NBC: We're unhealthier than everyone else – and it's our own fault

[Koolblue13]

100% cranberry juice isn't real.

[Rocky21]

Clearly health care in this country doesn't need to be reformed.

(Read with heavy sarcasm.)

[Thiebear]

Clearly health care in this country doesn't need to be reformed.
(Read with heavy sarcasm.)

You can't cure stupid with single payer, but you can pay more for it..

[pjfootballer]

100% cranberry juice isn't real.

Well, it's better than the 10% and aside from having a cranberry tree in my backyard, that's as good as it can get for me. It's seemed to have worked for my gout, so I'll just keep with it until that tree in my backyard is planted and fully grown. I'm not trying to be snarky here, but if you look at all foods, unless it comes straight out of your own yard, there is something wrong with every food.

[Stadium-Armory]

Bah. We need to overhaul the American lifestyle. Redesign communities so we have drive less. People should learn to make food from scratch and sit down to dinner. To do this we need less activities for kids and slightly shorter work days for parents. Kids need to go and play instead of getting shuttled to so many activities. Just doing the simple acts of being human would make us all healthier and happier.

This thought reminds me of something I saw in that 'peak oil' video that was circulating a few years ago. The person being interviewed talked about how we need to rethink the way our communities are structured. The ex-urban subdivision model isn't sustainable from an energy perspective, and he suggested that we'll see a period of re-consolidation over the next 50 years. Communities will have to become less spread out, and we'll have to structure things so that we can access the things we need much closer to home.

On a personal note, my wife and I came to a similar conclusion about lifestyle and are militant about not over booking. No chance any of my kids are running around during the school week to activities. We do organized soccer on Saturday morning, and a few other things but by and large my kids are doing homework after school, then riding bikes with the neighbor kids before coming in for dinner that is cooked by their stay at home mom. Not knocking the folks who have dual working parents, swim practice, piano lessons and all that, but it just didn't seem like the right thing for us.

[Koolblue13]

Well, it's better than the 10% and aside from having a cranberry tree in my backyard, that's as good as it can get for me. It's seemed to have worked for my gout, so I'll just keep with it until that tree in my backyard is planted and fully grown. I'm not trying to be snarky here, but if you look at all foods, unless it comes straight out of your own yard, there is something wrong with every food.

I'm glad it's helped with your gout. Growing your own food is fantastic, that's true, but you can still get healthy foods, just rarely from the big box grocery store. Find a farmers market, it'll change your life. Local and healthy.

[pjfootballer]

I'm glad it's helped with your gout. Growing your own food is fantastic, that's true, but you can still get healthy foods, just rarely from the big box grocery store. Find a farmers market, it'll change your life. Local and healthy.

We have one down the street. I can get all the vegetables and fruit that I want, but farmers markets do not supply everything that you need. My point is, there is only so much you can get at a farmers market. I'm not a vegetarian, so that right there wouldn't help me. My wife is from Peru and they have markets all over her neighborhood, much like in a place like New York City. The problem with much of America is the areas that we live in, don't make it feasable to do all our shopping at local farmers markets.

[JMS]

You can't cure stupid with single payer, but you can pay more for it..

You can if it's the stupid who are opposing single payer.

• The stupid who believe what we currently have is free market.
• The stupid who believe the free market has anything to do with US healthcare.
• The stupid who believe inefficiency crushing the US consumer which go to private industry is better than crushing inefficiencies by the government they are irrationally afraid of.
• The stupid who believe our healthcare system is still the best in the world.
• The stupid who believe our healthcare system still functions.
• The stupid who believe the golden age of the United States was at the dawn of the industrial revolution(1880-1900), when 90% of the people lived below the poverty line, and 1 out of 11 industrial workers could expect to die on the job in any given year (steel industry).
• The stupid who believe the government can't do anything right, and thus spend every opportunity to ensure it doesn't.

