Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

DarkNemesis is a faggot.

I hope you get banned for this

You guys have spent the last 3 pages of threads proving that Serbia is the best country.

Um, ok

I hope you win a Darwin Award some day.

Yo.

Ion wrote:DarkNemesis is a faggot. And a parasite to society.

Go back where you came from! /b/!

After reading this whole thread this is the truest statement I have found.

HEYYYOOO

noworries wrote:After reading this whole thread this is the most entertaining statement I have found.

Fixed.

On the topic of the UN: Powerless?

I recall reading somewhere that the US had something like the 13th best health system in the world? Lemme go look it up. . .

Ah, here it is. http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

EDIT: Correction, I meant 37th. And granted, it is a little old (from 2000). However, countries like Israel, Canada, and France were > The US, so they must be doing SOMETHING right. Don't be so quick to dismiss universal health care as impossible?

EDIT: Correction, I meant 37th. And granted, it is a little old (from 2000). However, countries like Israel, Canada, and France were > The US, so they must be doing SOMETHING right. Don't be so quick to dismiss universal health care as impossible?

Those rankings are full of crap, they're practically designed to make the US look bad. A quick glance doesn't tell me the criteria they used, but for similar lists they tend to just have a list of flaws in the US (whatever) which most of Europe doesn't happen to have. Like there was one on justice and the US got a giant ass penalty because we still have the death penalty.

DarnYak

It was old and was also at a time when the US was more prosperous then it was now. Also, you could've taken the first link to look at how they assessed it all. http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_wor ... ranks.html

All of these reports do need to be taken with a grain of salt because there is undoubtedly some bias in them, but I don't think it's easy to just blow it all off because the US is in 37th. Using rankings is not a great way of determining how one country is better than another, because the difference between some countries might be much smaller then others.

However, one would think if healthcare in the US was efficient, affordable and working people would not be suffering, would be able to get medical insurance, keep it and stay relatively healthy. But it's not like the US is known for being able to walk into a clinic and get quality care. It's known for 'if you have the most cash you get the kidney and surgeon'.

Like I said before, in emergency situations medical facilities are under law to treat any patient whether or not they can pay or not. Having worked in a hospital and being a constant medical patient myself, I can tell you that many of our facilities, especially those like Vanderbilt are very high quality with no question of cost until after the care had been administered (was a few hours from going into a coma). The majority of working people in the United States can find healthcare affordable to them if they want ir. But surprisingly enough many people don't even bother with it because A): They think they won't get critically ill. B): Don't think they should bother to pay for it for whatever reason. When people tend to do surveys they tend to leave out asking why the people don't have it and auto-assume that its only because they can't afford it, leading to more than a few skewed numbers.

Luftwaffles wrote:Also, you could've taken the first link to look at how they assessed it all. http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_wor ... ranks.html

Missed that, but that just confirmed my suspecions.

However, one would think if healthcare in the US was efficient, affordable and working people would not be suffering, would be able to get medical insurance, keep it and stay relatively healthy. But it's not like the US is known for being able to walk into a clinic and get quality care.

As Kalrithus points out, hospitals are required to treat patients whether they can pay or not. This is actually one of the many factors making the whole cost of health care so fucked up - many people aren't insured and can't pay (especially illegal immigrants), and the government doesn't exactly reimburse for treatment, so instead they charge multiple times the cost to the ones with insurance who can pay.

The issue isn't with the quality of care, which is why i object to the US being 37th. Seeing the factors listed, there's acutaly not a single one about quality of care, it's all about the 'fairness' of the system. The closest one is the adjusted life expetancy, which is also flawed due to being yet another average, failing to take into account the vast numbers of immigrants we get, and especially leaving out the unhealthy lifestyle most Americans choose to have.

It's known for 'if you have the most cash you get the kidney and surgeon'.

I don't think that's even accurate, pretty sure it's illegal.

DarnYak

First off, let me say that the report was posted primarily to prove a point to Dark: Universal health care is NOT necessarily a bad thing. In this report (which, granted, may not have said it covered quality of care, but more on that later) other countries, including those with universal health care, did better.

