Hey, try sending anything anywhere in the country for less than 50 cents without using USPS. USPS gets the vast majority of its operating budget from user fees, not taxes.

Also note the fact that other industrialized countries with "socialized medicine" spend less per capita on healthcare than the US, with better outcomes (i.e. higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, etc.) than the US.

>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^CrushBug:
What cracks me up is that hospital births are a relatively recent concept. Women have been birthing on their own for thousands of years. A birth is a natural event, not a medical problem to be solved.

Antibiotics are a relatively recent concept. Before that people died of all kinds of infections we would laugh at today. Modern medicine is a "recent concept." The average life expectancy, a few hundred years ago, was thirty. Should we go back to that, just because it's "natural"?
I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to give birth however they want -- but don't claim that it isn't inherently more risky than giving birth in a hospital. "Natural" doesn't necessarily always mean better.

I totally agree with you and was in no way trying to imply that. My issue is with the approach that birth is a medical problem to be solved, that the mother is in need of being fixed. That part is not the case. We have made many medical advances over the years and I am appreciative of these advances especially when my son was hospitalized for 4 days. Did I think we should have hung out at home and burned incense and hoped for the best? Hell no, we went to peds emergency.

That being said, if all things are equal, and there is no obvious risk to mother and child, why should there be a "No home births" rule/law made based on fear and what might go wrong? The facts don't support it.

>> ^CrushBug:
What cracks me up is that hospital births are a relatively recent concept. Women have been birthing on their own for thousands of years. A birth is a natural event, not a medical problem to be solved.

Antibiotics are a relatively recent concept. Before that people died of all kinds of infections we would laugh at today. Modern medicine is a "recent concept." The average life expectancy, a few hundred years ago, was thirty. Should we go back to that, just because it's "natural"?

I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to give birth however they want -- but don't claim that it isn't inherently more risky than giving birth in a hospital. "Natural" doesn't necessarily always mean better.

Hmm, Bill O'Reilly claiming Amsterdam has a lower percentage of pot users because they have a smaller population. This is very reminiscent of his claim that Canada had a higher life expectancy because the US has 10 times the people and thus 10 times the accidents, 10 times the crime, etc. (Or something like that). Is his grasp of statistics really that bad, or does he just hope to befuddle the audience by saying it in a way that makes it sounds like he believes it?

Anyway, this guys defense of Amsterdam videos are nicely done. I've always thought of Amsterdam as a nice European city that I might like to visit some day, so I guess I'm not the intended audience.

BAAAAA HA HA HA HAH AH AHAHAHA, 40% vs 22% and you're saying "It's a much smaller country" - AGAIN?

Really Bill? Do you have any grasp over the concept of percentages?? Or do you expect that your average viewer has the intellectual prowess of a parrot?

"In fact the only time we don't have a greater life expectancy than the americans is when we're on joint military manouvers" rofl!

I need a clip of the newspaper proposing that "If Hawking was british..."!

Health spending as a share of GDP

US 16%

UK 8.4%

Public spending on healthcare (% of total spending on healthcare)

US 45%

UK 82%

Health spending per head

US $7,290

UK $2,992

Practising physicians (per 1,000 people)

US 2.4

UK 2.5

Nurses (per 1,000 people)

US 10.6

UK 10.0

Acute care hospital beds (per 1,000 people)

US 2.7

UK 2.6

Life expectancy:

US 78

UK 80

Infant mortality (per 1,000 live births)

US 6.7

UK 4.8

Source: WHO/OECD Health Data 2009

If you look at this data, you can see that the US government spends MORE than the British government on healthcare, right now. in actual taxpayers money. 45% of the 16% is 7.2% of GDP, while the britsh government pays 82% of the 8.4%= 6.9% of the GDP

And yet, somehow, the british have FREE, UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. infact, for you Americans, its cheaper than free, because you are already paying MORE, just to be uninsured. If you actually, on top of that want any actual healthcare, you have to pay an insurance company as well.

I just dont get you, here, why wouldnt you rather spend LESS money for BETTER healthcare?

I have a feeling that our low life expectancy in the US is due to lifestyle more than health care. People here, on average, have much higher body fat and exercise far less (including walking) than those in other countries. These are both great ways to ensure that you die at a younger age than you would have otherwise, even with good health care.

