4 ms·

Just regarding the US healthcare stuff- life expectancy is determined by public health measures, medicine is just tinkering around the fringes of that. The US h

Just regarding the US healthcare stuff- life expectancy is determined by public health measures, medicine is just tinkering around the fringes of that. The US has lower life expectancy because of higher obesity rates, gun deaths, traffic deaths, and drug overdoses. Until resurrection is patented medicine obviously cannot bring back to life a patient who's just been shot or died in a car accident. So the 'the US spends a lot on healthcare but has low life expectancy' argument is a non-sequitur, public health is an entirely separate field. There's still a criticism of the US there, it's just subtly different from the one he's making. I don't want to mention his other errors because they're culture-war bait, but I saw two not just enormous inaccuracies but famously partisan ones that are endlessly repeated despite being trivially easy to disprove. So, while I like his overall argument here, the glaring partisan inaccuracies doesn't exactly raise my opinion of Horgan as a thinker

jurimasa 4y ago
Do you mean "he's not a Republican like me"?
ChancyChance 4y ago
I agree to make a valid comparison exclude gun and car deaths from healthcare statistics. Unfortunately, Horgan has citations, but you don't. So I can't really do much with your claim because without facts it is an opinion. If this were a debate that would score a point, but we're not competing with rhetoric: this should be a forum with facts. Because I *believe* you are correct, but I have no data so it remains a belief: facts would have helped!
- civilized 4y ago
  Fortunately there was an article on this very recently [1]. Here's an archived link if needed [2]. > One statistic in particular stood out: one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but in the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will. > And this is a very American problem. These young deaths are caused overwhelmingly by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving and such — which are deeply embedded social problems involving groups with opposing interests. Far trickier to tackle than most health issues where everyone is pulling in one direction. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303 https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774... [2] https://archive.ph/3OlNW https://archive.ph/3OlNW
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    Currently the top one is getting shot, passing traffic accidents finally to get the first place. Yes, it is very much an American problem. The other part ruining statistics is infant and early childhood mortality, divided across racial lines. Very American as well.
    - vanattab 4y ago
      Honestly I didn't really believe you because I had looked similar numbers up a few years ago but then I found this pew research on the topic. Apparently youth gun deaths increased like a hockey stick graph %50 during the pandemic. I am surprised I have not heard more about this in the media. It will be interesting to see how much this returns to baseline. I wonder if this is just and effect of kids having %50 more opportunities for conflict out of school or if it was covid induced stress that everyone was feeling or what. It does make you wonder if shutting down all the schools really was the best thing to do for the kids. Although it's of course hard to balance that against the spreading of the disease to other familes members. And of course early on we did not know exactly how dangerous it would be for kids. It will be interesting to see how we respond during the next pandemic. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-...
runarberg 4y ago
Ok. Lets take maternal mortality rate. Yes there are a non-healthcare related risks to child births, e.g. your ambulance can be in a car accident, or there can be a mass shooting in your hospital, but these should be pretty rare, compared to other risks. USA has 21 deaths per 100 000 live births. Canada has 11. Cuba has 39. Latvia has 18 (highest in continental Europe), EU as a whole is around 6. Among all of these USA is the only one that is on the rise (even Cuba is down from 46 in the year 2000, when USA had 12). You’re not wrong. But if you look at the data, there are some strong indicators that the lack of public health care is a major contributor to the lower life expectancy in the USA.
- civilized 4y ago
  Reducing maternal mortality would not materially help close the gap between the US and peer countries. Here is data and an argument that show this: 1. Total maternal deaths are 650 to 750 per year in the United States [1]. 2. Accidental deaths by all causes total about 80,000 per year for ages 5-44 [2] (here I am eyeballing the Tableau chart by age group). 3. The risk of a 5-year-old dying in their 40s in the US is about 4x that in peer countries like the UK [3]. Putting #2 and #3 together, we would have to reduce yearly US accidental deaths for ages 44 and below by 4x to reach parity with peer countries. We'd have to go from 80,000 deaths per year to 20,000, meaning we'd need to save 60,000 lives per year from accidental death causes such as drug overdoses, vehicle accidents, and homicide. Bringing the US maternal mortality rate down to the EU rate, while highly desirable, would only save a few hundred lives per year, a fraction of a percent needed to close the gap. [1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2021/oct/severe-maternal-morbidity-united-states-primer https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demographics/deaths-by-age/data-details/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph... [3] https://archive.ph/3OlNW https://archive.ph/3OlNW
  - watwut 4y ago
    I think that OP implicitly assumes that new mothers are dying more due to systemic failures that apply to other patients too.

jurimasa 4y ago

Do you mean "he's not a Republican like me"?

