As Canadian doctors prepare to meet in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to discuss their country’s “sick” health-care system, Dr. Anne Doig, the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) says, “We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize“. (Emphasis added.)
As the Canadian system implodes, Dr. Robert Ouellet, the outgoing President of the CMA, will be putting forward the notion of allowing “a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.”
Wonder if the American media will be covering the Canadian doctors’ push for change in the direction of the system President Obama is trying to overhaul.
(Via GatewayPundit who has more.)
UPDATE: A search for Anne Doig on google news yields no links to American publications. I get a similar result when I search for Robert Ouellet.
UP-UPDATE: Well, they are picking this up “>on the right- and libertarianosphere (guess the former is (by my definition at least) inclusive of the latter).
So our Statists have been worried about offending America’s hat…..why?
Dan, the Canadian debate is about allowing for mix of public and private delivery of services, not changing the universal coverage or the single-payer nature of that system.
Oullet explains in this article:
Their debate is over how to improve a system that already provides universal coverage with great long term outcomes in comparison to systems that do it still better.
We aren’t one of those systems.
Oh, that quote was from a recent London Free Press article.
Fair point, Jody, so please read what I said above, about a change in the direction of our system. But, let’s not forget what his successor is saying, the system is sick and imploding.
reat long term outcomes in comparison to systems that do it still better.
We aren’t one of those systems.
Say, what’s the survival rates for say breast cancer, prostate cancer and some other more common ailments?
D, Ouellet’s comment about private health care was directed at successful models in Europe, in countries like France and Sweeden, who provide the best and the cheapest care. While he’s not against learning anything from anyone, including the US, his focus isn’t on making Canada’s care more like ours.
The “sick and imploding” comment by Doig is directed towards their issues of increasing the numbers of family doctors and nurses in their system, the high costs of pharmaceuticals, rural care and emergency room wait times — not a looming onset of Soviet era medicine.
Canada, as well as the rest of Europe, are single-payer systems that use varying mixes of public and private delivery systems to provide better care and cheaper costs with greater outcomes than our system provides. Their arguments are over how to improve on what’s already better.
AE, if you have breast or prostate cancer you have a better chance of surviving here. If you have colorectal cancer, childhood lukemia, or need a kidney or liver transplant, you are better off surviving in Canada. If you have cervial cancer or non-Hodgkins lymphoma, it’s a wash. (Hussey, 2004)
But if you don’t want to die from complications from diabetes, hypertension, measles, asthma or a host of diseases easily amenable to treatment through modern healthcare, then you are better off in any other Western nation than the US. (Nolte, 2008.) While we are great at catching and treating those complicated cancers, we suck at treating the simplest of diseases.
Wasn’t always the case though. A decade ago we did a better job with those simple diseases than the Fins, Portuguese, Brits and Irish. In the ensuing decade, we’ve fallen behind them.
We just don’t have the best healthcare system in the world.
Then.. Jody.. why don’t I know anyone that goes to Canada or England for treatment of those diseases? I think pulling a man’s teeth would be pretty simple.. but someone had to do that themselves. Not here, but in England.
What about the lady whose mother .. with Diabetes lost not just her bad leg, but her GOOD one. not in the US, but in your vaunted Canada (Oh. .and I was raised there. here in the US now,, thankfully)
Jodi, the little numbers you seem to be stuck one..Please get unstuck. The fact is that numbers are always able to manipulated someway. The REAL truth is that you are better off here, although you hate freedom so much you can’t see that and want to ruin it with this ugly behemoth. Now I am off to report myself so you don’t have to worry about it, and the White House understands they don’t get to put anything trough that includes a “public” option. Period.
I am a Canadian who has had to deal with the absolute disgusting condition of my country’s health care system. In my city, an average city of 120,000 people, part of a metropolitan area of 550,000, people have to wait an average of 2-3 months to get a family doctor. You ahve to apply for a family doctor and that doctor can refuse or accept you as a patient after an interview which he/she conducts – exactly like a job interview. If that doctor refuses you as a patient, you then have to apply to another family doctor, wait to be called for an interview and go through the trial process again. The wait for some specialists (as in my case) was between 12-20 months after being referred by a family doctor, as described above, if you can get one.
In terms of my medical problem, I was spitting acid into my esophogaus and burning the delicate tissue of said body part and I could do nothing to receive care. The ironic thing about my lack of access to care was that it was costing me more to not have care than the direct cost of the actual care itself.