I also suspect that this is one factor in the high per capita cost. Emergency care, especially when involving surgery, costs far more than standard care. When there are more people who are obese and sedentary there is generally a greater demand for those expensive emergency treatments. Many of the most costly diseases (diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc) are strongly associated with unhealthy lifestyles, and therefore health care costs tend to correlate with such lifestyles as well.

Of course, diagnostic tools like electrocardiograms are not going to be effective if the patient doesn't care about the results. The test isn't going to cure them. A person might be upset to find out they have heart disease, but how likely will they be to give up cheeseburgers? My grandfather had a lung removed because of lung cancer, but not even that experience put a dent in his smoking habit.

Obviously there are lots of expensive medical procedures that have very little relation to lifestyle (treating accident victims for example), but I don't see how preventable health problems wouldn't inflate our per capita spending numbers. It may be true that treatments simply cost more here than anywhere else, but that isn't the whole story.

What great, time-conserving way to artificially increase the content of carcinogenic dioxins in my leftovers!

This is sure to decrease my life expectancy by alteast 10 to 20 years, thanks Metacafe!

(As many people have already stated in the previous comments, do NOT do this)

Quite so Psychologic. The life expectancy metrics are not reflective of the quality of US doctors, clinics, & hospitals. It has far more to do with choices of individuals regarding diet, sedentary lifestyle, and overindulgence (booze, food, smokes & drugs). Infant mortality is a strawman. When you look at the data, it is obvious the reason is America's far greater 'pre-term' birth rates which are riskier and result in higher mortality (duh) no matter how good the doctors are.

it only takes one person to qualify a country as having excellent health care.

You can rage at the conservative perspective as much as you like if it helps, but reality is what it is. Conservatives think that excellent health care equals excellent doctors, clinics, hospitals, & medicine. Neolibs think that excellent equals a socialized entitlement.

Based on WHAT?

Based on the fact that our health care is excellent. The numbers you cite have very little to do with our health care providers being somehow 'inferior' to European counterparts. They are the result of the poor choices of our citizens. In fact, American doctors are superior at identifying and quickly beginning the treatment of patient conditions. The problem is the PEOPLE want to be 'healthy' while at the same time they are smoking, drinking, drugging up, screwing around, driving stupidly, laying out in the sun, pigging out on junk food, and not exercising.

Definition of inferior

WHO is weighted strongly towards issues that are more political and economic than they are related to actual quality of health care. Regardless, I take issue with the loaded, inaccurate use of 'inferior'. That somehow implies that the US system is full of incompetent doctors, crappy clinics, lousy hospitals, and poor quality medicine. That's simply not true.

Your beef is not that we have 'bad health care'. Your beef is that we haven't scored higher on the WHO's artifically weighted list. We're #37. Oh NO! Our system is 'terrible!'... Uh - no... Just... No. You keep bragging how much better Canada is. They're #30. That's a REALLY big difference, eh hoser? :eyeroll: Just beceause the US is not #1 on the WHO's list doesn't mean our system is 'inferior'. It means: 1. That the WHO's metrics are skewed... 2. US citizens need to stop having thier kids early just to suit thier careers... 3. Americans need to quit being hedonistic, bacchinal, sluggards and start eating less & exercising more.

"But we spend SO MUCH MORE MONEY...!" This is another strawman. Americans spend more per capita on EVERYTHING. Food. Cosmetics. Widgits. Soap. Computer games. Movies. You name it - the US spends more per capita. You think maybe - just maybe - that our spending per capita on health care has more to do with our macroeconomics?

Honestly, the low life expectancy in the USA is much more likely due to lifestyle than healthcare. It doesn't matter how good your hospital is if you're eating pizza and burgers every day. Look at the rate of obesity in the US vs other countries... people die here because they are killing themselves.

I bet it's the 46th-ranked lowest infant mortality rate and 30th-ranked highest life expectancy in the world. It's just so awesome.

Bill-O has a history of being clueless regarding statistics. As for facts, he made a career from being oblivious to those.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

That's the biggest misconception that all you non-Americans need to get your facts straight about. Canadians & Europeans look down their noses and say, "Oh how awful that you evil American's don't 'cover' all your people..." Bullcrap. There is a difference between being 'covered' and being TREATED. I would venture to say that the end result of the evil American system is that far more people are TREATED than in the precious socialized countries where everyone is 'covered' but is routinely denied treatment. I'd rather have a system where 42 million people weren't 'covered', but almost everyone was being treated as opposed to a system where everyone was 'covered' but that people are not treated.


