm also sure a lot of y'all are thinking exactly the same thing. There's an ugly mood about America right now, and the media and politicos are trying to paper it over.. but it's there. The numbers are lying. We're not as well as they tell us we are. To me it feels like the mid to late 70's did. Ugh, that was ugly. I was 10 going into 1980, and I could sense it was ugly.
So what I'm saying is.. maybe more people are dying off because things have been rotten for a couple of decades, and there's no end in sight?
Could just be me, though. I'm a pessimist by nature and by training. Meteorology and then IT? Yeah. Expect the worst, always =o)
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To me it feels like the mid to late 70's did. Ugh, that was ugly. I was 10 going into 1980, and I could sense it was ugly.
I wasn't 10, more like 4 but hey. My parents told me the stories of the crap they went through during that period and I can remember bits and pieces of what stuff was like here in Canada too. Wage and price controls for one thing, and my dad was mentioning the other day that everything feels like 1976 right now. Even in Florida(central) where I own property, it still hasn't recovered from 2008 and when I was down there early this year there were just as many forclosures popping up as there were in 2007,
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I'd rephrase what you said a bit by stating that a society based on consumerism, bombarded with advertisements of happy families consuming product X, might be hard on e.g. the unemployed or singles. Some people may be just bored because life isn't so hard as it was for previous generations (so many appliances manage the household today) and there is more time to worry about things and be unhappy about.
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I think a big part of the problem you describe is modern media telling us things are way worse in the world than they are. Most people seem to think violent crime in the last 70 years has gone up in America when it has done almost nothing but gone down. Likewise, war in this world we live in? We live in one of the most peaceful periods in global history and yet modern media crams the few truly tragic events happening around the world down our throats like they are the norm.
Genocide (Score:5, Insightful)
The people, especially whites, are being punished for the failed social doctrine to which they have been subject. They are too hard to please; they need more resources to do work than immigrants from the third world. They expect a quality of life that "they don't deserve" according to our leaders and people who don't have any real problems in their lives in general ("they're not me so fuck them" syndrome).
The situation boils down to the simple fact that we have incompetent leaders that are incapable of mobilizing our human resources because they live in a bubble and can't relate to anything they don't have first-hand experience in, which is not much. They are used to having people do all of that for them, but their social doctrine has seen that all of those people have disappeared.
They've milked the cow too dry: the worst aspect is that the world wars damaged the population severely by disrupting the traditional transference of knowledge, habit, and experience; too many kids grew up without fathers and the media failed to pick up the pieces.
If throwing money at the problem by making an exaggerated effort to solve it with whatever devices happen to be lying around doesn't work immediately, as was the case with the media, our leaders find the problem to be impossibly difficult to solve. The quality of true innovation has escaped them from generation after generation of soft living; they completely rely on others that they can entice with wealth to do everything for them. They have inherited a system that they very barely can keep track of and have completely forgotten how it was made. They have lost the characteristics that allowed their ancestors to make it to begin with.
If they can't solve the puzzle, then, like the spoiled rotten idiot children they are, they start attacking it. See: the recent "recession". It is simply the rich robbing everyone who isn't working in the industries with the most growth. Squeezing people dry until there's nothing left to shed but their very lives. This ensures that people are living day-to-day and cannot organize to do something to help themselves (against their leaders' interests), like enact a revolution (like the German Third Reich).
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And perhaps stimulated bad lifestyles by industrial tycoons. Lobbyists have more power than the complete registered amount of civilian voters. So being addicted to sugar, fat, salt and other food substitutes will not prolong your life ...
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Isn't the problem even deeper than that? What I see from History is that fundamentally the wealth distribution remains more or less the same regardless of the socio-economic system. Sure, the absolute value grows but one might say this comes at the expense of the future generations since the idea of "progress" is eating as much as possible from the [one and only available, finite] cake while fighting the other kids. First we had chiefs and witch doctors, then we had slavers, then we had feudal lords, then w
You guys are working too hard for too little (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the reason is that the USAians are working harder and longer than before, and because of the always-present stress about making ends meet.
Perhaps some unions or welfare system would be nice to have?
Lack of Privacy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Baby Boom = Baby Bust (Score:2)
Studies have shown that 100% of all people BORN, will eventually DIE :)
Increased birth rates will necessarily lead to increased death rates somewhere down the line.
Everyone together now! (Score:4, Funny)
USA! USA! USA!
Same old, same old (Score:2)
Another article, another lack of error stated in quoted figures.
What is the standard deviation on those per 100,000 figures? A change from 723 to 730 deaths per 100,000 sounds like it could be heavily made up by the (perfectly understandable) random fluctuations in death rates for each type of illness.
You mean it's gone over 100%? (Score:2)
The good news is that, by inference, the resurrection rate has risen. [theonion.com]
We're winning the War on Cholesterol (Score:2)
35 years of widespread use of statins are showing their results. Depression, Alzheimer's [mit.edu], and generally worse health in old age.
Official Coroners Report Will Say... (Score:2)
Climate Change-Related Suicides (Score:2)
I have a theory (Score:2)
It was science that got the death-rate this low and life expectancy this high. For years we've warned that the anti-science movement risks undoing those gains. The anti-science movement has only grown stronger over this time. Surely we should consider the possibility that this is that prediction coming true. That the blame for this belongs with the anti-vaxers and the homepaths and if so - perhaps that other rabid anti-science group so prevalent here on slashdot who think that cause and effect somehow doesn
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Is the amount of doctors visits the same or has that declined as well?
