Healthcare & rationing

[choff]

Funny thing I learned about Chinese green tea locally. If you ever go into a Chinese porcelain shop, you see lots of ornate decorated white porcelain with gold leaf trim costing from $100.00 to $200.00. Locked away inside the highly secure viewing cabinet are the little brown tea pots.

Those tea pots have the little signs beside them that say 'you break you buy, I break I cry.' Those little brown Chinese tea pots start at about $400.00 and go up to $50,000.00. It's illegal to take the clay they're made of out of China. They have an elaborate ritual to preparing the tea, involving the boiling and steeping in the pot, the clay affects temperature control and flavour.

There's more than one type of green tea they serve, the more expensive tea is supposed to have the greater health benefit. Bojenmi tea, as best translated.

[vankirkc]

I still have that other question. I'm being generous and saying life expectancy is equal. I'm told superior levels of technology from superior levels of spending means the USA cancer survival rate is 3x to 5x superior to socialist western countries. So if life expectancy is the same something else kills US citizens at a compensating rate. What is it?

Life expectancy is not equal. The U.S. is 36th on this list : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... expectancy, and trails Japan by about 5 years. It looks like the differential is mainly in life expectancy of men. So your missing balancer has to include that as well.

How can a massive project like socialized medicine get passed if only 20% of the electorate support it and 60% oppose, I thought the USA was a democracy. Unless elites can subvert the will of the electorate, is this true?

The U.S. is kind of democratic on election day about who gets to be the king (president) and nobles (congress). On other days it is a kingdom.

The level of health care afforded the average western world citizen is superior to that of an English monarch from 200 years ago or a US president 150 years ago. The average global citizen has superior health care to that of an Egyptian Pharoah. The p**sing match going on here is really splitting hairs.

A 50% cost premium is hardly a split hair.

[MSimon]

A 50% cost premium is hardly a split hair.

I believe the premium reflects the average difference in income. Roughly.

===

And on our other current topic:

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richard ... cts-090109

I told Franklin I was surprised to hear a cop express so much sympathy for drug addicts. Even pro-drug types don't do that much. "I do have sympathy," he says. "What they're dealing with is a health issue, not a criminal issue. And as long as you treat it as a criminal issue, we're treating the symptom and not the cause."

Last year, Franklin went public with his conclusions by joining a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Since then he's made it his business to talk to other cops about the subject, and he's been surprised by another discovery: "I find that 95 percent of my law-enforcement friends agree that we have to take a different direction, but they're not sure what direction that is — and probably 60 percent to 65 percent agree that we should legalize."

And why, exactly, don't we hear about a possibly overwhelming majority of police wanting to legalize — not just decriminalize, but legalize — major narcotics?

"Selfish reasons," he says. "There is a lot of money to be made in law enforcement. If we were to legalize, you could get rid of one third of every law-enforcement agency in this country."

Really? One third?

"And give back all the federal funds too. That's why very seldom will you see a police chief step forward and say, 'Yeah, we need to do this.'"

I was surprised to hear a cop express so much sympathy for drug addicts. Even pro-drug types don't do that much.

Except around here.

BTW I started looking in to the medical knowledge on addiction in 2000. By 2002 or so I came to the conclusion that it was a genetic disease triggered by trauma. By 2007 or so the NIDA had come to a similar conclusion.

Then consider America's prisons, the problems with which we've discussed here time and again. "The prison population is off the hook in this country," Franklin says. "In 1993, at the height of apartheid in South Africa, the incarceration of black males was 870 per 100,000. In 2004 in the U.S., for every 100,000 people we are sending 4,919 black males to prison. And the majority of those are for nonviolent drug offenses. But we'd rather send people to prison than give them information and treatment."

So where are the boycotts on America for practicing apartheid?

BTW if you have time you might want to read this piece. It is a talk given to some California Judges. A similar talk was given to the FBI. It is all about the racist origins of the drug war:

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

And we have a half black president letting this continue. I guess when it comes to the drug war his white half rules.

