California Study To Examine the Influence of a Healthy Diet On Patients (nytimes.com) 242
"According to The New York Times, the state of California is funding an experiment through The Ceres Community Project to test the influence of a healthy diet on the recovery of state Medicaid patients with long-term serious illnesses," writes Slashdot reader MonteCarloMethod. From the report: Over the next three years, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and Stanford will assess whether providing 1,000 patients who have congestive heart failure or Type 2 diabetes with a healthier diet and nutrition education affects hospital readmissions and referrals to long-term care, compared with 4,000 similar Medi-Cal patients who don't get the food.
The California study will build on more modest and less rigorous earlier research. A study in Philadelphia by the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance retroactively compared health insurance claims for 65 chronically ill Medicaid patients who received six months' of medically tailored meals with a control group. The patients who got the food racked up about $12,000 less a month in medical expenses. Another small study by researchers at U.C.S.F. tracked patients with H.I.V. and Type 2 diabetes who got special meals for six months to see if it would positively affect their health. The researchers found they were less depressed, less likely to make trade-offs between food and health care, and more likely to stick with their medications.
The California study will build on more modest and less rigorous earlier research. A study in Philadelphia by the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance retroactively compared health insurance claims for 65 chronically ill Medicaid patients who received six months' of medically tailored meals with a control group. The patients who got the food racked up about $12,000 less a month in medical expenses. Another small study by researchers at U.C.S.F. tracked patients with H.I.V. and Type 2 diabetes who got special meals for six months to see if it would positively affect their health. The researchers found they were less depressed, less likely to make trade-offs between food and health care, and more likely to stick with their medications.
Food (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well in reality it is very easy, the problem is modern corporations, corrupt government and entirely worthless mainstream media. A good diet and just as important and how to prepare it, not just what you should eat but how to make it. So probably it should be taught in school because that is the only way it will work in a society based around greed and lies, at least there is a chance when done in schools under supervision. So teach people not just the elements of a good diet but how to purchase the ingredi
Re: Food (Score:2)
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2+2 is easy. My teachers went over it anyhow.
Learning how to cook is easy. I've taken many classes to learn different techniques that I had not been exposed to.
Many people have almost no exposure to cooking as children. Many have no idea how to prepare any type of food. A basics class certainly won't hurt.
Just because something is going to be mired in controversy, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
--
"Where can I find the blue fairy?" - David
Re:Food (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is the same shit following the US food pyramid, full of grains, carbs and low fat, I can guess they're likely NOT going to get that pleasant of an outcome.
If they go mostly all veggies and non-processed foods, they'll see a lot of improvement, but I think they should also try different groups in different considerations of "healthy" diets....Mediterranean type, kept/low carb types, vegetarian......etc
I think not only would they show eating better helps health, but also, what is the best form of "Healthy" diet?
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also, what is the best form of "Healthy" diet?
We pretty much already know there is no "best form" of diet to counter western lifestyle diseases like metabolic syndrome. Both Mediterranean and traditional Japanese diets are (or at least were) consumed by exceptionally healthy populations. The Adventist Health Study 2 suggests that vegetarians (including vegetarian+fish) have the best health outcomes. We don't see scientifically reliable results when studying low-fat vs low-carb (e.g. on insulin and glucose metabolism) when people eat sensible quantit
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> Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
Better advice "eat real food, only when hungry". There's no good reason to restrict yourself to mostly plants.
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There's no good reason to restrict yourself to mostly plants.
Mostly plant diets are associated with longer, healthier lives (e.g. see the Adventist study); they are better for the planet; and, for some, offer ethical benefits. Your claim of no good reason for mostly plants seems faulty,
Contrast this with diets high in red meat [wikipedia.org]: "A 2016 literature review reported that for 100g or more per day of red meat consumed, the risk increased 11% for each of stroke and for breast cancer, 15% for cardiovascular mortality, 17% for colorectal cancer, and 19% for advanced prostat
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Not sure what exactly this means....
