The United States ranks 29th in the world in infant mortality. The only western country with a worse infant mortality rate is Latvia.
In the end, I’d like to think that health care reform isn’t about what Max Baucus thinks or whether Peggy Noonan and John Harris believe that Obama has “fundamentally misread the electorate” or how deep the teabaggers’ anger runs, I’d like to to think it’s about taking baby steps towards being a normal first world country.
Update. The reconstructed teabaggers at Reason have something on this today:
Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, also attributes the gap largely to conduct. Comparing white Americans to Norwegians in his 1995 book, The Tyranny of Numbers, Eberstadt concluded that “white America’s higher rates of infant mortality are explained not by poverty (as conventionally construed) or by medical care but rather by the habits, actions, and indeed lifestyles of a critical portion of its parents.” Whites are not unique in those types of behavior.
If someone from AEI says it, it must be true. Can’t you glibertarians do a little better?
We’re just about the only western country in the world without universal health care. We’re also pretty close to butt-naked last in infant mortality. The onus is on the glibertarians to explain why these two facts are not connected.
And, no, something from AEI doesn’t cut it.
ricky
Obama “fundamentally misread the electorate.” The poor miserable dumb bastard must have looked at the same results as Noonan and Harria and thought he won.
Derelict
Never forget that for Republicans, life begins at conception and ends at birth–with certain limitations.
We cannot fund pre-natal care, since that would just encourage welfare queens to have more babies (just to be able to scoop more free stuff!).
We cannot fund adequate infant nutrition programs, since that would again encourage “those people” to have more babies.
And we most certainly cannot provide them with adequate low-cost healthcare–we’re not communists, after all.
cervantes
And let’s not forget we are also close to last in life expectancy; and we have major racial and ethnic disparities in health status and longevity; and we pay twice as much for health care; and we rank low on consumer satisfaction, ease of navigating the system, and other indicators of individual experience. We also overtreat and do a lot of harm through iatrogenic injury and illness and nosocomial infections.
In other words, we don’t have the “highest quality health care” in the world, we have the lousiest, the absolute worst, among the wealthy countries, and we’re even behind a lot of poor countries. We are, to put it in technical terms, for shit.
Of course it would be unpatriotic to say so.
Morbo
But… we’re obese! We don’t need health care reform; we just need those damn obese babies need to go on a diet!
Face
Yes, but if you have an extremely rare, fundementally bizarre, completely unique condition requiring $200,000 medications and a $790,000 1-month hospital stay, the U.S. is by far the best country to be in. Mostly because there’s so many bankrupcy lawyers.
So fuck the infants, and show me the cojoined twins with Lou Gherigs and Celiacs and CF stats, bitch.
lotus
Toddle over to The New Yorker to check out a href=”http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/08/31/090831ta_talk_surowiecki?printable=true”>James Surowiecki on the “endowment effect,” “status quo bias,” and how Obama could flip them into arguments for instead of against reform. Good stuff I hope the WH sees.
lotus
Ah shoot. Well, there’s the link, even if you have to cut-&-paste.
Dr. I. F. Stone
“… I’d like to to think it’s about taking baby steps towards being a normal first world country.” …and you’d be wrong as usual.
ricky
Where do we rank in deaths of infants and toddlers left in car seats?
amk
USA, USA, USA, USa, USa, USa….Usa, …Usa,…Usa….usa…usa….us……….
Keith G
Brought this up with an MD I know socially and got this:
Besides anger issues, I was wondering about finding stats adjusted for the differing methods of counting.
jwb
Shorter Noonan and Harris: What the electorate clearly wants is Republicans in charge and tax cuts.
Has anyone noticed that recently (since the teabagging has died down) the GOP message machine has been operating much more efficiently and on target? Any idea who has taken charge?
RSA
This observation is difficult to fit into the argument that socialized medicine is a violation of our basic freedoms as Americans. So let’s ignore it. /glibertarian
smijer
Via RW:
Behind the Baby Count
Worth considering. I mean, I agree our healthcare system needs the overhaul – but this statistic is suspicious.
tc125231
Wonkette on Queen Noonan.
http://wonkette.com/410651/peggy-noonan-abhors-this-tasteless-measure-to-bring-health-to-humans
jwb
@Keith G: Yeah, that sounds like talking points, and I imagine we’ll be hearing a lot more of them in the near future. I wonder who is putting them out.
jwb
@tc125231: Pull the plug on Queen Noonan.
Cataphract
Yeah!
Take that, Latvia!
Zifnab25
These numbers come from the WHO, which uses a uniform standard for determining live birth. And this is a typical right wing talking point, alongside “But we treat specific kinds of cancer and heart disease better”. It’s a lot of noise.
Lee
Reason has an article up about this
@Keith G:
The EU has been using the same reporting methods has we have (WHO standards) since the mid(?) 90’s. I believe MOST European nations use the same standards. We fair poorly against many EU nations.
I have no idea about countries in Asia.
Original Lee
Don’t forget that Latvia has a reputation of being a drug trafficking crossroads. IIRC, Latvia has the highest percentage of children in orphanages of any Western Hemisphere country because of this.
gnomedad
Steve Chapman takes a contrarian view here, if anyone wants to take him on. I have no simple summary or reply.
tc125231
@Keith G: Krugman posts carloads. Check his archive. Your doctor, by the way, is an intellectually lazy SOB for two reasons:
1. Many countries with single payer have launched effective campaigns to change public behavior, and improved outcomes in that fashion. Finalnd leaps immediately to mind, but there are others.
2. Every EU country, including England, whose health care stats are sort of the “weak sister” of the bunch, has better measurements than the US on a statistic created specifically to factor out demographics –deaths per 1000 treatable illnesses. Not only do some (Sweden, France, Germany….) have MUCH better numbers on this statistic, they ALL spend less money per capita.
Tell your halfwit doctor to put that in his pipe and smoke it.
El Cid
@Keith G: Social scientists are usually aware of different measurement standards. People who aren’t assume that such statistical researchers have never thunk of looking up definitions and stuff when doing cross-national research. The WHO doesn’t just buy a local survey and say ‘hey everybody we got numerz!’
There are also global warming ‘skeptics’ who continually talk about the possibility of some sort of solar-based effects as though climate scientists had never really heard of or noticed the Sun before.
Original Lee
@Zifnab25: But it’s useful noise, see, ’cause WHO is a soci a list unit of the UN, and therefore their numbers are suspect.
Lee
The numbers come from the countries. The standards of reporting from the WHO. It is up to the individual countries if they use the WHO standards or not.
jibeaux
“We also count stillbirths as infant mortality; no one else does. ”
I really, really do not see how that could possibly be true. If a baby born dead is not considered an infant mortality, it’s pretty tough to see what WOULD be. I would ask HIM/HER (I’m guessing “him”) for his support for that position.
Koz
Just remember kiddies, the problem isn’t “them” it’s you.
Roger Moore
@Derelict:
Fixt.
Capn America
Since when has Latvia been a Western country??? I know they’re not as backwards as Russia or Belorus or the other Eastern European nations, but they’re not exactly Denmark either.
scav
mmmph, herr docktor is rather revealing in his examples. Apparently performing wild acrobatics at the beginning of life (preemies) and at the end (keeping the moribund breathing) both activities rather coincidentally being machine intensive and taking place in hospitals are what “we’re” good at and area apparently what medicine is all about. Helping people not be obese and all those other things in the middle aren’t apparently medicine at all.
“homogeneous populations”, ha! Like he would know.
El Cid
The World Health Organization publishes a guide to its statistical indicators (PDF here).
Here are portions of its treatment of infant mortality:
***************************************
Infant mortality rate is the probability of a child born in a specific year or period dying before reaching the age of one, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of that period.
Infant mortality rate is strictly speaking not a rate (i.e. the number of deaths divided by the number of population at risk during a certain period of time) but a probability of death derived from a life table and expressed as rate per 1000 live births…
…WHO produces trend of IMR with standardized methodology by group of countries depending on the type and quality of source of data available.
For developed countries where civil registration is complete, IMR is computed directly from data of the civil registry if the data of the year to be estimated is available.