DarnYak wrote:The issue isn't with the quality of care, which is why i object to the US being 37th. Seeing the factors listed, there's acutally not a single one about quality of care, it's all about the 'fairness' of the system. The closest one is the adjusted life expectancy, which is also flawed due to being yet another average, failing to take into account the vast numbers of immigrants we get, and especially leaving out the unhealthy lifestyle most Americans choose to have.

I may be missing something here, but people go into the job for two reasons: They want to help people, or, in places like the US, they want to make a lot of money. Me being an optimist, I'd say a lot of people who handle injured people, doctors, surgeons and the like, feel a need to help people. I'd say they would give the best possible care given their equipment. Granted, that's an entirely different argument, but I'm pretty sure they've all got decently high quality of care.

Moving on, if you're not talking about an average, how the hell can you judge anything based on numbers? The larger the sample gets, the more representative it gets, but handling those numbers individually -- let alone actually getting them -- would be painful. You say that the average life expectancy ignores our unhealthy lifestyles, yet I would imagine that if everyone lives an unhealthy lifestyle, the average life expectancy goes down? I don't see as to how you can say that the two are completely independent.

Also, I may be reading a bit of my own intention into this, but they do seem to hint at quality of care. Lemme pull some quotes here.

Responsiveness wrote:The nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. The reason these are all advanced industrial nations is that a number of the elements of responsiveness depend strongly on the availability of resources.

I'm kind of seeing that with more resources available, the quality of care would go up. The more stuff you have, the better you can care for others as you have more resources / doctor. Now, what 'resources' are is somewhat questionable. They never do specify what they are.

Responsiveness wrote:Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider).

I don't know about yourself, but personally I see prompt attention as being pretty important. The other thing is the quality of basic amenities increases the quality of care, for any improvement increases the quality of care.

And Yak, how do you quantify the unquantifiable? (Bonus points for anyone who grabs the Dilbert comic of "Dogbert the Quantifier"). How in the world does one quantify quality of care? The best I can think of is the amount of equipment and support personnel doctors have, but I would refer you again to the resource availability quote.

Edit: inb4 "Wall of text crits me for over 9000!" or "tl;dr"

Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider).

If this is important to you then you can't fault the US medical system in this regard. While it may have faults it does give prompt care to patients and schedules sessions of followup care to those with chronic illness's like diabetes to help train the patients on how to live with said illness. Doctor - Patient privilege is held practically sacred here as it is for most modern medical systems so no fault there. Frankly the fact that we're rated so low seems to deal more with the site's political agenda than a solid and unbiased look at the medical systems themselves.

I'd love to reply crypt but I just finished page 1 of a 15 page paper due tomorrow. If this debate's still going on in 2 days then i'll type out a proper reponse.

DarnYak

Yak: Well, thanks for noticing at least.

GL on the paper.

Kal: First off, the last two quotes were what I took out of the WHO's standards for the test; it just served to help give a feel for where I was coming from, wasn't necessarily my point of view. That having been said, you're right on those points, but I think the US lost a lot of 'points', as it were, on the financial side of things, and the fact that we don't have health care for everyone.

Also, that was the only study I could find in a quick 5 minute search. So biased it may be, but it's kinda what I've got to go on. I'll see if I can't find a more recent, less biased one, but it did kinda underscore what I wanted it to. . .while it may be biased, a difference of 37 spots can't be bias alone (Or the people who ran the studies should be fired and/or dead), which hopefully shows that universal health care isn't necessarily an evil. (Which was my original point all along.)

Yes well in a country as large as ours, with as many financial problems, and issues with illegal immigration etc. Universal Healthcare would bankrupt us all if tried, and when our economy collapses who else do you think it will effect?

Edit

a difference of 37 spots can't be bias alone (Or the people who ran the studies should be fired and/or dead),

Well it would depend on the employer =P After all some of the worst America hating bilge comes from several of our National News companies and they are frankly applauded for their remarkable bias and ignorance of the facts.

Please, stop sapping my good will toward the human race. . .

=( sorry I have a rather cynical but realistic outlook on the world as a whole.