[extropy-chat] Health data

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Jun 16, 2006, at 9:23 AM, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> So, tell me again how socialized medicine doesn't work.  Seems to work
> as well or better than ours for half as much money.


Excluding relative gross deficiencies in medical care, which is not  
really in evidence in most industrialized countries, I do not see how  
the cost of medical care has any significant impact on infant  
mortality rates or life expectancy.  I would expect that  
environmental and lifestyle factors completely dominate such that  
arguments over the cost of health care among modern countries is  
pretty much irrelevant to health.  I doubt the difference in life  
expectancy between Utah and Mississippi (5 years!) has much to do  
with medical care per se.

If the US had a socialized healthcare system tomorrow, even a very  
expensive one, it would have no impact on the factors that very  
likely account for differences in mortality.  It would change the  
economics, but it is not the economics that are killing people (at  
least not for the sake of this discussion).  It seems that the  
discussion here is conflating two mostly unrelated issues: the  
economic efficiency of health care and mortality rates.


J. Andrew Rogers