You see, being self-employed, I was too sick to work and had to hire staff at a cost of $70 per day. I did this for about 3 months and as you can calculate, it was very expensive. However, a consultation with a specialist, which was all I needed, only cost $100. The problem was and is that I can’t pay the doctor $100 from my own pocket. I had to wait in line until the doctor became available, which was months and months down the road. Finally, I was able to call around, offer some of the secretaries money to help me jump the line (they didn’t take the money, but offered me an apointment of 6 weeks ahead as they realized I was suffering greatly), and after seeing the specialist, I was able to get help.
I wish people would realize from my example that public health care, in terms of indirect, opportunity-cost calcuatlions is definitely MORE EXPENSIVE than paying directly out of pock but getting faster and better treatment.
I see a lot of assertions that Canada is “better,” but I’m not seeing any links to statistics or facts to back up that assertion.
Here’s a link to statistics and facts that refute that assertion. The link goes into more detail, but here’s the summary:
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians.
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K.
Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed.
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians.
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K.
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.
First off, what is the relevance here?
The Obamacare bills that are under consideration have nothing whatsoever to do with a Canadian-type system.
Secondly, if you actually read the article rather than trying to just pick out a few soundbites, you see that some of the solutions to the problems in Canada are precisely the same solutions to similar problems that Obamacare is trying to solve – making the system more efficient with electronic medical records and such.
Third – the implication that is left by this post is that somehow Canadians want to move toward an American system. Thats totally off the wall. First off, it was addressed in the article itself : “Doig, who has had a full-time family practice in Saskatoon for 30 years, acknowledges that when physicians have talked about changing the health-care system in the past, they’ve been accused of wanting an American-style structure. She insists that’s not the case.”
The only statement in the article that could possibly be spun to support the point GPW tries to make – and he reproduced this quote – is one that speaks of “allowing “a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.” But what is the point here? Under Obamacare, ALL health-care delivery (outside the military and VA) will remain in private hands, and most insurance as well.
If anything it seems the Canadian reformers are converging on Obamacare as the best system.
I think you guys are starting to flounder around. You should be looking for cases where countries with universal care are looking to get rid of their public systems, and throw everyone to the mercy of a private marketplace for health insurance. That would be an example of external support that you could point to.
Good luck finding that.
Citations please. There is one and only one bill that has been written and put on line for Tano or anyone else to study. That is the House bill. Everything else, is blather. The Senate is working up bills, but there is nothing published Tano or anyone else can study.
“Whatsoever” is a heck of a standard for comparison. But to couple it with “Canadian-type system” is a bit of meaningless gobbledygook. What, pray tell, is a “Canadian-type” system? Are we simply trying to say that there is no thought “whatsoever” given to a single payer system? If so, would that mean that “the Obamacare bills that are under consideration” have nothing “whatsoever” in them that would help move health care in the US toward a single payer system?
Reading such quotes is like trying to unscramble eggs.
Remember when Tardo was claiming what a great example of a Government program Cash for Clunkers was … even though it was horrifically wasteful, cost three times as much as advertised, and had at best minimal economic or environmental benefit?
Guess what? The Government that wants to run health insurance can’t even manage a relatively straightforward rebate program.
But if you don’t want to die from complications from diabetes, hypertension, measles, asthma or a host of diseases easily amenable to treatment through modern healthcare, then you are better off in any other Western nation than the US. (Nolte, 2008.)
Or…..more likely, it has something to do with the fact that the United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world, with that being the number-one cause of diabetes and hypertension.
Wasn’t always the case though. A decade ago we did a better job with those simple diseases than the Fins, Portuguese, Brits and Irish. In the ensuing decade, we’ve fallen behind them.
But of course, that is due to the lack of socialized medicine, and not the fact that over the past two decades, our obesity rate has gone from being the same or better than those countries to nearly twice as much, right?
Of course, the reason that’s not reported is because it doesn’t do much for the Obama Party propagandists who live on wetting themselves and screaming “starving children” when anyone takes a look at their welfare programs to admit that the fattest kids, and by and large the fattest people, in the US are on welfare and government health plans.
Meanwhile, as for measles, a disease of which there are an average of 63 cases a year, most due to importation from elsewhere and failure of parents to vaccinate their children, is not exactly grounds to nationalize the health care system.