Via Wiki

One complaint about both the U.S. and Canadian health care systems is waiting times, whether for a specialist, major elective surgery, such as hip replacement, or specialized treatments, such as radiation for breast cancer. Wait times in each country are affected by various factors. In the United States, access to health care is primarily determined by whether a person has access to funding to pay for treatment and by the availability of services in the area and by willingness of the provider to deliver service at the price set by the insurer. In Canada the wait time is set according the availability of services in the area and by the relative need of the person needing treatment.

A report published by Health Canada in 2008 included statistics on self-reported wait times for diagnostic services.[47] The median wait time for diagnostic services such as MRI and CAT scans is two weeks with 89.5% waiting less than 3 months.[47][48] The median wait time to see a special physician is a little over four weeks with 86.4% waiting less then 3 months. [47][49] The median wait time for surgery is a little over four weeks with 82.2% waiting less than 3 months. [47] [50] In the U.S., patients on Medicaid, the low-income government programs, can wait three months or more to see specialists. Because Medicaid payments are low, some have claimed that some doctors do not want to see Medicaid patients. For example, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, specialists agreed to spend one afternoon every week or two at a Medicaid clinic, which meant that Medicaid patients had to make appointments not at the doctor's office, but at the clinic, where appointments had to be booked months in advance.[51]

In Canada, waiting is prioritized by patient according to relative urgency, with urgent patients receiving immediate access and the least urgent waiting longer. [52] Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 42% of Canadians waited 2 hours or more in the emergency room, vs. 29% in the U.S.; 57% waited 4 weeks or more to see a specialist, vs. 23% in the U.S., but Canadians had more chances of getting medical attention at nights, or on weekends and holidays than their American neighbors without the need to visit an ER (54% compared to 61%).[53] However, statistics from the free market think tank Fraser Institute in 2008 indicate that the average wait time between the time when a general practitioner refers a patient for care and the receipt of treatment was almost four and a half months in 2008, roughly double what it had been 15 years before.[54]

A 2003 survey of hospital administrators conducted in Canada, the U.S., and three other countries found dissatisfaction with both the U.S. and Canadian systems. For example, 21% of Canadian hospital administrators, but less than 1% of American administrators, said that it would take over three weeks to do a biopsy for possible breast cancer on a 50-year-old woman; 50% of Canadian administrators versus none of their American counterparts said that it would take over six months for a 65-year-old to undergo a routine hip replacement surgery. However, U.S. administrators were the most negative about their country's health care system. Hospital executives in all five countries expressed concerns about staffing shortages and emergency department waiting times and quality.[55][56]

In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, the President and CEO of University Health Network, Toronto, said that Michael Moore's film Sicko "exaggerated the performance of the Canadian health system — there is no doubt that too many patients still stay in our emergency departments waiting for admission to scarce hospital beds." However, "Canadians spend about 55% of what Americans spend on health care and have longer life expectancy, and lower infant mortality rates. Many Americans have access to quality health care. All Canadians have access to similar care at a considerably lower cost." There is "no question" that the lower cost has come at the cost of "restriction of supply with sub-optimal access to services," said Bell. A new approach is targeting waiting times, which are reported on public websites

If we're looking to change the "quality" of content that gets published, I think we need to start by really analyzing what it is that people think shouldn't be there.

I know that I often just submit stuff that I find interesting, and hope it catches with other people. Sometimes I start out knowing it's unlikely to sift, like this DNC ad about healthcare. But sometimes I think I've found a gem, and it doesn't sift for reasons that escape me like FDR's Second Bill of Rights, or 8 Must See Documentaries.

On the other hand, stuff like Bill O'Reilly being a moron skyrockets onto the Top 15, presumably because schadenfreude trumps enlightenment.

There are probably a lot of different ways to go about shaping what's sifted to match our notions of quality, but just raising queue escape mostly just affects how quickly individuals get new ranks, not what gets on the front page or Top 15.

In my opinion the big issue with how VS works now is that timing plays too big a factor. If I sift something late at night, or early in the morning, it's a lot less likely to sift than something I post early in the evening.