RE: Government health care is GREAT!

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DomKen -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 5:15:29 PM)
Lucy you gave away my ace in the hole. :(

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 5:16:20 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Lucylastic The OECD states In several countries, such as in the United States, Canada, Japan and the Nordic countries, very premature babies (with relatively low odds of survival) are registered as live births, which increases mortality rates compared with other countries that do not register them as live births For more information , stats, etc http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:IUoxYIrcW5AJ:www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/23/34970246.pdf+infant+mortality+data+difference&hl=en&sig=AFQjCNHV-jxf_bD4vKB4zM49ddXU8_aorQ Umm... nothing in the linked article supports your position.

Lucylastic -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 5:32:00 PM)
My bad http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:JcZ_DzFxr-IJ:www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/36/40321504.pdf+In+several+countries,+such+as+in+the+United+States,+Canada,+Japan+and+the+Nordic+countries,+very+premature+babies+%28with+relatively+low+odds+of+survival%29+are+registered+as+live+births,+which+increases+mortality+rates+compared+with+other+countries+that+do+no&hl=en&sig=AFQjCNH-gLu-yTSYSLydljl8ddfsFdGyGQ down at the bottom of the page In several countries, such as in the United States, Canada, Japan and the Nordic countries, very premature babies with relatively low odds of survival are registered as live births. This increases mortality rates compared with other countries that register them as foetal deaths instead of live births. DomKen Sorry smilessssss didnt mean to steal anything, I just knew I had the info somewhere.

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 6:33:27 PM)
Wow, those are some HORRIBLE graphs. Hold on, let me dig a little. Okay, here's some interesting facts: one million babies die each year from being born premature - note, this article is talking about WORLDWIDE births. 6.69 deaths per 1,000 live births - this is for the US. Now, we... AHA! JACKPOT!! Ok, here's some REAL NUMBERS. In 2005, we had 4,138,573 "live births", as the US defines them. Of those, we had 28,384 infant deaths (18,782 neonatal deaths and 9,602 post-neonatal deaths). Neonatal deaths are of the most interest to us: Those are infant deaths between 0 and 28 days of birth. If every single one of those 18,782 deaths in a given year was a preemie that another country would have declared DOA, and the remaining 4,119,793 live births follow the expected statistical spread for life expectancy, then those neonatal deaths will reduce life expectancy by zero point four percent (0.4%). That works out to about two months for men and about three months for women. And that's assuming ZERO cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrom, ZERO cases of Shaken Baby Syndrome, ZERO cases of neonatal pneumonia, ZERO cases of undiscovered anatomical anomalies incompatable with life... in all likelihood, the real numbers are closer to 500 or so fetuses per year that get "over-counted" (or babies that get under-counted in other countries, if you go with the 'every sperm is sacred' hard-line). So, yeah. I think there's far more statistically significant factors than how to count a few preemies. Yes, it has "some effect" on our statistics, but even if we

Arpig -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 8:10:08 PM)
quote: Easier just to invade. I say we do it on a Saturday night, when they're all at hockey games. We could wrap the whole thing up in a half hour, tops. You're assuming your Military brass could locate us...after all a frighteningly large percentage of Americans couldn't locate Canada on a map.

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 8:35:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Archer quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen quote: ORIGINAL: Archer And I reject the idea that the US system is that much less effective and efficient. How can you reject facts? The fact is we spend a far greater percentage of our GNP on health care than any other industrialized nation and despite all that money spent we have lower life expectancies and worse over all health by any of a broad range of measurements. That's less efficient and less effective. Because as has been debated before and noted before the statistics used to determine life spans is flawed. Fact the WHO says Do not include infants who take heroic measures to attempt to sustain life as a live birth if they die before X amount of time. However the US reports EVERY infant who draws one breath as a live birth as a matter of policy even though it conflicts with WHO policy. The way we in the US report live births queers the data. Add to that the fact that the US population has a less healthy diet and lifestyle by and large and you have all the reason for the data being a comparison of apples and oranges. Doctors cant make the obesity levels here go away, they can only reduce the damage we do to ourselves. Diet and exercise (personal habits) effect something like 60% of life span healthcare systems only effect about 10% , the rest rounded out with things like sanitation of the society etc. (rough numbers recalled from a radio interview with a former Surgeon General. But I'm sure I can find citations if you insist. Definition of a live birth by the World Health Organization Live birth refers to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life - e.g. beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscles - whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached. Each product of such a birth is considered live born. http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/indneonatalmortality/en/ I had posted that information before. The US is the only country that follows this definition. The rest do not.

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 8:51:52 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl I had posted that information before. The US is the only country that follows this definition. The rest do not. Even so, it's not really relevant to the discussion. The MAXIMUM effect it could have is 0.4%, which works out to a few months' worth of life expectancy.