[Koolblue13]

We have one down the street. I can get all the vegetables and fruit that I want, but farmers markets do not supply everything that you need. My point is, there is only so much you can get at a farmers market. I'm not a vegetarian, so that right there wouldn't help me. My wife is from Peru and they have markets all over her neighborhood, much like in a place like New York City. The problem with much of America is the areas that we live in, don't make it feasable to do all our shopping at local farmers markets.

I had a nice response written and my internet crapped out. I'll get back in a bit.

[DCsportsfan53]

This serves to remind how absolutely insane it is that so many people have actually been convinced that a for profit health care system is to or benefit and saves money compared to universal health care. I mean, just think about it for a moment. The people who profit from the for profit health care system tell us it's socialism and will create death panels if we change it.....and we believe them. Wonderful.

[JMS]

As a result, I suspect the difference in inftant mortality rates has very little to do with the ABILITY to access the healthcare system when expecting and for a baby (it might have something to with ACTUAL use of it).

Now, I might be wrong, but I'd have to see some real data to convince me of that. .

Empirically you might ask your mom what the budget is for her office and compare that with the number of births for the region she services. Ask what infant mortality is for the nearest largest city? and Why..

The facts are the entire US healthcare system treat services for the poor as an after thought. In this country about half of the population who have healthcare coverage receive this coverage from the government. And that "coverage" is not translated into services in areas such as prenatal care and infant mortality which in this country dramatically breaks down along urban / rural and income boundaries. Central to this phenomena is the profit motivation uniquely built into the US healthcare system. There simple is not money to be made by servicing the poor, and this the poor don't receive many important services. Infant Mortality for low income inner city folks is a dramatic example of this.

Infant Mortality and Income in 4 World Cities: New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo

Conclusions. In stark contrast to Tokyo, Paris, and London, the association of income and infant mortality rate was strongly evident in Manhattan.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449857/

Empty Cradles | Confronting Our Infant Mortality Crisis
Where city factories, and now babies, die

In Milwaukee, one baby under the age of 12 months dies for every 95 who live, making it one of America's most fatal cities for infants. A generation ago, Milwaukee was one of the safest.

......

Infant survival and economic competitiveness tend to move on the same sliding scale. Study after study reveals survival chances increase in communities and nations with rising wealth and stability - just as young life is threatened by economic crisis and upheaval.

The issue is especially acute in Milwaukee, a once-muscular manufacturing city where the infant mortality rate in some neighborhoods now rivals that of Third World nations. As civic leaders embark on just-announced efforts to eliminate racial disparities and cut deaths to historic lows, the central city fallout from 30 years of industrial downsizing underscores the biggest challenge in turning the tide.

INFANT MORTALITY: FRIGHTFUL ODDS IN INNER CITY

Each year, a quarter million babies are born dangerously underweight in this country and face a 1 in 10 chance that they will not live to their first birthday. Ollie Hill's baby is one of them.

[JeffSchmeff]

Can't we start with a ban on trans fat? NYC banned it in restaurants. I honestly thing obesity is this country's biggest problem.

[PeterMP]

Yes you are wrong.. Empirically you might ask your mom what the budget is for her office and compare that with the number of births for the region she services. The facts are the entire US healthcare system treat services for the poor as an after thought. In this country about half of the population who have healthcare coverage receive this coverage from the government. And that "coverage" is not translated into services in areas such as prenatal care and infant mortality which in this country dramatically breaks down along urban and rural and income boundaries.

I'm struck by the fact that nothing you posted actually says anything about access to the system.

In fact the one study you actually linked says:

"Because we have neither a measure of income inequality nor a measure of health service
use for each of our neighborhoods, our analysis does not shed light on the relative
importance of neighborhood average income, health service use, and income inequality on
infant mortality."

So in fact, they can't say anything about USE of the healthcare system much less the ABILITY to access it (i.e. are there people that are able to access the healthcare system, but choose not to).

