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#27 Aug 03 2010 at 1:23 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
A large portion of what is spent on health care is actually spent on health care research. A whole lot of the new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally are paid for in the US.


[FUcking Huge Flashing Neon Text]

WRONG! FALSE! UNTRUE!

[/FUcking Huge Flashing Neon Text]

1. The WHO and other international bodies who compare healthcare expenditure use a definition of the planning, management and delivery of prophylactic/preventive or responsive healthcare treatment. They exclude technological and pharmaceutical research.

2. Healthcare Research, whether conducted by universities, healthcare institutions or private companies is nearly all funded by the for-profit pharmaceutical or healthcare technology sector.

You really are talking ***** again gbaji.

Once again, let me remind you that the US spends more taxpayers money per head on healthcare management and delivery than UK, Canada & France etc, while only providing a basic service to a proportion of the populace, usually involving co-payments.

The primary reasons your patchy service costs so much more than most other major countries is:

a) a barely regulated private insurance model that inflates the cost of everything to pay shareholders a dividend,
b) small, fragmented delivery organisations that are unable to achieve economies of scale from regional or national entities, and have to take a slice of profit each
c) Per-capita insurance premiums fall in proportion to the number of policy holders.

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#28 Aug 03 2010 at 1:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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What does it mean??
#29 Aug 03 2010 at 1:25 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:


That's misleading as well. A large portion of what is spent on health care is actually spent on health care research. A whole lot of the new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally are paid for in the US. It's one of the reasons I always wonder why the hell people living in countries with socialized medical systems argue for the US to do the same. That's the last thing you want. Right now, you can focus almost all of your health care dollars on direct treatment. It's why universal health care "works" at all. Take away another nation doing all the heavy lifting and it doesn't. Well. It does, but the rate of advancement will slow to a crawl.


You have any idea what percentage of that money that is spent on researching and developing 'new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally' by those wonderfull US medical and pharmeceutical companies that you like to champion, is spent on 'lifestyle' treatments (ie. treatments and drugs that enable people to go on living their unhealthy lifestyles and still get an erection for example, or to treat the heart disease and obesity bought on by peoples shitty dietery habits) rather than actually going into researching drugs and treatments that would improve the quality of life of people who are ill through no fault of their own?

No? Thought not....

You ought to research it sometime...

You could start by looking at the amount of money spent on researching developing and advertising erectile dysfuntion treatments as opposed to say, malaria treatments for example...


But I expect you wont. You'll just blindly burble on about how the Health Care industry in the US is doing all the work while the rest of us sit around getting the benefits.



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#30 Aug 03 2010 at 1:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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#31 Aug 03 2010 at 1:50 PM Rating: Decent
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Lord Nobby wrote:
gbaji wrote:
A large portion of what is spent on health care is actually spent on health care research. A whole lot of the new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally are paid for in the US.


[FUcking Huge Flashing Neon Text]

WRONG! FALSE! UNTRUE!

[/FUcking Huge Flashing Neon Text]

1. The WHO and other international bodies who compare healthcare expenditure use a definition of the planning, management and delivery of prophylactic/preventive or responsive healthcare treatment. They exclude technological and pharmaceutical research.

2. Healthcare Research, whether conducted by universities, healthcare institutions or private companies is nearly all funded by the for-profit pharmaceutical or healthcare technology sector.


Yeah. Great Nobby. Now look at the graph Xsarus just posted. Look at the public costs per capita, and the private costs per capita. Compare to other countries. When only public costs are considered, the US is about the same as most other countries, isn't it?


My point is that when people say that the US spends more per capita on health care than blah blah blah, they are including all expenditures. Public, private, research, development, teaching hospitals, etc. I get that maybe the WHO has different calculations, but those *aren't* the ones people are parroting when they say that.

Quote:
Once again, let me remind you that the US spends more taxpayers money per head on healthcare management and delivery than UK, Canada & France etc, while only providing a basic service to a proportion of the populace, usually involving co-payments.


