>>>Why do you think, that it is not important to the U.S. economy, whether it uses 10% or 20% of GDP on health care?
Dybdahl,
Thank you for your reply. As RJA posted the Ambrose-Evans Pritchard piece just a few moments ago, I'm reminded of how much I appreciate exposure to views from outside the USA media. If for no other reason, I value the internet for access to pertinent and cogent articulations and slices of multi-faceted perspectives' presentation.
That being said, I, too, find it difficult to embrace the statistical perameters around health care as a part of our GDP, same as RJA apparently found it difficult to get his mind around, based upon his reply.
I cannot speak for RJA, but I will toss these thoughts into your miasma of statistical quotations:
I for one, am absolutely cynical whenever a statistic is floated past my eyeballs which appears without vetting.
For examples based upon your statistic. WHO says the US economy uses your quoted "10% or 20% of US GDP on health care? What portions of the widely used phrase "health care" are included? Excluded?
Are health insurance premiums included?
Are health savings accounts included?
Are "no fault" injury accidents included?
Are fault injury accidents included?
Are "final epenses" included, aka casket and memorials and crematoriums and paid mourners, etc.?
And how about salaries of school nurses?
Hospice Social Workers that visit the home?
Gasoline for transportation to and from hospice offices to my home? Woops...sorry, just learned last week that gasoline purchases are part of Retail Sales--Gas stations. (grin)
And seminars for AMA members and their registration fees? Lodging. Handouts? Dinners?
And, let's not forget the advertising in print and in video format to tout efficacy of one drug over another?
And the salaries of the washed out med students who are suddenly drug peddlers and crowd my Doctors' offices, competing for chairs with the sick patients.
Dybdahl, the list goes on and on and on and on and on....
Whenever I see a "kitchen sink" statistic, I question it. It is my postulate: We all should.
To question is NOT a swipe at you for bringing a number you like to the discussion of the US economy and its swelling or shrinkage due to the dollar crises' on a global scale.
Then you state, "it" ...while I'm not too sure what "it" is to paraphase a disgraced past President whose wife would like to bring her own version of rape and plunder of our population to the Oval Office...you state that this ubiquitous it is at the bottom of some pyramid.
What pyramid? Who thunk it up? How was it calculated? Was it peer reviewed before being published as "fact?"
I am conversant with....oh, let's say, the great Pyramids of Egypt, for a ridiculous example. Surely you don't mean them.
Ditto the energy pyramid that unhealthy go and sit under to receive channeled positive (or are they negative) ions while doing so?
And the tricorner [sic]pyramid hat worn by early fighters in our own US history.
Or, are you speaking of Maslow's Need's Pyramid where physiological needs are placed as the foundation of such a pyramid by this humanistic psychologist? It encompasses such requirements as food, water, shelter, if college Psychology 101 hasn't failed me.
Hey, I can even accept (if it is shown to me)--whether from an outside US health intelligence specialist I believe was your title--or from another perhaps US based source, that Maslow's lowest pyramid level has since been sub-divided into many smaller pyramids in the last 40 years or so since college days, and that somewhere among that plethora of subdivisions, the health care statistical range you quoted, pops up into view.
However...and this is a biggie, at least for me...
I am nullified by hearing statistics from those who are talking their own biased perspective. For example, the anti-smoking people quote cancer statistics. However, they aren't the same cancer statistics quoted by Reynold's Tobacco PR dept. Hmm.
And the Diabetes Association quote their statistics, and the "health professionals" constantly adjust downward what is considered diabetic blood sugar and what is "pre-diabetic" and what isn't diabetic at all. For example, I have 2 friends, living in the same midwest town, one whose doctor considers anything she registers on her glucose meter in the above 135 range as being "uh oh" territory. While my other other female friend has a Doctor who has her on insulin shots whenever her glucose meter registers 105 or greater? Whose doctor is right?
And then there are the Breast Cancer statistics. And the Prostate Cancer statistics. And the Asthmatic statistics which are now sub-divided into COPD and RAD, and other sub-minuet nomenclature.
Vioxx or not to Vioxx?
Botox or not to Botox?
Chlorox or not to Chlorox?
THAT is the question, pardon me, Shakespeare...
It's downright numbing, (and I don't believe I'm the only cynic whose eyes glaze over whenever a statistic is tossed out for unquestioning acceptance as "fact") to believe ANY of it, when all perspectives are just trying to "prove their side is correct" and the other guy/gal is just foolin' with us or doesn't have it right, or made a typo or whatever.
I'm sorry, but Dybdahl, you are "talking your book" as an analyst in your field. And until I know what "it" is, and what all is tossed into the "health care category" or "excluded" <<<<a trick our own DoL pulls on us all the time with unemployment rate statistics >>> ...
well, I'm sorry, but I just can't accept your 10% to 20% of GDP statistic as valid.
Productivity improvement via more IT applications is not the answer to the decades of fiscal irresponsibility, no coherent policy, whether energy or military or other based....it is entirely possible it will only MASK symptoms when one gets right down to it, instead of solving the housing/mortagage/off-balance sheet fraud which is our present embrolio.
You might wish to look at this from another way. IT has brought a great deal in information standardization to the real estate industry, via MLS listing forms, view Listings on line, inexpensive color flyer mfgr and distribution, etc. And IT has certainly added to BlackBerry and BlueTooth and Cellphone "instant contact," and reduced to about 40minutes "pre-qualifications" for jumbo loans based upon a form filled out by an application.
But <bInfo Tech--IT sure didn't do a darned thing for controlling or "managing" 11:1 or 40:1 obscene leverage that has brought commercial paper market to its knees and will VISIBLY bankrupt the US monetary system. I guess an IT argument could be made if you were to include considering BlackBox-Black-Scholes models as "improvement" when, even THEY only consider static markets as their primary metric for using their algorithms!!!, and failed miserably, when just ONE PERSON asked for their cash out of the system, in August this year in AUSTRIA...and the house of cards came a tumblin' down.
Only so much a MLS IT distributed ForSale flyer can do, Dybdah.
And only so many 10-20% of US GDP portions to parse out, before we are at multiples of 100% of US GDP and the cynic's game is "afoot."
G_T |
