Re: Productivity - Norway leads the table.

On Sep 14, 9:22 am, James Arthur <dagmargoodb...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 13, 11:57 pm, MooseFET <kensm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 13, 9:32 pm, James Arthur <dagmargoodb...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 13, 6:34 pm, MooseFET wrote:
[...]
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.

Yes, that is often the first symptom that is evident to the person
with it. Many of the processes could be detected with fairly simple
tests.

No they can't. That's what I'm saying. My dad had an EKG & other
care in the year before the fateful day. That is to say, he was
_specifically_ screened for heart disease, but to no avail.

The EKG only detects that the heart has already started to
malfunction. It doesn't tell you much about what is going to happen
in the future. Detecting problems with teh blood supply to the heart
such as hardening of the arteries sees further into the future.
Detecting the CRP level in the blood also sees further into the future
than the EKG.



[....]
Yes, Lipitor reduces 2nd heart attacks. AFAICT statins are good
drugs, if you can tolerate them. Even better treatments are being
developed by 'evil' pharmaceutical companies right now.

I think more is being done at places like Oregon Health and Science
University and Rochester. There is a lot of publicly funded research
into the subject. Drug companies are very good at bringing a drug to
market but they don't generally do the basic research.


I'm not sure what they're referring to...ah, here it is:
"...the percentage of patients who were alive 30 days after being
admitted to hospital with a heart attack..."

so this is survival of patients who were still alive upon arrival at
the hospital, a select group. Slow transport would actually weed out
a bunch of marginal cases and improve(!) this statistic.

Yes, this is one of the problems with such statistics. They are far
too easily cherry picked.


Also, we've got to be careful here in assuming other nation's figures
can be directly compared to the US though. For example, it's not a
given that other peoples are equally sick.

We also have to allow for the number of people who "just died". In
some places if you are somewhat elderly, the cause of death can be
"old age". In other places, they list what failed first.


In countries that have less heart disease to being with, it stands to
reason that they'd have many more people that barely have it--less
advanced disease, more slowly advancing: milder cases--and have better
outcomes because of that.

No, that may not follow:

Country A:
90% of people take brisk walks and visit the doctor.
10% of people watch TV 24-7

Country B:
70% of people take brisk walks and visit the doctor.
30% walk around the mall once a week.

Country A could have a lower number with it but those that have it
would have the worse cases. Some countries have a divided populace
with some, lets say, farmers and some, lets say bankers.


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

A difference in what and what are you calling the best?

I meant my dad had all those advantages you attribute to a good
healthcare system, but it didn't make any difference for him.

You can't run the experiment the other way. One persons outcome
really can't be used to judge.

[...]
The carpenter's house always needs fixing. Just because he was a
doctor working in the area, you can't assume he was getting the best
healthcare.

The assumption is yours; I'm not assuming, I'm speaking from personal
knowledge of him, his medical history, and his medical records.

You only know what you observed and were told. How can you rate the
health care as "the best". Somewhere someone may be getting better.


How often did he get a complete physical?

Annually. He himself had a personal physician, and as I wrote above,
he'd had a physical and an ekg that year and other screenings. That
year he'd been to his doc a few times &, from the tests run, it looks
like they suspected something small was awry, but were on completely
the wrong track. They blew it.

And the problem was missed despite warning signs. My dad had
symptoms--getting out of breath too easily--for at least a year, but
he fooled everyone by being in great shape despite it. We ran 4 miles
together the month before. I chastised him for being a bit wimpy, and
he agreed to 'shape up.'

So there were warning signs that were missed. A different doctor on a
different day may have caught it. We will never know.


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

Last time I checked, he was still alive.

But he had a heart attack!, something which never could've happened if
healthcare were more important than lifestyle...that's my point. In a
battle between healthcare and Bill's beloved burgers, burgers win!

I disagree with what you are assuming there. You assume that if Bill
Clinton had eaten differently he wouldn't have had the heart attack
and that without the health care he would have lived. Neather of
these can really be proven for a single case.


saw such bogus arguments that it wasn't.

Okay, noted, but I'm not quite sure I see the difference. AIUI, your
theory is still that poor healthcare in the US explains why, oh,
Swedish men, for example, live 3 years longer than American.

No, it isn't my theory and I am not arguing that that is the case. I
am arguing that the arguments on the other side are bogus. People
were say "XXX is caused by YYY" when there were obvious holes in the
argument. They had stopped actually gathering facts and thinking and
were making wild guesses and calling them facts.


It was a report quoted by
someone else that was suggesting that the US has poor health care.

Okay, noted, but could you point me to it? I can't find it.

The way google groups works makes it very hard to find it while typing
a reply.
I think it was Eeyore.

If whoever did is reading along please jump in here.



Best,
James Arthur


.

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