Bill said:
It's clear to you because you know what you want to see.
No, because the numbers say so. They are what they are, and they are not
disputed in the medical field. It is quite similar in other areas, this
type of cancer is only one example.
One interesting aspect of the data is that the colon cancer rates in
Canada, and Germany are substantially higher than they are in the US
and the UK. This does suggest that we are looking at different
populations.
Not a surprise at all. When they do a colonoscopy on people and see
polyps these will, if the patient agrees, be snipped out right then and
there. It's discomforting but it is known that this will greatly reduce
your chance of developing colon cancer later. In countries without such
vigorous screening such polyps are not detected. Until it is too late.
Polyps are not considered cancer stage so that won't show up in the numbers.
http://coloncancer.about.com/od/screening/a/Polyps.htm
One obvious point is that life expectancy is higher in Canada (at 82)
and Germany (at 81) than it is the the US (at 79).
That has to do with healthier lifestyle. Americans have an unfortunate
trend to ruin their bodies via fast food, obesity and too little
exercise. They smoke less on average but that doesn't make up fior it
and the medical worls is quite powerless against those "diseases".
Heck, I can't even get to some popular places here on my bicycle without
resorting to the mountain bike and plowing some rough turf. So the
infrastructure is partly to blame.
Cancer rates go up rapidly with age, so it's reasonable to suppose
that the US cancer victims are younger (and consequently healthier,
with a longer expectation of life) than their Canadian and German
counterparts, so the comparison is of apples and pears.
Colon cancer is something people get at younger ages, which is why I
picked that as an example. Same for breast cancer, where the US is (or
soon was?) vastly leading. I only know one woman who got that past age
70, all others (a lot of women) were 30-50.
You may recall the fuss about the poorer survival rate of UK diabetes
sufferers, which turned out to reflect the fact that the UK has less
fat people and less type 2 diabetes (which is less lethal and easier
to treat). The anti-Obamacare statistics managed to bury that
significant difference too.
One has to be honest about the numbers. But most of them are simply
better in the US. Soon, they may not be anymore.
studies are paid access only. In the area of cardiology I sometimes
have such access.
And you need to have a sharper eye for confounds than you have
demonstrated so far.
I know how to read numbers and they speak clearly. Interestingly, they
are disputed in the medical world and if they were wrong that is the
very first thing that would happen. Med professional do not mince words
at conferences, BT.
[...]
People care about that, or will.
If they get lied to often and loudly enough.
They just were, by the president saying that they keep their
current health plan if they want to. I sure hope people remember
that this time when the elections come around. Most likely
they'll be fuming anyhow because of the huge deductible they
weren't explicitly told about. Most did not have that much
deductible in the old plans they were just kicked out of.
That isn't the lie you started off talking about.
I haven't talked about lies in this thread. But this ain't the only
one.
... One of the side effects of Obamacare was to ban a bunch of
dishonest and inadequate health insurance schemes - some
apparently used to dump patients if they got sick, which did
allow them to offer low rates to the healthy.
Nonsense. Ask people Charlie Edmonson about it. He just lost his
health plan.
Pre-Obama we had free will when it came to health care. People were
free to select plans they saw fit. Now they are no longer free to
do that. It's that simple.
And we had lots of stories about insurers refusing to okay treatments
until after the patients were too sick to survive them.
Mostly urban legend. I have not witnessed one case. They can't do that,
fear of a lawsuit is one reason why.
If desperate relatives want to spend their own money on over-priced
treatments that have little change of success, that's fine.
Health care schemes only have a finite amount of money and they are
obliged to spend it cost-effectively. Quality-adjusted years of life
saved provide a mechanism for comparing different treatments for
different diseases.
Doctors can decide that, bureaucrats can't.
That's what bureaucrats are for.
Like politicans, they are typically not competent to do that. Else they
would not have given things like sex change surgery preference.