I don't think you go after any place that has "bad" food. If someone wants to eat four Big Macs a day I don't care. The only time it will effect me is when I have to pay extra taxes to pay for their bypass operation, which I am against. Just like if someone wants to smoke cigarettes, it is their own personal choice. The only time it effects me is when I have to flip the bill for their lifestyle choices.

I think the problem is more with the unhealthy lifestyles of Americans (which are by choice) than it does incompetency of our health care providers - because that is what is being said. If our health care is inadequate, it is inadequate for everyone - even those who can afford good medical care. That is an indictment on the health professionals. For example, the stats on infant mortality. That is an indictment on our health care providers, not any system. People on medicare actually pay less to have children than I do (and I know this from anecdotal examples). It isn't a lack of money that is the reason for infant mortality, there are other factors. I think it has more to do with the lifestyles of some of the mothers in this country than it does doctors and nurses.

Yes Cizungu..I am on a roll with healthcare issues. Major point...we are allpaying right now for irresponsible people indiretly. Many responsible working people cannot get coverage. Our healthcare system is failing. Although I believe socialized medicine can work in small countries it would be a failure here.

The system that would work is Universal Healthcare with a one payer system.

Dom Yes you are right American lifestyes play a major role in our health however the medical system is broken. HMO , the pharmaceutical industry and even some specialists. Tort reform might even raise the cost of helathcare but I will start a thread tonight in the courts section for that. Read this link about Universal healthcare and there is a link from there how it would differ from Canadian socialized medicine. I have lived/worked in healthcare in France and even though they have probably the leading healthcare in the world they have a completely different government system and it is a smaller country. Their system while working for them will not work for us. Good point Dom their lifestyle is much higher quality in addition to their actual medical facilities. That is why so many of our specialists go to France for specialized training.

I see your point, and you are correct to some degree, but that doesn't change the central observation: we spend much more on health care than any other Western country : there's a gap of over 5 GDP points between us and the next most prolific spender, France. That's a huge difference! To provide some scale: 5% of our GDP covers slightly more than the Pentagon budget.
This huge overspending outweighs by far any of the health penalties entailed by obesity and drugs. With all that money, if we allocated our health care spending as efficiently as Europe, we would be the healthiest people on Earth, with the most doctors, hospital beds, etc. But, despite our profligate spending, we are in relatively poor health, and have fewer doctors and hospital beds than other Western nations.
Or, to take a different approach: as a hypothetical, if we could get solid data and use it to statistically ignore the ill effects of obesity and of drugs, we would probably rise into the middle of the pack--all that overspending would still be wasted, since we would only be as healthy as everybody else.
In other words, with or without taking into account our various health penalties, we're clearly spending too much on health care, without actually providing adequate health care.

The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars.

The regional medical cener where I am employed has a department that was not in existence 20 years ago. It is called Utilization Review. It employs 23 Registered Nurses to sort out and call and try to obtain approval for healthcare days and procedures from various insures and try to work the maze of their paperwork and get their approval for the physician to admit or treat the patient.

More than 25% of our healthcare dollars are being thrown to the wind with these multi system for profit mangers. however they can dictate to you whether or not your patient can stay an additional day in the hospital but they have no liability. they are protected and many of their CEO are making 30 million+. Add in the pharaceautical industry and you have skyrocketing costs.

Politicians that offer no solution to healthcare costs beyond legislating ad hoc limits on malpractice lawsuit settlements are just posturing for votes IMHO. Such caps are also worth little. They may be effective at reducing the legal risk of medical practice for providers and slightly lower physicians malpractice insurance but they are far too legally dangerous in practice. No legislature can reasonably determine the maximum allowable damage an incident of malpractice should create. And because the possibility still remains for egregious events of malpractice to warrant damages far larger than this “cap”, such limitations end up inhibiting justice for those who are truly harmed by the worst cases of true malpractice.

I want to start a thread on malpractice so when people want caps they will know what they are really saying. Believe me at this point they do not.

Yes Cizungu..you are right on target. Diet/lifestyle is each individuals responsibility and America is faling however we cannt afford to keep pushing off the costs of the 36% that are uninsured to healthcare consumers. We are paying for the uninsured..believe me on this. in addtion the major cause of bankruptcy in a WORKING responsible persons life is a medical crisis. Those companies will get out of paying astronomical bills and they have their 87 page contracts to do so.

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepaye...php#socialized

No it is not. Read this link for further understanding. Right now all of working and buying our insurance are paying for the person who is iresponsible and then with no insurance waits until the last moment and has a catastrphic bill.

It is eroding our system and causing many with insurance and working to go bankrupt if they have a major medical crisis . Most insurance covers 80% of their well over million dollars in medical bills.Thay consumer will have an inflated bill in oreder to pay for the uninsured that have required care.

Great stats and graphs, Cizungu. You know, I'd be interested in seeing how these stats break down by looking at the distributions for US only e.g., break them down by wealth, etc. My guess is that we (the US) have a much higher variance than other countries. Our wealthier probably do pretty well (maybe even better) in comparison to other countries, but our poorer segment....not so well. There is likely a strong correlation between wealth and health.

__________________

Fear leads to Anger...Anger leads to Hate...Hate leads to Suffering.

I never said diet didn't matter. What I said was that I would not be in favor of going after any places that sold food, or anything else, which was deemed bad for us. They are personal choices which those people make. If someone wants to eat four Big Macs per day I say let them go at it. I simply don't care. The only time I would care is when I have to flip the bill for their triple bypass because they didn't take care of themsleves.

The argument was also made above that our health care providers and facilities are inadequate and that was the reason for the statistics. Which is it? Is it that our doctors and nurses suck or is it that we have people who are uninsured? Is it a combination of the two? Pregnant mothers are not turned away from the hospital, so maybe the stats mean our doctors and nurses suck. Fine, how about higher standards then.

Tell me what those stats mean then Deadshot. Does it mean our doctors suck or that we have people who can't afford to pay for proper medical care for their infants?

Who is paying for this universal health care? Who are the people who are ultimately going to be held responsible for this? I would bet anything the burden will fall on the middle class. By the way, there are statistics out there which say that most of the uninsured (the numbers often cited are over estimated) are actually people who work. I found that even on a Democratic government website. Fact is, a person who is on medicare can have a baby for a lot less than I can and I have health insurance. That is absolutely 100% true.