[cube]

I have wondered why the cost of health care has gone thru the roof in the past couple decades. I have a theory the reason why is because people are actually using medical services much more.

Back in the days people didn't go to see their doctor unless they were sick....but not just sick but very ill. The idea of getting a preventive maintenance check up was weird and rarely done. In other words the health care industry was getting a free ride. They were collecting money but didn't have to provide much.

But social attitudes and values have changed. If you have health insurance and are alotted a check up every year and you don't use it then people think you're stupid for not using what you paid for. Now that the medical industry actually has to "provide services" their expenses have gone thru the roof and so has health insurance.

just a theory?

[Denny]

To piggyback on what others have stated, I quote an excerpt from a Washington Monthly article of two years ago, "The Health of Nations" by Phillip J. Longman.

"To get an idea of how wildly ineffective our health-care system is, consider this: The United States spends roughly $4,500 per person on health care each year. Costa Rica spends just $273. That small Central American country also has half as many doctors per capita as the United States. Yet the life expectancy of the average Costa Rican is virtually the same as the average American's: 76.1 years.

How can that be? According to public health researchers, the biggest reasons are behavior and environment. Costa Ricans consume about half as many cigarettes per person as we do. Not surprisingly, they are four times less likely to die of lung cancer. The car ownership rate in Costa Rica is a fraction of what it is in the United States. That not only means that fewer Costa Ricans die in auto accidents, but that they do a lot more walking, and hence they get more exercise. Thanks to a much lower McDonald's-to-citizen ratio, the average Costa Rican thrives on a traditional diet of rice, beans, fruits, vegetables, and a moderate amount of fried food--and therefore enjoys one of the world's lowest rates of heart disease and other stress-related illnesses."

So, assuming Mr. Lomngman is correct, we all will adapt. The big problem will be repairing the bodies of those presently in their middle age, who have done major damage to thie bodies already.

One part of this quote puzzles me. Unless medical professionals make far, far less than in the U.S., how can the per capita cost be so low in Costa Rica? They still have half the number of physicians as the U.S. per capita, but their spending is only 6% of the U.S.

[entropyfails]

Our public health care already has a crisis of a first order magnitude. Check out Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett. As we have slipped down the Energy Per Capita slope, we have massively cut spending on public health. Peak Oil will put a nail in the coffin of an already dying system. And given our population size/density and the rise of drug resistant bacteria... Things don't look good.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ur public health care already has a crisis of a first order magnitude. Check out Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health by Laurie Garrett. As we have slipped down the Energy Per Capita slope, we have massively cut spending on public health. Peak Oil will put a nail in the coffin of an already dying system. And given our population size/density and the rise of drug resistant bacteria... Things don't look good.

[I_Like_Plants]

Don't get started talking about the US's cost of health, life expectency, etc because I think the US comes out worst of the industrialized countries and is outdone by quite a few socialist backwater banana republics too.

[hoplite]

The Mexicans will destroy American health Care Waaaay before the PO boogeyman does...

Flame away, but unles your involved in the healthcare field in Occupied Mexico you dont have a clue what illegal immigration is costing you. Fact of the matter is- when most of your customers wont (or dont have to) pay their bills- you go out of business.

[MagnoliaFan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hoplite', 'T')he Mexicans will destroy American health Care Waaaay before the PO boogeyman does...

Flame away, but unles your involved in the healthcare field in Occupied Mexico you dont have a clue what illegal immigration is costing you. Fact of the matter is- when most of your customers wont (or dont have to) pay their bills- you go out of business.

[Macsporan]

Hi-tech medicine is a grotesquerie designed to suck large amounts of money out of those foolish enough to believe in it.

It has not made a substantial difference to the quantity and quality of human life since the 1940's.

Say goodbye to the machine that goes ping.

Say hello to food with nutrition in it (gasp), fresh air, exercise, probiotics and simple medical clinics.

We'll all be far better off.

It's a pity we abused and waste the potential of antibiotics by prescribing them for everything from the common cold to foot odour.

They would have been useful post PO.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', 'H')i-tech medicine is a grotesquerie designed to suck large amounts of money out of those foolish enough to believe in it.

It has not made a substantial difference to the quantity and quality of human life since the 1940's.

[Eli]

hoplite

The first thing that will happen when we get in an economic crunch is immigration will be ground to a halt. And illegal workers will get the boot. It happened before during the great depression and it will happen again IMHO.

Not that I have anything against Mexicans they understand and appreciate working for a living unlike all us fat lazy Americans.

[Hawkcreek]

--

[Eli]

of course I was speaking in generalitys.

Most Americans are fat and lazy look at rise of obesity, they are about to go a diet though.

And there is a really epidemic entitlement attitude problem of "I deserve this,

I deserve nice things" this is really none existant in those raised during the great deprtesion.

[darren]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'I') have wondered why the cost of health care has gone thru the roof in the past couple decades. I have a theory the reason why is because people are actually using medical services much more.