But if my lifestyle changes, especially through diet choices....I'll not have meds to take and that will save a good bit of money.
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I think that brocooli is awesome. At least if its fresh and you prepare it properly. I prefer to steam vegetables like that.
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...and low fat
That's good; you're up to date with the current, pervasive notion that "Paleo" means "Atkins." However, it doesn't... and if you begin to look closely at those who adhere to a strict high-fat diet - perhaps by looking in the mirror? - you'll soon realize (if you're willing to admit it) that they begin to look old as fuck very quickly.
The anthropological/archaeological and biological evidence clearly indicates that even though fats/oils can represent a viable alternate energy source for human beings (what
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That's kind of along the lines of what I'm thinking these days.
I'm liking more and more what I'm reading, and experiencing with the low, low carb thing, with good Fat intake, then protein, and lastly..carbs.
I"m trying within that framework, to eat a LOT of veggies...so, far it seems to be working.
In a few months, on next bl
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If you don't mind me asking, are you on metformin? If so, you'll have very good results with the low-carb/high protein diet. The trick is to eat around 130-170 grams of protein (which is actually a shit-ton). Also, nothing but protein for breakfast. It tells your body to prepare to metabolize fat instead of sugar. Coffee is fine. You can eat all the veggies you want (not potatoes or beets, but
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> The US food pyramid is meant to be easy, and while it's better than nothing it's not what dietitians recommend either for diabetes, heart failure, or weight loss. It's pretty far from a medically tailored diet.
Bullshit. It replaced something even simpler that could be distilled down to a single overriding principle: moderation. The old food guidelines had an easy to remember mnemonic and a jingle. It even came with supporting "propaganda" in the form of educational adventures supporting the narrative.
T
Re:Food (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cooking for 1 is a hassle, more expensive. Buy hea (Score:4, Insightful)
Another thing is that the value proposition, in time and money, isn't as good cooking for one person as it is cooking for a family. If I get a hankering for a sandwich, I need to buy a LOAF of bread, a HEAD of lettuce, a package of cheese, etc. The bottle of mayo will go bad before I use 1/4 of it. Then take the time cutting the vegetables and such. All for one sandwich. Subway starts to look like a reasonable option.
If a family of four wants sandwiches, it's still a loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, etc to feed all four people. That's a better value proposition.
I probably could plan out different meals a week ahead to use up that whole red onion, which I got to put 1/16th of it on my sandwich. It's a bit of a hassle, though.
I'm glad to see that restaurants, even fast food places, are slowly starting to offer healthier options.
Re: Cooking for 1 is a hassle, more expensive. Buy (Score:3)
Yeah I do pretty much the same thing. Whip up a big batch of chili, portion out into individual servings in Tupperware, freeze it, and I've got lunch or dinner for a couple weeks. Make a batch of egg salad and that's breakfast for 4 days. Tuna salad, same thing but for lunch. It's not hard, it just limits your options a little bit. The biggest pain is trying to get enough fresh fruit and vegetables.
Canned and frozen is what I do. Vs cooking :) (Score:2)
"Noodle bowls and cans of chili" and frozen food is about what I do. Which better than fast food or restaurants. It's not what I think of when people say "cooking". Just the way I was raised, cooking involves ingredients. Things like eggs, milk, flour, etc.
I do sometimes enjoy a hybrid, combining fresh and frozen. Things like putting some fresh cilantro and diced tomatoes or onions on top of a frozen burrito.
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I do sometimes enjoy a hybrid, combining fresh and frozen. Things like putting some fresh cilantro and diced tomatoes or onions on top of a frozen burrito.
You could move all the way up to putting canned beans into a burrito cover if you wanted to move up to the next level (1).