For countries with adequate trend of data from civil registration, age pattern between infant mortality and under-5 mortality from the most recent data is used as standard to the modified logit life table developed by WHO, in order to convert the projected under-5 mortality rate from a weighted regression into a projected infant mortality rate.
For countries with survey data, since infant mortality rates from birth histories of surveys are exposed to recall biases, infant mortality is derived from the projection of under-five mortality rates converted into infant mortality rates using Coale- Demeney model life tables.
The Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality of Estimation which includes representatives from Unicef, WHO, the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division, is actively working to harmonize and carry out joint estimation.
Predominant type of statistics: adjusted and predicted.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Keith G:
You are a better person than I am, to listen to that screed all the way to the end. I would have stopped listening to anything that person had say right after that bit. The sherrif isn’t the only thing blackity-black black in this man’s picture, methinks.
By the way, since when and on what basis is a “homogeneous population”** a good thing from a health stats standpoint?
** whatever that means – 19th Century psuedo “scientific” racism much? I guess being an MD in the 21st Century doesn’t necessarily mean being caught up on the latest in population genetics.
PeakVT
most of these other countries are very homogeneous in their population
Translation: America has more stupid brown people.
Tell your acquaintance to go get stuffed
joes527
but … but … but …
I heard if you removed violent crime and auto accidents we are #1!!!!!!!
Punchy
@Keith G: Related, but a little OT, my comment:
Does anyone here find themselves so angry at Republicans that they’ve chosen to exclude them whenever possible? Like this doc? Would you choose a new doc if you found out he was a McCain/Palin supporter? I would. We bounced a wedding florist for this exact reason (she was dumb enough to put a bumper sticker in a prominent position in her store for all to see).
Seriously….I would change financial advisors, counselors, a lawyer (if I needed one), doctor, fitness trainer….there really isn’t anything that I would trust them on if I knew they were dumb/bigoted/angry/corrupt enough to support the Republican style of gov’t.
jibeaux
Well, I have to correct myself. It seems that a common definition of infant mortality is the number of deaths of infants 1 year or younger per 1000 LIVE births.
I never knew that. I instinctively consider a newborn to be an infant and completely assumed they would be counted.
Oh, well, another of the internet traditions of which I am aware is running your mouth when you know not of what you speak, hm?
Paul L.
Megan McArdle destroyed that talking point.
Blacks have higher rates of preterm birth.
US defines smaller preemies than most countries.
And since the argument will be that she was wrong about the high mortality rate for black babies.
From your link.
Napoleon
@Punchy:
Yes, I would never do business with a wingnut if I could avoid it.
El Cid
@joes527: But remember, only remove those factors from the U.S. and leave all those factors in the soci-alist countries’ info, because that right there’s some good statisticking!
jibeaux
@Punchy:
I do. It’s not just that they’re obviously going to be not very smart – people can be smart in different ways and I think that you could be a Republican and still manage to successfully pick flowers for a wedding – but that for all I know, those people contribute heavily to Republican campaigns. I do not want even the tiniest fraction of money I contribute to be a part of that.
The only time I have ever had the opportunity to do so, however, was when I was going to get some used kids’ clothes from a small craigslist business and I saw the McCain sticker on the only car in the driveway. Really sticking it to the Man, I was!
In addition to the contribution rationale, I think for nearly everyone it is a moronic business strategy that should be discouraged, much the same way it doesn’t make any sense for John Mackey, who might know something about $3 oranges but is not a health care expert, to go spouting off on his ideas for health care reform. If I am in the market for a plumber or a florist, advertising your political preferences is just going to potentially piss off half your client base for no obvious gain. (It’s a little different if you have, say, a sustainable green roof business or something, and you think it would improve your bona fides to advertise your support for progressive candidates.)
tc125231
@Paul L.: I am missing your point. Aren’t these people US citizens? Are you suggesting that they are not white so they don’t count? Are you suggesting that those other countries have mostly white people, who are naturally healthy?
WHAT are you saying?
By the way, the idea that McArdle could destroy anyone in a statistical argument is ludicrous. She couldn’t count to 20 without her fingers and toes.
El Cid
See people? Our infant mortality rates are awesome if you don’t count black people and those Hispanicoids. Thank Megan McAddled, that proud product of a government-funded, soci_alist upbringing, for proving this important fact.
Wapiti
First, most of these other countries are very homogeneous in their population…
I wonder if people, like your MD friend, know that when they use the homogeneous argument that everyone else in the room hears “I’m a bigot”.
And in any case, I’m not sure that either France or England, for example, with immigration from old colonies, are particularly homogeneous.
Brian J
A few weeks ago, at my niece’s baptism, I spoke with some of my conservative relatives. Some were a little more out there than they usually are, especially the fairly well off family members. I can’t really speak about their claims about Obama and small businesses, although the fact that they kept on referring to him as a socialist doesn’t do them any favors in my eyes.
Anyway, the subject turned to health care, and while it revealed some interesting information, such as the fact that one of my aunts would probably buy into a public option for my cousin who is in college depending on the price (or something to that effect), the basic thrust of her point was that she didn’t understand why it was her problem to pay for people who didn’t have coverage. In other words, she was talking about a value judgment, not something more factual in nature.
There’s certainly a healthy mix of the normative and the positive in economics. We’ve seen that in the health care debate, where the right policies are even less clear than they are in other areas. But I’m starting to suspect that here, a lot of people who are against reform simply don’t want to fork any more money over, or more generally, don’t want theirs messed with. But unfortunately, this seems even more backwards than it does when it comes to something like taxes. It’s far more easier, I think, to expect someone to stop receiving public assistance and earn more money (at least in normal times) than it is to have someone who is priced out of insurance to attain coverage.
Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I think there’s something to this. Sadly, I don’t see any way around this, if the other side isn’t willing to budge.
gwangung
So, basically, what you’re saying is Blacks aren’t real Americans.
BIGOT.
Michael
OT, but I think we’re actually about to hit the wingularity.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/24/771581/-8-Years-Later-A-Republican-Wants-Timelines
“John Roberts was interviewing Corker on the state of affairs in Afghanistan since their recent election. Corker says he expects the military to ask for more troops soon…But then, Corker went on to say some pretty astonishing things, given the way republicans have waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq the past eight years. His assessment is that we’re NATION BUILDING in Afghanistan! We need to get back to finding alQueda in Pakistan, he said. There was no followup questioning….Corker has finally come to the conclusion that we need BENCHMARKS, which does sound a lot like timelines to me. He said that someone needs to talk with the troops and the American people and explain what the plan is in Afghanistan….He’s also decided that we need some diplomacy. We need diplomacy and partners.”
gwangung
“I’m a bigot I’m a bigot I’m a bigot and I’m DAMN proud of it.”
Asshat.
jibeaux
I realize that I have as much chance of gaining insight from Paul L. as from Barney Frank’s dining room chair, but can anyone figure out WTF is his point here? Is it the usual one made in voting, namely that if you count only the REAL Americans, white people, that McCain won? It’s just these superfluous people that keep being included for some weird statistical reason that’s messing up the TRUE statistics?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@tc125231:
A Constitutional Originalist would tell you that black infant mortality stats should only count 3/5ths as much as white infant mortality stats, just like the founders intended.
Napoleon
@Paul L.:
Megan M has never destroyed any talking point. She is as close to a complete fool as one can be.
Warren Terra
Paul L, even assuming anything you say is correct, the most charitable interpretation (i.e. leaving accusations of racism out of it) is:
Poor Folks Don’t Count.
To which I reply:
Fnck you very much.
JGabriel
Keith G’s Winger MD Acquaintance: :
This is most likely a crock of shit. While I can’t prove it from context, I strongly suspect Winger, MD is comparing US over 40 and over 80 rates to UK and Swedish general population rates. That’s just the type of statistical apples and oranges comparisons the right does all the time. Note how it’s perfectly phrased to be true either way.
And if it’s a talking point they got from elsewhere (most likely) they may not even be aware they’re doing it.
.
gwangung
Why be that way?
What he said is racist. Period.
Far as I’m concerned, if you say racist things and don’t take them back, you’re a racist and a bigot.
dmsilev
@Paul L.:
The only way that sentence could exude more FAIL would be if you changed the name to Jonah Goldberg.
