Re: Productivity - Norway leads the table.

On Sep 13, 6:34 pm, MooseFET wrote:
On Sep 13, 9:20 am, Joerg wrote:

MooseFET wrote:
On Sep 13, 3:41 am, Joerg wrote:
MooseFET wrote:
[....]

Still, you can't mix it all together to gauge the effectiveness of a
country's health system.

I don't see why not.

Ok, I give up explaining it.

You were claiming not explaining.

Not so.

Ok, once more: In order to compare the efficiency of health care systems
you need to compare diseases where the health system has an early
influence.

I think I disagree with this statement. Already but I'll see how you
support it.

Such as cancer. Here you have a clear cut message: How good
is the screening process? How successful is the treatment? Health care
has a great deal of impact here.

If there was no screening at all, people would die of the cancers and
shorten the average life. So whether or not there is good screening
shows up in the average life expecancy.

I guess America is performing rather
well in this league.

So you are guessing.

An example for a not so suitable scenario: Heart attack (a major dent in
our life expectancy). If people eat to much junk food many will suffer
that infamous chest cramp in the wee moring hours. Ambulance gets
called, arrives in minutes but it's already too late. A very common
scenario and there is next to nothing a country's health system can do
to improve that outside educating via TV ads and stuff. IOW health care
does _not_ have a great deal of impact here. Strokes kind of fall into
the same category.

You are assuming that most heart disease kills quickly. This is not
the case.

My dad's colleagues said in half the cases the first symptom of heart
disease is (sudden) death.

The speed of the ambulance is also part of the health care
system. If you use donkey carts for it, less people make it to the
doctor alive.

Of people who make it to the hospital, half die in the next 28 days,
at least in the UK:
http://www.heartstats.org/datapage.asp?id=1590

Also the health care system either pays for an anual
physical or it doesn't. If it does the heart disease or the factors
leading up to it can be detected.

The best healthcare in the world doesn't seem to make much difference.

My dad--himself a (great) physician, married to a nurse, obviously
with many friends and colleagues who were also fine doctors--he
dropped in his tracks and died one sad day, from heart disease,
undiagnosed. He was 65. I can hardly imagine health care better than
his.

And Bill Clinton, after all, had the best healthcare in the world.

This is one of many reasons why one cannot simply look at a country's
total life expectancy and draw conclusions about quality of health care.

So far you haven't convinced me. You have a guess and a quite weak
argument so far.

<snip>

People were claiming that it was the american diet that made the
difference. That claim is now, I assert disproven.

So you know that the average diet in the US is not making a difference?
Wow, that's quite brazen. To me the average consumption of take-out and
burger joint food is mind boggling.

No, I think Ken's half right here. It's clear that bad habits shorten
life, but the question at hand is proving that Americans' bad habits
shorten their lives compared to certain European countries. So you'd
have to show a) bad habits, that b) shorten life, c) in Americans, d)
more than in Europeans, e) that account for the difference.

Or, in my case, showing that shorter life expectancy in USA is due to
bad habits of a few groups (my notion), not generally worse healthcare
(Ken's notion). That's gonna be hard to show.

To prove his point Ken would have to show that a) healthcare in Europe
is better, b) that this extends life, c) over and above what would be
expected in a population with American genetics and habits.

I've not been idle--I collected a bunch of info on Americans & the
factors influencing their life expectancy. It's very clear that life-
choices make a huge difference in lifespans amongst our countrymen.

For example, the overall American male life expectancy is shortened
roughly one year due to high rates of
a) excess mortality from obesity and obesity-related conditions
(heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, stroke),
b) homicide, and
c) AIDS,

in black men, with these factors accounting for 25% / 19% / 12%,
respectively, of the gap with Americans of european descent. (The
effect of infant mortality on African life expectancy is likely large,
but not easily isolated, & not included here.)

But how does one fairly compare this with the EU?

There are several difficulties:
a) Americans aren't one individual who can easily be compared to a
proto-EUropean, and
b) statistics for the european countries are lacking, not
comparable, and in foreign languages, and
c) it's a big job to quantify diet, exercise, diseases, detection
rates, outcomes, etc.

And I don't want to core-dump a bunch of OT stats on SED.

So I'm stewing on it.

Cheers,
James Arthur

.

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