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About that "World's Best Healthcare System" the U.S. is supposed to have...

^Governments always claim great efficiency but that can't really be true. The VA could show that they responded to appointment requests within two weeks, but it was not true. In the same sense, claims of government health care efficiency are false. Just some simple googling makes this evident.

http://www.cato.org/blog/private-insurance-more-efficient-medicare-far

The facts are pretty simple: forcing one person to pay another person's bills is not efficient. You are entitled to your own desire for free stuff but not to your own facts.
 
You would think that our health outcomes would be far superior than the rest of the world then.
 
Despite wasteful Medicare, Medicaid, and VA people still want to come here for health care. Imagine if we did not have these wasteful, greedy government programs.
 
^Governments always claim great efficiency but that can't really be true. The VA could show that they responded to appointment requests within two weeks, but it was not true. In the same sense, claims of government health care efficiency are false. Just some simple googling makes this evident.

http://www.cato.org/blog/private-insurance-more-efficient-medicare-far

The facts are pretty simple: forcing one person to pay another person's bills is not efficient. You are entitled to your own desire for free stuff but not to your own facts.

You are against the idea of insurance?
 
I'm guessing tjmcd is in the let them die crowd.
 
No. Food contribute, but doesn't explain it all.
 
Right, so how do you back out the effect and variety of food to make any logical conclusions as to what is not caused(or at least significantly influenced) by food?

ETA: and then consider the effect that said food variety has on our genetic salad as opposed to other countries with much more homogeneous populations?
 
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Just control for food consumption and nutrition.
 
I believe this is the first time I have ever heard somebody suggest the genetic heterogeneity (eloquently referred to as the "genetic salad") of the US is responsible for poorer health outcomes. On an individual level? Perhaps. On a population level? Nope, not really a chance.
 
I'm sure some others know more. From what I know, it's a combination of self-reports and logs over a period of time.
 
I believe this is the first time I have ever heard somebody suggest the genetic heterogeneity (eloquently referred to as the "genetic salad") of the US is responsible for poorer health outcomes. On an individual level? Perhaps. On a population level? Nope, not really a chance.

I'm not saying it is or it isn't. It could make for better health outcomes, or it could make it worse, or it could be neutral. Certain ethnicities are predisposed for higher rates of certain diseases, correct? I don't think that's arguable. So with as many ethnicities as we have, and with as much mixing of those ethnicities as we have had over the centuries, who knows the impact that those genetics have on long term health care. All I'm saying is that it is pretty apples to oranges to try to compare our health care to that of a homogeneous country.
 
I'm sure some others know more. From what I know, it's a combination of self-reports and logs over a period of time.

Yeah you can log what a person eats while in a study, but you can't log what they have eaten for the 45 years of their life before they started the study. That is just a massive variable with a direct correlation that you can't just "control" away. How much mayonaise and what brand of it did you eat when you were 8 years old?
 
I'm not saying it is or it isn't. It could make for better health outcomes, or it could make it worse, or it could be neutral. Certain ethnicities are predisposed for higher rates of certain diseases, correct? I don't think that's arguable. So with as many ethnicities as we have, and with as much mixing of those ethnicities as we have had over the centuries, who knows the impact that those genetics have on long term health care. All I'm saying is that it is pretty apples to oranges to try to compare our health care to that of a homogeneous country.

Gotcha, misinterpreted your point a bit. You are correct that certain ethnicities have increased incidence rates of various genetic disorders. However this is because a vast majority of genetic disorders are recessive meaning both alleles must have the altered gene in order to get disease. The isolated (and resulting inbred) nature of certain populations results in the increased risk. As you outbreed, you lower that risk because fewer and fewer individuals end up carrying the disease allele which results in fewer and fewer homozygous recessive individuals. This obviously doesn't apply to dominant genetic disorders but they are a minor fraction of total diseases. So on average, the more heterogeneous a population is the lower the rates of these types of diseases.

I will grant you it can be difficult to compare health outcomes between countries that have vastly different population/genetic dynamics. However if one was to seek to determine if heterogeneity positively or negatively impacted disease occurrence and health outcomes, there would be far more support (history/dogmas of genetics, research, case studies, etc) supporting the notion that increased heterogeneity positively impacts it. Much tougher sell the other way.
 
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