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

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (759832)	12/28/2013 12:56:38 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574857

Defining quality isn't that hard. Its not an extremely simple concept but it can be defined. How good of job the people providing health care do at improving the health care results of patients would be one way to define the quality of healthcare. You could also include access to those professionals, or you could consider that a separate important category. Defining isn't the problem. Measuring it is. Overall statistics of input and output don't show you quality. Large inputs may not be needed, or may be wasted to little benefit. Great outcomes can be the result of other things than medical care or insurance (two points themselves that are separate things, so you would need at least two ratings per country), for example if (past a certain point) you have fat people in a country then you are likely to have more deaths and other negative results from cardiovascular problems, diabetes etc. But their doctor, or health insurance company didn't make them fat. More smokers, worse results (after a time lag, you have to consider smoking in the past at least as much as today), Higher violent crime rates, and accident rates lead to worse results. War and internal strife can lead to bad results and not just from, or even primarily from, the disruption of the health care system. Different people have different genetics, different habits, different non-medical environmental factors, and these don't all average out to be the same in different countries, medical care or medical payments systems are not the only, or in many cases even the most relevant, difference in medical outcomes. Then there are things outside the medical system, but that operate on health care by their effect on the medical system. For example the American legal system and culture definitely drives up the cost of American health care, and at least on some points probably reduces its quality. Factoring out all these things accurately, or even thinking of all the things you would need to factor out, is very difficult.