Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Total population |
| Females 2001 | ||||||||||
Member State | At birth 2000 | At birth 2001 | At birth | Uncertainty interval | At age 60 | Uncertainty interval | At birth | Uncertainty interval | At age 60 | Uncertainty interval | ||
Canada | 69.7 | 69.9 | 68.2 | 67.6 - 69.1 | 15.3 | 15.0 - 16.0 | 71.6 | 70.9 - 72.7 | 17.9 | 17.6 - 18.6 | ||
United Kingdom | 69.2 | 69.6 | 68.4 | 68.0 - 69.4 | 15.0 | 14.7 - 15.6 | 70.9 | 70.1 - 72.4 | 16.9 | 16.5 - 17.4 | ||
United States of Americab | 67.4 | 67.6 | 66.4 | 65.8 - 67.5 | 14.9 | 14.5 - 15.7 | 68.8 | 67.9 - 70.2 | 16.6 | 16.2 - 17.3 | ||
It is worth while, in light of your data here, to look at work by Nobel Prize winning economist (and philosopher) Amartya Sen. Sen supports your argument, showing that African American men have lower life expectancies than much "poorer" men in India and China. He argues that strong state support for things like health care in those countries means that there is more equitable access to life's basic necessities. His argument being that such access cannot be measured purely in terms of income.
Economist Paul Krugman, a strong advocate for free markets, has similarly argued that not all sectors of the economy are the same. While some benefit from lack of government regulation and open markets, others (such as the electrical grid) are "natural monopolies" and de-regulation necessarily reduces efficiency and openness in the system. It bothers me when ideological libertarians refuse to take such issues on a case-by-case basis.
Oh, and don't forget to read this.
The Sen book is called "Development as Freedom."
I only know american healthcare from TV-series, but life expectancy is a rather rough measuring stick for assessing healthcare quality, as it it also heavily influenced by stuff like road safety, dietary habits and others
For instance, here in belgium, we have the same healthcare system in the north and south,
(2000)
life expectancy (birth) males females
Vlaams Gewest (north) 76,01 81,93
Waals Gewest (south) 73,41 80,53
Most of the discrepancy can be ascribed to differences in diet, and also some dangerous industrial activities (like coal mining) was more prevalent in the south.
So, you're sending the message that a health care system can't be judged by the health or lack thereof that it produces, right?
How would you judge between single pay systems and robber baron systems like we have in the USofA? To me:
1 - The people served by one have a longer healthy life expectance
2 - That same system cost both the government and the people it serves less
3 - That same system makes necessary health care available to anyone whoneeds it
…is a pretty damn conclusive combination.
P6,
Generally I hate arguing statistics. this is because for every stat someone can pull to back their argument, I can usually find a flawed methodology (more accurately find someone who has found a flaw in the methodology)or a statistical analysis that refutes their statistical analysis. It's much better & more realistic to argue on merits rather than raw numbers which can be twisted to make one point or another. Wasn't it Benjamin Disreali who said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics" ?
What you pointed out was a life expectancy average. Even if I bought into the validity of statistical analysis as a predictable way of determining the outcomes of situations I would be hard pressed to see life expectancy as anything more than correlatable evidence in a discussion of the possible causations of high quality health care.
For life expectancy to be a valid talking point, we'd have to compare two countries with the same climate, same social classes & relationships between & among those classes, same geography, same wotk envirements, employment rates, dietary trends, & a host of other variables even I am not verbose enough to mention. :)
Really it's no different than comparing the rate of gun ownership to the homocide/accidental death/suicide rate by firearm & concluding that in nations without firearms since people live longer then the firearms ownership rates being high must be the cause of the relatively pre-mature death.
& since Who is a UN agency I find them to be biased as a source of any useful material. It's a group of 'doctors' funded by & answerable to a group of governments that, on the whole, are worse than the cures government is suppossed to implement.
But I admit that is a personal bias & not necessarily applicable to the refutation of life expectancy stats as an indicator of health care systems. I think the lack of provable causation does that well enough.
Then I ask you the same question as I as DoF. If lower cost, greater availability and longer healthy life isn't a measure of superiority, what is?
If your only reason is "the government did it so it is by definition bad" you have no argument at all.
If the only improvement you can think of is removing the government, then you damage those who must pick up the cost…which will be greater than the amout of taxes they would save.
What causes high quality health care? Since you'd need identical circumstances to make a valid comparison basedon outcome, and since that CANNOT happen, you're left with cost and availability--and single pay wins that hands down.
I don't agree with the lower cost part. Most statist health-care system tend to devolve from reserve systems (if they ever were), where payments made by people when they are active are held in reserve for later when their healtcare costs increase dramatically due to age, to a system without reserves where payments made by the active generation are immediately spent on (for the most part) the older generation.
This is in effect a pyramid-scheme, and will cause problems when there is a major shift in demographics.