====

Now I know we have our racists in America. Why would any Euro back them? I thought you were over that sort of thing. Or perhaps you you fail to realize what the policies you believe in are doing here. Well now you know. Drug prohibition from beginning to end in America has been a racist enterprise. Because white people would never stand for the kind of enforcement done in black neighborhoods.

====

And just to make the parallels to a past age a little sharper may I suggest:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... users.html

[choff]

http://www.aintnowaytogo.com/garfield.htm
Health care today for the average citizen is probably better than for this US president.

[MSimon]

http://www.aintnowaytogo.com/garfield.htm
Health care today for the average citizen is probably better than for this US president.

X-Rays did not come into wide spread use until the 1920s. Although the physics was apparent in the late 1890s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray

And today we have CAT scans and MRIs and PET scans. And loads of other stuff.

[choff]

We have it a lot better that the treatment applied to the English monarch Charles 2nd. I dug this up.

"But first, by way of introduction to the subject of death by
doctoring, we travel back a few hundred years, to the bedside of
King Charles II, where fourteen of the highest physicians in the
land are earnestly reviving the king from a stroke.
King Charles II, 1685
Curiously, his strength seemed to wane
The king was bled to the extent of a pint from a vein in his right
arm. Next, his shoulder was cut into and the incised area was sucked
of an additional 8oz of blood. An emetic and a purgative were
administered followed by a second purgative followed by an enema
containing antimone, sacred bitters, rock salt, mallow leaves,
violets, beetroot, camomile flowers, fennel seeds, linseed, cinnamon,
cardamom seed, saffron, cochineal and aloes. The kings scalp was
shaved and a blister raised. A sneezing powder of hellebore was
administered. A plaster of burgundy pitch and pigeon dung was applied
to the feet. Medicaments included melon seeds, manna, slippery-elm,
black cherry water, lime flowers, lily of the valley, peony, lavender,
and dissolved pearls. As he grew worse, forty drops of extract of
human skull were administered, followed by a rallying dose of
Raleighs antidote. Finally Bezoar Stone was given. Curiously, his
Majestys strength seemed to wane after all these interventions and
as the end of his life seemed imminent, his doctors tried a last
ditch attempt by forcing more Raleighs mixture, pearl julep and
ammonia down the dying Kings throat. Further treatment was rendered
more difficult by the kings death. [3]
We can be sure that the physicians gathered around the Kings bed
were all leaders in their particular field - royalty and presidents
do not settle for anything less. But as Proust observed, with
hindsight, we can now see the hideous error of their therapeutics."

[choff]

Found this tidbit on the medical care of Engish monarch Charles II.


But first, by way of introduction to the subject of death by
doctoring, we travel back a few hundred years, to the bedside of
King Charles II, where fourteen of the highest physicians in the
land are earnestly reviving the king from a stroke.
King Charles II, 1685
Curiously, his strength seemed to wane
The king was bled to the extent of a pint from a vein in his right
arm. Next, his shoulder was cut into and the incised area was sucked
of an additional 8oz of blood. An emetic and a purgative were
administered followed by a second purgative followed by an enema
containing antimone, sacred bitters, rock salt, mallow leaves,
violets, beetroot, camomile flowers, fennel seeds, linseed, cinnamon,
cardamom seed, saffron, cochineal and aloes. The kings scalp was
shaved and a blister raised. A sneezing powder of hellebore was
administered. A plaster of burgundy pitch and pigeon dung was applied
to the feet. Medicaments included melon seeds, manna, slippery-elm,
black cherry water, lime flowers, lily of the valley, peony, lavender,
and dissolved pearls. As he grew worse, forty drops of extract of
human skull were administered, followed by a rallying dose of
Raleighs antidote. Finally Bezoar Stone was given. Curiously, his
Majestys strength seemed to wane after all these interventions and
as the end of his life seemed imminent, his doctors tried a last
ditch attempt by forcing more Raleighs mixture, pearl julep and
ammonia down the dying Kings throat. Further treatment was rendered
more difficult by the kings death. [3]
We can be sure that the physicians gathered around the Kings bed
were all leaders in their particular field - royalty and presidents
do not settle for anything less. But as Proust observed, with
hindsight, we can now see the hideous error of their therapeutics.