-dms
JGabriel
Paul L.:
So you’re arguing that blacks aren’t Americans? That’s mighty white of you.
.
amk
@Paul L.:
paul, how much did megan pay you to spread her crap ?
Zifnab
@gwangung: Yeah, I stopped listening the moment he sighted Megan McArdle as a credible source. He might have scored lower on the credibility poll if he’d started with “But Bill Kristol said…”, although not by much.
dmsilev
@JGabriel:
Remember, you have to multiply all black statistics by 3/5s to get the “real American” numbers.
-dms
JGabriel
Reason:
And, of course, habits, actions, and especially lifestyle, are never a response to, or a product of, poverty.
What a jackass.
.
Zifnab
@Warren Terra:
What’s that? The new GOP Health Care Recovery Plan?
Step 1: Stop counting poor people
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Palin / Bachman ’12!
Zifnab
@JGabriel: For instance, poor people don’t have regular doctor checkups. And they have a habit of missing the diabetes prescriptions they can’t afford. And poor women over 50 are less likely to get mammograms.
This is really just the result of bad habits.
mclaren
This is outrageous.
It’s a disgrace.
We can do better. American can become number one in the world with the highest infant mortality if we all pull together and do our parts.
C’mon, everyone! Let’s put our backs into it! We can have the highest infant death rate in the world if only we want it badly enough. Insurance companies can help — redefine pregnancy as the result of a “pre-existing condition” and refuse to pay for obstetrics…that would do it!
Yeah! Raise your giant foam fingers, people! GO AMERICA! NUMBER ONE!!!
Warren Terra
@ Gwangung, #54
I just figured that the trolls love being called racists, claiming their accusers have prevented dialogue. I wanted to point out the insanity of the idea even exclusive of race.
El Cid
In fact, many pregnancies can be seen as the result of behaviors which lead to pregnancy, so it’s clear that if you subtract out all pregnancies the infant mortality rate goes way down.
Brian J
Let’s just say that AEI has it right. The question then becomes, just what the fuck do they propose to do about it?
dmsilev
@Brian J:
Tax cuts for the wealthy, of course.
-dms
Ash Can
This.
I swear to God, is it too fucking much to ask that this supposedly wealthiest and most highly evolved nation in the world, you know, act like it?
Oh, and @Dr. I. F. Stone: Golly gosh, I’m so glad you post here. You add so much to the discussion.
joe from Lowell
Reason writer: our health outcome statistics aren’t universally worse than other developed countries because of our health care system. Perish the thought! No, that’s a consequence of other factors.
For my next piece, I’ll explain why guns are awesome.
After that, I’ll explain why cars are awesome.
Week Three, I’ll explain what obesity isn’t a problem.
And, rounding out the month, I’ll explain why poverty and inequality aren’t problems.
Morbo
This is an awesome moment in talking point history. On one hand we have Reason claiming that whites have higher infant mortality rates. On the other we have McArdle/her proxy claiming that our rates are worse because of minorities. It’s a beautiful thing.
Meyer
Megan McArdle destroyed that talking point. Blacks have higher rates of preterm birth.
Megan McArdle doesn’t “destroy” talking points, she just ignores data which doesn’t fit into her argument.
And speaking of not doing business with Wingnuts, she caused me to cancel my Atlantic subscription.
Warren Terra
@ Zifnab, #61
I’m still hoping to compromise with the old Republican plan and create a Public Beer Heiress Option.
Or maybe if we abandon our sick or crippled then Ross Perot will pay for their care.
Brian J
Oh, right. My bad, SATSQ.
Brian J
And speaking of not doing business with Wingnuts, she caused me to cancel my Atlantic subscription.
gwangung
At some point, you just have to call them out. And bring out the evidence again and again and again. Either they walk back from it or they accept it. YOU’RE not stopping dialogue; THEY are. Either they own their racism or they repudiate it; they just can’t ignore it.
asiangrrlMN
By the way, did you know that Asian American women have the highest life expectancy rate (average) of any American at 86 years old? White males, on the other hand, top out at 76 years old. Therefore, the man is bringing MY average down!
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/111095.php
http://www.omhrc.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlID=53
So, if we’re really talking about homogeneous populations, then it’s yellow all the way, baby!
gwangung
@gwangung: Because, God knows, there are those of us who CAN’T ignore their racism on an everyday basis.
Church Lady
Here in Memphis, we have one of the highest, if not the highest, infant mortality rates in the nation. Here, it is a combination of poverty, teen motherhood and, frankly, ignorance. These girls/women are all eligible for services under the WIC program, but many fail to utilize the services available to help them.
About a year or so ago, The Commercial Appeal ran a series on the infant mortality rate and some of the things these new mothers did in caring for their infants was jaw dropping. Can you imagine putting your baby to sleep in a dresser drawer? How about having the baby sleep in the bed with you, and often a few others. There were babies dying because an adult rolled over on them, or accidentally shoved them off of the bed.
There are programs here, both public and private, sending nurses out to teach these young mothers to properly care for their children. Unforutnately, here the army of poor teen mothers vastly outnumbers the nurses available to help them, and even when a nurse is available, her efforts are often thwarted by well meaning grandmothers and great grandmothers that insist the young mother do things the way they did, including having the infant sleef of its stomach.
In some circumstances, I’m not sure the battle can be won.
asiangrrlMN
@gwangung: Damn right. You keep shouting out the truth. I am right here to back you up on it.
lotus
A little OT maybe, but a nice idea: “NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Could Glenn Beck be killing off an entire cable genre? …”
P.S. Beck has now lost 33 advertisers.
Zifnab
@lotus: God let’s hope so.
Glidwrith
@El Cid: Hate to tell you this, but they DO define pregnancy as a “pre-existing condition”. I ran directly into it………
jibeaux
@Church Lady:
Sure. Lots of poor babies throughout time have slept in drawers. I’m not sure it’s a cause of death or that they know or care. And lots of babies sleep in beds with adults, and rolling over on them until they suffocate is extremely rare, generally by parents so drunk they’re comatose. “Co-sleeping” is a very popular upper middle-class phenomenon advocated prominently by pediatrician Dr. William Sears.
matoko_chan
hehe, I just submitted a question to the unreconstructed teabaggers (niiiice!) at Reason through channels…..bet i get crickets.
I axed, is the emergence of the Third Culture making conservatism obsolete?
Brick Oven Bill
The fall in ranking from 1960 to the present corresponds inversely with the increase in non-European populations in the US. However, if you look at any given demographic group, the US does a pretty good job.
Infant Mortality-Albania: 18.62/1000
Infant Mortality-White Americans: 5.76/1000
Infant Mortality-Zimbabwe: 32.31/1000
Infant Mortality-Black Americans: 13.63/1000
If the goal is to increase America’s health care ranking in the world, illegal aliens should be deported, and future immigration policy should be limited to high IQ applicants, who have a better sense of future-time orientation, making better health decisions. Doing drugs while pregnant is a bad health decision for the child. You cannot blame irresponsible personal behavior on America’s health care system.
“Pregnant black women were 4.5 times more likely to have used illicit drugs in the past month than white pregnant women.”
HyperIon
@Michael: you quote someone who said “We need diplomacy and partners”.
To which I add “And a pony”.
“Af/Pak is a disaster” => “water is wet”.
The real question is: what is mr. 11 dimensional chess going to do about it? If he buys into the “more troops” approach, he will drive me even further away. I’m pretty sure Canada and europe are not going to throw more troops into the mix.
If one wants to talk tough on Af/Pak when running for office, OK. But it’s time for reality…we don’t have the bodies to do COIN there. He’s naive if he thinks even 100K would be enough.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Church Lady:
El Cid
The rich and powerful, giant nation of Nicaragua declared that despite massive unemployment and tiny government budgets and massive indebtedness, it had now once again achieved the status of near universal literacy, attaining under 4% illiteracy rates after a height of 30% illiteracy as recently as 2006.
Meanwhile the struggling, impoverished, tiny United States continues efforts toward matching Costa Rica’s achievements in health care, life expectancy, and infant mortality.
toujoursdan
Many of those other countries are every bit as heterogeneous as the U.S.
