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

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (554596)	3/11/2010 7:02:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576725

Do the accidents include the 200K people who die from hospital mistakes? I believe they do. I also don't think the rates of such mistakes vary significantly between the US and Canada. So that issue (while an important one) isn't really relevant here. Homicide? We need more guns. There is evidence that more guns makes American's safer than they would otherwise be (since if their are fewer guns you will be disarming the law abiding first and the criminals not so much). But this isn't about gun control, so for the sake of argument I'll assume that more guns means more death and crime. That assumption only strengthens the point I'm making. The lower unadjusted life expectancy scores are for reasons other than our health insurance set up. When you adjust for those reasons the US does well in international comparisons. Obesity....should not included in medical stats? Obesity rates have almost nothing to do with the structure of the health insurance system. They are primarily about lifestyle choices, and may also be dependent on genetic differences. Swap health care insurance systems with Norway (number 91 on a list of obesity by countries, and the US (number 9, and the top large country) would still have a more obese population than Norway. In fact there isn't any good reason to think such a swap would move us (or Norway) up or down on the list at all. forbes.com We are tied for 14th on that list of 16. In the raw unadjusted score. Adjusted for accident rates (the data in the 2nd column) we are number one. Not that I'd trumpet "we are number one" too loudly. Even with adjustments life expectancy isn't highly connected with the set up of the health insurance system in a country. It has too many other factors. And of course if you just want to compare life expectancies and aren't trying to use it as an argument for changing health insurance, than the unadjusted numbers are correct and we are number 14 (or somewhere around there, different studies show slight variations).