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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

Please let me know if you'd like your link added

"AW, you can read his posts if you don't log in first...strange but true."


Apparently, this is according to a friend who signed up,
the system is set to I am ignored is the default setting.

If you go to your 'Profile' then in the left hand column 'Modify Profile' and click on ignore user options' I would be on your list of people to ignore -- you won't see anything I post after you log in.

This dialogue we've been having is why I am active here. You are a perfect gentleman, an honest "opponent" and a tough interogator. I don't think an unchallenged opinion is worth holding on to.

I don't disagree with the general theme of your latest comments.

But drug companies will drop effective drugs that aren't as profitable as a new less effective but more expensive and profitable formulation.

The problem is getting data to back up my beliefs when I diagree.

I don't keep links to everything I've read.

Small differences between drugs make a difference. I personally attest to it as well. I can't take one of the more popular statin drugs. But another one works just fine for me.

I take seriously the World Health Organizations rankings of health care systems. We don't have a golden goose -- we have, ironically unlike Canada, a Canada Goose health care system.

And we pay way too much for it.

Now, I wouldn't mind getting into details about the methodology behind the WHO rankings. I'm sure there are some questionable assumptions and standards.

I understand the basic crticism is that WHO puts a lot of emphasis on equal distribution of health care services. So a health care system that provides top notch care to a only a small segment of the population is graded lower than a system that provides less than top notch care to the whole population.  Conservatives object that this is an ideological bias.

Life expectancy is one of the criteria WHO uses. The objection is that Life expectancy has more to do with smoking, exercise and diet, and murder rates than any medical intervention.

But I suspect that WHO methodology uses controls for this comparing death rates from disease and not death rates due to guns and disease in one country to death rates due to disease in another.

We don't want to measure healthy life styles, we want to measure the health care systems. So compare smokers to smokers and non-smokers to non-smokers and make adjustments when comparing across these lines. I suspect that WHO's methodologies conform to these basic ways of compiling data.

I am a conservative by disposition -- I don't like taking uncalculated risks--going with a public option in the health care bill is, in my opinion, a risk well worth taking.  We must do something -- and this is about the smallest step that can be taken to straighten things up.




 

[Edmund Burke]

Rest assured that I never put you on my "ignore" list...I didn't even know the utility existed.  The same is probably true for AW, so I suspect this is a little bit of cyber-mischief.  I have corrected it.

There are no perfect medical systems, but I've learned over the years that opening the door to certain things virtually guarantees the old "slippery slope."  Obama and his crew are on record in wanting a single-payer system (aka socialized medicine), and they are being utterly disingenuous when they say that the current proposal is modest.  It's just the first step, and they know it.

The experiences of Canada and, more specifically, Great Britain should give everyone pause on this question.  Whenever you have a valuable commodity, there are only two ways of doling it out - the market (those who can afford it get it) and rationing (or market-clearing, where everyone hypothetically has a chance, but in reality wait-times are used to discourage people from using the resource -- e.g., the long queues for virtually everything in the old Soviet Union).  It may sound cold-hearted, but the market mechanism at least guarantees a modicum of true "justice" -- those that contribute to society are served first (to have money you must serve other people in some fashion).  I think that's far better (and gives people far more control over their own destinies) than to discriminate based on age, genes, or even behavior (e.g., oh, you're fat...no  heart for you...NEXT).  On the latter point, it's possible to be fat, alcoholic, or whatever and STILL be a large contributor to social welfare.  For instance, would Steve Jobs' recent liver transplant be possible under socialized medicine?  REAL justice can be a bitter thing.

Excellent points Dain... (I'm still not getting IS's postings... I can see that something was posted... but not the text hmmmm)

Any other suggestions?

AHHH IS there you are.... gotchya now friend....

"There are no perfect medical systems, but I've learned over the years that opening the door to certain things virtually guarantees the old "slippery slope."  Obama and his crew are on record in wanting a single-payer system (aka socialized medicine), and they are being utterly disingenuous when they say that the current proposal is modest.  It's just the first step, and they know it."

I remember learning about the "slippery slope" argument in a logic course many years ago. I was impressed with the argument.

I learned it is only an argument that works against another argument. In the real world, we never get on a slippery slope.

As an argument it works as follows. Smith claims that we should do A(1). But doing A(1) leads to doing A(2), A(2) leads to A(3) ... finally this leads to A (some finite number n) and A(n) is significantly wrong or even disastrous.

As an argument this is effective. In the real world we just get off the slippery slope and avoid disaster. Maybe not always, we invaded Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and we still are dependent of foreign oil.



Where do you see us getting on the slippery slope -- was medicare the first step?
Is any sort of regulation of the health insurance plans a step on the slippery slope?

Would HR3200 (the health care bill under consideration) without the public option be a step on the slippery slope?

Is health insurance the first step on the slippery slope?
The idea of a collective pooling of money to pay for each other's health needs is surely a form of socialism.

Notice that I am not claiming that you are wrong -- I'm merely asking questions that I think need to be considered.

