Healthy Questions
While I’m ranting health, insurance, yadda yadda…..as for health itself – here is the World Health Organization’s Report – and a good article via America’s Health Rankings, which I think is a little easier to understand. Note Table 6 on that last list….
Table 6 has a few interesting stats. Notice that we have one of the lowest percentages of tobacco use, and Japan, the top-ranking country, has a higher percentage. Yet we are #28. The WHO has us as #15, but the America’s Health Rankings combines a lot of different studies to develop their table.
You can’t say it’s *just* diet – although I am a big fan of Eastern food. Unfortunately, CorpAmurk has convinced you that it’s better to buy prepackaged crap. Are we not lucky, to have all this food laced with MSG/aspartame/high fructose corn syrup, as well as nonstop TV and video games for activities???
Just look at some of the countries ahead of us….Hell, I’m in Amish Country – where do you think we got our diet? Um, Germany???! Germany eats TONS of junk, noodles, fat, and glop, although more of it is probably made from scratch than ours. I was in Italy and England two years ago, and France before that, and I know what’s on the shelves of their grocery stores, too. They sell our processed crap over there. So you can’t say it’s diet alone causing our health issues. Gee, do ya think it’s that they have better preventative health care?
We know we have the Fattest People in the World in this country – 33% of women over the age of 15, and 31% of males are overweight. Of course, it would be best if we could get everyone off their butts and lose that weight…..then again, maybe if people wouldn’t eat things with aspartame, their thyroids wouldn’t be so screwed up….. It would also be good if the woman I saw in the nail shop a couple of weeks ago would see the stretch marks on the EEEEE boobs that were hanging out of her tank top…..but that’s another issue….
The US has the highest infant mortality rate – and there is absolutely NO excuse for that. But what is the CAUSE?
Of the ones who are above us, Germany is the only one with a multi-payer “universal” healthcare system. Everyone else has universal health care, period. Farrah Fawcett had to go to Germany for cancer treatments she couldn’t get here – treatments that have been proven to work, but since Dumbya put health on the backburner we are still in the dark ages. She could afford to go, but still, that she actually HAD to is the issue.
I still want these questions answered, and not with information, but with ACTION to FIX the problems.
Why is this happening?
Why is this supposedly wonderful country so far down the list?
Why are we so in the dark about our own health?
Why does a supposedly religious country NOT want to care for their weak, elderly, indigent???
Why do people who are sick have to fight to get care, and what happens when they have no one to fight for them?
I know BO said we all have to work for “change” – but you know what? HE has to work for it, too. I am SO tired of fighting the frigging system – it’s time for THEM to DO something about it. Is there a stat for stress deaths anywhere??
Moi ;) on June 27th, 2009 | File Under Uncategorized | 7 Comments -
i know its the hip thing to do on leftwing blogs to complain about how the white house isn’t going for single payer. during the primary i was pissed off that none of the three major democratic candidates (clinton, edwards and obama) were willing to propose single payer. that left single payer to candidates like kusinich and gravel, assuring that it would be dismissed as a fringe position to take.
but over the last year or so, i’ve slowly come to term with other approaches. there are a lot of different systems out there that all achieve universal health care and avoid our screwed up system of spiraling costs. i’d personally be happy with any of them.
a few months ago i read an article. i can’t find it anymore, i think it was in the new yorker. the article was about the differences between the health care systems in the developing world, how different the various european and canadian systems were, and how each was a product of that country’s own history. basically, the article argued, efforts to completely revamp health care in a country have failed, but efforts to universalize health care that build upon the pre-existing health care system are the ones that succeed. the reason different european countries use different methods to be universal is because each took the path that was an extension of where they were before.
by that logic, the plans currently before congress seem a lot better. they all build on our current system. and plenty of european countries have systems that include private insurers, it’s not just germany. the netherlands has a private-public hybrid system. switzerland is based on an individual mandate (as clinton proposed during the primary and as obama has since adopted into his plan since he became president). there’s more than one way to do this. my main concern is that the reform turn out to be real, not some bullshit pretend reform that kicks the can further down the road.
Well, I hope that you are right about the success being built on what was there. However, this country’s plan is Shite. How do you build on that?
Hillary *did* change her mind and decide to support universal health care. So please do give her some credit for moving away from the dark side.