[vankirkc]

NPR on this topic.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =112486341

[TallDave]

Life expectancy is not equal. The U.S. is 36th on this list : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... expectancy, and trails Japan by about 5 years. It looks like the differential is mainly in life expectancy of men. So your missing balancer has to include that as well.

Actually, depending where you live, who you are, and how you calculate it, life expectancy can be the highest in the world in the U.S. For instance, Minnesota and Hawaii are comparable to Japan, and in fact if you are Asian you may have a longer LE than the Japanese average (when corrected for IM).

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnf ... 099763.htm

http://mapoftheunitedstates.org/2008/ma ... y-usa-map/

Notice the gap is as large as eight years. This variation among different people with the same American health care argues strongly that cultural factors like diet and lifestyle, not national differences in health care policy, are responsible for most of the national variation in LE.

Also, as alluded to above, American LE includes a reduction for infant mortality that Japan's and Europe's does not because stillbirths are reported differently there (they have birthweight standards, here you're considered a live birth if you manage a single breath).


Cold uncaring capitalism:

NYC Man Survives After Heart Stops For 45 Minutes Joseph Tiralosi was released from the hospital Tuesday. He had gone to the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center on Aug. 17 because he wasn't feeling well. Within minutes of his arrival, he collapsed and his heart stopped beating. Doctors and nurses tried CPR and shocked him multiple times with a defibrillator. A last-ditch effort to break up any clots finally worked, and Tiralosi's pulse finally came back. Doctors kept his body cold while they removed a clot and Tiralosi's heart started working normally.

Warm and fuzzy socialism:

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death. Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away. ..."Forecasting death is an inexact science,"they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death "without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong. ...The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

I leave you with Hayek on price controls:

Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose--and it is very significant that it does not matter--which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all his without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity--or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.--brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

[Aero]

About 10 years ago I spent a year studying Health Data Management. It seems to me that there are several bogus arguments on this thread. In particular, Life Expectancy is not really a valid measure of health care quality. That's because death often comes without health care. My whole class was shocked when analyzing raw death statistics, we found that the third leading cause of death in the data sample was, "Death by Police action."

I did a short Google search for mortality tables but couldn't find that particular cause of death with Google. I did find this interesting table though which I think illustrates my point.

Table 1. Total Cases by Manner of Death by OCME District, 2004
OCME District
Manner Central Northern Tidewater Western Total
Accident 735 462 430 685 2,312
Homicide 192 37 130 70 429
Natural 664 435 627 409 2,135
Suicide 236 196 164 244 840
Undetermined1 25 13 18 27 83
Total 1,852 1,143 1,369 1,435 5,799
1An undetermined death is one where, after medico-legal death investigation, a forensic
pathologist cannot identify or isolate the precise fatal injury or disease that caused
a death and/or the specific circumstances surrounding the death that would distinguish .....

[ravingdave]

We have it a lot better that the treatment applied to the English monarch Charles 2nd. I dug this up.

"But first, by way of introduction to the subject of death by
doctoring, we travel back a few hundred years, to the bedside of
King Charles II, where fourteen of the highest physicians in the
land are earnestly reviving the king from a stroke.
King Charles II, 1685
Curiously, his strength seemed to wane
The king was bled to the extent of a pint from a vein in his right
arm. Next, his shoulder was cut into and the incised area was sucked
of an additional 8oz of blood. An emetic and a purgative were
administered followed by a second purgative followed by an enema
containing antimone, sacred bitters, rock salt, mallow leaves,
violets, beetroot, camomile flowers, fennel seeds, linseed, cinnamon,
cardamom seed, saffron, cochineal and aloes. The kings scalp was
shaved and a blister raised. A sneezing powder of hellebore was
administered. A plaster of burgundy pitch and pigeon dung was applied
to the feet. Medicaments included melon seeds, manna, slippery-elm,
black cherry water, lime flowers, lily of the valley, peony, lavender,
and dissolved pearls. As he grew worse, forty drops of extract of
human skull were administered, followed by a rallying dose of
Raleighs antidote. Finally Bezoar Stone was given. Curiously, his
Majestys strength seemed to wane after all these interventions and
as the end of his life seemed imminent, his doctors tried a last
ditch attempt by forcing more Raleighs mixture, pearl julep and
ammonia down the dying Kings throat. Further treatment was rendered
more difficult by the kings death. [3]
We can be sure that the physicians gathered around the Kings bed
were all leaders in their particular field - royalty and presidents
do not settle for anything less. But as Proust observed, with
hindsight, we can now see the hideous error of their therapeutics."

