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Comment by jtbayly | Hacker News Reader

Both GDP and living standards are discussed in the article. The NHS is addressed near the beginning as proof of the deteriorating condition of living standards. 1/10th of the population are on a waiting list for care. 1/10th have done DIY dental work.

You're right that GDP is not a measure of living standards. But neither is saying "NHS" a measure of living standards. Do you actually have a measure you could refer to in order to prove the article wrong?

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Considering Mississippi has 7-8 years less of life expectancy than the UK, the onus of proving who has better healthcare is probably not on the Brits.

I don't think it's a matter of better or worse quality, the Healthcare being expensive and for profit in Mississippi leads to people just not going to the doctor at all

What matters is the outcomes. If nobody is able to use a world-class healthcare system (for whatever reason, could be affordability as in the US or availability as in the UK), then as a whole it's as good as no healthcare.

To be fair, meaningful changes to life expectancy numbers tend to take longer to manifest.

For instance, if you cut preventive healthcare for younger parts of the population that will take longer to manifest.

I wish there were more modeling tools available to run what-if simulations on public data.

The US has both much higher infant mortality and more gun deaths of mostly young men, which skews the life expectancies.

That being said, a relatively large proportion of US GDP is driven by healthcare, which is normally measured at cost in the UK and Europe.

It's because Mississippi is the second most obese state at 40% of the pop. Healthcare can't fix that.

Preventative interventions can; preventing obesity falls under the purview of healthcare departments like the NHS.

But neither private insurance nor hospitals have any incentive to operate preventatively because insurance can just increase premiums and everybody happily makes more money... Some might observe how that also increases the GDP...

Eli Lilly may have a different point of view on that!

Actual health care can fix obesity.

The USA doesn't do much of that though. It prefers medical care.

(E.g., adding a dose-dependent sin tax on food-like substances with added sugar, subsidizing real food for those on SNAP. Unpopular because who doesn't want their simple carbs?)

I dont think paternalism raises quality of life. If Mississippians want to live short, fat lives I dont see the problem.

They don't want to, any more than someone who steps into traffic carelessly wants to have a broken hip (albeit on a different time scale). That's a stunningly paternalistic view.

I dont think the people in mississippi who are fat want to have diets that are comparable to french ones. I also think shame and peer pressure play a large role in keeping people from getting fat and personally find that a terrible way to run a society. Of course, all else equal, almost no one wants to be fat, but all else is not equal.

> USA doesn't do much of that

America does a lot of that, often quite well. It just isn’t provisioned equally, geographically or class-wise.

I prefer forced beatings in the town square

I honestly don't understand this statement. What else besides healthcare could fix that? Are you arguing that Mississippi obesity is due to genetics and cannot be changed?

The only other thing I can think of that would affect state wide obesity is food security and quality. Proper healthcare would be my first pick for fixing obesity.

About Britain:> 1/10th of the population are on a waiting list for care. 1/10th have done DIY dental work

1/10th the population of Mississippi does not have health insurance.

55% of adults in Mississippi over 65 have lost 6 or more teeth. In the UK it is about 45%.

My kids are very unlikely to get shot at school.

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