Medicine pays very, very well. On the flip side, most physicians have student loan debt in the hundreds of thousands.
I apologise for not participating in the thread - access from many IP addresses I get assigned is often blocked. I wanted to bring this to the attention of folks who beat on the US system,
not that I contend it is the best of all possible systems, but one thing I often hear said is that it pays more for worse outcomes. The ‘worse’ outcomes bit doesn’t seem to be true. Data.
Ohsfeldt and Schneider did not do that study for Texas A&M or the University of Iowa. Its just written like that to make the study look more legitimate. They did it for the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing thinktank. Upon publication, it was shredded by maths people, who pointed out that the wrong regression was used. The authors admitted they’d used a much simpler regression that the more difficult one they knew would give the correct number. But they stated to the Wall Street Journal that they’d never intended to produce a correct number anyway.
Its still being treated as genuine on right-wing blogs and by reightwing thinktanks. Otherwise, its never been takes seriously.
In short, its absolute bull. And its easy to check: The difference between 19th place and first place in life expectancy in the OECD is 2 years. (The US is actually at no. 28, but the study is 7 years old.)
How many 18-year olds have to have a fatal incident each year to reduce the life expctancy of a population of 310 million by two years? Fifth grade maths.
Hint: More than the number of soldiers the US lost through WW2.
As for the CONCORD study, thats legitimate. The US does legitimatly do well in cancers. Not no 1 in all of them, but pretty good overall.
However, not quite as good as you’d think from the CONCORD. 5-year survival rates are boosed by the US more rigorous screening regime. Which also boosts the rate of cures, but it would boost 5-years survival rates even if no intervention was made.
Also, cancer is a disease that gets more prevalent the older you get. The fact that the US has a shorter lifespan means that the US are dealing with patients that are somewhat less elderly than most nations.
But yes, the “worse outcomes” bit is definitly true.
On the average, people living in government run UHC systems live longer than Americans.
On the average, people living in government run UHC systems spend more years out of that lifespan in good health. This is a measurement called HLY.
On the average, people living in government run UHC systems lose fewer years to ill health. This is a measurement called DALYs.
On the average, fewer people living in government run UHC systems die as a result of inappropriate, late or complete lack of healthcare. This is a measurement called Amendable Mortality.
When the efficiency of healthcare systems are compared in Public Health, large, over-arching measures are used. Measures that involve as many factors as possible. This is to even out the confounding factors introduced by some countries having particular competencies or challenges. More people die from malaria in Nigeria than in Iceland, but that says nothing about how their healthcare systems perform. Cuba is pretty good on preventive medicine, Norway on resuscitating people who has been under snow or ice, America does well on many cancers. And systems have their areas where they do badly as well.
But the measurements above are highly appropriate for measuring the performance of a healthcare system across all levels of a population.
Additionally, America has a higher rate of infant mortality. A higher rate of maternal mortality, fewer mothers survive giving birth. And a higher rate of under-5 mortality.
The first and major stumbling block in answering is the fact that “government” is an abstraction: it does not exist. People exist.
The second obstacle is to determine if people forming that group called “government” serve a socially useful purpose. Since they operate as a monopoly upon violence, and since monopolies tend to be inept and inefficient, the answer should be obvious to any critical thinker.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is the question of where that monopoly of folks operating under the mantle of “government” would procure the resources to “provide medical care”. They have no resources of their own – or at least none that they’re willing to bring to the playing field – as far as I know. So the resource to “provide medical care” to the hoi polloi would necessarily need to be impounded (stolen) from producers.
The answer to the question is a poke in the nose, methinks.
Sam
Is it just me or is this all just a coy retread of the “the government does everything worse than the private sector” and “taxation is theft” memes?
withdrawn