mprotsenko | Entries tagged with healthcare

Numerous cross-sectional studies indicate that body weight, or body mass index (BMI; in kg/m2), is lower in cigarette smokers than in nonsmokers (5, 14, 15, 16). In the World Health Organization Monitoring Cardiac Disease (ie, WHO MONICA) surveys, BMI was lower in smokers than in nonsmokers in 20 (men) and 30 (women) of the 42 populations, and there was no population in which smokers had a higher BMI than did nonsmokers (17).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523235479#bib6

Цікаво, я практично і забув про це! Хоча двадцять років тому в Україні я чув від дівчат, що паління допомагає їм тримати форму.

Мені здається, коли в нас буде бажання скаржитися на зайву вагу серед молоді - то треба це пригадати і трохи пригальмувати. (Особливо якщо ще пригадати, що амфетімін для похудіння продавався ще не так давно...)

Подумалось, вбивство CEO of UnitedHealth - це ж класичний лівий терор. Але подивиться, як його підтримують прості робочі люди.

(Якщо що - це не заклик до терору, це заклик подумати, чи здатна ідея "збереження статус-кво" заохотити простий робочий люд голосувати за носія цієї ідеї.)

I was going through my records for examples to use in another post. (Unfortunately, I have a bunch of my friends and acquaintances who needed help with getting/paying for healthcare at some point of time - cancer, delivered unconscious in off-network hospital after a car accident, another case of cancer, a kid with special needs - the list goes on and on...)

And I came at the great example.

A single mother, working a regular office job. Nothing fancy - a tiny apartment in LA, a couple of pets, drives a cheap Toyota, a poster child for lower middle class. Her daughter - who studies in college at the moment - get diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, aggressive but still curable. The daughter has no insurance (that's early 2000-ish, pre-ACA times and she's too old to be on her mom's insurance - like 19 or 20).

It literally means financial ruin for them - despite crowdfunding a big chunk of hospital bills - she is royally screwed. Screwed as in "lose the job, lose the apartment, screw up the credit score, move to the countryside, bribe a super to take over a rent-controlled lease etc etc".

Several years later she's rebuilding her life. We are discussing ACA (which is not a law yet). And she is furiously defending the existing system - "under ACA some will suffer and get the worse care, that's unacceptable", she says (plus some bullshit about Michelle Obama spending 2 billion on her vacation and the rest of Tea Party propaganda).

Now I realize - people with that kind of position cannot be convinced by rational arguments. If they are ready to screw themselves in order to protect the status quo - how can you convince them not to screw other people? No numbers, no statistics can change that - or so it seems to me. (Though I'd like to be proven wrong.)

I had a discussion recently about different types of healthcare system. Heard a very honest argument along those lines (not verbatim so I may misinterpret it but I do hope I summarize in the right way):

- Yep, the poor are screwed, but what about those who can pay? Shouldn't we care about them too? Does it make sense to prioritize that care? If we start caring about poor, others will suffer and that's bad.

Well, a couple of months ago I took part in a fundraiser. People were collecting money for a software developer (a friend of a friend of mine). Why? After all, if you work in Facebook, you get the best health insurance money can buy. If you work in Facebook - you are not poor, you belong to top 1-5% incomewise. He must have done something really wrong to screw things up so bad he needs to beg. It must be a poor decision. It will never happen to us. Right?

Well, wrong. Turns out - if you have a cancer, if you're too sick to work, you lose your job. After a certain period of time, your disability insurance stops paying - since you're "healthy" enough to be doing something (even if this something is paying 10x-20x less than your last job). You still need to make your mortgage payments (your kids need to go to a good school, right?), but you also need to travel out-of-state to a clinic that specialized in your type of cancer (and pay out-of-network copays and deductibles). And you need to rent another place to stay during your treatment. Ah, and in addition to that you need to make insurance premium payments (fortunately, due to CORBA you get to keep your insurance - but you still need to cough up several thousands dollars a month).

So if you think that a single payer system only benefits poor people - think again. When you are going to become sick (not if, when - it is a matter of time for all of us) - it is going to become about you, not about poor people. (Unless you have a few hundred thousand dollars stashed away.)

The only lucky break here is that you can be old enough to qualify for an existing single payer health coverage (Medicare, yep).

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mykyta_p

Obesity epidemics and smoking

UnitedHealth CEO

Convincing other people to change their views on healthcare

Let's care about folks who can pay

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March 2025

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