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I like getting one of those whole rotisserie chickens at the grocery store, they cost pennies more than a raw whole chicken. When I get it home I take five minutes to carve it up into 8 pieces and strip off all the extra bits of meat. Whatever pieces we aren't eating immediately goes in the fridge for another meal. The scraps I stripped from the carcass and usually the leftover breast meat gets cut up and used to fancy up a couple bowls of Ramen for my lunches throughout the week.
People, including my wife,
Four or five sandwiches per year (Score:2)
I make four or five sandwiches a year, so yeah, it will.
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and liter of coke
Liter is French for give me some fucking cola before I break those fucking lips!
Re: Food (Score:2)
Since I met my wife, I have been teaching her the difference between fast cheap prepared foods, and fast cheap homemade foods. Homemade pancakes, breads, deserts. But also how to cook chicken, steak, and even burgers so you don't need condiments. A typical dinner is protien heavy (pick a meat) and veggies or a salad.
My weight stays pretty constant but can vary,. Hers goes down when she hits the gym 3 days a week. (I work basically 12 hour days and don't get gym time).
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Time / Money trade off?
Does that count the time waiting in line at a restaurant?
Does that include tips for waiters and delivery people?
Does that include all the gas going to / from wherever you eat?
The key to enjoy cooking for me is multifaceted:
1) I'd rather experiment in the kitchen and discover something amazing (science).
2) I'd rather have the satisfaction of making my own meals (accomplishment)
3) I'd rather try some creative time (art)
4) I'd reward myself with great food.
Yes, I can sit and relax in a r
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Of course people are lazy. That doesn't mean that people don't have the time. Much of society is quite willing to make up excuses. Plenty of people want to be let off the hook for their own choices.
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Good food is cheap if you cook it yourself. Big bag of salad greens: $2. Big bag of tomatoes: $4. Cheese $3. Onion $1. Pepper $2. $12 + oil/vinegar gives you salad for approximately a week, even in an expensive area like NYC. Chicken/fish aren't expensive, nor are rice, potatoes, or greens. You can eat well for less than fast food costs every day if you know how to cook half decently.
Salad stays good for a week? Maybe, if you really luck out ... or like half frozen salad.
Keep in mind that to be an ideal healthy hipster, you can't lug those ingredients home in a car. You have to bike or take the bus. So you are not going to be able to lug huge amounts of fresh stuff (for your four kids and spouse) home on the bus once a week, even if it would keep. You'll have to do it every day, or almost every day. Not very practical.
There are more factors in play on this than most people want to adm
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There's a guy outside of Trader Joes selling fruits, there are three more veggie places before getting home, and grocery and bread stores (and other veggy places) within a two block detour.
There's zero effort in getting fresh vegetables in hipster areas.
other areas are a little more difficult - but not
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So you are not going to be able to lug huge amounts of fresh stuff (for your four kids and spouse) home on the bus once a week, even if it would keep. You'll have to do it every day, or almost every day. Not very practical.
I love it when people swing on to the thread to tell Londoners that we don't exist. Plenty of people live here and have kids and don't own a car what with them being expensive and impractical in a a lot of places.
No, you don't have to spend the entire time on the bus lugging ingredients
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Re: Food (Score:3)
Hey! You leave salt encrusted frys out of this!
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Re: Food (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Food (Score:4)
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Because experts disagree with each other in this field.
Not on the basics they don't provided you listen to actual experts not people selling fad diets. The basics are don't eat too much, avoid processed foods, eat a balanced diet and eat lots of vegetables.
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> How often should I eat red meat then? If it's not a simple answer, it requires knowledge.
Not really. The hype against red meat is mostly bullshit. The more important things to consider are nutrients of various kinds. Are you getting what you need and avoiding what you don't.
Protein? Fat? B12?
NONE of these thing have anything to do with the media war against red meat.