Have these people visited Canada, Australia or New Zealand recently? They take in more immigrants per capita than the U.S. does and it shows. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Sydney (NSW), Melbourne and Auckland are amongst the most multicultural cities in the world.
Capn America
@asiangrrlMN yup and they still looks like they’re 20 at 40. Of course, after 50 they suddenly crash.
steve s
What Clinton tried didn’t work, in other words, so Obama’s trying it another way. Now the United States Senate looks reluctant to pass a comprehensive plan, so people think Obama is making mistakes. But looking back at American history, it’s not only Clinton who failed to accomplish comprehensive health-care reform—his effort joined reform charges by FDR, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter on the ash heap of history. Johnson, arguably the most accomplished legislator in American history, was too scared to try and brought us Medicare and Medicaid instead. It defies plausibility to suggest that president after president after president is blundering or inept. Rather, we should just admit the obvious—people keep trying and failing to reform the health-care system because reform is hard to do.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/08/reform-is-hard.php
liberal
@Keith G:
I think this really might be true (viz, that at least regarding infant mortality there’s an apples-to-oranges issue).
Brick Oven Bill
Also from the above link. Percentage of drug-using women who quit using illegal drugs when they find out they are pregnant:
White: 79% stop taking drugs.
Hispanic: 43% stop taking drugs.
Black: 11% stop taking drugs.
In my opinion, this again ties into the future time orientation portion of the human brain, evolution, and human biodiversity.
asiangrrlMN
@Capn America: You got that right. I still have a dozen good years in me before my fall, though, so I’m ok with it.
Warren Terra
@ Church Lady, #78
It’s true poor people fail to utilize services, but it’s no accident. Often enrollment is limited to fewer than eligible or a program isn’t publicized, so the state can save money.
Church Lady
@Montysano: Should have been “sleep”. Where did the edit function go? I miss it.
Keith G
@Church Lady:
Utter nonsense. This is social education we are talking about, not cold fusion. If the tales you tell are indeed true, the problems you id can be corrected – unless you buy into the notion that America society is just plain too inept to continue existing. I am not there……yet.
But you do allude to a concern of mine (and others) that a key componet of healthcare is education; a componet that is being crushed down by some state budgets. that’s another topic.
Woody
Since when has Latvia been a Western country???
Since the scientists of the Renaissance invented the idea of ‘continents,’ probably…Europe (i.e., the “West”) starts at the Urals…
Keith
We are all Latvians now.
Ann B. Nonymous
I wonder how they’ll square this circle?
Hypothesis one: the wingnuts will claim that “wiggers” are raising white infant mortality rates, as impressionable young people of sound white stock are seduced by the charms of Ludacris to procreate like pimps and welfare queens.
Hypothesis two: the wingnuts will claim that George Soros is making White America fat, so that Gentile infants will be plumper for Passover. (Related: where do you think the “medical waste” trucks from the abortion clinics go? Straight to the matzo factory, my friends.)
Hypothesis three: the wingnuts will claim that White America has been cursed by the Moon God Baphomet for its refusal to submit to sharia law, while the craven dhimmi Europeans have submitted to the lash of Tash in all but name.
Which is stupid enough for Erick Erickson to believe? All three? Or should I add more lobotomy?
liberal
@Church Lady:
I’m a father of 4 m.o. twins, and up to a certain age, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with using a dresser drawer as a poor-man’s bassinette. Of course, the safest place for a child is a crib.
It’s pretty common among the granola crowd to “co-sleep”. I think it’s a bad idea, but it’s not clear that it’s _that_ dangerous. IMHO the examples you cite are probably quite rare.
I guess you know about as much about the history of raising infants as you know about the connection between wealth inequality and rent seeking (i.e., not much). Yes, infants should be placed on their back to sleep (barring some unusual reason not to), but it’s hardly something old—the “Back to Sleep” campaign is much more recent than that (maybe twenty years or so). So you don’t have to go back to our “grandmothers” generation.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@JGabriel:
MASSIVE basic logic fail. Even if it was true in the most straightforward sense, it doesn’t do you a lot of good if you’re not one of the ones that makes it to 40/80 in the first place. Is he making an argument that we should start out our life somewhere else and then move to the US in our 40s? Or just that anyone over 40 shouldn’t give a shit about younger people dying because they have perfectly “adequate” healthcare?
And one would assume MDs would be familiar with selection bias–that the rates might be different because our really sick people die before 40/80.
Good god.
Capn America
@Woody: so you would consider backwater countries like Albania, Macedonia, and Ukraine, not to mention very Eastern countries like Turkey and Russia, as part of “The West”?
Michael
We have the “Ishtar” of health insurance systems – expensive and utterly failed at its central purpose.
To Cato Conservatives, I say this: go get your shine box.
CapMidnight
@El Cid:
The problem is those darn babies. I favor a policy making them go back where they came from, then filing proper admission forms.
RSA
From the Reason article:
It’s well-known, or it should be, at least, that in some European countries the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers is far higher. In Sweden, for example, it’s 55%. Making the connections that Chapman does without identifying their obvious weaknesses smacks of intellectual dishonesty. It might be possible to explain this away, but you have to try. Unless you don’t respect your readers.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
And this is aside from the fact that Mr. Brilliant Winger, M.D. somehow thinks that “lifestyle” choices aren’t a legitimate medical issue that would be treated in an adequate healthcare system?
Zifnab
@Brick Oven Bill: Yes, we’ve managed to stay above two of the poorest countries in Europe and Africa respectively. We also have a much lower rate of domestic terrorism than in Israel, Egypt, and Iraq.
And we have fewer incidences of malaria than in India.
And we have fewer droughts than in Sudan. And we have a smaller population than China. And we are home to far fewer former Soviet KGB operatives than Russia.
USA! USA!
DougJ
To Cato Conservatives, I say this: go get your shine box.
A few years back, when I lived in Georgia, some buddies of mine came down to visit and we watched “Good Fellas”, then went out to play pool and drink. Coming out of the men’s room, I thought I saw one of my friends and said “now go get your fucking shoe shine box.” Turned out it was a total stranger.
Luckily, I was in the south so the guy just nodded. If that had happened up here, I would have gotten my ass kicked.
Capn America
@Zifnab: lol Not to mention that the vast majority of white Americans have no roots in Albania, nor the vast majority of black Americans actually descend from Zimbabwe. The UK and Ivory Coast, respectively, would be more suitable countries for comparison.
Warren Terra
I love when opponents of “socialized medicine” bang on about how if they live long enough then Americans subsequently do OK by world standards, as in this post-40 bit.
They should read up on Medicare.
liberal
@lotus:
Love that endowment effect—makes good old Coase’s Theorem irrelevant to the real world.
Ash Can
@Church Lady:
True, but that doesn’t excuse us as a nation from trying to improve the situation. In this case, I’d say the long-term solution is to take steps to reduce poverty and near-poverty (part and parcel of which is improving access to decent health care) and improve public education, while a near-term solution would be to increase allocations to expand the visiting nurse program. These long-term suggestions especially are pie-in-the-sky, to be sure, but it all boils down to getting our priorities straight — of deciding once and for all that the well-being of our nation’s citizens trumps our observation of the tenets of the Most Holy Church of the Free Market (viz., treating capitalism as a deity rather than just another tool to achieve greater and more important objectives).
JGabriel
@Brick Oven Bill:
The goal is to provide First World levels of health care commensurate with out status as a First World Country. Your argument, BOB, suffers greatly from comparing our infant mortality rates to Third World countries like Albania and Zimbabwe — a fundamentally dishonest comparison.
The 5.7 deaths per thousand you cite for White Americans is obviously much higher than the <3.5 deaths per thousand typical, for instance, in Scandinavia.
Why shouldn’t we have the same kind of infant mortality rates for ALL Americans as Scandinavia does for its citizens? Any reference to race, poverty, etc., is just excuse making for the fact that you obviously hate America.
Any true American would want us to be #1 in the world in health care for ALL Americans. We’re America! There’s no reason in the world why we shouldn’t be able to do as well as Sweden or Norway or Finland.
