The best health care system the world has ever known

[HenryReardon]

When you cite a source that touts the myth of infant mortality in the US being so bad, you lose all credibility.

As was shown in an earlier thread, the WHO statistics on that subject are extremely flawed.

The Canadian Government spends $2 Billion per year sending patients to the USA for treatment that either cannot be gotten in Canada or cannot be gotten in a timely manner.

 

[Apollo]

When you cite a source that touts the myth of infant mortality in the US being so bad, you lose all credibility.

As was shown in an earlier thread, the WHO statistics on that subject are extremely flawed.

The Canadian Government spends $2 Billion per year sending patients to the USA for treatment that either cannot be gotten in Canada or cannot be gotten in a timely manner.

Obviously you didnt read the post.

And as I said, I am not debating our quality, it is the availability of it, and how it ends up ruining peoples lives.

And yes, they are sent here for advanced procedures. But guess who is paying? The Canadian government. Once these people have gotten these life saving procedures, they don't have to worry about spending the rest of their lives paying it off. They go back to normal lives, not so for an american getting the exact same care.

I remember a story on CBS. This canadian man came to the US to golf in Florida. Some how he got his big toe chopped off. He was rushed to the hospital to get this fixed. When a foreigner comes the US, they get this weird temporary insurance just in case. Under that insurance, he would still have to pay over $100,000 dollars to get the problem fixed.

The man refused to let them do the procedure, went back to Canada, got the toe stitched back on for the cost of zero dollars. And he got immediate care too, he didn't have to wait in a long line.

In that same story, it talked about an American women sneaking across the border to get Canada healthcare because it would be too expensive for here in the US and free clinics wouldn't cut it.

And in the same story, it told of foreigners afraid to come to the US for vacation because of fear that they would get hurt and be forced to pay exorbitant cost for healthcare.

 

[Apollo]

I am also reminded of this story from a lady who was a leader in her medical field. She was finally speaking out agaisn't the insurance companies.

The story was shared of how she refused a procedure that would save this mans life because it would cost his insurance company too much money. The man ended up dieing because he wasn't given this procedure. Because of it, her career flourished of course, and she was well loved by the insurance industry.

Under a Universal Health Care system, he would have gotten that procedure.

 

[White Eagle]

And global warming is a myth and the lunar landing was filmed on a soundstage.

Please, enough nuttiness.

From the U.S. CIA Factbook:

INFANT MORTALITY:

UK: 4.85
CANADA: 5.04 deaths/1,000 live births
US: 6.26 deaths/1,000 live births


FACT: The US infant mortality rate is 22% HIGHER than Canada's, 35% higher than the UK's.

I normally don't respond to HR because he never lets the facts stand in the way of his odd and rather queer outlook on reality, but the facts, well, they trump wingnut fantasy every time.

I should take the cue from you and quit responding to him also. It never does any good as he always has a cite that doesn't match the discussion or is just plain wrong. That is going to make my personal ignore list grow to three.

 

[HenryReardon]

I should take the cue from you and quit responding to him also. It never does any good as he always has a cite that doesn't match the discussion or is just plain wrong. That is going to make my personal ignore list grow to three.

Nobody ALWAYS does anything. This from another thread:

That poor infant mortality line is one of the most commonly fraudulent statements used by the proponents of socialized medicine to support it.


Evidently you couldn't be bothered, so I spent a few minutes doing some actual research. Here's what the WHO says about its own data:

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statis...lmortality/en/




Quote:
Data sources
1. Neonatal mortality rates are calculated from birth and death data derived from vital registration or from household surveys:
Vital registration: The number of live births and number of neonatal deaths are used to calculate age specific rates.
Surveys: Calculations are based on birth history - a series of detailed questions on each child a woman has given birth to during her lifetime. The estimates are generally presented as period rates for the five-year periods preceding the survey. The total number of births in the survey provides the denominator.


"Household surveys?" Wow. That's a highly accurate method. Not.


Quote:
The reliability of the neonatal mortality estimates depends on accuracy and completeness of reporting and recording of births and deaths. Underreporting and misclassification are common, especially for deaths occurring early on in life.

So much for the validity of third-world reporting.