Yes. I agree that our publicly managed health care sucks. But the health care reform just passed doesn't actually fix that, and arguably just makes it worse.

Quote:
The primary reasons your patchy service costs so much more than most other major countries is:

a) a barely regulated private insurance model that inflates the cost of everything to pay shareholders a dividend,
b) small, fragmented delivery organisations that are unable to achieve economies of scale from regional or national entities, and have to take a slice of profit each
c) Per-capita insurance premiums fall in proportion to the number of policy holders.




Honestly Nobby? The reason our health care is so expensive is because we are in the midst of a social conflict between the principles of individual rights versus group outcomes. As a people we reject socialist institutions, but some want to change our society and do so by implementing them anyway. But they can't just say "we're going to create socialized medicine, universal healthcare, or whatever". They have to dance around the issue and get people to accept it without having to make the argument up front. In order to do that, they have to make the existing health insurance system so expensive and so unwieldy that the people will eventually yell and scream for a "simple" solution involving the government taking over the whole industry.


Let's not kid ourselves. Fully privatized health care would be vastly cheaper. Our system is costly on purpose. We could argue about the merits of the social aspects going on if you want, but let's not pretend that it doesn't factor in.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2010 12:51pm by gbaji
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#32 Aug 03 2010 at 1:53 PM Rating: Decent
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paulsol wrote:
gbaji wrote:


That's misleading as well. A large portion of what is spent on health care is actually spent on health care research. A whole lot of the new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally are paid for in the US. It's one of the reasons I always wonder why the hell people living in countries with socialized medical systems argue for the US to do the same. That's the last thing you want. Right now, you can focus almost all of your health care dollars on direct treatment. It's why universal health care "works" at all. Take away another nation doing all the heavy lifting and it doesn't. Well. It does, but the rate of advancement will slow to a crawl.


You have any idea what percentage of that money that is spent on researching and developing 'new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally' by those wonderfull US medical and pharmeceutical companies that you like to champion, is spent on 'lifestyle' treatments (ie. treatments and drugs that enable people to go on living their unhealthy lifestyles and still get an erection for example, or to treat the heart disease and obesity bought on by peoples shitty dietery habits) rather than actually going into researching drugs and treatments that would improve the quality of life of people who are ill through no fault of their own?


I don't care. If those numbers are still counted when tallying up the total cost of the "health care system" in the US, then my point is still valid, isn't it?


Are you suggesting that when most people come up with some ridiculous number of per capita expenses by the US for medical care that they aren't including every single dollar spent on everything related to the medical field regardless of relevance? Cause people lowball their own arguments all the time, don't they?
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#33 Aug 03 2010 at 1:53 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Yeah. Great Nobby. Now look at the graph Xsarus just posted. Look at the public costs per capita, and the private costs per capita. Compare to other countries. When only public costs are considered, the US is about the same as most other countries, isn't it?


My point is that when people say that the US spends more per capita on health care than blah blah blah, they are including all expenditures. Public, private, research, development, teaching hospitals, etc. I get that maybe the WHO has different calculations, but those *aren't* the ones people are parroting when they say that.
Perhaps you should read my post when I state that the research spending is omitted in the following graph. So, the US is spending more then almost every country, without including research, and then the citizens have to spend even more. It's nice that you're proud of spending more to provide way less coverage though.

Quote:
Are you suggesting that when most people come up with some ridiculous number of per capita expenses by the US for medical care that they aren't including every single dollar spent on everything related to the medical field regardless of relevance? Cause people lowball their own arguments all the time, don't they?
Yes, my numbers and the graph exclude research spending.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2010 2:54pm by Xsarus
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#34 Aug 03 2010 at 1:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Belkira wrote:
Only $150 comes out of each check for the premium.


Your premium is $3600/year? Holy hell.

