Healthcare next industry to take big hit

Ah, I should have substituted "you" with "one". That "one" can be the nearest of kin. Could be the government with nationalized health insurance (doubt it though).

"You're talking about repressing human nature, 30yrs. I can see cutting off treatment in last 2 weeks being more palatable. Strangely enough, religious people seem to have a harder time letting go of life."

"find me the politican with the guts to even bring this up."

I agree it's never going to happen: that's why I described it as an "entitlement". in general, once something becomes an entitlement, you're never going to get rid of it no matter how much sense it does or doesn't make. But that doesn't mean I'm ever going to stop yelling about it.

you're right. keep yelling.

Skippy: what is plain wrong? I have immense respect for many doctors. However, your run of the mill primary care physician who fumbles around, does some bloodwork, sends you off to a specialist... I don't care how much training that PCP has, what his/her debt load is, MCAT score. Why on earth should he/she be entitled to a "low" 100kish salary?

On a personal note, I think my PCP is fantastic. Terse, but very capable. The only issue I have is that she works 30 hours/week out of choice and she has very poor coverage when she's out of the office.

Everyone argues that a PCP's role in a healthy universal HC coverage system is essential and yet, there is no real way to measure how good a PCP is, right?

Hey Alpine, just in case you think you guys in Jersey live longer than people in Greece, the Jersey mentioned on your list is Jersey the Island , not New Jersey.

Another thing I wonder about is if having a national healthcare system will strengthen our social compact. Or weaken it. Does the idea that we're all going to be paying/borrowing/printing through our noses for this mean that we'll agree to eat less, work out more subconsciously? Bcs now I'll be REALLY paying for your lardy behinds.

oh really sledgehammer? Bergen County ranks #18 in the nation for life expectancy. Of the top 25 counties in the U.S. for life expectancy, NOT a single one is in New York!

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/moneymag/0809/gallery.bestplaces_lifeexpect.moneymag/18.html

an old article, but stil relevant:

Asian women in Bergen have nation's top life expectancy

Even the leader of a new Harvard University study on longevity was surprised to find that Asian-American women living in Bergen County have the longest life expectancy in the nation, typically reaching age 91. "Yes, it's surprising and interesting," said Dr. Christopher Murray, a population health specialist at the Harvard School of Public Health. "I was very surprised that it was Bergen County, as opposed to Asian-American women living in a whole series of well-to-do counties in California," Murray said in a phone interview Monday.

The Asian women in Bergen, for example, lived an average of 33 years longer than American Indian men in parts of South Dakota, who die around age 58, the study found.

http://www.worldhealth.net/news/asian_women_in_bergen_have_nation_s_top_

Damned! What are all the Greeks doing in Greece. They should all move to Bergen County. :-)

"Country Comparison :: Life expectancy at birth"

non-politically correct question which I'm sure there is no answer to:

I wonder how that list would change if you narrowed it down to "for the largest ethnic group in the country"

In other words, a lot of the countries above the US have very few minorities, and in some of them don't count anyone but "natives" in their data. My wife is Japanese and according to her, if you're not Japanese of Japanese ancestry, you're not Japanese enough to get included in a lot of statistics they keep. For example (according to her), if your parents are Korean, but you were born in Japan and lived your whole life in Japan, you're still not considered Japanese enough to get included.

Immigrants to First World countries typically have higher life expectancies than back home. No surprise that relatively homogenous populations dominate the top 50.

alpine292,
You seem like you rely your decision based on irrelevant data.
I was involved with Canadian health system for few years and like nyc10023 said, it is not a good system for fast pace diseases. Many will recieve lesser treatment or simply die from waiting.
Canada is in the process of introducing private sector for those who wants to seek better and urgent care at their expense. I think this would work...hope we head for the right direction.

I think it's a HELL of a lot easier for Canada to add a higher priced private option (or add-on) to their system than for us to move towards theirs.

almost anyone, lay or trained, can look logically back at a situation and say "well maybe THEY shouldn't have treated it so aggressively" when it is a fictitious third party. However when it comes to your loved ones or yourself, rarely will the choice be 'lets do little.' In many ways what we do is correct. Expensive, but correct. We never know when someone will do great. I've had patients who were clinically dead for a while(30-40 minutes). Very aggressive resusitative treatments were done and lo and behold they work.I've seen patients who told me, "yeah doc you saw me 18 months ago when they thought I was never going to go out of the ICU, and here I am back to work." These are miracles that we hope for and sometime we get. It is VERY expensive. But can you price a human life? Breast cancer survival rates are better in this country than in Europe. You may ask why. We use the latest treatments, not the ones the bean counters say work most of the time for a majority of the women. We have an expensive inefficient system, but its damn good. We are Americans, and we have grown accustomed to our way. The Canadians and Europeans think very differently, and have to because it is publicly funded...it is a better system for the majority most of the time. I see expats/corporate transferees from England routinely. Almost universally they say they like the American system better.

but like everything else, no one is willing to step up and pay for this. and as Americans, we resent anyone telling us what to do. great.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all

Obama thinks this the most important article he has ever read on healthcare system & possible reforms - def worth the time it takes.