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:16:27 PM)
how do you figure a 0.4%? im curious

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:24:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl I had posted that information before. The US is the only country that follows this definition. The rest do not. Even so, it's not really relevant to the discussion. The MAXIMUM effect it could have is 0.4%, which works out to a few months' worth of life expectancy. Actually, it can have a significant difference if, say, a country doesnt count the first 24 hours as a live birth. If the weight doesnt fall within a specified parameters... and yes, these have occured in the past. Currently, other countries are doing better at reporting what the US reports as a life birth, but they are still far behind. When people start tossing up figures on infant mortality rates, time waiting in ER's, ect... its VERY crucial to understand that we arent discussing the same things. quote: Another challenge to comparability is the practice of counting frail or premature infants who die before the normal due date as miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) or those who die during or immediately after childbirth as stillborn. Therefore, the quality of a country's documentation of perinatal mortality can matter greatly to the accuracy of its infant mortality statistics. This point is reinforced by the demographer Ansley Coale, who finds dubiously high ratios of reported stillbirths to infant deaths in Hong Kong and Japan in the first 24 hours after birth, a pattern that is consistent with the high recorded sex ratios at birth in those countries and suggests not only that many female infants who die in the first 24 hours are misreported as stillbirths rather than infant deaths but also that those countries do not follow WHO recommendations for the reporting of live births and infant deaths.[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality_rate When discussing anything reported "world wide" then its critical we all follow the same rules for reporting... if not.. the numbers are meaningless... especially when using that figure for political gains.

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:28:50 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl how do you figure a 0.4%? im curious For illustrative purposes, I grabbed the CDC's 2005 data on births and infant mortality. In 2005, we had 4,138,573 "live births", as the US defines them. Of those, we had 28,384 infant deaths (18,782 neonatal deaths and 9,602 post-neonatal deaths). A neonatal death is any death within the first 28 days. Assuming EVERY ONE of those 18,782 children was specifically a stillborn preemie that only took a single heartbeat, we get a maximum of 18,782 "miscounted" deaths weighing down 4,119,793 "live births". If those 4,119,793 new souls lived out their statistically expected lifespans, then their average life expectancy would be N, computed as (total years lived) / 4,119,793. However, if we throw in an extra 18,782 "near-stillbirths", that drags the life expectancy down somewhat. The new value becomes N1=(total years lived) / 4,138,573 - and remember, each of them lived 0 years, so they contribute nothing to the "total years lived" value. So, the new value is off from the old value by a factor of 4,119,793/4,138,573 - N1 is 99.6% of N. Put another way, N1 is [18,782/4,138,573] less than N, which is 0.4%. That's given 2005's data. Given that infant mortality has gone down by "up to" 20%, and it's mathematically possible (although highly implausible) that every single one of those saved babies was ALSO a near-stillbirth, it's conceivable that we're looking at 0.5% instead of 0.4% - but even so, that's just an extra month out of 70-odd years.

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:30:48 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl quote: ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl I had posted that information before. The US is the only country that follows this definition. The rest do not. Even so, it's not really relevant to the discussion. The MAXIMUM effect it could have is 0.4%, which works out to a few months' worth of life expectancy. Actually, it can have a significant difference if, say, a country doesnt count the first 24 hours as a live birth. If the weight doesnt fall within a specified parameters... and yes, these have occured in the past. Currently, other countries are doing better at reporting what the US reports as a life birth, but they are still far behind. When people start tossing up figures on infant mortality rates, time waiting in ER's, ect... its VERY crucial to understand that we arent discussing the same things. quote: Another challenge to comparability is the practice of counting frail or premature infants who die before the normal due date as miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) or those who die during or immediately after childbirth as stillborn. Therefore, the quality of a country's documentation of perinatal mortality can matter greatly to the accuracy of its infant mortality statistics. This point is reinforced by the demographer Ansley Coale, who finds dubiously high ratios of reported stillbirths to infant deaths in Hong Kong and Japan in the first 24 hours after birth, a pattern that is consistent with the high recorded sex ratios at birth in those countries and suggests not only that many female infants who die in the first 24 hours are misreported as stillbirths rather than infant deaths but also that those countries do not follow WHO recommendations for the reporting of live births and infant deaths.[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality_rate When discussing anything reported "world wide" then its critical we all follow the same rules for reporting... if not.. the numbers are meaningless... especially when using that figure for political gains. How many babies are we talking, here? Millions? Billions? Trillions? Unless we're at LEAST talking half a million per year, the numbers are too insignificant to matter, given that the US is more than a few percentage points below other such nations.