Sounds exactly like Democrats trying to fix the Economy and Save the poor.


David

[ravingdave]

I leave you with Hayek on price controls:

Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose--and it is very significant that it does not matter--which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all his without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity--or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.--brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

Hayek was quite insightful. I have long alleged that something very similar happens with the social rules of society. Before the Government made it tolerable, having a child out of wedlock was miserable and possibly fatal for both the mother and child. Many people would question what possible good could come of letting a poor girl suffer and her child live in misery or possibly die. The answer is that word spreads through the community and the girl serves as a negative example to others not to emulate the actions which brought her to her fate.

One sufferer may prevent hundreds of followers.

As there is an invisible hand of economics, there is likewise an invisible hand of social right and wrong. You can tamper with it for awhile, but at some point the forces will reassert themselves.


David

[MSimon]

I leave you with Hayek on price controls:

Assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the use of some raw material, say, tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has been eliminated. It does not matter for our purpose--and it is very significant that it does not matter--which of these two causes has made tin more scarce. All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now more profitably employed elsewhere and that, in consequence, they must economize tin. There is no need for the great majority of them even to know where the more urgent need has arisen, or in favor of what other needs they ought to husband the supply. If only some of them know directly of the new demand, and switch resources over to it, and if the people who are aware of the new gap thus created in turn fill it from still other sources, the effect will rapidly spread throughout the whole economic system and influence not only all the uses of tin but also those of its substitutes and the substitutes of these substitutes, the supply of all the things made of tin, and their substitutes, and so on; and all his without the great majority of those instrumental in bringing about these substitutions knowing anything at all about the original cause of these changes. The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. The mere fact that there is one price for any commodity--or rather that local prices are connected in a manner determined by the cost of transport, etc.--brings about the solution which (it is just conceptually possible) might have been arrived at by one single mind possessing all the information which is in fact dispersed among all the people involved in the process.

Hayek was quite insightful. I have long alleged that something very similar happens with the social rules of society. Before the Government made it tolerable, having a child out of wedlock was miserable and possibly fatal for both the mother and child. Many people would question what possible good could come of letting a poor girl suffer and her child live in misery or possibly die. The answer is that word spreads through the community and the girl serves as a negative example to others not to emulate the actions which brought her to her fate.

One sufferer may prevent hundreds of followers.

As there is an invisible hand of economics, there is likewise an invisible hand of social right and wrong. You can tamper with it for awhile, but at some point the forces will reassert themselves.

David

The wealth of a society will determine which vices it can support. Vices once confined to the rich are now supportable by the poor.

You always need more bread and better circuses.

[MSimon]

What kind of relief will be required when the average income (PPP) of the bottom 20% is $50,000 in todays dollars?

Sail boat subsidies? Home automation rebates (for those living in old hovels built in 2010)?

It will be something.

[ravingdave]

Hayek was quite insightful. I have long alleged that something very similar happens with the social rules of society. Before the Government made it tolerable, having a child out of wedlock was miserable and possibly fatal for both the mother and child. Many people would question what possible good could come of letting a poor girl suffer and her child live in misery or possibly die. The answer is that word spreads through the community and the girl serves as a negative example to others not to emulate the actions which brought her to her fate.

One sufferer may prevent hundreds of followers.

As there is an invisible hand of economics, there is likewise an invisible hand of social right and wrong. You can tamper with it for awhile, but at some point the forces will reassert themselves.

David

The wealth of a society will determine which vices it can support. Vices once confined to the rich are now supportable by the poor.

You always need more bread and better circuses.

It has yet to be determined. From where I sit, the fallacies of the Progressives in the 1930s are only now coming to hurt us. It may be decades longer before we see the result of the fallacies of the 60s, though the evidence of them lies everywhere about us.



David