New Australian oil find

[Ziggy Stardust]

Those arent 'poor', those are straight up fucking homeless people. Which literally every nation has.

So homeless people aren't poor?

You do realize that a fairly massive chunk of those firebarrle guys are deinstutionalized people from when the asylums started kicking people out, not to mention other mentally disabled people.

Sorry, but you are incorrect.

Quite frankly, there arent enough of those people for it to really matter. And there things called HUD, EBT, and Welfare/Disability.

Well, that depends on how you define homelessness. Permanently homeless? There are probably "only" a few hundred thousand. But in any given year as many as 3.5 million people will be homeless for some length of time (1% of the population, or 10% of the poor population). Almost 40% are under the age of 18, and somewhere around 25% of them are entire families.

And while technically you are right that when you look at them as a proportion of the total country's population, there are not that many. However, population is not uniformly distributed. Rural areas have very little itinerant homelessness, while the vast majority are in cities. And the majority of those are in a select number of cities. On a local level, homeless rates can be massive. The homeless rate in Tampa is almost 3 times the national average. Las Vegas, New Orleans, Honolulu, and Fresno are not far behind.

But yeah, those people getting screwed over is in fact, the price itself. Worth it. I mean really, what do you think motivates most research in the medical field?
Altruism?
Or greed and pride? The desire for all the delicious money and your name being remembered forever. What do you think gets these projects funded to get started? Greed. Dollar signs.

Actually, the vast majority of medical research is motivated by, for lack of a better term, intellectual curiosity. While you are right that there is a good deal of greed on the administrative and funding levels of research institutions, this is largely ancillary to the research itself. Most researchers are career scientists, and nobody becomes a scientist out of greed (it doesn't pay well enough). I mean, if you really think most scientists are after "delicious money" and name recognition, I would venture to guess you don't know too many scientists.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

In fact, thats what I will do. Anytime any "EU is better than America" shit is brought up, Ill just bring up Greece. Just Greece.

Which has better healthcare than the US, and life expectancy still rates higher than the US according to the CIA factbook. So yes, our fiscal policy is dictated by foreign powers, the public sector is close to disintegration, immigration is reaching post-WW2 levels, unemployment is officially 26% and possibly up to 35%, and we are generally a country falling apart. And our healthcare is still better than yours, dummy. Stuff that in your pipe and choke on it.

Also, I didn't know that Greece's situation turns America's fiscal bullfuckery into sound policy.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Better Healthcare? Whose paying for it? Not the Greeks....

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

DH, how does it make you feel to know that the US pays more taxpayer dollars per capita on healthcare than any country with UHC, despite UHC being entirely taxpayer funded and the US's system having private funds to work with as well?

And all this money pays for a system that gives worse results so it's just a matter of private healthcare being incredibly wasteful and terrible. Money has nothing to do with it; America's system is just bad by design.

[Melchior]

Better Healthcare? Whose paying for it? Not the Greeks....

Did you go to private schools? They could have done a better job of teaching you your first language. Wonders of the free market.
More to the point, you're wrong. Greece spends far less per capita for better outcomes, despite being hilariously mismanaged as a country - your less-than-bright-and-informed snipe about their fiscal trouble actually weakens your position, since it highlights how deeply unjust your social system is.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Except Greece may very well default soon....lololololololol. And the European Union fucking implodes. Or Germany purchases Greece.

Muh Feelings? I never claimed that SOCIAL JUSTICE was important to the American System. It only ever is in a tangenital way.

The American System isnt designed to available to all at an efficient cost. Its designed to maximize profit, both profit from serving customers and profit resulting from the fruits of R&D. The second part is the most important. We are one of the world leaders in terms of funding medical advances, regardless of what they may be. Although per capita, Germany might actually exceed us. 1 or 2 others might as well.


Its designed to line the pockets of rich people even more. Big Pharma and all that. And its rather undeniable that a lot of people go into college and Universities do the research etc etc in the Medical field for the money. So in just getting people working to advance medical knowledge, it works fairly well. But its a side effect of its real design, which is to make the successful people involved, from nurses to CEOs, fabulously wealthy.

So in terms of accomplishing its ACTUAL primary goal, monetary profit, the American System is Supreme.

So. In evaluating the American system, you have to take that into consideration. Whether or not that is entirely fucked up is of course debatable.

Which it is really fucked up.

[Stark]

Is this a desperate attempt to find US supremacy in failure, or a sad attempt to appear orthodox on a leftist board?

Both pretty sad.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Appear orthodox?

What? What does the Eastern Orthodoxy have to do with Healthcare?

[sgt67]

Open a fucking dictionary.

[Thanas]

Dominarch's hope has been warned for obvious troll posts in this thread.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Better Healthcare? Whose paying for it? Not the Greeks....

Why don't you roll all that ignorance into a 3-foot tube and stick it up your ass? It won't help your situation, but it will certainly help mine.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Dominarch's hope has been warned for obvious troll posts in this thread.

Okay, what specifically is the troll post other than making fun of Greece's situation?

What? Pointing the hilarious and incredibly stupid policies of the European Union in the last five years is bad? Or is pointing out the massive difference in the end goals of the different healthcare systems mean?


@Dr.Trainwreck


The Me Too asskissing is starting to show.

[Aaron MkII]

The EU's political jackassery isn't relevant to the issue of US healthcare, it still sucks no matter how much you try to distract from the issue by going on about Greece. And that's what your up to, trying to distract from the issue and shift the conversation away from the awkward facts of US healthcare.