This is the stupidity of Barack Obama and his puppets. They are rationalizing a government takeover of health care based on outcomes that essentially have nothing to do with health care and are all about lifestyle choices that they and their welfare programs encourage.
The Obamacare bills that are under consideration have nothing whatsoever to do with a Canadian-type system.
Oops.
He also got House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to agree to allow a full House vote on the single-payer reform that more than 85 House Democrats have endorsed.
Congressman Anthony Weiner, D-New York, worked with Waxman to get the deal on single-payer and declared a sort of victory Friday, saying that: “Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice.”
Why can’t Barack Obama stop himself from lying about this? Why can’t he be honest and state that he intends to ram single-payer down Americans’ throats?
Oh, that’s right, he did.
ND30.
Why dont you stop your silly games. We ahve been through this before, have we not?
Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that he does not support a single payer system. He said once that he would prefer it if we could start from scratch. But in his very next sentence he acknowledge that we cannot start from scratch, and given the reality of our health care system, he does NOT support single payer.
Plus he, along with everyone else, has long since acknowledged that the level of support for single payer is low enough in the Congress that it need not even be considered. As such, as he said, and his administration has said many times, single payer is simply not on the table as the various bills make their way through congress.
All this has greatly upset the left wing of the Democratic party that does support single payer, and that thought that with the Dems controlling everything they were going to have their chance. This group includes about 80 or so Congressman. They are quite upset that their voices are pretty much excluded from the negotiations. In fact they are quite upset that they, loyal members of the winning party, are being sidelined while Obama tries to negotiate a plan with some of the loyal members of the losing party.
As a sop to these folks, the Speaker has agreed to let them have their moment on the House floor – to state their case, and to get a vote on their bill. A vote that everyone knows will lose. And one that has no effect whatsoever on the ongoing negotiations taking place in the five committees over what will emerge in the end as Obamacare.
For someone who spends so much time following politics, I find it impossible to beleive that you dont understand all of this perfectly well. So I must conclude that you are willfully trying to decieve.
That, Barack Obama, qualifies as the most pathetic spin anyone has yet to see here.
You stated that there were no bills for single-payer and ended up having to admit that there were indeed bills for single-payer.
You stated that you have never supported single-payer and ended up having to admit that you do indeed support single-payer.
And here’s an even bigger lie.
In fact they are quite upset that they, loyal members of the winning party, are being sidelined while Obama tries to negotiate a plan with some of the loyal members of the losing party.
Obama is saying that members of the “losing party” are nothing but evil-mongers and swastika-carrying Nazis. He has made it clear that he doesn’t want to hear from them and has no interest in their inputs. Indeed, he has ordered his union goons and thugs to “punch back twice as hard” and has supported the physical assault of conservatives of all skin colors who dare to contradict him.
What gets me is that we’re told over and over again how much the Canuks love their system. At the same time, we’re told that the overwhelming majority of Americans who like our system don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
“He has made it clear that he doesn’t want to hear from them and has no interest in their inputs.”
Unfortunatly for you, the facts are that the bipartisan gang of six who are writing the Finance Committe bill are in daily contact with the White House, including the president.
ND30, obviously we’re not approaching this in the right way. All we have to do to get Tano to agree with and promote conservative principles is to place them in a context he can understand. So, after typing each of your points, go back and copy and paste the following phrase at the beginning of each point:
“Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that [CONSERVATIVE POINT HERE].”
Since Tano will believe ANYTHING that Obama has ever said or ever will say, this method will ensure that he starts finally saying some things that make sense (even if he doesn’t understand them).
For example, instead of “liberals are bigoted racists who value diversity only with regard to skin pigmentation and sexual practices,” try “Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that liberals are bigoted racists who value diversity only with regard to skin pigmentation and sexual practices.” Within minutes, Tano will not only believe it to be true, he will make every effort to convince others that it is true as well.
And later, just for fun, put whatever comes to mind in front of the magic phrase and watch the hilarity ensue!
“Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that [plants have feelings].”
“Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that [people like me who voted for him are feeble-minded douchebags].”
“Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that [Jurassic Park could totally happen in real life].”
Seriously, there’s no limit. The magic phrase will work with ANYTHING.
Then.. Jody.. why don’t I know anyone that goes to Canada or England for treatment of those diseases?
Because Noelie you don’t know everyone in the United States, Canada and England.
