US Prez Election 2012 Thread - Opinions and Discussions

[trdsf]

Here is exactly and only the findings of that report you trumpet:

Sorry, but what you are quoting there is called an "abstract" - it's just a short summary of the paper, not the whole paper.

Yes. An abstract of the FINDINGS OF THE PAPER.

The data from my link are directly from the Lancet paper. That's why I talked about the data from the link, and not the verbiage.

No, you extracted irrelevant charts so you could try to compare apples to outboard motors and make a false claim that is neither implied by the data nor even an attempted showing of the study.

As for the WHO analysis, it hasn't been updated in over a decade because even the UN admits the methodology is questionable.

That's nonsense and you know it.

The WHO does a different analysis every year looking at different aspects of world health care and health care systems. Whether they'll ever get back to overall health care on a nation by nation basis, I don't know. But nothing's come up in the intervening years to refute it, especially not a study that only looks at cancer survival rates.

You're no different from Seth, and you can join him in my twitfilter. I shall save my breath for honest disputants; I have no time for the delusional.

[Coito ergo sum]

Here is exactly and only the findings of that report you trumpet:

Sorry, but what you are quoting there is called an "abstract" - it's just a short summary of the paper, not the whole paper.

Yes. An abstract of the FINDINGS OF THE PAPER.

The data from my link are directly from the Lancet paper. That's why I talked about the data from the link, and not the verbiage.

No, you extracted irrelevant charts so you could try to compare apples to outboard motors and make a false claim that is neither implied by the data nor even an attempted showing of the study.

As for the WHO analysis, it hasn't been updated in over a decade because even the UN admits the methodology is questionable.

That's nonsense and you know it.

The WHO does a different analysis every year looking at different aspects of world health care and health care systems. Whether they'll ever get back to overall health care on a nation by nation basis, I don't know. But nothing's come up in the intervening years to refute it, especially not a study that only looks at cancer survival rates.

You're no different from Seth, and you can join him in my twitfilter. I shall save my breath for honest disputants; I have no time for the delusional.

Any thoughts on the methodology of the WHO study?

You think that it's fair to conclude the national health care systems are better, when the methodology of the study is weighted 25% dependent on whether a country has nationalized healthcare? Sorta begs the question, there, don't it?

And, what about the fact that the OP rankings that you rely on to paint the US as 37th isn't a measure of "who delivers the best healthcare to the most people," but rather is a measure of how good a countries' healthcare is in relation how could it "could be" -- I.e. the reason the US is ranked 37th is because the WHO thinks the US has so much more resources that it could be far better than it is. It's just saying that the US is rich.

The WHO study is bollocks methodology that is weighted to score countries with national healthcare higher than market economies. How can that then be used as evidence that national healthcare is better than market economies?

And, how in the world is it fair to rank countries like Costa Rica higher than the US just because, while delivering worse overall health care, they deliver the worse healthcare equally? That's another ideologically based criteria, don't you think? Ranking equality higher than overall quality? In other words, the test suggests that it's better to have a lower level of healthcare delivered equally than to have a higher level of healthcare delivered unequally, even if the poor in the higher level country are better off than the poor in the "equality" country.

The US, when you examine and remove these ideologically based factors from the WHO report, clearly moves to the top of the charts.

[Clinton Huxley]

CES said...

The US, when you examine and remove these ideologically based factors from the WHO report, clearly moves to the top of the charts.

Students will gain extra marks for showing their working...

[Coito ergo sum]

CES said...

The US, when you examine and remove these ideologically based factors from the WHO report, clearly moves to the top of the charts.

Students will gain extra marks for showing their working...

I showed quite a bit of work here: http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 0#p1203320

Note, already, in the WHO's OA report, the US is among the top in the world - 15th, not 37th -- and that is even with the 25% of the study weighted to the "financial fairness" category, where the US is scored low. 15th out of about 192 countries. That's the Overall Attainment list. Is 15th on the list really any sort of evidence that the US needs to completely overhaul their system because they are delivering substandard healthcare? That is, of course, what we're told...

WHO officials make no bones about their desire to push countries in the direction of aiding the have-nots. They gave the controversial factors that reward socioeconomic fairness 62.5 percent weight, compared with only 37.5 percent for the broadly accepted factors of health level and responsiveness.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... lth-care-/

Tweak the weighting a little bit and a country such as the United States rises or falls in the rankings. For instance, judged on responsiveness alone, the United States ranked No. 1 in the world. A bigger weight for that factor — and a smaller weight for financial fairness, where the United States ranked 54th in the world — would have given the country a much higher ranking.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... lth-care-/

Meanwhile, Whitman also raised questions about the WHO's "overall performance" measure — the one in which a country's health ranking is adjusted for its education level and economic resources. (This is the category in which the United States finished 37th.) The implication from the WHO itself as well as subsequent news reports, Whitman wrote, "is that the United States performs badly ... despite its high expenditures." In fact, he writes, in the WHO's statistical model, America's first-in-the-world expenditures for health care actually hurt its ranking in overall performance by setting the theoretical bar it had to reach very high. "A more accurate statement is that the United States performs badly because of its high expenditures, at least in part," Whitman writes.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... lth-care-/

This bit is one of the most misrepresented parts of the WHO report -- we always here how the US spends so much AND YET DELIVERS WORSE CARE. But, obviously, the WHO study says nothing of the kind.

It should be obvious that when 25% of the study is weighted heavily in favor of a countries that have nationalized health care systems, that the US rank of 15th in Overall Attainment is artificially low. Do you dispute that? I can't say we'd go to number one, but we would certainly move towards the top of the charts. I may have used the word "to" improvidently in my last post.