To quote something else in your paper:

"For example, after an internal study that reported an 80% rate of unintended pregnancies in
neighborhoods with high infant mortality rates,16 the DHMH established a citywide family planning initiative."

Is it really a failure of our healthcare system if infants die because people have babies they don't intend to have? My wife and I never recieved any family planning input from our private insurance.

Now, the study also says that NYC is attempting to address that, and I think that's probably a good idea. But I don't think that's evidence that there are issues with access to our healthcare system.

It would be different if wealthy people were getting significant family planning help and the poor weren't, but to my knowledge that's not the case.

[JMS]

This serves to remind how absolutely insane it is that so many people have actually been convinced that a for profit health care system is to or benefit and saves money compared to universal health care. I mean, just think about it for a moment. The people who profit from the for profit health care system tell us it's socialism and will create death panels if we change it.....and we believe them. Wonderful.

The bottom line is the free market is the most efficient system for delivering goods to a population. We know this, and we all believe this... So therefore folks not associated with the US healthcare system, or economics think our market = free market = good...

The fact is our healthcare system is not and hasn't been for a long time based upon the free market. As specialization began to dominate healthcare in the early 1900's, costs for services sky rocketed... Old "Dr. Brown" no longer set broken bones, birthed babies, and performed most operations and services which were necessary for a given population... All the sudden it took dozens of doctors to perform these same tasks and it took larger populations to support such medical infrastructure.. This infrastructure had to be created often times at great expense, and that often took government action... To attract doctors, build hospitals, allocate land.. Costs went way up but results also improved so society was willing to pay for this improvement... That's how collectivism was introduced into the US system. When folks started to need to buy insurance to afford services, because they couldn't pay for those services themselves.... removing consumer awareness of cost from the system.... In the 1945, in an attempt to control growing costs, the McCarran–Ferguson Act became law. This was an anti trust exemption eliminating competition which was deemed to be too expensive. It was believed if we eliminated competition and set up special anti competitive enclaves we could streamline services. It allowed insurance companies to collude on prices to avoid costly competition. It legislatively removed the threat of interstate competition making each state it's own microcosm for services eliminating any economy of scale.

The result is an entirely socialized government dominated system where every band-aid, device, doctor, nurse, organization are licensed, certified, and controlled by the government. A system devoid of competition, devoid of real consumer choice, devoid of all the mechanisms of a free market except for one... Profit... Ronald Reagan re-introduced profit into the then largely non profit dominated US healthcare system in the 1980's along the reasoning that introducing businessmen would hold down costs... The problem was they didn't introduce businessmen into a competitive market where unilateral price hikes could be punished by an informed consumers who could choose to go to another insurer/hospital/drug/doctor.. They introduced big business into an economic niche where consumers had no choices, but to one where "competitors" were legislatively entitled to collude on prices.. To coordinate price hikes and hide them withing fine print..

The fundamental disconnect was the belief Businessmen goal is to make things run more efficiently... Businessmen fundamental goal is profit... if they can get that through efficiency then they will do that, but if they can get that simple by raising revenue; they are happy to do that too... and that's what they did.

What we are left with is an entirely socialized system but not one legislated for delivering services to the population, but rather one designed to deliver profits for the companies.. companies who don't have to compete or even participate in a free market to justify increases, companies who legislatively organized into anti competitive trusts can simple impose cost increases devoid of any justification on the population...

Resulting in us paying more for drugs, more for hospital visits and more for insurance by orders of magnitude than any other industrialized country.

[DCsportsfan53]

Good stuff JMS and you're absolutely right. The profit part, combined with the lack of competition and the reality that every single one of us WILL be their customers. I have no problem with researchers, scientists, doctors, ect being compensated well, especially given the schooling required, but there should not be giant companies making so much money as a result of the work by those aforementioned parties. Our individual health is all we have in the end and if we continue to allow profit to be the primary goal of the system as a whole, instead of people's health we all lose, imo.