A much more relevant question would be whether or not a particular food is part of your natural diet based on where your grandparents or f
On self-control [Re:Food] (Score:3)
In the short term one often loses weight on a diet simply because changing the pattern your body is used to puts it into minor shock. But in the longer run it adjusts and things go back to "normal" (overweight). Longer-term studies almost always confirm this. For one, if your food intake decreases, your metabolism also slows down to match, making it an uphill battle.
Exercise is a better route, but is time-consuming. Countries that rely heavily on walking too and from public tran
False dichotomies in health (Score:2)
The distinction between nutrient, drug, and poison is largely mythic. The fact that doctors haven't been considering treating patients with nutrients before now is alarming.
Re:False dichotomies in health (Score:5, Interesting)
The journalist Michael Pollan calls the ideology of treating food like a drug "nutritionism". It has a very poor track record stretching back over a hundred years, when protein was the evil macronutrient and carbs were the good macronutrient.
His alternative proposal: eat food, mostly plants, and not too much. By "food" he mean something your (or somebody's) great-grandmother would recognize as food, not some highly processed industrial convenience product.
Take Cheetos -- from a marketing perspective there has never been a more perfect consumable product. Each puff is designed to give you a little burst of pleasure, but to have zero satiation value. It's engineered to make you eat forever.
Re: False dichotomies in health (Score:2)
In that case, he's making the distinction between drug and nutrient based primarily on how easy it is to run experiments. Drugs tend to have simple, short term effects that are easy to experiment with, while nutrients are more complicated, and often take longer to take effect.
I don't think throwing up your hands and saying "this is hard" is good science.
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By "food" he mean something your (or somebody's) great-grandmother would recognize as food, not some highly processed industrial convenience product.
This is just another vague, ad-hoc rule that isn't based on science (and probably not good history either.....the food available to my great-grandmothers wasn't always great).
Instead of dualistically thinking of "should" and "shouldn't" I think there's a more rational way of looking at it:
Your body is an omnivore, evolved to handle a wide variety of foods, but it needs certain macro-nutrients and certain micro-nutrients to function. If it doesn't get those, then the body will suffer. So for example, i
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It's not based on science, but it has it's advantage that it's not based on pseudoscience.
Look at the places where people have the best health outcomes -- let's say the so-called "blue zones". Are people in those places consciously managing their nutrient intake?
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First you show me the proof that carbohydrates are evil in the current mainstream scientific opinion.
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My grandmother would step out of the kitchen door and wring a chicken's neck. Or reach into the pen and skin a rabbit. Until refrigeration was widely available, the cow was used mainly for milk. But even before that, a daily trip to the town butcher shop would do. And then there were preserved meats. Heavily salted and or smoked sausage or jerky.
salt & pepper salmon
That's fine if you live near a sea port. And it's the right season. Otherwise you risked buying that rotting stuff that some indian caught out of a river. My grandm
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The fact that doctors haven't been considering treating patients with nutrients before now is alarming
It would be alarming, if it were true. Doctors pretty much always recommend improving diet for illnesses for which it is effective (like the ones mentioned -- heart disease, diabetes -- not for acute conditions, infections, etc....) But two big problems (not the only ones, no doubt) with a nutrition-based treatment plan are patient knowledge (knowing what to eat) and patient compliance (actually making the recommended dietary changes). This study attempts to improve those aspects by providing meals for pati
Re: False dichotomies in health (Score:2)
Myths can be useful. They are often essentially a mnemonic device to remind you of a rule of thumb. They are just most useful when they are understood to be myths. Otherwise, it's hard to predict how well that myth applies to new situations.
Myth: food can be consumed safely in portions that your body will naturally limit through sensations such as hunger or satiety.
Truth: some foods can lead to medical complications which can be fatal long before your body tells you something is wrong.
The myth is a useful r
How about... (Score:2)
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Excellent so far. (Score:2)
Patients are generally easy to catch. Many are pre-fattened for flavor...what? 'ON' patients?
Never mind.