[Macsporan]

The current system is great for patching up injured people because of all that practice they got in the world wars.

But as for curing people they are rather pathetic.

A partial list--can't cure: AIDS, Cancer, Heart Attack, Stroke, Diabetes, Alzhiemers, the Common Cold, Influenza.

And this despite generations and Billions of dollars.

The reason? Wrong focus: obessed with disease, not health.

Preventitive medicine is the only way forward.

Unfortunately the public health care system has been corrupted by the influence of multinational corporations who make a buck out of selling silly people defective food.

Also, modern agriculture produces food seriously deficient in vitamins and minerals and most people are suffering from sub-clinical malnutrition.

Everywhere you look the walls are tumbling.

And its closing time in the Gardens of the West.

[Petro]

The healthcare industry may not survive regardless. I have a bunch of friends in healthcare and its related professions and they tell me the inside stories: All is not well. It appears that the number one problem is giving care to non-citizens. There are all too many accounts of non-citizens, in country that become injured, or sick and seek public healthcare. This is breaking the backs of some of the biggest hospitals. There seems to be a whole network of of Latin American's that once diagnosed as sick, get a visa to visit US, and upon landing on American soil tell the stewardesses to dial 911. After wich they are taken from the airplane directly to the emergency room where care must be given. Boom they are in the system. Sympathetic, naturalized citizens, who are often from the patients 'home country', help them take advantage or our system. They all know how to work the system here in the US. Also, at least in FLorida, I don't think they can be deported while receiving healthcare. I could be wrong about this, but for sure once in the system, it's very hard to cut them off. Some of the injuries/illnesses, just for one patient can cost millions of dollars in care and rehab.

[darren]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', '
')
But as for curing people they are rather pathetic.

A partial list--can't cure: AIDS, Cancer, Heart Attack, Stroke, Diabetes, Alzhiemers, the Common Cold, Influenza.

[Macsporan]

I think not, nor am I asking a lot of modern medicine. In the US today a third of the population will get cancer and die of it or its complications. Heart attack and stroke will get most of the rest. Diabetes and other degenerative diseases will clean up the survivors.

This was unhead of one hundred years ago. Cancer was very rare, as were all these complaints. These are lifestyle diseases in pandemic proportions. There are many today who believe that these are essentially a deficency disease exacerbated by the toxic chemical environment that people live in these days.

Nor has there ever been a study that has conclusively proved that any of the treatments for cancer actually cured anyone. It may well be that the higher survival rate for cancer sufferers, if that is indeed the case, has been caused by alternative medicine of which improved diet is a pillar.

As for food, go to your local farmers market and get yourself and organic apple. You will not a certain difference between it and the ones you buy in the supermarket: this one has smell and taste.

Supermarkets are mausoleums where food lies in state. It looks good but its nutritional value is nurgatory. It is surely obvious that if a human body is not receiving the correct fuel and components from the environment it will break down or succumb to disease. This is what is happening and modern medicine in most cases is doing little more than lightening the pockets of sufferers, not curing them.

This is a topic of great interest to me and which I happen to have studied at some depth. My ideas are based on solid fact, not New Age romanticism.

In fact I predict that providing there are no outbreaks of pandemic disease such as the Plague or Typhus, basic sanitation is observed and that we avoid creating a half-starved and oppressed peasantry, that PO people, living entirely on organic food, will enjoy better health and longer lives than people today.

[Petro]

heh good points Macs...I live in Florida where you could reasonably assume that fruit would grow to near perfection. The other day I wanted a fresh fruit salad so off to Publix to get some fruit; strawberries, bananas, peaches.

All of my selection looked absolutely perfect. I got home and opened the bananas--they were completely rotten in their core--a very strange blue-green color, though they looked perfect outside. I threw them out!

I cleaned a brilliant red fat strawberry and bit into it. It was beyone tasteless. Like cardboard, but pithy; not resembling a strawberry in any shape or form save for smell, and color. I threw them out!

So last but not least, the peached. They again like the others looked like perfection. They were inedible. The texture had nothing in common with peaches. I can't even guess how the producers corrupted this simple fruit so completely. I threw them out! Except for one, which now sits like a deflated beachball in my kitchen; an experiment. The damn thing wont even rott properly.

So much for supermarkets. It really isn't any wonder we're all so sick.

[Madpaddy]

Macsporan and Petro,

Good post and I agree whole heartedly. IMO however, the food in the US is even more denutritionalised and crap than food in supermarkets here (Ireland). My wife and I visited Washington DC 2 years ago for nearly 2 weeks. We walked everywhere, sightseeing and I carried our 1 year old on my back most of the time. We found that despite our exercise we felt bloated anytime we ate anything and actually put on weight. One example, I bought a ham and salad roll in a shop. When I looked at the best before date it was for some time about 10 weeks in the future. The amount of preservatives to keep a roll for that length of time is truly frightening. Maybe your government are fattening you up to keep you docile.