Healthcare and health
 

There's a lot of bloat in privatization that allows money to into shareholder's pockets. See the American healthcare system.

i’m just here waiting for sonic to claim that the american healthcare system would work great if not for the government boot on the neck of united healthcare preventing them from helping people.

We should model the Canadians system where euthanasia is now higher on a per capita basis than gun deaths in the US.

yeah, we probably should allow people to die on their own terms with medical assistance if they want to.

Average age over 77 with foreseeable death in the future is a slightly different target audience (pun intended) than the about 20k pepole a year that didn't volunteer in the USA.

What about them expanding it to mental health patients? Are they really volunteering?

serious question: how much time have you spend reading candian law on the subject so you understand what guardrails are being proposed? i’m betting zero, but you still have a fully formed opinion on it.

I would assume he’s referring to the death panels.

so the thing that’s happening isn’t happening? Typical response.

We have death panels here.

It's called "claim denied."

The US healthcare system is one of the most over regulated industries on the planet. Look up the phrases "Rent seeking" and "Regulatory capture"

yes, the only thing keeping them from providing a good service is that dang ol’ government stopping them from treating customers well and covering more illnesses and medications.

the fact that they’re rent-seeking sh**bag middlemen is purely because the government makes them be that.

That is delayed till 2027 to further study, so no guarantee that that will happen. A requirement for assisted suicide in Canada is that the patient has to request it, an independent observer has to acknowledge that, and two health proffesionals have to sign off. Yes, with the mentally ill it is possible that they are not acting in their own best interest. I am personally less worried about the mentally ill being treated, than all the people with mental health issues not receiving any treatment because they don't have health insurance.

And also, while we are talking about it:

The United States ranks last among 16 high-income, industrialized nations when it comes to deaths that could potentially have been prevented with timely access to effective health care, according to a Commonwealth Fund–supported study that appeared online in the journal Health Policy. According to the analysis, other nations lowered their preventable death rates an average of 31 percent between 1997–98 and 2006–07, while the U.S. rate declined by only 20 percent, from 120 to 96 per 100,000. At the end of the decade, the preventable mortality rate in the U.S. was almost twice that in France, which had the lowest rate—55 per 100,000.

Because a large majority of Americans don’t put a high priority on their health.

Do you think our current “for profit” healthcare system is working out?

2 truths can exist at the same time:
.gov is bloated and spends too much
some services should be handled by the government and not “for profit”

Or any other American's health. My choice, amirite?

what is it about americans that makes them place a lower priority on health than, say, residents of the uk or canada or chile?

It was working a hell of a lot better before the "Affordable Care Act".

Considering I'm not in that group you are asking the wrong person.

but you made the claim

lifetime maximums were great thing, amirite?

Same with people getting denied coverage because actuaries decided their health wasn’t profitable.

so great

Our regular plan at WN in pre ACA and rocks. It’s the best one I have ever had.

That’s cool and all, but it does not address the fact plenty of people were dealing with things like reaching their lifetime max due to cancer, and no longer having health insurance. Or being denied any coverages due to complications from a bad accident.

please answer the question

And what’s your point?

And now they can’t afford coverage.

you claimed americans don’t care about their health as a reason the country falls behind in medically-preventable deaths. so what is it about americans that makes them care less than chileans or britons?

or were you just saying something without evidence or logic behind it as a way to avoid facing a hard issue?

Are you clueless or do you not live here because it's pretty damned obvious.

what a great answer. since it’s so obvious, what specifically makes americans less likely to prioritize their health than the others i listed?

Why are they so fat?

THREAD DRIFT
 

[mod input] Folks, please keep thread drift to a minimum. It's in the Forum rules to start a new thread. 32 posts is way too long to go before doing so.

Fundamental problem with healthcare industry, and food industry for that matter is that everything is profit-oriented vs. result-oriented. There's way more money to be made in treatments than in actual cures.

It's very similar with the food industry... I don't agree with Bernie Sanders on much, but I do agree with him when he talks about the food industry and how they're poisoning us. Next time you go to a grocery store, go take a look at your favorite products and see how much "added sugar" is there in the list of ingredients. Insane! Hell, go look at your regular beef jerky at the store or at the airport. The food industry puts sugar is in EVERYTHING. As a society, we've grown obese... why is that? Sugar. Cancer rates have also skyrocketed.... why is that? Obesity. Look at all these kids with various health issues. It wasn't like that before. What's changed? Obesity rates in our society.

It's pretty hard for Americans to "take care of themselves" when the entire food supply is riddled with foods that invariably lead to obesity, though it's not impossible. Next time at the grocery store, pay attention to the labels and steer clear of anything that has "added sugar." I think if we as society start rejecting sugar, the food industry being profit-driven will adapt as well, and not only that, but we'll also be healthier in general.