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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (349094)	8/30/2007 1:59:52 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573923

I have linked to enough data to show that the post you've posted is more than a little whacked. You've done nothing of the sort, you've barely even taken a stab at it. Real adjustments relying on the factors I brought up have been made and the US has done fairly well. You point out that suicide rates should be adjusted for as well. That's a useful point, but it doesn't show the rest of the analysis is "whacked" just that its incomplete. After adjusting for it (which apparently no one has done in a systematic way) there would still be other adjustments that would need to be done, a few like obesity that are fairly obvious and big factors, others that might not be so obvious. At most you have shown that the contention that the US is at the top in life expectancy is highly questionable, but my original point was not that the US is at the top, but that the claim that it was far behind was highly questionable. Adding additional factors that need adjustment as we go back and forth only makes the raw data for life expectancy even more questionable as evidence for which health system is better. There are quite a few factors that could and should be adjusted for, and than many more that perhaps can not. Most of those "many more" would probably be small, and possibly they might to an extent cancel each other out but there isn't any way we can really know that. It basically comes down to an issue where life expectancy is effected by so many other things besides the mechanism for paying for health care, that to use it as a proxy for which country has a better health care system isn't a good idea. And in all the countries with a higher life expectancy, their suicide rate is higher than in the US. You haven't shown any data that indicates that is true. You've shown a couple of examples where it is true, that's not "all countries with higher life expectancies". Or to answer more directly, your statement is simply false. Countries with higher life expectancy figures and lower suicide rates than the US include - Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Israel, Greece, and maybe more. Other countries with only slightly higher suicide rates include Norway, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Canada, and Iceland, Ireland, and Australia. Germany may go beyond "slightly higher", but its not enormously higher. The only large countries with a much higher suicide rate and a noticeably higher life expectancy than the US is Japan and arguably France. In addition to the raw number of suicides, homicides, accidents etc. you would also have to deal with the average age where such things happen. If one factor kills a lot of young people it has more effect on average life expectancy than a factor that kills a lot of old people. All of these factors might effect teens and 20s, more than middle aged people (young people are more likely to take risks, and probably more likely to commit suicide than middle aged people), but older people may commit suicide at a higher rate as well. Hmm - maybe just older men "At least in the USA, males over 70 die by suicide more often than younger males. There is no such trend for females." en.wikipedia.org -- "And to the extent that your contention that our medical system is better at treating the complications from it is true, that is a point in favor of our medical system." True. Never claimed differently. You do realize that this doesn't help your argument at all? And, in fact, hurts it? No it helps it. If we deal with obesity related deaths better than other countries (I'm not saying we do, but you seem to be saying we might) than its only an argument in favor of our system. Of course it could easily be some other aspect of our system other than how insurance works that covers this, but so could many of the claimed or real advantages in other countries. Show me the figures for excess mortality due to obesity for the US and other countries. Its pretty hard to determine how many deaths are due to obesity, you can estimate or guess, but you don't really have figures, and probably can't. Also if the health industry in different countries deals with obesity differently than a lower rate of deaths might be because of less problems with obesity, or because of better health care, and just throwing out the figures wouldn't tell you which, even if the figures where 100% accurate and reliable. That is the problem with nitpicking for nitpicking sake. You can undermine your own points. You can, except I'm not nitpicking, let alone "for nitpicking sake", and I didn't undermine my own point I strengthened it.