The very poor now can go to the doctor, and some of them do. That means that there's less health care to go around for the middle class, because the AMA has successfully made it harder than necessary to become a doctor (not everyone is going to work in an ER someday) which keeps down the supply of health care professionals, and which keeps the pay high which means that people who don't give one tenth of one shit about you become doctors anyway. Meanwhile, the upper-lower class or lower-middle class can no l
BIG ELEPHANT (Score:3, Insightful)
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"puppet socialist hellpits" What? You mean places like the USA? "SHOW YOUR PAPERS, CITIZEN!"
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hypocrisy knows no bounds, but the US isn't yet nearly as bad as the soviet union was.. Give it a few more decades..
Re: Libtards (Score:5, Informative)
The thing about making absolute statements is that it only takes a single counter-example to absolutely disprove them. So here you go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But it's not Andalusia of today that is interesting, it's Andalusia as it existed between 1920 and 1939. Andalusia the land of plenty while the rest of the world were living in the great depression. Absolutely socialist and completely anarchist - had no government whatsoever (let alone a totalitarian one). Orwell fought on their side in the Spanish civil war - he called Andalusia the closest thing to a Utopian society that has ever existed. A society that had no poverty, starvation or suffering at all - and more personal liberty than any other in history before or since.
That pissed off everybody else - nobody liked to see people governing themselves, without poverty or hunger, in a functioning industrial society. Other country's citizens may get ideas... so they faced a two-front war. Capitalist and communists (they may despise each other but not nearly as much as they despised anarcho-soialists. The Capitalists hated both the anarchism and the socialism and the communists REALLY hated the idea of a working socialism without an autocratic state) actually formed an alliance to wipe Andalusia off the map and after almost 2 decades they finally overwhelmed them.
But economically, politically and socially it was an astoundingly successful society. Democracy's greatest success. Unfortunately nobody can stand forever against a sustained war on two fronts by extremely powerful forces, even so it took two decades to defeat them.
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>You can't be socialist and anarchist.
Yes you can, and many socialists would argue you cannot be a true socialist and NOT be anarchist.
>The definition of socialism is state ownership of the means of production.
No it isn't. Who told you that ? The definition of socialism is WORKER ownership of the means of production. There is NOTHING in there about a "state". The idea of the state as a proxy for workers was introduced by Bolshevism but all the other forms roundly reject that. Worker-owned co-ops are s
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Obamacare just dumped 15 million people into the medical system who were not there before 2010.
So you're saying had these 15 million people not been given access to medical services, more of them would still be alive now? ie Better medical services killed them?
Because that sounds like what your saying, and it sounds a whole lot of crazy.
I'll let you guess which outcome capitalism would favor more. Hint: It's probably the one that generates a higher death rate.
So the "socialist" system is killing people, but a "capitalist" system also prefers to kill people too? Under a managed system, either socialist or capitalist, a living person generates more income to the state than a dead one. So this all sounds a bit whacko...
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Actually, statistically, that's correct. There have been a few occasions, due to strikes or disasters, when communities have lost access to hospitals. Death rates in those communities have gone down.
If you're really sick then a hospital can save your life. If you're not, hospitals are dangerous. And most people who go to the hospital don't need to be there.
Re:Hello! It's adjustment to Obamacare! (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're saying had these 15 million people not been given access to medical services, more of them would still be alive now?
No. Had those 15 million people not been given access to medical services, more other people would still be alive now. The system already couldn't handle the strain of the patient load, which has been increased without increasing the number of medical professionals sufficiently or even substantially, thanks to the AMA.
Also, medical misprescription is one of the biggest killers in America. It's in the top three. It's grossly underreported because if your doc fucks up and stops your heart with a bad drug combo it's most likely to be reported as a heart attack and stop there. They don't have time to get your prescription right, they certainly don't have time to figure out what killed you.
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Finally! I really thought this thread would get by without someone coughing "Obamacare" into it.
But I have to admit, your reason why giving people who didn't have medical insurance one should lead to more deaths is at least creative. Dumb, but creative.
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You might possibly have been a little more diplomatic in how you expressed that, but I suspect you are pretty much bang on the money.
Here in the UK, gross obesity that would once have been vanishingly rare is now merely uncommon. Meanwhile, "regular" obesity barely even counts as uncommon and "overweight" is the new normal. When I go to the US, what I see tends to suggest that you are one step further along the scale than us - that obesity is now normal and gross obesity is rapidly becoming normal. We are,
Re:it's obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at the components of the increase, it does not look much like an obesity epidemic. There are increases in suicide, Alzheimer's, gun deaths (probably because of suicides), and opioid overdoses. Most of the increase was among whites, especially white women, but whites have a slightly lower obesity rate [kff.org] than most other racial categories in the US.
It is easy, but probably wrong, to blame this on people's bad eating habits.
Re: it's obvious (Score:3)
I doubt it. That kind of violence is a tragedy we should try to prevent, but constitutes a tiny fraction of all deaths. Gun homicides are only roughly a third of gun deaths, and firearm deaths are about 1.5% of all deaths. So the 11% increase in murders (in the ten largest US cities, according to your DailySignal link) represents some fraction of 0.35 deaths per 100,000 people -- no more than 5% of the increase in death rate, and perhaps negated by reductions in other causes of death. Again, we shouldn't