DUmmies Discuss How O-Care Would Eliminate Death

[GOBUCKS]

ChoppinBroccoli (49 posts)      Sat Sep-19-09 01:54 AM
An American Dies Every 12 Minutes Due To Lack Of Healthcare (Harvard Medical School Study)
Americans are literally DYING for a public option. One every 12 minutes, according to a new study conducted by Harvard Medical School. And these numbers are INDISPUTIBLE. Even the doctor they interviewed in this video agrees that the numbers are air-tight. So let me get this straight. If the medical EXPERTS all agree that a public option is necessary, and 80% of Americans support a public option, and for God's sake even Bill O'Really? supports a public option, WHY exactly are we NOT getting a public option? (Insert ka-ching ka-ching sound effect here). Your days are numbered, Baucus. And don't think for a second that the blue dogs won't be the FIRST Democrats swept out the door if we get a health bill without a public option in it.

And ain't it funny how the right-wing mouth breathers who whip themselves into foaming-at-the-mouth frenzies over the very idea of a public option will then turn right around and demand that the Government protect the "right to life"? Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6584355

This is the thing about O-care that has me all worried. As I understand it, once we have O-care
none of us will ever die! Everywhere you look there will be like brazillions of really, really old
people that just live on and on because they get such good care for free. Where will all these millions
and millions of centenarians live? Will we have to just stack them up somewhere? Who's going to
drive them to their free doctor appointments?

And once O-care stops people from dying, what will be the government policy on allowing
people to have new babies? Since every new baby is a permanent resident who will never die,
overpopulation is an O-care time bomb.Obviously, after a few decades of O-care, everyone will be too old
to have kids, as long as the jug-eared muslim can get an effective czar in place to stop any
new births from happening. But then there will be challenges for O-care arising from its effectiveness.
Like, how would you feel about going to a 112-year-old surgeon for your free O-peration?

Anyway, seems to me this business of no one dying isn't all peaches and cream.

global1  (1000+ posts)       Sat Sep-19-09 02:12 AM
1. So If My Calculations Are Right - Every 25 Days An Equivalent Amount Of People That Died On 9/11....
die because of lack of health care. So who are the terrorists here? 

Come on, DUmmy global1! You know your calculations are never right! Don't your remember
all that embarrassment in junior high math class? 

ChoppinBroccoli (49 posts)      Sat Sep-19-09 02:19 AM
2. 45,000 People Every Year
That's equivalent to fifteen 9/11s EVERY year. Yet the "culture of life" Republicans do nothing,
and even worse than that, ridicule and intimidate those who DO try to do SOMETHING about it.
Very nice analogy.

But, DUmmy ChoppinBroccoli, before we "culture of life" people can buy into socialized
medicine, we need to know how you're going to handle all the complications that arise
from eliminating deaths.

Of course, if we use the Cuban model, we can just learn from how the Cubans solved that
no-death problem caused by having such foolproof free medical care.

I think in most socialist countries, they solve it through starvation.

[JohnnyReb]

300,000,000 people and only 1 per 12 minutes is dying? Thats 5 per hour, 120 per day, 840 per week,.............

Not bad, it'll pick up for a while after Obamacare kicks in.

[Carl]

Th problem with "studies" of any nature like this (always seems they are pushing a leftist agenda too btw) is that they inevitably have to make assumptions that can`t be proven or use extrapolations of smaller data.

In other words in a city of 100,000 people 5 deaths of indigents/year must equal 50/million.
Just picked those numbers out of the air but you get the idea.

The OP at the DUmp didn`t link to the study itself but a video so I will admit to not being aware of the methodology used to come up with that 1 person every 12 minutes figure but one would need to know what the exact cause of death was and the life circumstances.

For instance are they saying that a person who dies of a heart attack without insurance would have lived had they had it and received some sort of medical care previous to the fatal attack so therefore the death is attributed to a lack of "health care".
That is what I mean by assumptions that can`t be proven... the person would have taken better care of themselves if they had free access earlier.
No one knows if they would have availed themselves of it or not.

[mamacags]

I read a rant last week about a guy who was dying because he had a FATAL disease.  If we had universal healthcare of course he wouldn't be dying from his FATAL disease.   

I always remind my kids that even though a statistic looks scary that doesn't make it true.  I tell them how the anti-tobacco industry counts deaths of anyone who ever smoked as a smoking related death.  Statistics are usually stupid and biased.

[Carl]

These things annoy me so I did a google search and found this write up. http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

The findings come amid a fierce debate over Democrats' efforts to reform the nation's $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry by expanding coverage and reducing healthcare costs.

President Barack Obama's has made the overhaul a top domestic policy priority, but his plan has been besieged by critics and slowed by intense political battles in Congress, with the insurance and healthcare industries fighting some parts of the plan.

The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was released by Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors government-backed or "single-payer" health insurance.