.
liberal
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Absolutely. I’ve seen people claim that such public health issues can’t properly be thought of as under the designation of “medicine”.
liberal
@JGabriel:
Especially considering we spend more on health care/health insurance than almost everyone else (as fraction of GDP).
It’s not even a matter of compassion—it’s a matter of “what the hell are we getting for our dollar?”
If we’re going to be stuck with these crap results, could we at least be paying what we should be paying? Which is about 1/3 what we pay now.
Warren Terra
@ Zifnab, #108
We also have many fewer incidents involving penguins than Argentina, and our automobile safety must be better than in Australia, where serious accidents with kangaroos are more common.
JGabriel
@Michael:
Ishtar had a central purpose?
Huh. The things you learn on the interwebz(tm).
.
Meyer
It’s not even a matter of compassion—-it’s a matter of “what the hell are we getting for our dollar?”
The most powerful health insurance industry in the world.
Travis
@Keith G: Many people have given you good responses on the data question.
The question I always want answered from people who issued screeds like this is: if what you say is true, then why aren’t the populations of all the Western countries clamoring to have a great system like ours? French farmers have burned tractors in the street in the debate over imported cheeses, I think they’d be able to whip up a protest or two across Europe if they felt that their medical systems were inadequately serving them and their children.
I love being American, and yet, the idiocy of my native land can be awe-inspiring.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Being a graduate student at a med school and interacting with med students here has led me to believe that med schools are most definitely NOT created equal.
There seem to be med schools that teach students to understand the cutting-edge biology around new medicines, correctly apply statistical tests, and have a high percentage of students who do research and know how to interpret data–and there are those that, um, don’t.
joes527
@liberal: I have 3 kids. for each one, we listened to the pediatrician about how they should sleep, and they each ended up sleeping differently.
The first slept on his stomach (so he wouldn’t choke to death if he spit up)
The second slept on her side with rolled up blankets propping her up (so that she wouldn’t choke to death on her spit up and wouldn’t roll onto her stomach where she was sure to die) I remember special pillows designed to wedge your infant into a position where they might survive the night that were all the rage back then.
The third slept on her back (I guess choking to death on spit up was out of style by then)
If we had a fourth, I’m sure we would be balancing them on their head to sleep.
We also had the babies in our bed (not all the time, but some times) This was either supposed to kill them or make them healthier, depending on who you asked.
While the “back to sleep” thing looks like it is legitimate, pearl clutching over those other mothers who are DOIN IT RONG has an old and storied history.
Kyle
Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute…his 1995 book, The Tyranny of Numbers, Eberstadt
Funny how right-wing stink tanks devote so much attantion to proving ‘numbers don’t mean what they say’ when they show that United States is worse off than other countries. Don’t believe your lying eyes, we’re really not paying twice as much as Europeans for shittier health care because shutup-Jesus-9/11, that’s why.
Of course, when statistics show the US is better than other countries, it’s don’t you dare question Jesus’ sacred numbers you traitor! USA! USA!
Meyer
if what you say is true, then why aren’t the populations of all the Western countries clamoring to have a great system like ours?
And please to explain the rise of “health tourism”.
The Saff
@Punchy: Yes. I go out of my way at work, especially, to make sure I don’t know someone’s politics. My husband is the same way. We don’t even like to socialize with folks unless we know that they’re progressives.
Brachiator
@Keith G:
Teh stoopid is amazing here. This is certainly not the case with Canada and the United Kingdom, nor particularly the case with Canada. And many other countries are not particularly “homogeneous” as uninformed Americans might think (Australia easily comes to mind here).
Maybe these people are trying to conflate economic status and being “homogeneous,” but that doesn’t work either.
It’s interesting to note that both Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have higher life expectancy rates than the U.S.
Facts are difficult things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
even if you
ppcli
@Keith G:
“…and by 80 we live longer than Swedes.”
It is to weep. You should point out to your physician pal that if he thought for five seconds about what he typed instead of simply forwarding Fox-News-approved talking point factoids he’d realize: EVEN IF TRUE this point tells in favor of universal, government supplied health insurance. People in the U.S. over 80 are covered by Medicare. To judge by your doctor – supplied factoid, we can wash out the difference in life expectancy by supplying people with Medicare.
.
I’d take a close look at his Med. School diploma next time you’re in his office. (And look at the “long form”, if you can…)
Did it come from the Dr. Nick Riviera School of Medicine and Veterinary Science?
Pangloss
In your FACE, Latvia!!
*** Takes Victory Lap ***
USA!! USA!! USA!! **puts on giant foam finger** USA!! USA!!
T. O'Hara
So correlation really is causation? And failure to prove something false means it’s true? Even if the “facts” were not in dispute, this would be lame. And they are:
wasabi gasp
It did originally, but one of the producers used the script to light her crack pipe, oh, did I mention she was black? Anyway, it was still a better movie than anything coming out of Zimbabwe.
DougJ
@O’Hara
You’re boring me, pal. Try to come up with something more original.
Brick Oven Bill
Swedes were forced to evolve with the seasons and cycles of their northern climate. Those without a good future time orientation were weeded out of the population through the generations. The Swedish leftovers are thus programmed to think of the future, and are unlikely to continue to take crack when they find out they are pregnant.
Albanians, being from a more temperate climate, were not tested as rigorously by nature, being tested more by competing humans, and thus probably smoke a lot while pregnant, leading to lower birth weights, a higher infant mortality rate, and a greater level of feistiness. If you know an Albanian, you know what I am talking about. Swedes are more cooperative with each other, as it was them against the elements.
Thus, if the goal is to maximize our world rankings, Swedish embryos should be implanted into women from more temperate evolutionary climates, to create a race of people with improved future time orientation, low infant mortality rates, and better levels of cooperation. I also personally find Swedish women to be attractive.
So do the majority of Americans, based on beer commercial imagery.
Joe Buck
Note also that even if we restrict the measurement to “non-Hispanic white women”, we aren’t in the top 20. This kills the argument that some glibertarians make that the issue is our “diversity” (as in: all those unhealthy minority folks).
Persia
@Warren Terra: Also, the paperwork is confusing, insulting, and hard to access. But hey, why point that out when you can blame women who put their babies in drawers (like, you know, my grandmother and aunt slept in)?
El Cid
Wait — so the reason that infant mortality statistics are worse in the United States compared to such nations as Canada, Japan, and the Nordic countries is that we use the same statistical definitions? You know, like you just quoted in that very section above?
If you’re going to quote something and link to it, can you at least read it?
Mike G
First, most of these other countries are very homogeneous in their population…
Bear in mind these are the same people who insist that “Europe is overrun with Muslims”.
Tsulagi
Goddamned smug Latvians. They think we can’t outperform them? Bullshit. This is the U.S. of fucking A. From Scientific American just a few weeks ago…Deaths from avoidable medical error more than double in past decade, investigation shows. Don’t feel so smug now, do you?! Stay the Course.
Sanka
A co-worker has a daughter-in-law who is originally from England. Her parents came to visit my colleague and his family here in the USA. Apparently, the mother has dental issues and has been needing to get some procedures done. After looking into what’s available here in the states, she determined that a) she could use the procedures and b) they were far too expensive.
Complaining about the cost and complexity of our health system here, she determined that her best course of action was the more “comfortable” way, the way she was brought into—England’s healthcare system. Last he spoke to her my colleague informs me she had several teeth removed, at almost no cost, paid for and authorized by a directive from London.
This is the same, tireless wailing that we hear from liberals. So what if we’re the only western nation without universal health care? Yes it’s relatively free in other countries, but that doesn’t account for quality.
While the left is blaming centrists, protesters, Sarah Palin, Republicans, the media, etc., for the derailing of the healthcare reform train, did it ever occur to them that perhaps if the Democrats in congress and the administration spoke to Americans as if they were adults, instead of promising free stuff, we’d be talking about some serious changes. Instead they’re scratching their heads why nobody’s biting on the “get free healthcare now” trick?
The reforms Obama and the Democrats put together do nothing to address the fee for payment system in this country, nothing to address the payments to service providers, nothing to address physicians salaries, etc., which would all require tangling with the speical interests. Something the administration has yet to do. Thank god for the CBO holding his feet to the fire saying that these plans are a financial disaster.