..though you hate freedom so much you can’t see that and want to ruin it with this ugly behemoth.
Ooops, you caught me. I’d just gotten back from my local I Hate Freedom And Wish I Knew The Truth (TM) Meeting when I posted that. NoELLLLIEEE!!! (shakes fist in Wrath of Khan homage.)
but I’m not seeing any links to statistics or facts to back up that assertion.
V, I actually had two cites in my post.
But as far as the link you posted, it’s pretty much cherry picking, spin and bullshit.
We pay more at all levels and get less than any other Western nation does. That’s simply ridiculous.
They are rationalizing a government takeover of health care based on outcomes that essentially have nothing to do with health care
ND30, you are utterly and completely wrong. We rank last in treating preventable deaths. These are treatable conditions — the asthmas, intestinal infections, diphtheria, measles and influenzas that modern medical science is adept at curing. In a decade, we went from below average in preventing deaths from these diseases to dead frakking last.
That’s not the sign of a healthy heath care system.
Oooh! Let me try:
“Obama has made very clear – throughout the campaign and his presidency, that Tano’s a dumbass tool (read: Useful Idiot).”
#23: Oh No! Obama thinks Tano is a dumbass tool? Gosh, he’ll be crushed when he finds out. But, if Obama said it, well…
Jody,
We appear to be in agreement. That link you posted ischerry picking and bull.
Craig Karpel takes on the idea that the US spends too much on health care. Short version: if the percentage of our GDP we spend on health care is providing jobs, income, and breakthroughs… why is that a bad thing. I’m not sure I agree completely, but he has a point.
Frankly, I’m more concerned about the 40% of our GDP spent on government that the 17% on health care.
We rank last in treating preventable deaths. These are treatable conditions — the asthmas, intestinal infections, diphtheria, measles and influenzas that modern medical science is adept at curing.
You didn’t read your source, did you?
For this study, the researchers used data from the World Health Organization on deaths from conditions considered amenable to health care, such as treatable cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
Even entertaining your fantasy, just to use measles as an example, the rate of measles infections in the United States hit a ten year high last year, with over one hundred cases (131, to be exact) and no deaths — with all cases whose cause could be determined being the result of importation from other countries. In contrast, the UK, one of the socialist paradises that your study cites as having better health care than the United States, had over one thousand cases of measles in the same time period.
Only in the “Blame America First” mind of an Obama liberal could one thousand cases in a country with a population of 60 million be a sign of better health care than one hundred cases in a country with five times as many people.
This sort of ignorance is what is trying to take over health care in our country. Given that your talking points come directly from Barack Obama, Jody, he is demonstrating quite convincingly that his only qualification to rule on my medical care is his skin color — and that doesn’t work for me. You and your fellow sockpuppets like Tano may put race before competence, but the vast majority of Americans are realizing that’s not a good idea.
Oh, and just so everyone has it, here’s the link to the measles information for the UK.
Notice the difference; despite having free socialized medicine not driven by profits and administered by completely moral and upright government officials, one in four kids in the UK is not vaccinated. In contrast, in the US, it’s closer to one in ten, despite us having the evil and awful private health insurers who eat kittens for breakfast and deny vaccines to children so their executives can receive huge bonuses.
We appear to be in agreement.That link you posted ischerry picking and bull.
Yeah, Live, you can do better. Not a pithy enough response. Vacuous, sure, but humor? Nah. Tell you what. Go back with your friends, try a few more variations out with them, then try again. While you won’t earn any points for content, at least you might get some for style.
treatable cancers, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease
ND, those are still treatable diseases (“diseases amenable to care” in the literature.) They are in the same category as asthmas, intestinal infections, diphtheria, measles and influenzas. And we still rank dead last among Western nations in survivability in treating those diseases. You’ve provided no information to the contrary.
Even your non-sequitur about measles in the US (“…with all cases whose cause could be determined being the result of importation from other countries“) is wrong. Initial exposure was to unvaccinated visitors, but the spread was do to American families that chose not to have their children vaccinated, as the CDC explains:
See http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5733a1.htm
The UK and the US are experiencing the same problem here: nutty parents, egged on by fear mongers on the left and the right, believing vaccines cause autism and thus choosing not to immunize their children. These are failures of dumb parents, not of a healthcare system.
None of which changes the fact that, once diagnosed, statistically, historically, one has a better shot at surviving measles, mumps and a whole host of easily treatable diseases in any other Western medical system than in the United States.