Love to know their idea of a "healthy" diet. (Score:2)
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The research will ultimately recommend a well rounded diet eating lots of fresh veggies, a bit of meat and a few carbs/starches here and there too. By the time it actually gets to patients ill in bed, it'll be:
1) Healthy meal $20 ...and so it won't have the desired effect at all.
2) Burger and fries: $10 (go large! +$5)
3) Some sort of super-processed meal-in-a-tray $2
Who? (Score:2)
The researchers found they were less depressed, less likely to make trade-offs between food and health care, and more likely to stick with their medications.
Who? The researchers?
Cancer (Score:2)
I'll make a wild guess here ... (Score:2)
... after a while they will be more healthy.
*Tadum* *crash* *thud*
Really happy to read about this study (Score:2)
It's about time. People like MDs. Joel Fuhrman, Dean Ornish, John McDougall, Mark Hyman, and also Douglas Lisle, Ph.D. and Alan Goldhamer , D.C. have been saying this for decades. It's just crazy that health insurance or Medicare will pay $50K for a heart operation but won;t help people eat right to avoid the operation.
For example: https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr... [drfuhrman.com]
"CVD is ultimately caused by oxidative stress and inflammation that leads to damaged arteries. With an intake of low nutrient, pro-inflammatory f
Get to the bookies (Score:2)
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For the ones that reply that we ought to have a national healthcare system, do you ask them if they are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund it (with the assumption that, on average, the tax increase would be no more than the reduced national cost of health insurance).
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do you ask them if they are prepared to pay more in taxes
Why bother? The answer is no. Humans in general object to paying taxes in any form for any reason. They hate taxes, the taxation system and the notion that someone should take their hard earned money. The only part of the system they can get behind is that they feel entitled to benefits. This isn't even a left vs right issue, though the extreme right takes this to the logical extremes where I even heard one person say the government should not be building roads but that all infrastructure should be privatel
Re: I'm guessing this has less to do with healthy (Score:4, Insightful)
You think they spent $50 trillion on two wars?
Someone's been hitting the medical marijuana.
Re: $9 trillion (Score:2)
I'm gonna guess it's more than that, so let's round it to an even $10 trillion.
You can make up whatever numbers you want while you're guessing, but over in the real world the highest credible estimate - including not only the money actually spent but also projected medical spending as well as the interest on borrowed money - comes in at under $6 trillion.
So yeah, he exaggerated.
Yeah. What's an order of magnitude between friends.
Add in Iran and I can get us to $125k easy.
Man, if you add in the war with the Klingons we're probably hitting $1,000,000 easy!
So you tell me, when's it all gonna stop?
Never. Why would you expect it to? The story of mankind is one of constant conflict. What in th
Re: I'm guessing this has less to do with healthy (Score:2)
Try $18,461, all in.
https://research.hks.harvard.e... [harvard.edu]
Re:I'm guessing this has less to do with healthy f (Score:5, Insightful)
You pay one way or another.
You can pay for emergency treatment when people can't afford to visit a doctor for anything less than life-threatening emergencies, by which time a condition that could have been treated cheaply and with a better patient outcome is now an expensive, risk laden venture with poor prognosis. Worse, it's tying up a system that would be better serving emergencies that couldn't be anticipated or treated.
You can try to make emergency services a user pays proposition, but then you risk increasing the wealth inequality even further, increasing crime and you pay for police, a slower legal system and increased prisons, not to mention having a growing population that are in poor health creating a pool for infectious disease.
Maybe the math doesn't perfectly balance. It's hard to put a dollar value on quality of life and engagement with the social contract, but most other first world/OECD countries achieve better health outcomes for more people, for less money and lower cost to most citizens than the US. Using some flavour of nationalised health care.
There are some things that are terrible when government run, just as there are some things you don't want to let people profit from. Health care is one of the latter.
Re: I'm guessing this has less to do with healthy (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, the US pays more per capita than any other OECD [commonwealthfund.org] country.