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#35 Aug 03 2010 at 1:59 PM Rating: Good
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I'm not sure what normal premiums are, given that companies usually kick in, but for what it's worth

http://grab.by/5J0x
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#36 Aug 03 2010 at 2:01 PM Rating: Good
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Thanks to Ray's service in the military, our family premium is about $200 a month. It was less than $60 a month when he was on active duty. It automatically comes out of his pension so we've been spoiled when it comes to coverage. We've been lucky with the care we've received because I've heard of the nightmares that others have endured at a base hospital. However, since my mom is a nurse at the Veteran's Hospital, I always let it slip to whichever healthcare worker we're talking to that my mom is the senior nurse there and they seem to give us extra attention.
#37 Aug 03 2010 at 2:03 PM Rating: Good
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Even Xsarus is able to demolish gbaji's false, baseless, ill-informed brain-mangling.

gbaji

Your post conflates so many irrelevances and falsehoods it makes no sense whatever.
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#38 Aug 03 2010 at 2:07 PM Rating: Excellent
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Lord Nobby wrote:
Even Xsarus
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#39 Aug 03 2010 at 2:14 PM Rating: Excellent
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Quote:
I don't care. If those numbers are still counted when tallying up the total cost of the "health care system" in the US, then my point is still valid, isn't it?
Well, no. See, your numbers include wasteful research spending on things that really are of no use to society as a whole. While the socialized countries don't spend those wasteful dollars on crap like Viagra. They put it into curing/managing diseases. And those numbers aren't included in health care/capita.

Edited, Aug 3rd 2010 5:15pm by Uglysasquatch
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#40 Aug 03 2010 at 2:14 PM Rating: Decent
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Lord Nobby wrote:
gbaji wrote:
A large portion of what is spent on health care is actually spent on health care research. A whole lot of the new treatments, procedures, medicines, and equipment which advance medical care globally are paid for in the US.


[FUcking Huge Flashing Neon Text]

WRONG! FALSE! UNTRUE!

[/FUcking Huge Flashing Neon Text]

Pfft. Compared to gbaji, what the hell do *you* know?
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#41 Aug 03 2010 at 2:15 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Are you suggesting....blah blah


I'm not suggesting anything.

I'm absolutely refuting your statement about how the US Healthcare system is doing all the 'heavy lifting' and the 'rest of the world' with its socialised health system is sitting around getting all the benefits.

gbaji wrote:
I don't care.


About anything (especially facts) that may dent your perception of how your world works?

Yeah we know.
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#42 Aug 03 2010 at 2:29 PM Rating: Excellent
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Debalic wrote:

Pfft. Compared to gbaji, what the hell do *you* know?

English?
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#43 Aug 03 2010 at 2:31 PM Rating: Good
Samira wrote:
Belkira wrote:
Only $150 comes out of each check for the premium.


Your premium is $3600/year? Holy hell.



Wait... I think it's only $150 per month... Smiley: lol

It comes out of my husband's check, and I honestly don't see his paystubs that often (unless I pull them out of the dryer, and then they aren't very legible). He threw out the $150 number and I assumed it was each check, but that would be just stupid.
#44 Aug 03 2010 at 2:39 PM Rating: Decent
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So let me get this straight.

According to that chart the US government not only pays more per person for health care than most countries, people (insurance companies are paid by people too) actually pay nearly an equal amount as well? Health care is effectively more than double the price...Wow.

I'm totally working for the wrong industry in the wrong country, I want some of that golden kool-aid.
#45 Aug 03 2010 at 2:51 PM Rating: Good
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Yodabunny wrote:
So let me get this straight.

According to that chart the US government not only pays more per person for health care than most countries, people (insurance companies are paid by people too) actually pay nearly an equal amount as well? Health care is effectively more than double the price...
Well that's the consensus of all the comparative research by the main independent international bodies, but apparently they've failed to take gbaji's reasoning into account. Smiley: facepalm
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#46 Aug 03 2010 at 2:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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And indeed, how could they?


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#47 Aug 03 2010 at 2:57 PM Rating: Good
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Samira wrote:
And indeed, how could they?




Because he didn't type it in bold capital letters?
#48 Aug 03 2010 at 2:59 PM Rating: Decent
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That's one hairy beard.
#49 Aug 03 2010 at 5:18 PM Rating: Decent
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paulsol wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Are you suggesting....blah blah


I'm not suggesting anything.

