Anyway given that random EU folks live longer without switching to 1800 lifestyle, looks like there are better options.
In the birth cohorts that the study was looking at? Do you have data to support this?
EUs have lower chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension than USA. Those are not diseases that have any answers in medical system so it wouldn't matter how advanced and available the system is.
For example, 40% of ppl in usa are obese vs 12% Switzerland. 50% of ppl in usa have hypertension vs 20% Swiss.
So what exactly is a medical system supposed to do if half your population is sickly and obese ?
I see this 'medical system' stuff even from very educated ppl but I feel like i am missing something. Do ppl think having access to a doctor is going prevent one from being obese ? whats the logic.
Comments that try to reduce population-scale differences to a single factor, like access to healthcare, are overly reductive. When it comes to obesity (not using being overweight, but truly past the obese threshold) you don’t need a doctor to inform you that it’s unhealthy.
The reductive claims about access to healthcare are also ignoring the fact that people in the US do actually use a lot of healthcare. The rate of GLP-1 use in America for weight loss is around 1 in 8 people, which is significantly higher than anywhere in Europe last time I checked. Obviously the higher obesity rate contributes to higher usage, but it demonstrates that many obese people in the United States are not lacking access to health care.
Doctors can vary in whether or not (and for how long) they advocate trying a healthy diet and exercise before prescribing drugs. In the UK the system is incentivised to avoid drug prescriptions unless necessary, as it reduces the financial burden on the NHS - both for buying the drugs and for managing complications linked to obesity. In the US, pharma companies can offer money and perks to doctors who promote their products.
Why do ppl believe this kind of stuff. It is so bizarre and defies any commonsense.
Also this would often be in the context of the patient coming to the doctor with a complaint. If the doctor says "trying eating healthily and exercising, then come back in a month for a follow-up", some might just do nothing but many people will actually try it.
Of course there is the role of availability of options, but they come from demand, which comes from the above.
> , is this a matter of the health care system
And you say:
> I see this 'medical system' stuff
To me there is a big difference between a "health care system" and a "medical system".
One is only here to try and fix issues, while the other will invest in prevention campains and help direct the overall politics around having an healthy population.
To me the recent EPA decision around PFAs is a signal of a deficient "health care system".
There's also medications in there - hypertension can be controlled with drugs, no?
But, yes, I agree with your main point - obesity in the US is widespread and a massive influence on both longevity and health care costs.
2) There are a lot of things wrong with the American health care system, but a lack of care for white males is not actually one of them.
All it takes is a single, major non-routine event to learn that lesson.
The system is really broken for everyone and the incentives are really skewed away from healthcare.
It was the first time I realized that people are existentially truly on their own and despite its claims, “the system” truly isn’t there for them.
The Amish are very deliberate about what changes they incorporate into their communities. Each community also sets their own rules, so it's poor practice to generalize.
(For example, their attitudes towards electricity are quite complicated and I don't think I could do it justice in a quick post.)
A lack of care for those who can't afford it is, though.
My dad is poor and neglectful of himself. He had a stroke. He got ambulanced to the emergency room and spent a good deal of time there.
The hospital discussed billing which was several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well he can’t afford that. The hospital had us talk to some advisers and they got him on a state Medicaid (?) plan. The plan retroactively paid for it all.
He then got checked out for a variety of other issues including a severe spinal issue and a hip replacement for 0 out of pocket.
It’s great. He’s a changed man who is active and takes care of himself now.
I also had a major medical event and I have since paid tens of thousands out of pocket after insurance. At one point we were investigating if I could essentially quit work for a bit, go on the Medicaid plan, get better, and then go back to my job. That is madness!
States that opted into the ACA Medicaid Expansion and generally fund hospitals have great emergency care for poor people. There's a kind of missing middle where once you're above the income threshold for Medicaid but aren't working for a job that's willing to fund an extremely good health plan you have to deal with all sorts of deductibles and prior authorizations and stuff. Plus, non-emergency care, especially from specialists, has gotten longer and longer wait times unless you're lucky enough to live in a region with mostly healthy people that also aren't the "worried well."
Tl;dr, it's incredibly patchwork, and everyone's experience is going to vary depending on their state's individual social safety net, the overall health of their local population, the particular insurance network and hospital network they have access to, and their individual income.
Also, the US has a federal law that no hospital that accepts Medicare patients is allowed to deny care in the case of an emergency based on someone's ability to pay. That means that a lot of very poor people will get incredibly expensive emergency care for free, while not being able to afford the basic preventative care that would keep them out of a state of medical emergency. That isn't really the hallmark of a particularly functional system.
https://www.cms.gov/priorities/your-patient-rights/emergency...
You have rights in an emergency room under EMTALA Doctor talking to a patient
You have these protections:
1. An appropriate medical screening exam to check for an emergency medical condition, and if you have one,
2. Treatment until your emergency medical condition is stabilized, or
3. An appropriate transfer to another hospital if you need it The law that gives everyone in the U.S. these protections is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, also known as "EMTALA." This law helps prevent any hospital emergency department that receives Medicare funds (which includes most U.S. hospitals) from refusing to treat patients.
racist, or just naive?
However, approx. 9% of US population is uninsured, in Europe (including Eastern Europe) health care systems are universal.
Edit: Even for those insured, insurance claim rejection rate is 19%
I wouldn’t say that, imagine an Amish lifestyle of lots of exercise and no screens mixed with EU better healthcare.
So, we got to know some people in the community and learned some things that would be relevant to this. One big one is the Amish view on technology. With 1965 data, especially looking at farmers, you’ll see variations in pest control tech. Amish people are not against all technology but they evaluate it differently.
For the Amish, they look at a technology and ask whether it will pull them together or push them apart. Farm chemicals would increase yields, but dramatically reduce the number of people they could have working on fields. So many colonies avoided highly toxic chemicals like DDT that were released during or after WW2. And because there was some resistance to Amish people, they tend to congregate together and so you’ll have colonies bunched up in areas - some colonies avoided water table contamination through a freak of geology and cousins who shared a belief on technology.
So nutrition does play a role - food in Amish communities is very whole and very close to natural. As an example, my stepfather was quite affable and so we’d take doughnuts to the factory where we picked up RVs. Certain companies have so much sugar in their doughnuts that it felt like giving people drugs. Physical activity is a constant. And their community plays a massive role in life and life expectancy but this data is from 1965 and looks at farmers so chemical use is definitely part of these findings as well.