A Little Research

For a bit of a change I'm going to revisit a topic I covered earlier in the week. Usually I don't stop by the same topic that often, but this angers me so much I need to write on it. The topic is, predictably, American healthcare.

The thing that I don't understand is that when I've been to America, I've not met anyone who I've talked with who felt that the current system was a good one. I've not seen any evidence that there is a groundswell of support for the status quo. This is all down to rhetoric and scary words such as 'socialised'. There's no discussion on whether the healthcare system should be improved. So why is the debat enot about that?

Touching again on the statistics I posted up on Wednesday, the US spends more money, per head, on the healthcare system than anywhere else in the world. Yet it ranks only 37th for the quality of healthcare, and what's more astounding is if you showed Americans the list of countries above them. Oman. United Arab Emirates. Cyprus. Colombia. Costa Rica. Dominica. Morroco. Greece. Iceland. Singapore. Andorra. And yes, even the much-maligned 'socialised' United Kingdom. Topping the list are those ultimate favourites of the right, France.

This study was carried out in 2000, so is bound to be changed a little since then. However, it doesn't do anything but emphasise that the American system is not performing as it should. But why? Ironically, one of the suggested reasons is because of too much bureaucracy. As this is a charge levied at the NHS at the moment as part of this debate, it's not but a little ironic that the American levels of bureaucracy in healthcare are 50% above average. For more background, have a look at the WHO report, which goes into this in more detail.

Now, let's change tack and talk about people who oppose this. Besides those with a vested interest, those convinced by the rhetoric, and discounting the bigger government argument for a minute here, there is a number who are very much on the side of the 'why me? I'm healthy' line. I've done a little research today and found out the following; dates for statistics vary but the point is fairly illustrative.

414,295 residential fires occured in 2007 in the United States of America. Latest figures (2006) indicate approximately 125 million houses in the US; translating to a 0.3% chance of a residential fire - which is naturally going to be biased as well. There are no direct statistics for the residential damage cost of fires, but a proportional $35,300 will suffice to demonstrate the point.

Now, back to healthcare. Of a population of 303 million (2008), 25.1 million have a heart condition (2007); making this about 8%. The statistics consider that 11%, based on only adults, but I am happy with 8%. Statistics on the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and medical premiums for a year alone run to $21,900 (2007 - taken from the American Heart Association). Note that won't account for the run-on cost on future years, as you would expect would be a cost liability. Estimations including loss of earnings on one site I saw topped $1 million.

So this is the point of this exercise in figures. My bet is that those people who are convinced they are healthy, they won't be the ones affected by any healthcare scare - they will have fire insurance. At a chance of 0.3%, you will take out insurance on the basis of a risk of a $35,000 cost. So all these people, those that aren't the ones who'll get ill, wouldn't think anything giving them better access to healthcare (8-10% risk, costs running into the hundreds of thousands - and that's heart disease alone) should probably think again.

Of course, you can reduce the chance of suffering from those diseases by keeping yourself in good fitness. But you can reduce the chance of a residential fire. And you'll still have fire insurance. Just in case.

Food for thought.

I'm fairly confident I'll be revisiting this topic.

Triple Century

Believe it or not, this is my 300th blog post.

As an interesting contrast, it's taken me a little under a year (335 days) to go from blog #201 to blog #300. It took me far longer to go from blog #1 to blog #100 (496 days), although not as long as from blog #101 to blog #200 (a lengthy 528 days). All these pointless statistics are just to entertain myself, really. Perhaps I simply have more to talk about now, or make more to talk about. Or don't care about having anything to talk about or not and post regardless!

As commented on Monday, I was trying to do a bit more exercise (read: some exercise). This has so far resulted in me going for a run in the morning on Monday through Wednesday, with gradually improving results. A brief play with a finger as a measuring device and googlemaps estimate my circular route to be around 2.5km which isn't terrible - especially considering by Wednesday I was managing to slowly jog round the first 1.8km without a break, a drastic improvement on my run-then-walk-and-wheeze approach from Monday! A more realistic pace admittedly helped with this.

