anyone who believes the infant mortality / life expectancy is a reliable statistic needs to do some research before speaking
It’s sure better than any evidence you have. Welcome to the social sciences.
“america has the best cancer survival rate” - I can’t find that data, but here’s the overall cancer mortality rate - America is middling.
SOURCE: OECD Health Data 2004
Again, that’s with the U.S.spending more than $6000 per capita and the U.K. spending $2,900 per capita, and the U.K. is getting much better results:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_exp_per_cap_cur_us-expenditure-per-capita-current-us
If that’s not a pathetic, ineffective rip-off, I don’t know what is.
Would you consider that part of the problem could be due to unethical practices of businesses combined with the lack of government controls over unethical market-distorting practices.
Example: Drug Companies Pay to other Drug Companies Keep Drug Prices High – they pay them to delay the introduction of generic drugs.
The FTC has been fighting to stop companies from paying other companies to withhold generic versions of drugs. In court, this has met with mix success. Pushes for legislation to ban this practice have not been successful. (see this Reuters article). Aside from this being a immoral practice, free trade advocates – please note that this practice files in the face of free trade principles. It’s not about free trade, its about creating market distortions. Some regulation is needed to keep markets free and open – which means allowing competition.
“I dunno, I don’t think it’s too hard to find objective measures for how healthy we are. Take infant mortality - U.S is behind 44 other countries according to the CIA. For life expectancy we’re #47. Both of those things are easy to measure objectively and have a lot to do with how good a nations health care provision is.” - ravochol
And if in the US more problematic pregnancies are taken to and beyond term because our medical facilities allow babies that would die in the womb or be terminated in other countries to live we would have higher infant mortality because our health care was better.
“I think the problem is health care providers have captured the government.”
The government is the one with the guns and the legal authority to kill, how were they captured? I always love how the government is supposed to solve all these problems and has all the guns and legal authority possible but somehow never seems to be able to resist the massive and terrible onslaught by all these greedy capitalists hell bent on screwing the rest of society. Never in the history of the planet have people so doggedly begged for help from an organiztion that is in their own estimation one of the most impotent and incompetent that could ever exist.
I also belive that it is a problem that industry has captured the goverement. How has this happened? With the power of money. Goverment for the benefit of industry is an oldish idea. It served facist Italy. It was the way of the British Empire at its height. We need to start distignusihing between honest buisness who provide goods and services and – those who simply suck money from the system through specualtion, legalized piracy, and the kind of “captitalist” who invest in lawyers and lobbiest as a means to profit rather than in machinery and people.
Dude, this is silly. Infant mortality and life expectancy are influenced by all sorts of things besides health care. Obesity and race influence infant mortality, and homicide, car accidents and race influence life expectancy. Americans, for instance, live longer than Canadians once obesity, homicide and automobile accidents are controlled for.
If you want to see which country has better health care, why not - I don’t know - look at who has better health care? Cancer survival rates are better in the US than in other countries. People do not die in waiting lines here. People do not pull out their own rotten teeth here. Survival rates for all kinds of nasty diseases are typically higher in the US than in other Western nations. That’s the measure of health care.
Now as far as the entire health care system goes, ours sucks, but not because it doesn’t get results. It just bankrupts you in the process.
infant mortality is not calculated in the same way in every country.
Very simple. Corporatism.
The Health Care industry is almost at 100% under corporatism.
This is the biggest enemy of capitalism and the closest thing to communism.
<<< The idea that you somehow have a right to a doctor’s services, skills that took around 6-10 years of training to acquire, is sickening. >>>
Ever heard of the oath of Hippocratis?
What’s an objective standard on good evidence? Is misinformation better than no information?
Here’s a little something on Cuba’s healthcare:
The doctor freely undertakes that oath. The poster was talking about forcing people to provide medical services.
The Hippocratic Oath was so backward and stupid that it has not been practiced in ages.
So if doctors didn’t take the hippopotamous oath Rob’s argument would fall apart?
He is suggesting that it obliges M.D.'s to treat people for free. I don’t know where that came from.
Haven’t you also heard of:
The Chef’s Oath obliging cooks/chefs to feed all the hungry for free?
The Stripper’s Oath obliging strippers to strip for all the horny for free?
“First do no harm” approximates much more to the non-aggression principle than it does to any claims people allegedly have upon the labor of others.