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:33:46 PM)
quote: dubiously high ratios of reported stillbirths to infant deaths in Hong Kong and Japan in the first 24 hours after birth, a pattern that is consistent with the high recorded sex ratios at birth in those countries and suggests not only that many female infants who die in the first 24 hours are misreported as stillbirths rather than infant deaths but also that those countries do not follow WHO recommendations for the reporting of live births and infant deaths Add that to the number of infants born in Hong Kong and Japan... then you tell me how statistically significant the change would be if they did not report them as live births that later died? Coupled with those births that are never reported? Its a rarity in the US. There, its more common. Many still births, and births that die, are never reported.

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:36:18 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl quote: dubiously high ratios of reported stillbirths to infant deaths in Hong Kong and Japan in the first 24 hours after birth, a pattern that is consistent with the high recorded sex ratios at birth in those countries and suggests not only that many female infants who die in the first 24 hours are misreported as stillbirths rather than infant deaths but also that those countries do not follow WHO recommendations for the reporting of live births and infant deaths Add that to the number of infants born in Hong Kong and Japan... then you tell me how statistically significant the change would be if they did not report them as live births that later died? Coupled with those births that are never reported? Its a rarity in the US. There, its more common. Many still births, and births that die, are never reported. ... I don't know how to plug the word "many" into an equation. Please help.

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:41:00 PM)
Your problem, i think, if you are trying to adjust the US rates. Those arent the ones called into question. They are the most accurately reported of any country. The rates of the other countries that the US is compared too are the ones that are "off". Try plugging your numbers using Hong Kong figures, though, i doubt that would help since we dont have a truly accurate count of how many live births they have, how many were actually stillborn or a percentage of those never reported in either category, or reported under the wrong one.

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:49:12 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl Your problem, i think, if you are trying to adjust the US rates. Those arent the ones called into question. They are the most accurately reported of any country. The rates of the other countries that the US is compared too are the ones that are "off". Try plugging your numbers using Hong Kong figures, though, i doubt that would help since we dont have a truly accurate count of how many live births they have, how many were actually stillborn or a percentage of those never reported in either category, or reported under the wrong one. Umm... well, let me see if I can explain this. First, the US is reporting as live, births that other countries don't report. So, you're correct: we can't find out what's going on by examining those countries. All we CAN do, is look at what numbers we DO have easy access to: in this case, the US. So, we work backwards. Instead of asking, "if other countries reported the way the US does, how much lower would their rates be?" - a question we can't answer - we ask, "if the US was reporting the same way these other countries were, how much higher would our rates be?" - and it turns out, the answer is about 0.4%. Now, the thing is, the raw figures aren't going to be too different from place to place. If 18,000 out of 4 million US births end within 28 days of pregnancy, chances are the values for other post-industrial countries aren't going to be much less than 1,000 or much higher than 100,000. So if other countries are causing trillions of unborn fetuses to spontaneously self-immolate, something wonky is going on. Do I make sense?

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 9:53:10 PM)
You cant even say that without knowing how many other countries do not report, what they do not report, or how much of what they report is misleading. Do you have that figure? If you do, i would love to see your source for it. By my post, Japan doesnt even report every birth, still or otherwise. How can you determine what their actual birth rate is, much less the rest of the information needed?

Ialdabaoth -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/4/2009 10:00:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl You cant even say that without knowing how many other countries do not report, what they do not report, or how much of what they report is misleading. Do you have that figure? If you do, i would love to see your source for it. By my post, Japan doesnt even report every birth, still or otherwise. How can you determine what their actual birth rate is, much less the rest of the information needed? Because I know it's not in the trillions, and I know it's not in the quadrillions, and I know it's not in the quintillions... listen, you can make pretty good estimates by looking at similar systems, without having the real numbers. You're doing the same thing, in fact - you're saying "because we don't have the real numbers, other countries must be a LOT WORSE than us!". I'm trying to put some realistic boundaries on how far these other countries could be deviating from us, and it's not looking like those numbers are that high. Here's a simple math question: How many stillborn babies would other countries need to fail to report, for their numbers to be significantly skewed from ours? I'll even go out on a limb and call 15% a "significant skew".

tazzygirl -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/5/2009 5:21:26 AM)
This is why i dislike statistics,,, they can be skewed to say whatever you wish them too. What i AM saying is.. we dont know. If your using it as a measure to declare that the US health care system is a success or failure, and in that usage your comparing it with other countries, you should damn well know what you are comparing.

Politesub53 -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/5/2009 11:31:47 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl Your problem, i think, if you are trying to adjust the US rates. Those arent the ones called into question. They are the most accurately reported of any country. You could argue all day about the meaning of live births, the CIA`s own world factbook shows the US as having a higher infant mortality rate than most developed nations. That said, it still doesnt explain why life expectancy in America is shorter than elsewhere. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

Sanity -> RE: Government health care is GREAT! (10/5/2009 11:50:25 AM)
That said, life expectancy and quality of health care remain two entirely separate things. Its apples vs. oranges. For example, how many shooting deaths were there in London this month vs. Chicago? How many died in Englands deserts or mountains from exposure...

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