19 thoughts on “A Briton Is Five Times More Likely”

  1. And you’re even more likely to die from US health care:

    By 2007, the potentially preventable death rate among U.S. men under age 65 was 69 per 100,000, considerably higher than in the U.K. (53), Germany, (50) and France (37). Death rates for men in this age group have declined more rapidly in all three countries since 1999 than in the United States.

    But things are better after you turn 65, and gain the benefit of US government health care:

    In contrast to the under-65 population, U.S. potentially preventable death rates compared relatively well for men and women ages 65-74, the age when people in the U.S. become eligible for Medicare.

    1. I always wondered if Jim’s motivations are based on malevolence. I suspect Chris Gerrib’s motivations are based on being a sheep, he just keeps bleating.

      You do know that government healthcare is opposed to legalized drugs, right? That if the government controls your health, it will have the incentive to tell you what food to eat and what drugs to use. The same government that tells you that wheat is more healthy than meat (in contravention of the evolutionary history of mankind) and that boys should be drugged for being boys. But then, it’s useless to argue with a malevolent and dishonest Che Guevara thug supporter.

    2. “And you’re even more likely to die from US health care….”

      ….particularly under Medicare. As a “cost-control” measure, Medicare will no longer pay for hospital care for a person who had been discharged from a hospital within the past 30 days, regardless of the reason for the readmission.

      You, Jim, consider that a good thing in terms of cost control. But Medicare has always had a rule against paying for readmission within 30 days of a discharge, if the readmission was for the same reason or for a hospital stay-induced reason. The new part is exclusion for causes completely unrelated to the prior hospitalization. So if a person has been nursed back to perfect health, then wheeled down to the curbside pickup in a wheelchair, only to be run over by a hospital shuttle bus, Medicare will not pay for the readmission.

      As a newly minted Leftist Democrat, I agree with you, Comrade Jim, that this is perfectly reasonable cost containment. It will help kill off the unproductive members of the body politic sooner rather than later. But why must we pretend it is otherwise?

  2. Sorry Jim your stats don’t wash. The link in the story is to HOSPITAL deaths. The ones that are DIRECTLY attributable to a healthcare program/facility. Your “facts” are for “potentially preventable death rate” (whatever that is). Not deaths due to a healthcare system or program.

  3. “Sorry Jim your stats don’t wash . . . ” Boy, if i had a nickel for everythime I’ve read this or something similar about one of Jim’s assertions and claims, I’d have enough money to buy him a copy of Hazlitt’s ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON. Or Aristotle’s LOGIC. Or Bastiat’s THE LAW. Or all three, tied up in a nice Christmas ribbon.

    1. The better question is what is Jim’s real motivations? I’ve caught him supporting Che Guevara earlier on this blog. I suspect that Jim knows that government run healthcare kills medical innovation and I also suspect that Jim knows that gun control doesn’t work.

  4. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=deaths-from-avoidable-medical-error-2009-08-10

    Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year

    The precise number of these deaths is still unknown because many states lack a standard or mandatory reporting system for injuries due to medical mistakes. The investigative team gathered disparate medical records, legal documents, personnel files and reports and analyzed databases to arrive at its estimate.

    12000/61.9 = 193.86 deaths/million per year in the UK
    200000/311.59 = 641.87 deaths/million per year in the US

    1. That 200,000 number is way too high. As stated in the original article this was a detailed analysis of the NHS system with regards to basic errors. But the estimates across the entire U.S. with regards to deaths due to basic errors isn’t the result of such a detailed analysis. In fact the variation is a pretty wide margin of at least 45,000 to as much as 98,000. This is the problem when trying to compare the outcomes of one European country with that of the entire U.S. It’d probably be more app to compare GBR to just Texas or California to keep the population sizes roughly the same.

  5. And ObamaCare is going to lead to more healthcare-related deaths in the U.S. as government bean counters take more asnd more control of medical decisionmaking.

    Britain’s NHS is an HMO run by rejects from the British counterparts of the DMV and IRS.

  6. Rx for healthcare:

    ● 100% taxpayer-funded (at the state level) for all minor children

    ● 100% cash — no insurance, no government assistance of any kind — for legal adults

    1. Individuals should still be able to buy insurance, for the same reason that I can buy insurance for my car. Getting to that state from where we are now is going to be a major headache–either people with existing conditions or insurance companies are going to take it in the shorts.

    1. In the past they HAVE done this, and the Mullahs go to the head of the line. And usually for ‘diplomatic reasons’.

      1. Shocking! A government bureaucracy gives head of line privileges to the 1% like the Iranian mullahs but craps over the little people? It’s like how antigun laws are enforced. David Gregory isn’t in jail yet. Quick! Let’s have Jim and Chris Gerrib defend this.

  7. Whether from guns or healthcare, your odds of death are better than 1/1000. Why are we worried about this, while the number of people going on disability is skyrocketing under Obama?

  8. I find it hard to believe any figures from the website of a law firm that makes their money suing doctors for malpractice. This looks a nothing more that a “news” article designed to drum up more business for this law firm 🙂

  9. B Lewis – I’ve been saying for some time now that the ideal (for adults anyway – children possibly another case) is that health insurance be much more like other forms of insurance; pay yourself, or possibly on some sort of inexpensive “maintenance contract”, for routine matters and reserve insurance for massively expensive catastrophes.

    You don’t ask your motor insurance company for reimbursement of the cost of an oil change. You do ask them for help if you wrap it around a tree or someone steals it. (Yes, I do realise the two cases – health and cars – are not the same!)

    One reason for not using insurance for routine matters is that it keeps the cost down. Many, perhaps most, people aren’t all that interested in the cost of minor procedures that are covered by insurance. They would be if they were paying the bill. Another way of saying this is that if routine matters were not covered by insurance, then market forces would come into play.

    1. There is a mathematical argument for this: every objective function achieves its maximum either in the interior of the domain, or on the boundary. If there are no counterbalancing forces, then the system will diverge to the boundary.

      It was the genius of the American political system that the Founding Fathers set up a system of checks and balances which would naturally constrain the political system near the optimum. Within 200 years, it would produce the most powerful nation the world had ever seen. It remains to be seen if it is robust enough to handle the latest challenge of an ill-informed and easily manipulated populace in the age of instant, mass communication.

      The operative word is: feedback. The system must be able to respond to and rectify errors and sub-optimal performance and, most importantly, it must be able to sense those errors in order to take corrective action. When there is no feedback, the system diverges to the boundary. A system in which consumers do not have to consider cost is open loop. A single payer, government run system is also open loop, or at least the feedback is of marginal strength, and will ultimately race to the boundary of mediocrity and wretchedness. It is a mathematical imperative. But, how do you get lay people to understand that there will be no more gold when they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

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