[ExI] Health care discussion

[Damien Sullivan]

> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 04:52:36PM +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote:

> > Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people.
> > Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect.

A couple of interesting factors are chronic stress and reports that
lower socioeconomic people live less long even when given the same
access to health care.  Some of the latter might be diet, but there are
intimations that being low status is sefl-deadly.  And stress is looking
like a big killer.

So... it's possible even a bad universal system could save lives simply
by being universal, especially in combination with a strong safety net.
Simply the knowledge that health care was there, unlike "lose your job,
lose your insurance", combined with knowledge that one would never be
reduced to desperate straits, vs. "rat race" and humiliating welfare
applications, might save lives, through lack of worry and through not
feeling like one was on the bottom of society.

-xx- Damien X-)