No running this morning because my back was slept on odd so twinging. Hopefully more again next week, we'll see how it goes!

Lies and Damn Lies

This morning I was reading an article on how right wing pressure groups in the US, opposed to healthcare reform, are using statistics on the NHS as proof of the 'great evil' that is socialised medicine. Some of these statistics are true, some are grounded in truth, and others are just plain manufactured. But statistics can be used to make any point when used like this.

To me, the only statistic that matters is this: in the UK, 100% of people have access to healthcare - regardless of wealth, employment status, employer, length of employment or previous medical conditions. Oh, and not to bring rankings into this, but American healthcare is ranked only 37th in the world. Those are the statistics this debate should be about.

Exercise: Worth the Pain?

So, this morning I was awake at 5:30, and after being paranoid I was late, dozed for a few minutes. Then I peered at the clock and after much umming and ahhing, finally got up around 6ish.

And then I did something bizarre (for me) and went for a run for 20-25 minutes. I've been meaning to get more exercise, and eventually I pushed myself enough to do it. Note that when I say run, I mean jog for a few minutes, then walk and wheeze to get my breath back. I'm more out of shape than I realised. I'm putting this up here mainly in the hope of shaming myself into doing it again tomorrow and getting into the habit of it!

Also, to completely change the subject - congratulations Russell on getting engaged.

Haircut Organisation

So, you know how I always bemoan the fact that I'm overdue for a haircut because I forgot to book one? Well, today, I actually booked ahead and booked my next haircut as well as the current one.

I can learn from this. This means when I attend Tim and Kat's wedding in September, I will look slighly more presentable than I did for Mark and Sophie's wedding!

No Offence, But ...

This week I've been thinking a fair bit about tolerance and respect. This has mainly been specifically about religion and religious views. This all came out of a conversation I was having with Chrissi at the tail of the weekend.

I thought a decent amount about the politics - the irony of the contrast between separation of church and state and the opposite in the UK (with the Queen being the head of state and the head of the church, there are bishops sitting in the House of Lords, CoE schools are standard and we still have 'D.F.' on our coins as a fair indication of the relative difference). Yet here people are a lot more accepting or non-caring about the belief of others. It's considerably less judgemental.

The main thing that came out of it, however, was a gratitude to my friends for despite being mostly church-orientated (this great phrase courtesy of my Dad - 'religious', 'devout' and similar all have oddly sinister undertones!) - despite being church-orientated, none have really questioned, challenged or judged my own very different beliefs. This, I get the feeling, is rare, so I'm appreciative of that.

Wedding Titbits

Following in the style of a news wrap-up, I'm going to do a brief summary from the weekend without going into excess words.

Mark and Sophie being married isn't weird; Mr and Mrs Molloy is ... the bathrooms in the Jury's Inn having a full-length mirror over the toilet was plain bizarre ... Ceilidh is harder to do than spell, and that's saying something ... Chris' speech was superb, got to love the singing, but why was nobody filming it to put it on YouTube ... taxi drivers racing round corners through deep puddles are not on my happy list right now ... Mark had far too much paranoia about his honeymoon secrecy (it's in Tunis, folks, in case you were wondering, think it's safe to say now) ... lego men truly amuse men of all ages.

Back tomorrow.

Mobile Blogging

I'm writing this blog, excitingly, from my phone. This now means I can blog from anywhere - it may even mean more frequent updates - although I doubt I'll be writing anything of significant length! I can easily see why the brevity of twitter has caught on. However, I prefer my updates to be slightly longer!

I'm writing this from my hotel room, before I go to meet Tim for brunch. Then, after that, it's Mark's wedding! With typical summer timing it is, naturally, raining. Welcome to the north! Ending now before I am running late, more later or tomorrow.