Comrade Darkness
@Keith G: High rates of preemies and stillbirths are a direct result of crappy prenatal care. Not counting them would be delusional.
JGabriel
@Meyer:
That’s the one that always gets me. You would think that our own medical professionals might think it’s time to restructure our health care system when medical professionals in other countries can provide adequate health care and airfare for less than it costs here.
.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ:
The pages of his Wingnut Wanking Handbook have stuck together, for some strange reason.
‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
gnomedad
@gnomedad:
D’oh, it’s the same Reason essay! Sorry about that.
kay
Many countries have public policy, exclusive of superior medical care, that values children and families.
Pregnant women generally aren’t sick. They don’t need “medical care” so much as (most) just need a citizenry and government and general attitude that values them.
Here’s one! Like Canada:
In 2000, parental leave was greatly expanded in Canada from 10 weeks to 35 weeks divided as desired between two parents. This is in addition to 15 weeks maternity leave, giving a total possible period of 50 weeks paid leave for a mother. In Canada maternity and parental leave is paid for by the Employment Insurance system.
Countries really can’t lie about priorities. What we really value is right out there. Despite all the lip service, our “values” are not all that hard to discern. We don’t prioritize maternal and child health, and that’s a deliberate choice we made.
Church Lady
A few statistics on infant mortality in Memphis/Shelby County:
In 1990, the mortality rate for black infants was 20/1000. The rate for white infants was 7/1,000. In 2006, the black infant mortality rate was reduced to 19, while the white rate stayed at 7.
In 2002, premature and low birth weight babies accounted for about 25% of infant deaths. In 2006, the figure was 31%.
In 2009, Shelby County lost 209 babies. No other Tennessee county lost more than 93.
At least one Memphis zip code, 38108, is deadlier for babies than Vietnam, Iran and El Salvador.
2006 Infant Mortality Rate Comparisons:
U.S. – 7/1,000
Tennessee – 9/1,000
Memphis – 14/1,000
Zip Code 38108 – 31/1,000
The Shelby County Health Department had a $2 million federal grant, the Healthy Start Initiative, that enabled nurses to visit over 1,000 poor teen mothers on a regualr basis, teaching them about nutrition and how to care for their babies and making sure they were enrolled in any programs, like WIC, that they were entitled to. The program was considered quite successful in that they only lost 2 babies in the program. In 2008, the County lost the grant due to competition from other cities for very limited federal dollars.
T. O'Hara
You really are dim, aren’t you? Isn’t the whole point of this that the US is 29th in IMR behind a bunch of other countries? Did you forget about: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cuba, Czech Republic, England and Wales, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, and Switzerland?
Michael
It was supposed to be entertaining, but failed.
IndieTarheel
@Paul L.: Racist prick. Go suck a syphilitic donkey, clown.Also, I hope that you and everyone else who wants to take the president down keep doing this same old ignorant shit every time you get a chance. The more people see people like you spouting verbal diarrhea (and seeing your cronies on the right either engage in earnest navel-gazing or outright egging you retards on), the more people with IQs north of 45 are driven away from you. We do desperately need at least two sane parties for effective political discourse in this country, but I am more and more convinced everyday that if there is to be a Republican party in the mix, it will have to be GOP 3.0 (post-wingnut). You guys are swimming in a tar pit and are too fucking stupid to even realize it. Good luck with that.
Doonhamer
@Punchy:
I’ve made mental notes while driving never to do business with any contractor who slaps one of those “Annoy A Liberal” bumper stickers on their truck.
PS First post in a very long time, since after losing preview and editing. Here goes…
Comrade Darkness
@liberal: Having dealt for years with the (I now realize totally obvious symptoms of a food intolerance) I can assure you, all MDs think this. They know zero about nutrition, so of course they aren’t going to try to stick you with that quill.
T. O'Hara
I’m laughing. Today’s Times:Sign of Softer Support for a Health Overhaul:
But, but, your arguments are so convincing.
JGabriel
@Brick Oven Bill:
I live in NYC, where I used to frequent a bar that was about three blocks from where I live and that catered to Albanian ex-pats. And I still don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
The only big differences I ever noticed between Albanians and anyone else was that they:
A) spoke Albanian; and,
B) were just as likely to dance to Albanian folk music and modern dance music.
The latter was, admittedly, kind of cool. You’d hear a few dance tunes, watch the people dancing while drinking your beer, then an Albanian folk tune would come on and, rather than leave the floor, everyone would switch to an Albanian folk dance, and switch right back afterwards as if there was no real distinction between the two — which, when you think about it, I suppose there isn’t.
.
JGabriel
Meyer:
Win.
.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
This case saddens and enrages me every time I think about it, but I really think the case of Deamonte Driver is completely illustrative of our approach to healthcare. Because we as taxpayers couldn’t be bothered to cough up $80 to remove a rotting tooth from his jaw, we instead ended up paying $250,000 in a futile attempt to save his life.
Screw the people who claim it’s too expensive to pay for healthcare for everyone — we’re already paying through the nose for healthcare because we’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish by refusing to take care of small, inexpensive problems until they turn into enormously expensive problems. Republicans are arguing that $250,000 is less money than $80. And they claim to be the fiscally responsible ones.
Church Lady
Correcting myself @#143, it was in 2006 that Shelby County lost 209 babies.
My kingdom for the edit function.
Mnemosyne
Hey, maybe T. O’Hara can explain for all of us why it’s cheaper to pay $250,000 for a brain infection that could have been prevented with an $80 tooth extraction. I’m sure he has an absolutely fascinating explanation of why $80 is a much larger number than $250,000, so of course we were better off paying the $250,000 of emergency care than the $80 of primary care.
pcbedamned
@liberal:
[quote]It’s pretty common [b]among the granola crowd [/b]to “co-sleep”. I think it’s a bad idea, but it’s not clear that it’s that dangerous.[/quote]
Not just the “granola crowd”. I am a conservative (Canadian-not wingnut), and my son slept in the bed with me for the first 2 months of his life – otherwise no one in the house would get any sleep (and it sure helped with nursing!!!). My husband chose to sleep on the couch because he was afraid of rolling onto him. Both of my kids spent most of their childhood in and out of our bed. We had no problem with the ‘family bed’, and at 15 my daughter will STILL come in sometimes. I know many people (including my own parents) find it very strange, but for our family, it has worked. My husband and I have a wonderful relationship with both of our kids, now in their teens. I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything…
T. O'Hara
It sounds good, but:
People are nervous about cost. They ought to be. Red ink is piling up faster than ever before and there is no sign of any attempt to contain costs.
Brachiator
@Brick Oven Bill:
Which of course explains why the countries with the highest life expectancy are (in order), Macau, Andorra, Japan, Singapore, San Marino, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, France and then Sweden.
Is there a tight cluster of Scandinavian countries? Nope. Denmark’s life expectancy is very similar to that of the US, and Greenland is actually worse.
I suppose it might be interesting to tease out the life expectancy rates of European Basque populations, who may be non-Indo-European people who preceded other populations (including the Swedes), but this is not easy to do and in any case the results (or non-results) might give someone like BOB a big headache.
Still, BOB, it’s fun to watch you grasp at Darwinian straws when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Brick Oven Bill
6% of Albania’s GNP is spent on cigarettes.
That’s a lot of cigarettes.
In comparison, our GNP is like $14 trillion, and 6% of this would be $840 billion. Figure a pack of smokes goes for $4, after Obama’s stupid cigarette tax (on people who all make more than $250,000). So this is 210 billion packs of smokes.
But Albanians would probably kick the ass of someone who would charge them $2.50 tax on a pack of cigarettes, so let us figure an Albanian cigarette tax of $0.50 per pack, or $2.00 over the counter cost. This is 420 billion packs of smokes.
This is 1400 packs of cigarettes annually per American citizen, or 3.8 packs per day. Perhaps this influences my impression of Albanians. It would also explain infant mortality rates there.
pcbedamned
Someday I will figure out this whole code thing, promise :-)
DougJ
@Church Lady
Thanks. That is all interesting info!