The only ignorance on display is yours, ND.
Amazing.
Before Jody said the measles rate showed that American health care was a failure.
Now that Jody has been slapped with the fact that his socialized medicine paradise has ten times the measles rate of the United States with a fifth of the population, suddenly it’s not the health care system at all, but someone else’s fault.
Blame America first.
Another example:
ND, those are still treatable diseases (”diseases amenable to care” in the literature.)
Indeed they are. But you quoted them incorrectly. Furthermore, you’ve also utterly ignored the facts pointed out to you above that showed the reason the United States has such an issue with those diseases is that we have an obesity rate far, far greater than any of the other countries mentioned – and that the rate is even higher for those on the welfare programs that leftists like you push.
Blame America first.
None of which changes the fact that, once diagnosed, statistically, historically, one has a better shot at surviving measles, mumps and a whole host of easily treatable diseases in any other Western medical system than in the United States.
Oh really? So where’s your study for that, especially since I just proved above that you misquoted the previous one?
Furthermore, since you’ve already stated that measles, mumps, and whatnot are not the fault of the health care system, why are you trying to blame the health care system in the US based on that?
Blame America first. This is typical of a Barack Obama puppet like Jody, who has started from the premise that we must socialize medicine completely rather than looking at the facts.
Jody,
Could you post the full bibliographic citations for Nolte (2008) and Hussey (2004)? (If you already did, I apologize. I’m not seeing them here.) I work as a medical and science editor, and in my experience, a lot of the statistical differences like the ones you cite often tend to be within margin-of-error territory or artifacts of using different statistical methods. I’d be interested to get a look at the “Materials and Methods” sections in those papers and see how they arrived at their conclusions.
Before Jody said the measles rate showed that American health care was a failure.
Stop making shit up, ND. I said that we’re failing because, among other things, we have the poorest success rate in treating diseases amenable to care.
Now that Jody has been slapped with the fact that his socialized medicine paradise has ten times the measles rate of the United States with a fifth of the population, suddenly it’s not the health care system at all, but someone else’s fault.
Again, stop pulling shit out of your ass. You tried to refute a statistic that we do poorly in treating easily treatable diseases by saying “Yeah, but the UK has more measles than we do!”
My response is, so? a) they have better outcomes at treating that disease than we do AND they have a high incidence of that disease for the same reason we do: parents not immunizing their children.
Your measles stat neither speaks to the initial point I raised — that we have poor treatment outcomes — nor supports that your claim that we have a better medical system than the UK.
But you quoted them incorrectly
Again: ass. you. pulling. stop it.
that showed the reason the United States has such an issue with those diseases is that we have an obesity rate far, far greater than any of the other countries mentioned – and that the rate is even higher for those on the welfare programs that leftists like you push.
The etiology of heart disease and diabetes isn’t germane to the treatment of those diseases. Those are easily treatable diseases — and we come in dead last of all industrialized nations in that treatment. Per capita, people die more often from those diseases — and a whole host of related… and I’ll write slowly since you seem to be challenged here, other. diseases. that. easily. respond. to. modern. medical. science. — here than in other western nations.
So where’s your study for that, especially since I just proved above that you misquoted the previous one?
You are truly a legend in your own mind.
…why are you trying to blame the health care system in the US based on that?
I continue to be amazed at the inanity of your posts, ND. Years of them. I think theses could be written about their obtuseness…
Blame America first.
Yes, because wanting to make your country a better place is the same thing as hating it.
Wes, the two articles I referenced were
How Does the Quality of Medical Care Compare in Five Countries?
Hussey P, Anderson G, Osborn R, McLaughlin V, Millar J, Epstein A; AcademyHealth. Meeting (2004 : San Diego, Calif.).
and
Measuring the health of nations: updating an earlier analysis.
Nolte E, McKee CM. Health Aff (Millwood). 2008 Jan-Feb;27(1):58-71. Erratum in: Health Aff (Millwood). 2008 Mar-Apr;27(2):593.
You can find the full articles on PubMed and parts through Google. The Commonwealth Fund puts out the Hussey report, and I believe they have a full download there.
Thanks, Jody!
The etiology of heart disease and diabetes isn’t germane to the treatment of those diseases. Those are easily treatable diseases — and we come in dead last of all industrialized nations in that treatment.