Certainly, we can say that the rank of 37th, bandied about unquestioningly by skeptics for some reason, is bollocks.

Certainly we can say that the rank of 15th isn't too shabby overall, given that there are about 200 countries involved.

Certainly we can say that since 25% of that ranking is based on the US not having a national healthcare system, that if we removed that factor the US would most likely move up from 15th. If we were to say otherwise, we would be saying that the US system's financial fairness IMPROVES the US's score. Does anyone want to take that position?

Further, we know that 62.75% of the criteria of the WHO study hadn't approximately fuck all to do with the delivery of and quality of health care.

So, how valuable is the WHO study?

[Coito ergo sum]

doopy mcdooplicate

[Clinton Huxley]

37th does seem an odd result.

[Coito ergo sum]

37th does seem an odd result.

[Warren Dew]

Here is exactly and only the findings of that report you trumpet:

Sorry, but what you are quoting there is called an "abstract" - it's just a short summary of the paper, not the whole paper.

Yes. An abstract of the FINDINGS OF THE PAPER.

The data from my link are directly from the Lancet paper. That's why I talked about the data from the link, and not the verbiage.

No, you extracted irrelevant charts so you could try to compare apples to outboard motors and make a false claim that is neither implied by the data nor even an attempted showing of the study.

Ah, right. You like to believe the spin, instead of the actual data. Got it.

[Coito ergo sum]

They don't care about the data, Warren. The chart says the US is 37th, so that means the US has horrible health care. Period. Fingers in ears, "la la la la la la la la!!!!"

[Ian]

Sounds like you guys are the ones who believe the spin rather than the data.

US healthcare is indeed excellent - if you're well off or otherwise have a good insurance plan. My family and I have an excellent plan, as I'll bet you do too. But you got hung up on explaining how good the quality really is and didn't mention the quantity. Try explaining to someone living around the poverty line that she's got a health care system as adequate as someone from similar means in most of those other countries.

[Coito ergo sum]

Sounds like you guys are the ones who believe the spin rather than the data.

No. If you read my post, I am simply describing the methodology. Where was there any "spin" in that?

US healthcare is indeed excellent - if you're well off or otherwise have a good insurance plan.

Or, if you're on Medicare or Medicaid (so, you don't have to be well off), or if you can't afford it, in which case you get treated with the same health care that wealthy people get.

My family and I have an excellent plan, as I'll bet you do too. But you got hung up on explaining how good the quality really is and didn't mention the quantity. Try explaining to someone living around the poverty line that she's got a health care system as adequate as someone from similar means in most of those other countries.

They get free and subsidized health care already, and they can go to clinics anytime they want.

You'll need to specify what you mean by "most of those other countries." The US is ranked 15th on the Overall Attainment list. You mean 14 other countries, at most? And, don't you agree that when 2/3 of the factors involved in the rankings have nothing to do with the delivery and quality of health care that something is wrong with the measure?

EDIT: I know an illegal alien who was seriously ill, and in a temporary coma for a while as a result, and was in the hospital for months, and the bill was up to many hundreds of thousands. Never paid penny of it. Wasn't rejected by the hospital. He's fine now. So, this idea that people can't get healthcare -- there is an example of someone who isn't even legally in the country, wasn't covered by insurance, and received the best care in the world.

[Warren Dew]

US healthcare is indeed excellent - if you're well off or otherwise have a good insurance plan. My family and I have an excellent plan, as I'll bet you do too. But you got hung up on explaining how good the quality really is and didn't mention the quantity. Try explaining to someone living around the poverty line that she's got a health care system as adequate as someone from similar means in most of those other countries.

The statistics include medicaid and medicare. In fact, practically all people who get prostate cancer are older people who are on medicare, and our prostate cancer survival rate is still almost twice as high as the UK.

[Tyrannical]

Cheap World health care is based on them unfairly leeching off of US medical research.

The US leads the World in medical research and disease treatment, and all of that research costs money. That money has to come from somewhere, and it is ultimately from US residents. Once the money is spent and a treatment is invented, the rest of the World feels they have a right to it because it saves lives. But to save the most lives they claim, the cost must be minimized. So you have use of researched medical treatment without any responsibility to pay for the research or invest further medical cures.

To be fair,and of course save the most amount of lives, the US should impose a Global medical research tax. For the good of humanity of course.

[Schneibster]

Cheap World health care is based on them unfairly leeching off of US medical research.

The US leads the World in medical research and disease treatment, and all of that research costs money. That money has to come from somewhere, and it is ultimately from US residents. Once the money is spent and a treatment is invented, the rest of the World feels they have a right to it because it saves lives. But to save the most lives they claim, the cost must be minimized. So you have use of researched medical treatment without any responsibility to pay for the research or invest further medical cures.

This might not ring so hollow if you actually examined the amount of money spent on research, and actually compared it to the amounts spent on treatment, and the amount

now wait for it

taken from all that money they collected doing treatment to do the research

and found out it was zero. In which case you'd close your filthy pie hole, or start telling the truth.

Insurance companies do not pay for research. They have no right to claim to have done so. You have no data to claim it on their behalf.

The taxpayers pay for that research; the insurance companies, and the doctors, sponge off that research just as much as the third world. None of their money got spent on research.

To be fair,and of course save the most amount of lives, the US should impose a Global medical research tax. For the good of humanity of course.

Is this on some alternate Earth on which the rich greedy bastards who are raking in all the simoleons actually contribute a measurable amount of it to medical research?

[Hermit]

Cheap World health care is based on them unfairly leeching off of US medical research.

You mean to say that the price of pharmacological products or medical equipment excludes the cost of the research undertaken to develop them or that "Cheap World health" gets the stuff for nothing?