Senate health care bill show on C-SPAN

[Lisabob]

Well then scoutldr, no problems, no worries. If it is unconstitutional, I'm sure it will be overturned by the Supreme Court in due course.

[Crossramwedge]

Words out of Landrieu's own mouth: "I am not going to be defensive," she declared. "And it's not a $100 million fix. It's a $300 million fix." In other words, the fix was in.

 

This is 20 times the original amount of the Louisiana Purchase. Man what a joke. Landrieu's taking a $300,000,000.00 dollar bribe and there is nothing we can do about it. Its up to the people of La. to vote her out of office. Wether they will or not remains to be seen.

 

Blanche Lincoln also got goodies. Have not seen what they are yet.

If she continues down this path, she will be voted out of office. Her poll numbers where already way down in Arkansas and the majority of Arkansans are not for this bill. Bye-Bye Blanche.

[Oak Tree]

I am leery of over-simplification of the issue by both sides.

 

Hal asks, Or are you suggesting that WE have the best system in the world? It can't be our life expectancy, we lose there

 

I was more curious about that. According to the CIA world fact book (per wikipedia), we do in fact rank 34th in the world, out of 191 countries. The question then is, why? It could be due to poor health care. It could also be due to any number of other things - too much smoking, too much murder, too much dangerous work in the timber industry, too many taboos - one could hypothesize all day. My first theory, admittedly, with only anecdotal support from my own experience, would be that health care is probably pretty good for the top N% (where N=80 or so) of the population, but that poorer people with less access, or drug addicts, or a variety of others, don't fare as well, and their mortality rates could significantly pull down the average.

 

I did find this interesting paper (2009) on the web: Low Life Expectancy in the United States: Is the Health Care System at Fault?

http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=psc_working_papers

In the abstract, they sum it up: "We conclude that the low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely to be a result of a poorly functioning health care system."

 

From the paper, the U.S. "had the highest level of cigarette consumption per capita in the developed world over a 50-year period ending in the mid-80s" and goes on to state that the rank of the U.S. would improve noticeably if smoking were removed.

 

"Recent trends in obesity are also more adverse in the United States than in other developed countries." No surprise there.

 

Comparing with Europe, "For the major sites of lung, breast, prostate, colon, and rectum cancers, US survival rates were the highest of any of the 18 countries investigated. Cancers first diagnosed on the death certificate (5% in Europe and 1% in the US) were excluded from analysis; if they had been included, the US survival advantage would have increased."

 

and "For men ... 47.3% of Europeans survived 5 years, compared to 66.3% of Americans. For women, the contrast was 55.8% vs. 62.9%. The male survival difference was much greater than the female primarily because of the very large difference in survival rates from prostate cancer."

 

They go on to analyze the statistical evidence and show that the U.S. has higher screening rates and more effective treatments.

 

"Among those with hypertension, 65.5% were being successfully treated in the US (i.e., their levels were reduced below the hypertension-defining threshold), compared to 24.8% to 49.1% in the other countries."

 

Significantly more (88% vs 62%) of our high-cholesterol population is using lipid-lowering drugs (shown to be very effective).

 

Five year survival for heart attack (acute myocardial infarction), U.S. vs Canada: "the hazard rate was 17% higher in Canada", and "our findings are strongly suggestive of a survival advantage for the US cohort based on more aggressive revascularization"

 

This table is pretty telling:

 

5-year survival rate (%)

Site United States Europe

Prostate 99.3 77.5

Skin melanoma 92.3 86.1

Breast 90.1 79.0

Corpus uteri 82.3 78.0

Colorectum 65.5 56.2

N-H lymphoma 62.0 54.6

Stomach 25.0 24.9

Lung 15.7 10.9

 

 

They conclude by saying that it's pretty hard to tease apart international data due to so many reporting differences.

 

The graphs on pages 45 and 46 show a tremendous improvement over time in the U.S. and our treatment of prostrate cancer and breast cancer, far better improvement than other countries over the past 25 years.

 

Final summary: The question that we have posed is much simpler: does a poor performance by the US health care system account for the low international ranking of longevity in the US? Our answer is, no.

 

They do not present too much data on what the reason is...that does not appear to be the point of the paper. They suggest smoking rates, obesity rates, diabetic rates, availability of primary care physicians, and access to health insurance.

