Healthcare

[Raps18-19 Champ]

You can change behavior though. We have done it with nicotine. You can make subsidized foods healthier, you can force a drop in price of healthy foods if the government is willing to close the gap on margin losses.

Families WILL replace crap with healthy food in many cases if it's cheaper. Sure, no child is going to like broccoli over ice cream, but if we hold food companies absolutely accountable for the ingredients in their food, and push them to make healthier options/versions, we can absolutely make a dent.

We can also put enticements like insurance premium drops for healthy people. And slide it depending on how long or short a person is healthy (think car insurance).

One of the biggest obstacles is also education. Seriously, Go-Gurt apple pouches state something like "vitamins and minerals", and "made from yogurt, fruit, and oats". Um, maybe there are microscopic portions of this in there, but it's pure sugar. Call it what it is please. We MUST make food companies accountable for their food. No more misleading advertising on the packaging.

Nicotine is a bit different in a sense that smoking has a more narrow audience and is discretionary.

I can see families changing if it's cheaper but I think you have to make it a significant % cheaper than unhealthy options to make it work.

I do like the insurance premiums though. I do think that society will steer towards a situation where companies like Apple and Amazon expand to those fields where they will make their watches effectively be a built in health monitor that will affect how much insurance people will pay on a daily basis. If you can find out how much your daily life affects your insurance premiums, you will definitely change your behaviour more.

[Hawkeye15]

Nicotine is a bit different in a sense that smoking has a more narrow audience and is discretionary.

I can see families changing if it's cheaper but I think you have to make it a significant % cheaper than unhealthy options to make it work.

I do like the insurance premiums though. I do think that society will steer towards a situation where companies like Apple and Amazon expand to those fields where they will make their watches effectively be a built in health monitor that will affect how much insurance people will pay on a daily basis. If you can find out how much your daily life affects your insurance premiums, you will definitely change your behaviour more.

It does now, but during the 80-90s, when the visibility around how terrible it was for you came about, behavior started to change in boomers. I remember when you could smoke on airplanes, and inside any building.

Subsidizing healthy food to drop to a price level that can't be passed over, will save a ton more on the back end in health costs. Not right away, but over the course of years.

I am fuzzy on rewarding for premiums, some of that has to do with the fact I take great care of myself, while watching others pay the same premiums I do with double middle fingers to health. But I don't want to be like a GOPer, and make decisions for everyone based off my small little world. We have a society that is groomed to be unhealthy, so in reality, it may not be a reward for me, but yet another penalty for poor people.

It's a frustrating subject for sure, and we need to start holding food companies accountable for what is in their food, and make them explore REAL ways to make food healthier.

[Raps18-19 Champ]

I don't disagree that healthier food is saving more money than healthcare but most people never act in that way so I am skeptical.

Wouldn't holding more companies to make healthier food be the same concept where we make a decision for everyone instead of giving them choices? Or do you mean alternatives in addition to their unhealthy offering?

[Lil Rhody]

As I sit in a hospital stressed out waiting for my wife to come out of surgery I say to myself where is the FN bar around here

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[catman]

As I sit in a hospital stressed out waiting for my wife to come out of surgery I say to myself where is the FN bar around here

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Never a pleasant experience. I recall waiting for my wife's multiple cancer surgeries (she died in 2013) and not being sure just where I should be or what I should be doing.

[Raps18-19 Champ]

As I sit in a hospital stressed out waiting for my wife to come out of surgery I say to myself where is the FN bar around here

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Hope everything works out.

[Lil Rhody]

Thanks I appreciate it so much. And catman sorry for your loss. Well she'll be ok but had to get a tube taken a long with the egg. Sucks sucks sucks they said her other one is ok and we were only four weeks in so sad but mom is ok and that's all that matters. I would die without my wife but now I can't because my lil guy. Thank god for him

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[catman]

Hang in there, Rhody. Best wishes for your wife and little guy. She needs you to be strong right now.

[Lil Rhody]

It was a long night but we made it........ Crazy crazy how the way some things work out. Left our Vermont ski trip early because I had my bike being shipped to me. Would have been either in the middle of nowhere or driving back when it turned bad..... With the kid as well man it would have been rough.




My poor wife now has one kidney and one fallopian tube....... Luckily we got back when we did and she was less then a month along with everything. Sad sucks but she's alive and that's all that matters at the end of the day. My little dude and I get to still see her everyday





Much love psd legit only place I could vent

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[catman]

She is still here and that's what is important. Take care of her and be strong for her.

[Crovash]

Ha!

Little wonder why our “free market” health system is not.

In 2016, a blockbuster drug called Humira was poised to become a lot less valuable.

The key patent on the best-selling anti-inflammatory medication, used to treat conditions like arthritis, was expiring at the end of the year. Regulators had blessed a rival version of the drug, and more copycats were close behind. The onset of competition seemed likely to push down the medication’s $50,000-a-year list price.