Your outcomes are worse [healthsystemtracker.org].
Low cost preventive care is sort of a myth
The evidence [nih.gov] suggests otherwise.
There's a bunch of other articles with lower standards of rigor that all say much the same thing if you google 'cost of preventative care vs emergency care', for example. I'd be fascinated to see evidence to the contrary.
Extremely indulgent free medical services
Straw man. I'm arguing that socialised medical care as used by other OECD countries costs less and has better outcomes. You're arguing some fantastic exaggeration you're calling 'extremely indulgent free medical services'.
You're not even consistent. You argue first that people don't just avoid medical care because of cost, but then argue that were it free, people would use it too much.
The people advocating for universally free non-critical care (i.e 'free checkups') are generally the vendors of said services
Ad hominem.
Just be honest. The hot dog seller in the street is honest about his advocacy, and you can be too.
When you can back up your statement with something resembling facts, and avoid some fairly basic logical fallacies, your adoption of a patronising tone will probably ring less false.
Caveat. I'm from Australia, and while there are problems with our health care, I consider myself damn lucky to be able to live in country and period in history with access to the levels of civilisation that I enjoy. I'm more than happy to pay taxes to fund these services, both for myself and my fellow citizens and recognise that probably makes me a 'socialist' in the eyes of some. I consider the plight of those in the US who cannot afford medical care to be a tragedy. I've nothing to sell, and your assumption that this can be the only motivation for someone to advocate equitable access to the wealth of society says more about your motivations than anything else.
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Yeah, the first link you've skipped in your eagerness to criticise the second. Also most of the first few pages of a google search with terms like "US health outcomes vs world".
Have some intellectual honesty. If you are interested, I've made a point and provided some evidence. If you'd like to criticise the evidence, then please provide evidence to support your criticism. The bar has been raised. We left bare assertions a few comments back. Ante up or fold.
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That $10,000 ER bill is a total fiction.
ANY American hospital bill is a fiction. At most only 33% of that would ever actually get paid. Standard labs are dirt cheap.
The hospital is providing about $200 of service and claiming it's worth some absurd amount.
The hospital is certainly not out $10K.
Re: I'm guessing this has less to do with healthy (Score:2)
Isn't the idea of healthcare as a right more a left-wing idea? Do many of your right-leaning friends actually think healthcare should be a right?
I'm genuinely curious. I actually associate "healthcare as a right" to uninformed voters of all political stripes. On the right, they don't understand how it gets paid for, and on the left, they don't understand how to get doctors to accept socialized prices.
Re: I'm guessing this has less to do with healthy (Score:4, Interesting)
Your argument looks good on paper. Yet the US has worse outcomes for most people, at a higher cost than most first world countries - who are running some flavour of socialised healthcare.
Of course, they can distinguish between idealised 'pure' socialism of knee jerk rhetoric and practical, regulated socialised policies designed to try and prevent the abuses you cite.
Seriously. Take a look outside the US for other models and for examples of limited and regulated soclialism especially with respect to healthcare.
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...but, but....freedom!
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America already has government health care and it's a disgrace. This isn't some fantasy where the idolized version of Sweden will magically appear. If you force more Americans on government health care we will end up with more of Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA.
All other arguments fail in the face that America has already tried and continues to fail badly at this sort of thing.
It's not some abstract theory. You can find yourself a Vet or an old person and ask them yourself.
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To the degree that other countries are influenced by the US (directly and indirectly), there has been some 'overflow' from that war. Australia's obesity levels aren't far behind the US for all of our idealisation of 'ourselves' as a nation of sportspeople.
That's on us, btw.
Even so, it's still better to treat it early. Get people in for regular, subsidised or low cost health checks. Get doctors involved in providing lifestyle advice and warnings. Catching type II diabetes when it's still early makes it a lot
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Socialized doctors have free range to impose unnecessary procedures and run up the consultations count in order to maximize charges to the government.