John Harrold
Something to remember about letting your government run health care:
Our international rankings on education (a service that is heavily regulated and controlled by the government) isn’t much better.
clone12
@14
I do not find the US News article particularly convicing. If the US are counting all these stillbirths as dead babies whereas everyone else count them as still births, then the US should have a vastly lower stillbirth rates right?
Wrong.
The US has the about same stillbirth rate as the UK, despite having a significantly higher infant mortality rate.
This strikes me as arguing that it is wrong to say that an Airbus is bigger than a Cessna because one rounds up in meters while the other rounds up in feet.
Mnemosyne
Well, there is the public option, but you guys keep screaming that it’s Socialism to try and contain costs and that the Magical Market Fairy will wave her sparkly wand and costs will go down as long as the government leaves healthcare to the private sector. Because, of course, that’s worked so well over the last 20 years.
Medicare Part D is a perfect example. When Congress passed it, it was specifically written so the government was NOT allowed to use their buying power to get discounted prices. That’s right — the oh-so-fiscally responsible Republicans required the government to pay list price for everything.
Again, how the hell did you guys get this “fiscally responsible” image? Everywhere you turn, you find yet another example of Republicans spending public money like sailors on a bender (untraceable pallets of cash in Iraq, anyone?) and yet they’re the ones who insist that the US government can’t possibly do what every other Western country does successfully because we’re stupid or something, I guess.
Mnemosyne
What’s your definition of “heavily regulated”? Here in California, anyone can claim that they’re “homeschooling” their children and never have to produce anything to prove it. Local school boards set curricula. We supposedly have nationwide testing with No Child Left Behind but, as with all programs meddled with by Republicans, it spends all of its time punishing schools that are already doing well and taking money away from schools that desperately need it.
The countries that are doing well with education are far more heavily regulated than we are. Their curricula are set on the national level, not the state or local level.
You’re right, though — our healthcare system and our education system have very close parallels since we keep rejecting everything we know works in other countries and insisting that our way is best because shut up, that’s why. USA! USA! USA!
Meyer
Something to remember about letting your government run health care:
Our international rankings on education (a service that is heavily regulated and controlled by the government) isn’t much better.
Two things to remember about letting your government run healthcare:
(a) Nobody is talking about doing that.
and
(b) Where we do have government run health insurance (medicare) it shows lower admin costs than private healthcare, has done a better job controlling costs than private healthcare and is wildly popular – so popular that about many of the teabaggers are people screaming that we need to keep government out of medicare.
That is what we need to remember.
Keith G
@John Harrold: Good heavens, man. No one is asking for govt run health care. Try not to be a putz.
John S.
I see the flying monkey brigades are out in full force with their usual bullshit today.
jibeaux
@John Harrold: \
Well, that’s an interesting variation on the usual “teh DMV is teh governments!!eleventy ! do u want ur dr to werk like teh DMV” argument, but it does lead to the completely asinine implication that what we need more of in matters of our general social welfare as a people is more profit motive, or possibly the equally asinine implication that there is some country out there successfully demonstrating a good educational and a good health care system with limited government involvement. Good grief. Every first world country’s educational system is nationalized to a far greater extent than ours. Do you by any chance hail from the Dover, Kansas area?
Mnemosyne
Sigh. I hate how using the evil “S” word drops you into moderation.
Kyle
Republicans are arguing that $250,000 is less money than $80.
Let’s apply Republican health care principles to auto maintenance.
I’ll never bother with $30 oil chanes. I’ll just drive until the engine blows up, then have it towed to the mechanic for a $2000 overhaul. And this will save me money! Any statistics to the contrary from people who perform regular engine maintenance are traitorous lies that threaten my Jeebus-anointed way of life. USA! USA!
binzinerator
@Church Lady:
After 25 years of the Right demonizing people who use such programs as welfare queens, parasites, lazy, and un-American, small wonder why it doesn’t have the utilization it should.
God dammit Chuch Lady, if the Right isn’t busy cutting the funding and eligibility outright, if they aren’t trying to keep from educating people such programs exist, then they are busy creating a public discourse and inculcate cultural values that stigmatize people who use of such programs.
Under-utilization by keeping the poor unaware and shaming them for when they do get help is exactly what conservatives have been after for decades.
Yes. If you don’t have any money for a crib a dresser drawer will serve. More than one couple I have met has, when traveling where portable cribs were unavailable, put their infant to bed in a drawer.
And as someone who does dabbling in woodwooking, I’ll have you know most drawers are built sturdier than any of those cheap cribs out there.
Incidentally, a cradle is structurally built like a drawer (strong corner joints and often an interlocked bottom panel). There really is no ‘right’ size for a cradle, except to size it so to keep the baby from rolling around too much in the drawer, er, cradle. Most are sized now to fit a ‘standard’ bassinet pad, but old time cradles were quite a bit narrower and shorter and I’ll be damned if they didn’t look even more like a dresser drawer. Except for the rocking-chair feet, of course.
Horrors! My God the depravity and cruelty those lower-classes and poor people do to their babies.
Really, now. You never heard of co-sleeping? Apparently the rest of the world doesn’t have a problem with it. Neither did anyone in this country, up until recently.
I knew of two couples who co-slept with their infant. And they’re well-educated, well-traveled upwardly mobile types who don’t believe all that the AMA denounces is motivated by medical reasons (read Keith G’s comment from his wingnut MD asshole…) — gosh! Whodathunk, eh?
Apparently, if you’re a poor single mom and you co-sleep with your infant, you’re a bad mother. If you’re married, well-educated and have a good job and you co-sleep with your infant, you’re enlightened and nobody’s fool and want a closer relationship with your baby, along with very convenient nighttime breastfeedings.
Bender
Post hoc ergo propter whuuuuut?
On the other hand, Russia, with universal nationalized health care, has an infant mortality rate almost three times as high as the US.
The onus is on the leftards to explain why these two facts are not connected!Eleventy!
Simpletons armed with statistics — a combo destined to fail.
Meyer
@Bender:
Probably the fact that they drink like fish. And that’s mean to the fish.
“State statistics show that today, 38% of Russians between the ages of 20 and 39 suffer from alcoholism — between the ages of 40 and 59, that number jumps to 55%. Alcohol poisoning kills an average of 30,000 people in Russia each year, twice the number of Soviets who died during the 10-year war with Afghanistan in the ’80s.”
You’ve not only got enhanced FAS risk, but higher incidence of lower birth weight and prematurity. All of those would lead to a higher infant mortality rate.
Meyer
Whoops, link for above quote.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1917974,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
Anne Laurie
This, squared. As Church Lady points out, possibly not on purpose, helicoptering in to provide prenatal care to poor women after they’ve been identified as pregnant can only help so much. “We” refuse to pay for school nurses, for instance, because that’s too expensive… at least in the poverty-district schools where such nurses could make the most difference. Whenever some district sets up a pilot program that goes beyond one professional assigned to triage open wounds & seizures at two or three or six different schools, it’s quickly overwhelmed by the number of chronically sick kids whose parents can’t afford to treat their asthma, buy them glasses, or have their hearing tested. (Or, goddess forgive us, even feed them. The biggest pediatric hospital in Boston has a donation-sponsored food bank because “failure to thrive”, aka “malnutrition”, is such a common diagnosis.) The same low-income-district schools are forever struggling to provide nutritious lunches, sometimes the only good meal the kids can count on, because every penny spent on such “frills” is bitterly resented by a vocal percentage of voters. And of course, once the little paupers hit puberty, Talibangelical-God forbid that we teach them about contraception, much less provide condoms or birth control pills, because talking about Doing It would only put ideas in their heads!
So, once a sixteen-year-old from “the projects” figures out that her recent weight gain and shortness of breath isn’t just from living on fast food, Red Bull, and cigarettes — which may not happen until she’s four or five or six months along — if she can find her way to the nearest ER, she’ll be given a pregnancy test & some prenatal vitamins & a sheaf of paperwork to fill out. If she’s lucky, she’ll be assigned a social worker who finds the time to help with the forms, and maybe even a slot in a mothers-to-be training class, if she can afford transportation and it doesn’t interfere with her job at the fast-food place. And once she’s given birth, she’ll be eligible for WIC, unless the local public-health budget is in particularly bad shape, and assuming she can reach a grocery store that accepts coupons. But if her baby is born grossly premature and with multiple health issues, we will spare no expense to keep it struggling for weeks or months in the NICU, because American medicine loves a real challenge!