What about sick children whose parents cannot afford health care? Do we let them die?
Would providing some sort of community program for children's health care be the first step on the slippery slope towards socialism?

Real justice can be bitter -- so we must let them die? Because if someone were allowed to intervene it would lead to socialism?

Even if the vast majority of Americans support pooling of money to cover all poor children or everyone, for that matter, would it still be wrong?

[Edmund Burke]

I am not suggesting that it is necessary to let anyone die.  I just don't think it's government's job to make sure all our individual outcomes are happy...it can't, and it shouldn't try because it will be forced to enslave us all to do so.  If we are a sufficiently "good" society, then private charities and initiatives should suffice.  If they don't, holding a gun to our heads to make us "good" won't work either.

As for the "slippery slope," I've seen it too often in my lifetime not to fear it.  Let's see...medical spending has easily doubled economic growth ever since Medicare was instituted, which is one of the reasons we are going bankrupt as a nation.  Social Security...dido.  Hubert Humphrey promised the people in 1964 that passing the Civil Rights Act would enforce color-blind policies on the nation, but it did the exact opposite.  And the sad list goes on.

No, I've lived too long and seen too much to believe in promises and the power of good intentions anymore.  Once you hand the power over to a government bureaucracy, it's done.  You ain't ever getting that power back short of revolution.

I am not suggesting that it is necessary to let anyone die.

Well, then I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

22,000 uninsured deaths


Uninsured and Dying Because of It:
Updating the Institute of Medicine Analysis on the Impact of Uninsurance on Mortality

By Stan Dorn
Urban Institute
January 2008

The absence of health insurance creates a range of consequences, including lower quality of life, increased morbidity and mortality, and higher financial burdens. This paper focuses on just one aspect of this harm—namely, greater risk of death—and seeks to illustrate its general order of magnitude.

Source: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/make_that_22000_uni.php

[Edmund Burke]

I think you are being disingenuous.  People die, that's nature.  If you are saying people die because of denial of treatment, or malpractice, that happens in both private and socialized medicine.  Come on, Obamacare won't change that, it will simply rearrange the reasons people die.  The problem with socialism is that it's generally not shared welfare...it quickly becomes shared poverty.

http://www.nhsexposed.com/media/bookreviews/who-cares-about-the-patients-amanda-steane.shtml

"I think you are being disingenuous.  People die, that's nature. "

Of course it is natural for people to die. Every person alive today will die at some point.

If you are saying people die because of denial of treatment, or malpractice, that happens in both private and socialized medicine.

That's exactly right too.  Mistakes are always made.
The point is to try to prevent them -- the point is to try to offer care to those who are not getting and who need to get it.

The point is to reduce the number of people who die prematurely -- people who lives can be saved by early detection of cancer or of high blood pressure.

No form of health care can reduce the number of people dying. Health care can only prevent premature death.

Our present method of financing health care is making us poorer -- we pay more than any nation in the world per capita and we don't get our money's worth.

In the United States, about 700,000 file for bankruptcy because of medical bills.

Any idea how many bankruptcies caused by medical bills there are in France, England, or Canada?

[Edmund Burke]

Yea, that's true, the American way is to go bankrupt, but of course the European way is to DIE. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/5-yr-cancer-survival-rates-us-dominates.html  Personally, I'll opt for bankruptcy...it's hard to come back from death.

As for paying more, well, you get what you pay for.  Moreover, as I've already established, the American people are subsidizing the world.  No, it isn't fair, but it is essential, and the problem isn't with us...it's with THEM (and their allies, people like YOU). 

Not sure what's up with Reagan.  Whatever his position in the 1960s, I don't recall him doing anything about specialized medicine as President.  I guess we need more than a photo.

as I've already established, the American people are subsidizing the world.

I don't think you've established this.

Maybe it is true that American's pay more for drugs than any other nation.
Maybe it is true that American companies spend more on research than any other nation.

I need to see a list of the important life-saving drugs.
I need to see where they were developed.
I need to see the percentage of funds spent by the drug companies for the development of the drug.
I need to see the percentage of those funds that came from American sources.

Until you produce this information, I think your claim is unjustified.

"the American way is to go bankrupt, but of course the European way is to DIE."

Your own post refutes this.

The American way is to die and go bankrupt unless you live like a European
Thanks for the link on the report. This is interesting -- U.S. Does really well screening for and treating cancer -- better than the rest of the world.

[Modified here:  The link you posted for Carpe Diem : 5-Year Cancer Survival Rates provides a link to the paper providing the statistics --
http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=psc_working_papers

The Title of that Paper: "Low Life Expectancy in the United States: Is the Health Care System at Fault?"

But your generalization --the European way is to Die is not supported by this paper.

The opening sentence of the abstract refutes your position:
"Life expectancy in the United States fares poorly in international comparisons, primarily because of high mortality rates above age 50."

To be fair, the report suggests that poor health habits may be to blame. In which case you should amend your statement  -- the American way is to die and go bankrupt unless you live like a European.