Ironically the only place where I've heard this happening is the USA.
Wealth inequality at the root of health inequality (Score:2)
AC wrote: "cheap loans and massive debt are the foundation of the inertia that is the US economy"
And the reason for that is because in the USA the gains for increased productivity have gone to shareholders instead of workers due to decades of flat real wages -- and then the shareholders loan the money to the workers to keep the economy going (until perhaps the house of cards collapses due to unrepayable debts). See Richard Wolff and "Capitalism Hits the Fan". https://youtu.be/0HTkEBIoxBA?t... [youtu.be]
The real issue
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OTOH if I want to have a bit of libtard fun I like to ask my right wing friends/acquaintances if healthcare is a right or not try to make them answer yes or no. After 5-10 minutes of speeches and heming and hawing they'll either say 'no' or admit we ought to have a national healthcare system.
Well, that's easy: no, healthcare is not a right. No hemming and hawing required.
If you read the US Constitution and its amendments the only constitutionally guaranteed access to the labor and/or services of another individual is described in the sixth amendment: the right to assistance of defense counsel. (Some argue that by extension judges and others involved in the justice system as well.)
There is a reason for that. One of the founding ideals of the United States of America is rugged individualism.
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"Let them die" would amount to criminal neglect.
So while the state is not required to provide universal healthcare, it might be advisable to come up with an idea how to make it easy for the citizens to provide help to people in
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And offering preventive health care is orders of magnitude cheaper than letting people get so sick that they become medical emergencies.
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Not having healthcare is expensive. Dying people will stop at nothing to get treatment, even if it means threatening doctors or breaking down your hospital.
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Now, there is freedom of association in the USA. So if you prefer a collectivist approach to healthcare, you are more than welcome form your own coop, insurance company, charity hospital, or whatever, and get busy with convincing others to join you.
Nope.
There are a patchwork of laws and regulations that actually make it illegal to form my own co-op, insurance company or charity hospital. You have to meet a lot of requirements first, which cost an enormous amount of money. Then you can start being an insurance company....in one state.
But, keep in mind that a national healthcare system with compulsory participation flies in the face of the principles upon which the Republic was founded
Fire departments. Are they Constitutional? It's compulsory participation, and not enumerated in the Federal constitution or any State constitution.
At a minimum for such a thing to be implemented, I think it would require a constitutional amendment
Because Medicare does not already exist.
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Well, that's easy: no, healthcare is not a right. No hemming and hawing required.
If you read the US Constitution and its amendments
Like this bit?
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I can give you a simple answer....
No.
Healthcare paid for by others to you, is not a right.
Do what thou wilt (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually prefer guys like you. Because 95% of us know your ideas are just plain wrong. Which is exactly why so few right wingers will admit to them. Especially in person. After all, it's easy to say "Let 'em die" on the internet. Not so much when you're face to face with somebody actually dying.
And if you want to know why you're wrong (and you're open to figuring things out) start by googling "Wallet Biopsy".
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The simple fact is that even if we tax everyone at 100% and drive the whole budget toward healthcare, there will still not be enough money to provide best available treatment for every known disease.
Literally every other developed nation on the planet accomplishes this without spending 100% of their budget on healthcare. The UK has started having some problems recently, but that's because they've slashed NHS funding in an attempt to privatize it.
he difference between right wing and left wing is that right wing recognizes this as affordability problem, and lets the patients make the choice of "is it worth and can I afford to spend 5 mil dollars to extend my life for 3 months"
I like how you assume everyone has $5M in the bank, or is creditworthy enough to get it. It really demonstrates just how reality-based your thinking is.
Also, Medicare exists. For the vast majority of people, they are not spending that $5M. We already cover
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> Literally every other developed nation on the planet accomplishes this without spending 100% of their budget on healthcare.
No they don't. The NHS rations all kinds of stuff. Even before the Tories came along as a scapegoat, this was a common acknowledged problem in Canada.