"Anyone here who thinks that the health care plan in Congress is going to have an impact on RE values is a fool. Many doctors are very rich. If you want to know how rich, just take a look at the house below, owned by surgeon at Columbia: (it's the large one with the red roof)"

Alpine, are you this dense?

Are you really claiming that lowering incomes on doctors won't have an effect on RE because they USED to be able to earn money?

Do you understand the concept of before and after?

Clearly not.

Any health care plan is unlikely going to lower the income of doctors. We are not going to become like England where all the doctors will work for the government. The thing that hurts doctors the most is not pay, but malpractice insurance premiums.

Truly charming ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/us/politics/14cong.html?_r=1&hp

Many in Congress Hold Stakes in Health Industry

Alpine: the UK is mixed public/private - NOT single payer, unlike Canada.

LP, thanks for the post. fascinating article.

The UK is not mixed. Private health care in the UK is mostly for physio-type stuff and getting a nicer room at an NHS hospital. Anything serious you go straight to the NHS (if you want to live that is)

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/10/ama-looks-to-put-brakes-on-debt-load-of-med-students/

that's the average. take out the students whose parents are footing the bill, and you have a very ugly reality for those whose families can't afford to help.

Wow! I used to hear that the AMA does everything in its power to severely limit the number of med student seats in the US ... I wonder if that has something to do with the escalating cost to students ... ?

On an unrelated note: AR, if you haven't checked your SE email in the past few days, please do.

> Bergen County ranks #18 in the nation for life expectancy.

Because when you sit at home with nothing to do except go to the movies, you live longer. No good restaurants to make you fat, no exciting nighlife to risk danger in. And don't catch diseases because you don't get laid.

Also, because bergen is SO cheap, you have plenty of money left over to go to the doctor.

Bergen is cheap? HA HA. I'm sure I can find 1 million peopel to disagree with that statement. What's cheap about Bergen? We have the highest property taxes in NJ. We have the highest property values.

this was just published in the Bergen Record the other day. I guess you are quite an idiot, huh?

Buying a home in Bergen still out of reach for many

Even with recent home price declines, buying a house in North Jersey — especially in Bergen County — remains out of reach for many working people, the New Jersey Association of Realtors said today.

With a median price of $481,250 in the third quarter of 2008, Bergen County is the most expensive home purchase market in the state, the trade association said. At a more affordable median of $352,900, Passaic comes in ninth of New Jersey’s 21 counties.

NJAR released this data in introducing its new Internet database, called Paycheck to Paycheck, which allows workers to compare the average salary in different occupations to the income needed to buy or rent a home in different counties. As you might expect, even middle-class workers such as teachers, nurses and police officers would be hard-pressed to buy a home in Bergen County. For example, nurses have average income of about $71,000, but an annual income of almost $156,000 is required to buy a house in Bergen, and $135,000 to buy a house in Passaic.

Rentals in North Jersey are also a stretch for many people, according to the database. Workers need an annual income of $50,240 to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Bergen or Passaic. That’s beyond the means of retail sales people or janitors, who make less than $30,000 a year on average.

The least expensive housing markets — Atlantic, Gloucester, Camden, Cumberland and Salem counties — are all in the southern part of the state.

By "property taxes" I assume you mean residential, alpine.

How can that be? ... there are approximately 47 regional shopping malls in Bergen, plus Ikea, all presumably footing the bill for the residents.

Wait, Alpine just tried to argue that Bergen is expenive by comparing it TO THE REST OF NEW JERSEY?!?!?!

Make me laugh.

Off the 2008 numbers, I believe its 60-70% cheaper than Manhattan median, and probably 80% cheaper on a psf basis.

And NYC eats NJ taxes for breakfast... we have city and state taxes, each higher than jersey, and still property taxes.

If you don't have low income like alpine, those are MUCH higher than jersey taxes.

> HA HA. I'm sure I can find 1 million peopel to disagree with that statement.

Because a survey is a substitute for actual numbers?

Thats a funny one.

Hell, they got millions of americans to buy bubble real estate... clearly the number of idiots doesn't change the truth.

Might've been mentioned above, but a very good article in the New Yorker (by Gawande) a few weeks ago about the huge per-patient differences in Medicare expenditures from one place to another, and an attempt to figure out where they come from.

My favorite example is the motorized chairs for fat old people to ride around on. The TV commercial says "If we can't get Medicare to pay for it, it's free!" If it's worth advertising on TV, there's a shitload of our money going into it.

Leonhardt discusses the rationing of health care issue, and notes that we already do it, and not particularly well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?_r=1&ref=business

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/business/bayonne-medical-center-has-highest-us-billing-rates.html