Perhaps if you had actually read the materials instead of quoting talking points, Jody, you would not be making such obviously-incorrect statements.
Page 16:
The concept of “avoidable mortality” as it has been used over the last 25 years, stems from the Working Group on Preventable and Manageable Diseases led by David Rustein of Harvard Medical School in the USA in the 1970s. They introduced the notion of ‘unnecessary untimely deaths’ by proposing a list of conditions from which death should not occur in the presence of timely and effective medical care. Medical care was defined in its broadest sense as prevention, cure and care, and including “the application of all relevant medical knowledge […], the services of all medical and allied health personnel, institutions and laboratories, the resources of governmental, voluntary, and social agencies, and the co- operative responsibility of the individual himself”. Using this broad definition, the Working Group selected over 90 conditions as ‘sentinel health events’ since cases of disease, disability or death from these conditions were considered to be preventable and/or treatable by appropriate and timely medical care.
Furthermore:
Page 8 – 9
In contrast, many of the critics of ‘avoidable’ mortality, or more specifically, mortality amenable to health care (amenable mortality), have asked that it do something it was not intended to do, to be a definitive source of evidence of differences in effectiveness of health care. Thus, it is not unexpected that studies seeking to link amenable mortality with health care resources have failed to do so, especially when undertaken within countries, although it is notable that where gross differences exist, as between western and eastern Europe, the gap in amenable mortality is especially high.
The problem here, Jody, is that you have made up your mind that the US has awful health care, and nothing will convince you to the contrary — because to do so would be to contradict Barack Obama, and that would make you a racist. Hence you quote studies of concepts of which you have no understanding and end up claiming something that is clearly contradicted by the actual literature.
You really are obtuse, ND.
Avoidable Mortality is Notle and McKee’s a critique of the existing literature, identifying problems in researching the question of amenable healthcare outcomes between different countries and between different sets of statitics, especially as it applies with the WHO report of 2000. Measuring the health of nations…., is their response to their own critique.
In other words, Notle et.al found problems in Avoidable and then tried to correct for some of those standards in Measuring. See the “Methods” and “Discussion” section of the Measuring paper or, say, the entire fucking Avoidable paper you referenced.
What’s the word you guys like to use around here? Oh yeah: Dumbass.
Actually, no, Jody; I simply know the material, and you don’t. Furthermore, not only do I know it, I reference it, cite it, and make it clear where your statements are wrong.
Of course, the reason you’re now screaming and throwing a tantrum is because the facts do not line up with your attempt to blame America first. For a leftist like yourself to acknowledge that Americans’ lifestyle choices, not our health care system, are the primary cause of amenable mortality is not what Obama wants. We’ve seen how Obama twists and manipulates information to support his leftist causes; this is just the latest example.
Jody and ND30,
You two need to give me a chance to catch up. Working on this kind of material for a living, I tend not to read more of the same in my off-hours. “Avoidable Mortality” is the 138-page report with the main title “Does Health Care Save Lives?”, right? I’m interested to see what problems they actually corrected in “Measuring the Health of Nations,” because after a quick initial read-through of that one, I have got some real questions about their methodology and some of the assumptions they made with their data. I want to read that one through another time more carefully, though, before making up my mind how close to or off the mark I think they really are.
I will say that if I had been the editor on that study, they would have gotten some serious author queries from me… 🙂
Actually, no, Jody; I simply know the material, and you don’t. Furthermore, not only do I know it, I reference it, cite it, and make it clear where your statements are wrong.
No, you simply didn’t. You pointed to a 138 page study by the authors who noted problems in health comparisons, but not that health comparisons can’t be made.
From page 60:
The spent the previous 59 pages noting the limitations and problems with comparisons, noting that amenable care, in and of itself, can’t be the full measure of a systems’ problems but an identifier to them.
Remember, they are explicitly addressing the 2000 WHO report. They see studies of amenable mortality as a problematic, but better, measure though:
They then look at the use of tracer conditions (“….The tracer conditions would have to be discrete and identifiable health problems and offer a means to provide insight into how particular parts of the system work – not in isolation but in relation to each other. (care) systems…” as a better means to identify discrete factors affecting systematic care.
They think a two step process they propose would provide a better measure of what works and doesn’t work within and between systems. But that measure still includes studying amenable care outcomes, which they also do, which is what I cited.
Dumbass.
They then propose