But what about industrialized countries?

These quotes are from an article by a Dr. Granted, it is on a blog, but anyone with minimal research skills should be able to ferret out the underlying data.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-doc...l-miscarriage/

Infant Mortality Comparisons a Statistical Miscarriage
by Dr. Linda Halderman





Quote:
According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing <500g is not considered a living child.But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies — considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive — is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.
When Canada briefly registered an increased number of low weight babies previously omitted from statistical reporting, the infant mortality rose from 6.1 per 1,000 to 6.4 per thousand in just one year.
According to research done by Canada’s Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health, “Comparisons of infant mortality rates by place and time should be adjusted for the proportion of such live births, especially if the comparisons involve recent years.”
Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. But when the main determinant of mortality — weight at birth — is factored in, Norway has no better survival rates than the United States.

Quote:
Some of the countries reporting infant mortality rates lower than the U.S. classify babies as “stillborn” if they survive less than 24 hours whether or not such babies breathe, move, or have a beating heart at birth.
Forty percent of all infant deaths occur in the first 24 hours of life.
In the United States, all infants who show signs of life at birth (take a breath, move voluntarily, have a heartbeat) are considered alive.
If a child in Hong Kong or Japan is born alive but dies within the first 24 hours of birth, he or she is reported as a “miscarriage” and does not affect the country’s reported infant mortality rates.
The length of pregnancy considered “normal” is 37-41 weeks. In Belgium and France — in fact, in most European Union countries — any baby born before 26 weeks gestation is not considered alive and therefore does not “count” against reported infant mortality rates

Quote:
In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby born who is less than 30 centimeters long is not counted as a live birth. Therefore, unlike in the U.S., such high-risk infants cannot affect Swiss infant mortality rates.
Efforts to salvage these tiny babies reflect this classification. Since 2000, 42 of the world’s 52 surviving babies weighing less than 400g (0.9 lbs.) were born in the United States.
The parents of these children may view socialized medicine somewhat differently than its proponents.

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Code of Conduct

 

[HenryReardon]

I should take the cue from you and quit responding to him also. It never does any good as he always has a cite that doesn't match the discussion or is just plain wrong. That is going to make my personal ignore list grow to three.

and more:

Try this information on for size, and no I haven't checked out the "motives" of that particular site. Since the article includes footnotes it shouldn't be necessary.

http://www.biggovhealth.org/resource...emature-birth/


Quote:
Infant Mortality and Premature Birth
Myth: The U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than that of other countries

Fact: The U.S.’ infant mortality rate is not higher; the rates of Canada and many European countries are artificially low, due to more restrictive definitions of live birth. There also are variations in the willingness of nations to save very low birth weight and gestation babies.

The ethnic heterogeneity of the U.S. works against it because different ethnic and cultural groups may have widely different risk factors and genetic predispositions.

Definitions of a live birth, and therefore which babies are counted in the infant mortality statistics very considerably. The U.S. uses the full WHO definition, while Germany omits one of the four criteria. The U.K. defines a still birth “a child which has issued forth from its mother after the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy and which did not at any time after being completely expelled from its mother breathe or show any other signs of life.”1

This leaves what constitutes a sign of life open and places those born before 24 weeks in a gray area. Canada uses the complete WHO definition but struggles with tens of thousands of missing birth records and increasing numbers of mothers sent to the U.S. for care.2 France requires “a medical certificate [that] attests that the child was born ‘alive and viable’” for baby who died soon after birth to be counted, which may be difficult to obtain.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Quote:
Myth: The U.S. premature birth rate is higher than that of other countries.

Fact: In the Netherlands, babies below 25 weeks gestation are no longer resuscitated, but rather given only palliative treatment. Those at 25 to 26 weeks are generally resuscitated and kept alive, but the decision depends on the facts of each case.3 The result is underreporting the number babies that may be live-born but who are not offered aggressive treatment.

