Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Explaining the longevity gap

I await Evan's comment.
Posted by at

3 comments:

evan said...

Interesting article.

I'm not sure if you can disentangle us being unhealthy from the healthcare system, though. A good doctor is more than just someone who makes you better; they ensure your overall wellness.

This analysis basically says "we're really fat and live very unhealthy lives. Contrarily, we spend tons of money to avoid dying in spite of that, and we manage to actually do an okay job avoiding it, except a lot of people do actually die from living unhealthy lives."

You can't just say "we're unhealthy and a lot of people die due to obesity- and cancer-related issues in middle age, but once we're old, we're okay" and say that there's therefore no problem with the health care system. We shouldn't have so many people dying in middle age! And part of the reason they're dying is because it's very expensive to see a doctor. Speaking personally, my dad didn't see a doctor after he was about 35. He had no reason to. About 15 years later he had a heart attack. The bill insurance covered? Over $200,000.

But that's $200,000 that never should have been spent. Seeing a doctor even once in that span probably would've put him on blood pressure medication, and that almost certainly would have prevented his heart attack. Which would have saved a lot of money!

But doctors are inconvenient, and copayments are relatively high, and there's very little incentive to see a doctor when you feel fine. So you have people like my dad, who eschew $25 copays and taking a morning off to see a doctor, and instead stick an insurance company with a $200,000+ bill when a heart attack strikes.

This is not because our doctors suck. We have a systemic failure in our health care system that's causing lots of people to die in middle age.

September 23, 2009 at 7:30 PM
heckler said...

I don't think we should change the whole system, increase taxes, and who knows what else is included in this bill just because some people don't realize they need to see a doctor. If you pay a co-payment of only $15 or even $25 once a year for 20 years, that's still a whole lot less than the $200,000 bill you might get for a preventable heart attach.

Everyone knows to take showers everyday, brush their teeth everyday, etc, because it's simple basic knowledge. In the same sense, people should know they need to see a doctor around once a year on a consisten basis. The government does not force you to take showers and it should not force you to see a doctor because it should not need you to.

This comment is not directed at you or anyone personally, but people should not blame the government or the current system just because something bad happened to them. They need to look in the mirror first and see what they could have done to prevent the bad thing from happening..

September 24, 2009 at 10:36 AM
heckler said...

There were a lot of typos in that comment...

September 24, 2009 at 10:51 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)