 

You can also check out this government report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf

 

Everything is getting better, it seems. Death rates are down. Life expectancy is up. The gap between black and white is down. Heart disease deaths are down. Cancer deaths are down. AIDS deaths are down. Stroke deaths are down. Flu and pneumonia deaths are down (til this year, I imagine. There's some fluctuation in these, no doubt.)

 

Fifty-four percent of people live to age 80.

 

All in all, it's not a bad place to get health care. We develop and adopt better, newer medical treatments far faster than most of the world.

 

For all of those reasons, some people are understandably hesitant about doing a major overhaul on the system. They like the health care that they personally have.

 

 

[gwd-scouter]

Oak Tree - good research and analysis. One thing, though. The US does not develop and adopt new treatments or medications to market faster than most other developed countries. In fact, our FDA approval process makes ours a much slower country in that regard, especially for new pharmaceuticals. And, sadly, our brand name prescription medications cost far more than they do in other countries - for the exact same medications.

[gwd-scouter]

Yes, Landrieu set the record straight, from her own mouth, on the Senate floor, that the state was receiving $300 million and not the $100 million that was being reported on the news.

 

She also stated the reason, clearly and accurately. Talk about open and transparent. She may be voted out of office for voting to proceed with debate on the bill or if ultimately she votes for passage, but I do admire her honesty yesterday.

[scoutldr]

Well both of my Senators voted AYE. What else can be said, except, "THEY LIED"...

 

We have the technology to keep the human body "alive" almost indefinitely...is that what you want?

 

Now if some politically suicidal senator wants to tack on an amendment to ban tobacco to reduce health care costs, I may sit up and take notice.

[vol_scouter]

gwd-scouter,

 

The reason that our brand name medications are more expensive is that we are only one of two countries(the other is Japan I believe) that allow the pharmaceutical to make a profit. If the government that so many of you wish to entrust with your medical care would insist that Europe and Canada as well as other socialist countries pay a profit, then our prescription costs would be less. So the difference in prices is due to our government. If we do the same since we are now a socialist country, the pharmaceutical companies will go out of existence (those evil capitalist companies deserve to go out of existence for making a profit).

 

Before the liberals say that the generics are equivalent, that is a lie. They are chemically the same but their bioavailability are often considerably different which means how they affect the patient varies tremendously. Brand name medications must have a bioavailability of +/- 5% which means the amount actually delivered to the target organs can only vary by +/- 5%. Generics only have to show that the tablet/pill/capsule has +/- 15% of the stated dose - they do not have to provide bioavailability information. So that the fillers, adjustments to the drug that improve absorption, adjust pH, etc. are not accounted for. So between to batches of medications you are guaranteed that the difference is at most 10% to the TARGET ORGANS. Whereas, generics may have a 30% difference between batches of the dose. That is a 100 mg dose is acceptable if the dose is between 85 mg and 115 mg and the dose reaching the target organs is not known. That is why controlling the prothrombin time with generic warfarin is much more difficult than with the brand name Coumadin. The public has been sold a bill of goods.

 

Oak Tree,

 

Thanks for the research. I have lived in a socialized medicine country and watched their wealthy go to New York for their health care even though then and now it is considered one of the finest in the world. I have left my medical practice because the federal government is making it difficult to provide the best care for my patients. The senate will now pass the bill since it requires only 51 votes. Those who 'disagree' but voted for cloture are simply liars. They know that they can get their bribes (using our tax dollars) but tell the voters back home 'I voted against it'. All democrats who came from areas that still wish freedom and liberty will hopefully voted out. Those who wish chains and slavery of socialism will be getting their way.

[Lisabob]

Sigh. Slavery? Really? Isn't there some corollary to Godwin's law about this?

 

Could we *please* try to limit the hyperbole in this debate (isn't there already plenty of that out there).

 

 

[gwd-scouter]

One could hope LisaBob. Don't think it will happen, though.

[gwd-scouter]

I thought this was interesting:

 

While the Republicans like to show the stack and talk about how many pages the Senate health care bill is, I just found out the prescription drug benefit plan that the Republicans narrowly passed in 2003 was a bit over 1,000 pages. That bill didn't cover nearly as much as this bill does.

 

It seems nothing can be done in Congress without a great big bill.