An similar study in 1993 found those without insurance had a 25 percent greater risk of death, according to the Harvard group. The Institute of Medicine later used that data in its 2002 estimate showing about 18,000 people a year died because they lacked coverage.

Part of the increased risk now is due to the growing ranks of the uninsured, Himmelstein said. Roughly 46.3 million people in the United States lacked coverage in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last week, up from 45.7 million in 2007.

Another factor is that there are fewer places for the uninsured to get good care. Public hospitals and clinics are shuttering or scaling back across the country in cities like New Orleans, Detroit and others, he said.

Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said the findings show that without proper care, uninsured people are more likely to die from complications associated with preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Some critics called the study flawed.

The National Center for Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank that backs a free-market approach to health care, said researchers overstated the death risk and did not track how long subjects were uninsured.

Woolhandler said that while Physicians for a National Health Program supports government-backed coverage, the Harvard study's six researchers closely followed the methodology used in the 1993 study conducted by researchers in the federal government as well as the University of Rochester in New York.

The Harvard researchers analyzed data on about 9,000 patients tracked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics through the year 2000. They excluded older Americans because those aged 65 or older are covered by the U.S. Medicare insurance program.

"For any doctor ... it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent," said Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Once again even a simple minded person as myself can see that it reaches conclusions that are based on assumptions rather then by verifiable facts.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Let me see if I get this straight...

DOCTORS are the ones who have dished out this little report.

I'm assuming their motive is pure, i.e. he preservation of human life above all else.

I'm also assuming these doctors have the capacity to deal with 45,000 life-threatening maladies every year hence the "If not for the lack of healthcare coverage we could save them" line of argumentation.

Now, if you have the DESIRE to save life and the CAPACITY to save life then all you need to do after that is ACT to save life.

I see no reason these noble minded doctors can't do what they say can and should be done except that they seek money.

Which DUmmies hate.

[The Village Idiot]

The study is bogus from the get-go

[BEG]

My brother's widow had a rant on her facebook about how her "loved one" died because of lack of healthcare.  I had typed out and ready to post the reply below but decided it wasn't worth it to reply.

My brother didn't die from lack of healthcare, he died because of your methadone.  

Oh and an edit:  Her and her brother are now living together because she lost my brothers house.  Neither her brother nor she has insurance.  He is apparently "too smart" (her words) to work at a job that he can get insurance from (he is a waiter) and she is "too sick" (according to her) to work.  They both want "free" healthcare.

[tuolumnejim]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6584355



I think in most socialist countries, they solve it through starvation.

I actually have a relative that was (past tense, he went BOOM) a Banana Republic Dictator, they generally solve "to many peasants" with execution.

[Karin]

Rush was talking about this today (Monday).  They basically took a sample of people from 1988 to 94 and asked them "do you have health insurance?"  (as in right now.)  Decades later, they determined who had died since then, and then extrapolated.  Bullshit through and through.  And look at choppinbroccoli go on and on breathlessly about air-tight, irrefutable facts.  What a dimbulb. 

BEG, I have some loser in-law relatives like that too.  You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your relatives.   You wanna hear stupid?  My destitute BIL, who was living in his car, finally landed a job.  Was drinking beer on day one of said job.   

[GOBUCKS]

My destitute BIL, who was living in his car, finally landed a job.  Was drinking beer on day one of said job.

 

What else do we work for?
A world without Rolling Rock is no world at all. 

[Lord Undies]

WONDERFUL NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111

That means 300,000,000 (- 1)  Americans are not dying every 12 minutes !!  That means our current system is amazing. 

DON"T CHANGE A THING!!!!!111111111111

[The Village Idiot]

   You wanna hear stupid?  My destitute BIL, who was living in his car, finally landed a job.  Was drinking beer on day one of said job.   

Has it dawned on him that he might be the problem?

[Karin]

GOBUCKS, I meant on the job.  In the company car.  While driving it.  I would never begrudge anybody a cold one after an honest day's work. 

and, FGL, of course not.  Don't be ridiculous. 

[The Village Idiot]

GOBUCKS, I meant on the job.  In the company car.  While driving it.  I would never begrudge anybody a cold one after an honest day's work. 

and, FGL, of course not.  Don't be ridiculous. 

 

[diesel driver]

BEG, I have some loser in-law relatives like that too.  You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your relatives.   You wanna hear stupid?  My destitute BIL, who was living in his car, finally landed a job.  Was drinking beer on day one of said job.   

What's the difference between "in-laws" and "outlaws"?

"Outlaws" are wanted....

[debk]

What's the difference between "in-laws" and "outlaws"?

"Outlaws" are wanted....

 


the best thing about my divorce?

I no longer had the mother in law!

[BlueStateSaint]

What's the difference between "in-laws" and "outlaws"?

"Outlaws" are wanted....

I call my brother's wife "In-Law," and she calls me "Out-Law," because of that very joke.