ChancyChance 4y ago

I agree to make a valid comparison exclude gun and car deaths from healthcare statistics. Unfortunately, Horgan has citations, but you don't. So I can't really do much with your claim because without facts it is an opinion. If this were a debate that would score a point, but we're not competing with rhetoric: this should be a forum with facts. Because I *believe* you are correct, but I have no data so it remains a belief: facts would have helped!

civilized 4y ago
Fortunately there was an article on this very recently [1]. Here's an archived link if needed [2]. > One statistic in particular stood out: one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but in the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will. > And this is a very American problem. These young deaths are caused overwhelmingly by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving and such — which are deeply embedded social problems involving groups with opposing interests. Far trickier to tackle than most health issues where everyone is pulling in one direction. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303 https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774... [2] https://archive.ph/3OlNW https://archive.ph/3OlNW
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Currently the top one is getting shot, passing traffic accidents finally to get the first place. Yes, it is very much an American problem. The other part ruining statistics is infant and early childhood mortality, divided across racial lines. Very American as well.
  - vanattab 4y ago
    Honestly I didn't really believe you because I had looked similar numbers up a few years ago but then I found this pew research on the topic. Apparently youth gun deaths increased like a hockey stick graph %50 during the pandemic. I am surprised I have not heard more about this in the media. It will be interesting to see how much this returns to baseline. I wonder if this is just and effect of kids having %50 more opportunities for conflict out of school or if it was covid induced stress that everyone was feeling or what. It does make you wonder if shutting down all the schools really was the best thing to do for the kids. Although it's of course hard to balance that against the spreading of the disease to other familes members. And of course early on we did not know exactly how dangerous it would be for kids. It will be interesting to see how we respond during the next pandemic. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-...

runarberg 4y ago

Ok. Lets take maternal mortality rate. Yes there are a non-healthcare related risks to child births, e.g. your ambulance can be in a car accident, or there can be a mass shooting in your hospital, but these should be pretty rare, compared to other risks. USA has 21 deaths per 100 000 live births. Canada has 11. Cuba has 39. Latvia has 18 (highest in continental Europe), EU as a whole is around 6. Among all of these USA is the only one that is on the rise (even Cuba is down from 46 in the year 2000, when USA had 12). You’re not wrong. But if you look at the data, there are some strong indicators that the lack of public health care is a major contributor to the lower life expectancy in the USA.

civilized 4y ago
Reducing maternal mortality would not materially help close the gap between the US and peer countries. Here is data and an argument that show this: 1. Total maternal deaths are 650 to 750 per year in the United States [1]. 2. Accidental deaths by all causes total about 80,000 per year for ages 5-44 [2] (here I am eyeballing the Tableau chart by age group). 3. The risk of a 5-year-old dying in their 40s in the US is about 4x that in peer countries like the UK [3]. Putting #2 and #3 together, we would have to reduce yearly US accidental deaths for ages 44 and below by 4x to reach parity with peer countries. We'd have to go from 80,000 deaths per year to 20,000, meaning we'd need to save 60,000 lives per year from accidental death causes such as drug overdoses, vehicle accidents, and homicide. Bringing the US maternal mortality rate down to the EU rate, while highly desirable, would only save a few hundred lives per year, a fraction of a percent needed to close the gap. [1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2021/oct/severe-maternal-morbidity-united-states-primer https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demographics/deaths-by-age/data-details/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph... [3] https://archive.ph/3OlNW https://archive.ph/3OlNW
- watwut 4y ago
  I think that OP implicitly assumes that new mothers are dying more due to systemic failures that apply to other patients too.