I'm absolutely refuting your statement about how the US Healthcare system is doing all the 'heavy lifting' and the 'rest of the world' with its socialised health system is sitting around getting all the benefits.


Er? First link from google

Quote:
In real terms, spending on American biomedical research has doubled since 1994. By 2003, spending was up to $94.3 billion (there is no comparable number for Europe), with 57 percent of that coming from private industry. The National Institutes of Health’s current annual research budget is $28 billion, All European Union governments, in contrast, spent $3.7 billion in 2000, and since that time, Europe has not narrowed the research and development gap. America spends more on research and development over all and on drugs in particular, even though the United States has a smaller population than the core European Union countries. From 1989 to 2002, four times as much money was invested in private biotechnology companies in America than in Europe.

Dr. Thomas Boehm of Jerini, a biomedical research company in Berlin, titled his article in The Journal of Medical Marketing in 2005 “How Can We Explain the American Dominance in Biomedical Research and Development?” (ostina.org/downloads/pdfs/bridgesvol7_BoehmArticle.pdf) Dr. Boehm argues that the research environment in the United States, compared with Europe, is wealthier, more competitive, more meritocratic and more tolerant of waste and chaos. He argues that these features lead to more medical discoveries. About 400,000 European researchers are living in the United States, usually for superior financial compensation and research facilities.


We're doing the heavy lifting.


Also, a portion of the higher costs for medical care in the US is because those profits are used to fund the research. It's unfair to simply subtract the "cost" of direct research funding from the total and not also take that into account.

Quote:
Americans do not live longer than people in other countries in part because the innovations that get funded in America get used around the world. In Canada and some European countries drugs are sold for lower prices than in the US. So drug companies make most of their profits and therefore get most of their revenue to fund research by selling products in the United States. Effectively the United States is subsidizing medical research for the rest of the world.




But I suppose anyone can play with numbers, right? Don't get me wrong. I agree that the current semi-public/semi-private method we use to push out health care is moronic. However, I disagree that the direction to go is more public control. Obviously, that's a matter of debate and we clearly disagree on that point. However, it's incredibly simplistic to simply point at the total cost per capita spent on health care in the US and conclude that this somehow means we should fully socialize the health care industry. There's a lot more to it than just that.
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#50 Aug 03 2010 at 7:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'll just try this once more......

I was refuting your statement that the 'rest of the world' benefits from the US's largesse resulting from the the industries' massive spending on R&D of new drugs and equipment and procedures and as a result gets to reap the benefits while sitting around taking it easy with their socialised healthcare.

Sure, US (and European) based pharmaceutical and medical technology corps spend Zillions of $ on researching new drugs. But a majority of that money is spent on developing and then advertising drugs and treatments that are designed to make a profit from things like male pattern baldness, erectile dysfunction and obesity related disorders.

I dont dispute that the big companies are spending the money. I dispute your assertation that the rest of the world is sitting around benefitting from it. In fact those self same companies are the ones who are making every effort to stop the (genuinly) sick people in the 'rest of the world' from benefiting from western technologies with their lobbying to stop the use of locally produced generics for the treatment of things like AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other illnesses that actually kill people.

Just because the companies are spending up large on R&D, doesn't mean that they're doing so out of some sort of efforts towards philanthropy. Its because they are planning on making profits that would make your eyes sting out of treatments that are specifically developed so as to allow the affluent 1st world 'health consumer' to continue consuming and pursuing a lifestyle choice that caused their condition in the first place.

Thats what happens when you put the healthcare concerns into the hands of private companies who are beholden to shareholders. Profits come before health.

Feel free to continue to misunderstand or disagree or whatever the fUck you like. But that is the truth of it.



Edited, Aug 4th 2010 1:48am by paulsol
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#51 Aug 03 2010 at 8:00 PM Rating: Decent
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Is that part of the "Treatment pays better than cures" argument? I'm not questioning your comments, I"m just curious...
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