Instead, the opposite happened.

Through its savvy but legal exploitation of the U.S. patent system, Humira’s manufacturer, AbbVie, blocked competitors from entering the market. For the next six years, the drug’s price kept rising. Today, Humira is the most lucrative franchise in pharmaceutical history.

Next week, the curtain is expected to come down on a monopoly that has generated $114 billion in revenue for AbbVie just since the end of 2016. The knockoff drug that regulators authorized more than six years ago, Amgen’s Amjevita, will come to market in the United States, and as many as nine more Humira competitors will follow this year from pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer. Prices are likely to tumble.

The reason that it has taken so long to get to this point is a case study in how drug companies artificially prop up prices on their best-selling drugs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/b...7660ea25319dc3

[nyyfan555]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023...ncome-country/

Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country in the world—on the basis of both per-person costs and a share of gross domestic product. Yet, you wouldn't know it from looking at major health metrics in years past; the US has relatively abysmal health. And, if anything, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the US health care system's failures relative to its peers, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.

Compared with other high-income peers, the US has the shortest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of avoidable deaths, the highest rate of newborn deaths, the highest rate of maternal deaths, the highest rate of adults with multiple chronic conditions, and the highest rate of obesity, the new analysis found.

"Americans are living shorter, less healthy lives because our health system is not working as well as it could be," Munira Gunja, lead author of the analysis and a senior researcher for The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovation, said in a press statement. "To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population."

Overall, the analysis paints a grim picture of how much catching up the US has to do. In terms of life expectancy, the US has trailed its peers for years but took a nosedive during the pandemic, while other countries fared better. In 2020, the average life expectancy at birth in the US was 77 years, three years lower than the average for high-income countries. The next lowest life expectancy among high-income countries was from the UK, which had a 2020 life expectancy at birth of 80.4 years.

Provisional data for 2021 suggests US life expectancy fell nearly a full year further, from 77.0 years to 76.1 years. Relatedly, the US had the highest rate of deaths from COVID-19 in 2020 compared with its high-income peers and was among the lowest of its peers in rates of COVID-19 vaccination.

In a particularly shameful set of statistics, the US continues to have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any other high-income country. In 2020, there were 5.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the US, while the average among high-income countries was 4.1 infant deaths. In Norway, there were 1.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. The health care system is also failing mothers. In 2020, there were 24 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, about 2.5 times higher than the average for high-income countries. The country with the next highest maternal mortality rate was New Zealand with 13.6 per 100,000 live births.

With many US states now rapidly turning back the clock on reproductive rights and maternity care, the US's appallingly high rates of infant and maternal deaths are expected to worsen.

Beyond pregnancy, Americans are dying from other conditions that are treatable or preventable at a rate far higher than those seen in all other high-income countries. In 2020, 336 US deaths per 100,000 people were avoidable, while the average among high-income countries was just 225 deaths per 100,000. The rate of avoidable deaths has been rising in the US since 2015, the analysis notes.
Sicker

That tracks with the finding that Americans are more likely than their high-income-country peers to have multiple chronic conditions. In 2020, 30.4 percent of US adults said that they had previously been diagnosed with two or more chronic conditions in their life. Among other high-income countries, no more than a quarter of adults reported having two or more chronic conditions. America's high obesity rate may play into that discrepancy. The US has a higher obesity rate than any other high-income country. In fact, it's nearly two times higher than the average of its peers.

While Americans are dying young from avoidable conditions, they're also spending an exorbitant amount on health care. The US spent 17.8 percent of its GDP on health care in 2020, nearly twice as much as the average of 9.6 percent among high-income countries. On a per-person basis, it outspent its peers, paying nearly $12,000 per person via government insurance programs, private insurance coverage, and out-of-pocket costs. The country that came the closest to US spending was Germany, with a little over $7,000 per-person spending.

The data hints that these high prices are discouraging Americans from getting the care they need, potentially feeding into the country's high rates of chronic conditions and avoidable deaths. In the analysis, the US had among the lowest rate of doctor visits, with just four per year. The average was 5.7. The US also has one of the lowest rates of practicing physicians per 1,000 people—2.6 per 1,000, while the average is 3.7.

The US was the only high-income country in the analysis that does not guarantee health coverage. People in most other high-income countries have guaranteed health coverage with the option of buying supplemental private coverage.

[Hawkeye15]

Cue conservatives telling us why universal healthcare isn't the best option....

[catman]

EMS seminar today. State of Iowa is down about 500 EMS providers since 2016. We need a lot more. Average age of providers is 42.3. Oldest licensed provider is 86 right now. He has been working in EMS since 1970.

[spliff(TONE)]

Thanks for the update.