The problem with "government freebies" is that everyone hates taxes. Nobody wants to pay for the "government freebies". Sooner or later there is going to be a budget cut or someone you don't like is going to get elected.
It's really qu
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OTOH if I want to have a bit of libtard fun I like to ask my right wing friends/acquaintances if healthcare is a right or not try to make them answer yes or no. After 5-10 minutes of speeches and heming and hawing they'll either say 'no' or admit we ought to have a national healthcare system.
While I do believe we should have a national healthcare system because it makes economic sense, healthcare cannot possibly be considered a right: what if people decided being a doctor sucks and they didn't want to be doctors anymore? If healthcare is a right, then the government should force them to go into the profession and provide service... but that would violate the 13th amendment's ban on slavery. And the right of people to not be forced to provide healthcare must trump any alleged right to receive he
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I like to ask my right wing friends/acquaintances if healthcare is a right or not try to make them answer yes or no. After 5-10 minutes of speeches and hemming and hawing they'll either say 'no' or admit we ought to have a national healthcare system.
Your right wing friends are really that unable to express their own views? You should get some better right wing friends... oh, but then they might be able to successfully challenge your views, so I can see why you avoid them.
FWIW, no healthcare is not a "right". Positive rights are a very, very bad idea. Education is also not a "right".
OTOH, it's probably better for society to provide free education, and free basic healthcare. Not because they're rights but because providing them solves a lot of proble
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Admittedly a CT scan is a pretty expensive procedure. Although reimbursement rates for blood work are pretty low. Even the "rack rates" for basic blood work is not a budget buster.
Most blood work is done by machines. They look like something out of old Trek but larger.
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> If you think the answer should be yes, then you need to discuss how it is paid for.
You put your money where your mouth is and you open your wallet. You don't leave it to anyone else. You don't pretend that you can just soak the rich or gut the Pentagon.
Conservatives can play that game even better than you can.
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Hey, why not?
They shouldn't allow those food stamps to be spend on anything but fresh veggies, meats, etc.
There is NO reason they should be allowed to buy cokes on food stamps, there is no nutritional benefit to that at all.....
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I suppose it might vary by state, but I know this was already the case when I was a kid where I lived. I worked in a grocery store and everything was already labeled in the checkout system as being either eligible for payment with food stamps, or not. Soda, gum, and prepared foods from the deli were all prohibited if memory serves. The checkout system would show the total price, at which point the customer would pay first with their food stamps and then whatever balance was left, that wasn't eligible for th
amazon says we can have whole foods do EBT (Score:2)
amazon says we can have whole foods do EBT.
Re:We Are All Dead In The End (Score:5, Informative)
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it's about teaching people to find/prepare healthy food within a given budget.
This implies that finding / preparing healthy food isn't the cheapest option. Many people would find if they learnt to cook, spent just a few minutes a day in the kitchen and ate healthy, they'll likely have fatter wallets as a result.
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it's about teaching people to find/prepare healthy food within a given budget.
This implies that finding / preparing healthy food isn't the cheapest option
If you live in an urban "food desert", it isn't. You have to travel to get to real food, and that costs money.
If you are so poor that your utilities regularly get turned off, it isn't. You need refrigeration for real food. Fake food is designed for maximum shelf life.
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Since we're all dead in the end, the trip along the way is much more important than the inevitable destination.
Eating healthy improves your quality of life even if it doesn't cure you of all ills. Not eating healthy leads to scurvy, gout &c. in relatively extreme examples, but there's also corpulence, constipation, and the like.
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Success speaks for itself. The guy is 70. He's already made it to a ripe old age despite what any desperate partisan detractors want to think.
He's like the 100 year old woman that drinks bourbon and smokes cigars.
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The guy is 70. He's already made it to a ripe old age despite what any desperate partisan detractors want to think.
Three years past retirement age is not 'a ripe old age'.