Switzerland only uses two of the four WHO criteria, respiration and heart beat, and does not aggressively treat very premature babies. In some cantons, the baby must be 30 cm long to be registered as a live birth. Switzerland also requires registration of still births only from 6 months gestation and has no rule regarding registration of live births. Studies have found significant underreporting of premature births in Switzerland, which can alter the overall mortality rate by more than a percentage point.4


1 Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, paragraph 41, modified by Still Birth Definition Act 1992.
2 Lisa Priest, “Canada’s U.S. baby boom,” The Globe and Mail, 5 May 2008; Caroline Abraham, “Red tape denies baby Sonja her brief life; To the dismay of parents, thousands of births go undocumented in Ontario,” The Globe and Mail, 22 July 2006.
3 From the newsletter of the Dutch Paediatric Association, quoted in “The Dutch Policy,” BBC News, 22 September 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ma/3677278.stm.
4 Martina Müller, Gero Drack, Christian Schindler, and Hans Ulrich Bucher, “Live and Stillborn very low birthweight infants in Switzerland: comparison between hospital based birth registers and the national birth register,” Swiss Medical Weekly, vol. 135, (2005).


Perhaps the fact that in the USA we value life a little more highly (maybe due to our Judeo-Christian heritage?) than other countries allows hospitals and doctors to throw HUGE resources into the battle to save any baby no matter how tiny or premature accounts for some of those huge $$$$ expenditures you seem to be worried about.

 

[naked gent]

Hey Henry didn't you recently retire which means you are currently enjoying government supported healthcare?

Do I have that right?

 

[Apollo]

Wow, he even ignores the CIA fact sheet for false info. I guess you are right, he won't listen.

Although he seems to not have any objections to the facts I layed out.

 

[White Eagle]

If it's any consolation 3 of the links he supplied are dead links, and the 4th one is some random, God knows what.

And there is the answer to my last posts.
I quote

I should take the cue from you and quit responding to him also. It never does any good as he always has a cite that doesn't match the discussion or is just plain wrong. That is going to make my personal ignore list grow to three.

Thank you Ghost of MoltenRock

 

[Txgoodoldboy]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/07-0

Published on Sunday, June 7, 2009 by The Denver Post
Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths

by Rhonda Hackett

Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.

I thought this article was interesting.

 

[White Eagle]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/07-0

Published on Sunday, June 7, 2009 by The Denver Post
Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths

by Rhonda Hackett



I thought this article was interesting.

I liked this paragraph.

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

As with every organization this is the limit. The CEO is always taken care of first. Look at the mess around here.

 

[opinterph]

That poor infant mortality line is one of the most commonly fraudulent statements used by the proponents of socialized medicine to support it.

I think the comparison of US birth statistics to those of other countries could indeed lead to faulty conclusions.

There are more than 4 million babies born in the US every year [Link] and about 0.2% weigh less than 500 grams. [Link].

Thus, the total number of babies born in the US each year and weighing less than 500 grams is roughly 8,000.

4,000,000 x 0.002 = 8,000​

[In the US] Beginning with 1969, fetal deaths of not stated gestation were excluded for States requiring reporting of all products of conception except for those with a stated birthweight of 500 grams or more. [Link]

In other words, some US states do not include POC in their fetal mortality numbers – unless the specimen weighs more than 500 grams. (In many instances the gestation is not established and some states do not attempt to record it.)

In 2001, 85% of babies born in the US and weighing less than 500 grams did not survive. That calculation derives from 6,450 live births. [Link]

I suppose severely premature babies who survive are eventually considered “a living child” – even in the countries that do not count them in their initial data. In the US these babies would include the 935 born in 2001 and weighing less than 500 grams who survived their initial infancy.

 

[andysayshi]

Because of the rationing of healthcare that ensues. Because of the failure to spend adequately on technology. The list is endless.

For example, if you have a serious medical problem in the USA and visit your Doctor, you can have access to either a CAT scan or an MRI within 24 hours, sometimes even less.

Where else in the world is that happening???????

Henry, here in Australia, with a national healthcare system, I will get an MRI in less than 7 days if it is requested by my doctor, and usually much faster. My brother recently required an MRI for a pinched nerve in his neck and had the scan on the same day his doctor requested it - and he lives in a rural area where resources are far more scarce than in a big city.

 

[Just_Believe18]

1) R.

2) Ala.

3) Fox.

Beat me to it.