And if your not mature enough to discuss things without dishonesty, then why should we continue to humour you?

[Dominarch's Hope]

Dishonesty? You are the ones judging the American Healthcare system by a metric it never truly aspired to in the first place. Now, if you want to measure it by that metric, I wont completely disagree with you. But I wont completely agree either.

So....anybody know who's second in total money used for medical research grants and related stuff? Or whose first in funding research per capita of people? Combining Corporations and Govt etc.

I know Big Pharma funds a fuckload of research.

[loomer]

We're judging it by a moral and ethical standard, not its own 'metric'. If you're judging medicine solely by profitability, then you are doing it wrong.

[Dominarch's Hope]

How is it wrong to judge a business based on profitablitiy?


Now, if you are stating that the medical 'industry' shouldnt be a business and therefore not profit based, I kinda agree with that.

[Alkaloid]

The success of a healthcare system for a society should be judged on whether or not it provides healthcare for the society. If, throug laziness, greed or stupidity a society has allowed business interests to hijack the system for their own benefit, that doesn't make the system good, any more than an engineering form would be good if it turned a profit but whatever it makes falls apart as soon as its turned on.

It's not complicated.

US system = lots of people with no access to healthcare = bad.
Socialised healthcare systems = very few people without access to healthcare = good.

Profit doesn't really come into it here, although the fact that doctors and employees of health insurance firms in countries where socialised healthcare exists are not exactly living in poverty should indicate that it is not automatically unprofitable.

[PainRack]

OMG.... Valdemar is in an oil thread and there isn't talk about Peak Oil and Global warming yet?

[Dominarch's Hope]

The success of a healthcare system for a society should be judged on whether or not it provides healthcare for the society. If, throug laziness, greed or stupidity a society has allowed business interests to hijack the system for their own benefit, that doesn't make the system good, any more than an engineering form would be good if it turned a profit but whatever it makes falls apart as soon as its turned on.

It's not complicated.

US system = lots of people with no access to healthcare = bad.
Socialised healthcare systems = very few people without access to healthcare = good.

Profit doesn't really come into it here, although the fact that doctors and employees of health insurance firms in countries where socialised healthcare exists are not exactly living in poverty should indicate that it is not automatically unprofitable.

Thats your opinion. A nice one. I like it.


Which system has produce the largest growth of medical knowledge? Advancement of medical technology? What about per capita of dollar spent on research? Which system, per millions of citizens, has given mankind the most medical knowledge to work with?


Lets put the start date at 1950.

Then put it at 1900.

[weemadando]

Oh man, are you sure you want to play this game?

[weemadando]

Let's just go with Nobel Prizes for medicine:

Australia (joint with UK) - 1945 - PENICILLIN. Is your game over yet? Seriously, should we even keep going? Your dumb fucking metrics make it impossible for you to win at this point.

Australia (joint with UK) - 1960 - Acquired immune tolerance, which allows organ transplants.

Australia (joint with UK) - 1963 - Something technical to do with nerve cell membranes and behaviour.

Australia (joint with Switzerland) - 1996 - Technical stuff to do with "cell mediated immune defence", which again improved the lot for organ transplants.

Australia - 2005 - Discovery of the cause (and treatment for) peptic ulcers.

Australia (joint with US and Poland) - 2009 - Holy shit this is technical, so I won't even try to understand "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"

We have maybe 10% of your population, so I think those achievements are pretty good.

I mean have you got anything 10x better than antibiotics?

[Stark]

I don't know why you bothered, since all he did was say OMG BEST EVVVVAH and vaguely allude to the market driving research (and thus implying that the government is not a market actor). The research you just did is way more than he ever did: he's just repeating what his dad told him.

[weemadando]

I love his chosen metrics though:

"Best case care" rather than "average availability of care"

"Most money spent" rather than "best outcomes per dollar"

"Biggest pharma" rather than "cost of access to pharmaceuticals"

But hey, money > life.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Australia (joint with US and Poland) - 2009 - Holy shit this is technical, so I won't even try to understand "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase"

Telomerase is the enzyme which causes the creation of a chain of specific proteins at the end of an eucaryote's DNA sequence (eucaryote: any cell with a nucleus, so essentially all lifeforms with more than one cell to them). These proteins, the telomeres, are there to minimize errors in DNA replication. So yeah, telomerase is the reason why our cells can replicate without losing half their DNA in the process. We browse Wikipedia and distill it so you don't have to.

But the real question is not why we are not some weird Fallout mutants. The real question is: how can this be more important than a CEO's quarterly bonus?

Also Dummy, how is it asskissing to stay on a discussion that existed before a moderator stepped in? If you meant asskicking, it is delivered to you right now as per the board's fine purpose (see it right underneath its logo).

[PainRack]

I don't really want to dogpile, but claiming that US health system never aspired to equity and access is bogus.
http://www.cdc.gov/healthycommunitiespr ... equity.htm

Achieving health equity, eliminating disparities, and improving the health of all groups is an overarching goal for Healthy People 2020 and a top priority for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC's Healthy Communities Program supports eliminating socioeconomic and racial/ethnic health disparities as an integral part of its chronic disease prevention and health promotion efforts. To improve health on the local, state, and national level, communities are encouraged to identify and address social determinants of health and improve these conditions through environmental changes.