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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (16468)	4/8/2010 5:53:44 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

You can't just look at the numbers, you have to look at what they represent and how they are obtained. The infant mortality figures are not calculated the same way across the world. Deaths from hospital mistakes or diseases caught in hospitals may not be calculated the same way either, and whether or not the calculation methods are the same, the numbers are not low in any country that has sufficient medical intervention to create the possibility for significant hospital caused deaths. For the first problem we generally get numbers for different countries but no explanation about how the measurements are different. For the 2nd we don't usually even get international comparisons, just condemnation of the US because of a number provided with no context.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (16468)	4/8/2010 5:58:13 PM
From: Lane3	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

We have a high rate of infant mortality....you want to take that out of the data? What I want is for countries to be compared apples to apples if they are compared at all. Can you show what the result would be without those numbers? If we counted live births only after they survived a week and if we didn't save all those premies, the infant mortality rate would obviously drop. Surely you don't expect more explanation than that. What other things do you want to remove to make us look better? I don't care if the US looks good or not. I just want integrity in the data. I imagine that more rigor would make the US worse in some areas. Don't care either way. I just had that particular example available because it is prominently mentioned when the topic comes up so I remembered it. You can't reason you're way through the costs of a healtcare program with out looking at sample numbers.... It depends on the question you're asking. Sometimes you need actual numbers, sometimes you need only estimates, sometimes you just need orders of magnitude to answer the question. If the order of magnitude is sufficient, getting numbers is inefficient and redundant. The question here was simple. Would PO cost more or less than the status quo? You can develop an answer to that without using numbers at all because all you have to do is determine the direction from a starting point, which is the status quo, not the size of the difference. Every factor in play except possibly lower Medicare rates indicates an increase in costs. You can see at a glance that there is no way that any cut in rates could make up for the increase in utilization. Well, someone who can't even see at a glance how differences in counting births would affect infant mortality rate probably can't, but most people can. I can tell you I am not swayed by authority, only facts....real facts. For someone who eschews all but facts, you sure do manage to post a lot without offering any.