Bender
Probably the fact that they drink like fish. And that’s mean to the fish.
Fish-ist!
Church Lady
According to a story in the 03/29/09 Kentucky Herald-Leader, the CDC found suffocation deaths due to “co-sleeping” increased from 103 in 1984 to 513 in 2004. Most of the increase occurred after 1996.
While this arrangement might make life just a little easier for a nursing mother, pediatricians, the CDC and others concerned with infant safety are against it. Why take the chance?
gwangung
@Church Lady: Are these deaths nationwide or locally?
And, really, relating co-sleeping deaths from across all classes with sleeping habits of the poor is kinda beneath you, considering being poor may mean you may not have the money or resources to get a separate crib for a baby.
Leelee for Obama
@Church Lady: I co-slept with my two and my Daughter co-slept with her three and never an issue did we have. If there is alcohol or drugs involved, that’s another story. But Moms rarely smother their babies when they co-sleep. Just don’t put the little nipper next to Daddy-they tend to be heavier and oblivious.
Sarah Palin
Infant mortality is high in the U.S. because we murder innocent babies, not because healthcare sucks. Obamacare will not solve this problem, but make it worse by providing our tax dollars for joyous and rampant baby killing.
mld678
This is an emotional issue and we all should support covering individuals through private health insurance. To conquer these serious changes, doesn’t it seem right to advocate for greater transparency in both quality and price information, for it overlaps with many other issues? http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/issues/index.cfm?ID=300
Mnemosyne
Oh, see, now I know you’re a parody troll. A real conservative wouldn’t have missed their chance to rant about the lingering effects of Soviet Communism in Russia and claim that Obama is the next Hit- … uh, Stalin.
Church Lady
@gwangung: I have to assume that they were national figures, given that they were from the CDC.
The reason I mentioned babies sleeping in drawers (still in the dresser) and sleeping in beds with adults is that the series that was in the Commercial Appeal on infant mortality in Memphis/Shelby County dealt with those issues – there were instances of infant deaths due to these two things. And yes, these things are usually a result of poverty, but then if you are so poor that you can’t but even a used crib, you probably shouldn’t be having a baby.
Sadly, in addition to poverty, one of the things that drives the rate up here is neglect and abuse. It seems like almost every week there is a story in the paper about some mother’s boyfriend shaking or beating a baby to death or a house or apartment full of kids left alone, while Mom goes out, that die in a fire. It seems to happen an awful lot here.
Church Lady
@gwangung: I have a friend that’s active in the local Birthright organization, and they will get a crib for anyone that needs one. Locally, there is absolutely no excuse for not having a crib. If you can’t leave the hospital without a carseat, you shouldn’t be able to take a baby home unless you have either a bassinet or a crib.
gwangung
Well, the best thing to take care of that is good birth control education and available abort—oh, wait.
(Um, you kinda walked into that one….)
Mnemosyne
And when their baby dies because they didn’t know that the used crib they were given had been recalled by the CPSC, then you’ll blame them for not buying a brand-new one. We get the point.
Leelee for Obama
To say nothing of the fact that Conservative Goddess Barabar Bush wrote about having one of her babies-I think the girl who had leukemia later, in a dresser drawer when they first struck out on their own to Texas. It was, and is, a fairly common default-Usually when the babies are not mobile. And for the record, my Daughter had a fabulous crib that she never has used for any of her kids-but they do sleep on the floor occasionally-tough to fall off the floor. There are many things people do that are not inherently dangerous-being vigilant is key.
Jackie
There is nothing wrong with the damn drawer unless it is structuarlly unsound or full of soft clothing. see below.
The worry in co sleeping is that soft bedding increases SIDS rates. An occasional incident of squishing occurs. Usually related to sedation or apnea in addition to new mom exhaustion. But that isn’t the reason to discourage it.Most adults aren’t willing to sleep on the surface that is safest for newborns. And yes I know you did it and your kid didn’t die. I’m really glad.
canuckistani
We did the cosleeping thing, and I never squashed any of our kids. I may have been heavier, but I was never -NEVER – oblivious.
Jackie
@Church Lady: Gee, maybe they don’t know your friend or have any idea of her organization. I had never heard or it. What are the odds that a low information teenage mom who’s problems dwarf the idea of looking for a crib knows who to call, or assumes they are a white fundy group looking to evangalize her choice and who might not be very pigment friendly. I googled and it looks like it isn’t but it’s my default assumption for these kinds of groups.
Comrade Darkness
@Mnemosyne: I know three kinds of parents: ones who put their kids in a crib and get no sleep (neither does the kid), ones who bind their kids and put them in a crib and get too much sleep (kid doesn’t even wake up for 4 hour feeding), and parents who co-sleep and get some sleep at least, including a family practice doc.
Frankly, the confusing and constantly changing panic alerts about what or what not to do with infants is part of the problem too. If you have a real message, it will be ignored as simply more garbage, pop-science noise.
Leelee for Obama
@canuckistani: I said tend-not all Daddys-just seems to be more likely from what I’ve heard through the years.
@Jackie: I think I mentioned drugs and alcohol earlier. And I never said people should co-sleep if they don’t feel comfortable with it. I just gave information about me and mine.
Why is this such a touchy subject?
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Darkness:
My brother and (now ex-) sister-in-law had this bassinet-like thingy with a drop-down side that you put next to the bed so it was at the same height as the bed so that when the little nipper started wailing, you could roll over and scoop them out for feeding, but there was no danger of oversleeping the baby (unless it somehow managed to figure out how to roll in the middle of the night). For the life of me, I can’t remember what the damn thing was called, though.
Mnemosyne
Well, duh for me — apparently it’s actually called a co-sleeper.
Comrade Darkness
@Leelee for Obama: Why is this such a touchy subject?
You want a touchy subject, how about babies sleeping on their stomachs… I chalk it up to some innate tribal instinct. Nothing else makes sense.
This stuff makes me very glad I’m not a parent.
Comrade Darkness
@Mnemosyne: Ah yes, one co-sleeping parent I know has one, but the baby still refuses to sleep, even that close. Kid will not sleep unless in the crook of an arm.
It’s amusing to watch new parents adjust, adjust, adjust, then surrender. Sleep deprivation does all kinds of creative things to the brain. Hm, maybe we should use babies as elite CIA torturers.
Leelee for Obama
@Comrade Darkness: I used to say, when I baby-sat that I would never bribe MY child! Then, I had two, and was amazed at what a kid will do for one Oreo. Evil, I know-but I got to go to the bathroom occasionally-by myself!
MNPundit
I knew two girls from Latvia, one was a pen pal and the other was an extremely cute fake-red head I dated for a while. So for me, Latvia is 100% women who are interested in me in some way shape or form.
Win.
Bender
Because we as taxpayers couldn’t be bothered to cough up $80 to remove a rotting tooth from his jaw, we instead ended up paying $250,000 in a futile attempt to save his life.
Uhhhhhh, no. You just got suckered by advocate journalism. Read the Post’s story more critically and you’ll see they want you to think that this case was about lack of access, when it was really about parental neglect and bad, bad luck.
Buried in the story:
We as taxpayers are paying $80 to remove millions of kids’ teeth under Medicaid. In this poor child’s case, he got care at a hospital as soon as he complained about the headaches from the abscess that his mom never knew about, because his mom was more worried about his brother’s rotting teeth. (Mix in a toothbrush, Moms!)
So he had access to a hospital that very day, but it was too late. Even under Almighty ObamaCare, if a kid doesn’t complain and Mom doesn’t notice, all the access in the world won’t make a shit of difference.
Besides being irrelevant, this “they think $80 is more than $250K” bullshit is a weak argument. It’s not as if every rotten tooth leads to a brain infection. It’s probably one in a million, or there wouldn’t be any English left. Look at Shane McGowan — he should’ve been dead decades ago if you routinely got killed by rotten teeth. Or booze.
http://www.teapigs.co.uk/blog/shane_mcgowan.jpg