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Politics : A US National Health Care System?

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To: Nicholas Thompson who wrote (1021)3/1/2006 12:18:11 PM
From: Lazarus_Long  Read Replies (1) of 42652
 
Anybody with an internet connection can quickly find out that the US takes in more poor and uneducated migrants (willingly and unwillingly) than all those nations with better longevities, too. You think this has no effect on our statistics? These people have problems following medicos instruction, often can't read them if written, and do not have any understanding of basic hygeine or the threat that abundance of food here presents.

An ER HAS to treat you (by federal law) if you are in danger of death in the US, but the hospital around that ER and hospital DOES NOT have to keep you. Once you have been stabilized, they are allowed to ship you off to a public facility. Often they will end up not getting paid for that expensive ER treatment they gave you. Take a look at enlightened, civilized France. They take in less than 10% of the migrants we do.

This is a rather complicated subject. Trying to reduce it down to just longevity statistics is simplistic to the extreme. Those statistics are also heavily effected by diet and food availability. There is no doubt that (a) food in the US is more available and cheaper than in Europe (Don't believe it? Take a trip across the pond. You'll find out.), and (b) that avalibility and cheapness drives up obesity in this country and a great many diseases result from obesity, reducing life expectancy again. One thing you WILL notice in your trip to Europe is on average they are less often obese than us.

Now you can argue that those people shouldn't be getting fat. True. But their is little on the lawbooks to prevent manufacturers from marketing and supplying food in abundance that will sake you fat. This is really a public health matter, but it is a well understood fact that public health measures have far more effect on population health than all the doctors in the country combined.
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