I’m not complaining because it’s “hip” – I’m complaining because I expected something somewhere to change in this country in the first 6 months, and Nothing has. I have almost NO work. If my husband were to up and leave or die today, we would all be up the creek. I don’t know too many employers who want to take on a 50-something over-educated woman with an autistic kid who has been out of the work force for 16 years. Do you?
We desperately need to get the HMOs and insurance companies out of healthcare for good.
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.-= libhomoMoi
Hillary *did* change her mind and decide to support universal health care.
i think you’re mixing up two different things. hillary was always for universal health care, but she was always against single payer.
right now, president obama is also for universal health care, but against single payer. indeed, the remarkable thing is that after taking office, obama effectively adopted the clinton plan from the primary (the only real difference between the clinton and obama plan was whether health coverage would be mandated. obama was against that before, now he’s for it. it’s a flip-flip, but i don’t mind because it brings him to a better position). actually obama is going beyond the clinton plan. he’s also pushing for a public option, something clinton was unwilling to do during the primaries. that was more edwards thing. (
but none of them were for single payer. for that you had to look to kusinich or gravel, who weren’t considered serious candidates by a lot of people)
obama is doing a lot more than he promised during the campaign in terms of health care. i realize that isn’t fast enough for people losing their health care today, but in terms of legislation, obama is working very fast. when bill clinton ran on health care reform in 1992, he didn’t even propose a bill in congress until 1994, two years after he was elected! meanwhile, obama is pushing for a vote by the end of the summer (which is probably unrealistic, but i’m glad he’s pushing)
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.-= upyernozMoi
Actually, Noz, it’s a mixture – yes, I mixed them up, but she did say eventually that she was for single payer. And I have never seen Obama say he was for mandated health care for anyone other than children. I agree it would be a better position, but I haven’t read anywhere that he has changed his position on that. Can’t find it in a google, either.
Obama has no choice other than to push this. People are really suffering, and they are mad – this shite has been going on long enough. He has to put his foot down on the Democrat senators who are whining about his public option. If they do not approve it, these people are not going to be re-elected. The Dems will lose those seats.
People are pissed. The insurance companies are running everything, and truthfully, he’s not stopping them. Trying might be something we could support, ya know?
There is still wayyyyy too much vague-ness in this administration for me. He still talks around the subject matter (whatever the subject) too much. I don’t like it.
And I have never seen Obama say he was for mandated health care for anyone other than children.
that was his position during the primary. he’s now embracing a mandate for everyone, with the exception of people who can’t afford to pay and who would get an exemption from the mandate. see this link.
There is still wayyyyy too much vague-ness in this administration for me.
i agree. on health care the prevailing wisdom is that bill clinton’s plan failed because he was too hands on about the details of the proposal. i think it has more to do with the ad campaign mounted by the insurance industry, but once prevailing wisdom takes hold, it’s really hard to convince people otherwise. i think that obama’s extreme “hands off” approach, letting congress hash out the details, is an attempt to avoid clinton’s mistakes in the 1990s. as i said above, i don’t think that’s what was really wrong with clinton’s effort, but even if it was, obama shouldn’t be this hands off. he needs to draw a few lines in the sand even if he leaves other details to congress.
ezra klein has a rather depressing post about this. if he’s right, we’re basically screwed.
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.-= upyernozMoi
Truthfully, Noz, I really don’t trust BO yet. I wanted to. I really did. But this sitting on his hands…..to that end, thanks for the links, especially the one to Ezra’s post. He’s probably on the right track, I hate to say it.
Hillary’s health care plan back in the 90s was stomped NOT because of her husband or of anything he did. It was stomped because she was a woman, she was First Lady and not an elected official, and that pissed them and their little dick egos off.
I have no idea about ads by the insurance industry. I don’t watch commercials, lol, I mute ‘em.
All I know is that the Senate has too many friends in Corporate America, including insurance companies. That’s the wall (from Ezra’s article), not the Senate.
Really, how many people do you know who are ready to tear apart their investments, shitcan their friends’ jobs, yadda, yadda….? In the case of senators, those friends would be….insurance company folk??? Insurance companies fingers are in everything, and you can bet their CEOs are sitting there laughing their asses off at all of us.
Besides, Obama took campaign money from insurance companies. I don’t think he’s really going to stab them in the back, do you??