Sarah Palin: bat****, or howling-at-the-moon bat****?

[Lorizael]

Christ, someone needs to get this thread back on topic.

[ShaneWalter]

So ****ing what?

People still need to eat. They still need houses. They still need clothes, holidays, IPods, computers, and a lot of other **** they need money for to get, including lessons from twerps like you, although for what godforsaken reason I can only guess on the last point.

Ugh, this isn't a difficult concept. Workers supply labour depending on their marginal benefit they recieve. In the case of a labourer, the marginal benefit recieved is the sum total of all wages and fringe benefits recieved by employment. The greater the marginal benefit, the more workers that will supply labour. When healthcare becomes a right that one gets due to their residency of a certain country, rather than a benefit from working, their marginal benefit of working decreases. This is extremely intuitive. We're talking introductory micro-economics stuff here. To use the argument that "people still need to eat so they'll work in a society where their marginal benefit for working is lower for the exact same (or perhaps even lower) wages" is ridiculous and shows a very poor understanding of economics.

People still need to work. Only employers will have a larger pool of people in good health, who are not working in some other job just for the benes, to choose from.

Okay wait what? Are you trying to insinuate here that an employer cares whether the compensation their employees recieve is cash or healthcare benefits? What exactly is your point wrt "a larger pool of people in good health who are not working some other job just for the benes"? (I presume benes=benefits). Why would an employer care whether I am working my job for health care benefits or for cash? Further, do you seriously think that someone leaving one job for another has an effect on the aggregate supply and aggregate demand for labour?

The even worse thing I just realised is that going down this line of logic, is actually counterproductive to your point. (An own goal perhaps?)

You see, you are saying there are people who choose to work for a specific firm due to the health benefits they recieve. Thinking on it, this seems somewhat intuitive. Somebody who has a chronic health condition, or maybe just a person that is for some reason not healthy and is always getting sick, may be insensitive to wage levels, but very sensitive to changes in their health benefits. Such a person may choose to cut back their hours under a universal healthcare system (generally you have to work full time to recieve full healthcare benefits), or they may choose not to work at all.

I don't know whether such a scenario would occur, but I do think it is not at all reasonable to conclude that somebody who is working at a specific firm because of healthcare benefits, will under a universal healthcare system, work more hours. They would either work the same or (if they are insensitive to changes in salary and healthcare benefits made up most of their percieved marginal benefit from employment) would cut back their hours, lowering the aggregate labour supply.

The economy with public healthcare, or at least a larger public mandate (thinking the Swiss, Germans) would be more effecient than any that we can conceive of that actually exists without. And hense, public healthcare will not be detrimental to exports! Which was the argument all along, you ****trumpet.

The thing is, I don't think that KH has argued that universal healthcare would absolutely hurt exports. His argument, as far as I understand has been two-fold:
1) Universal healthcare may hurt exports.
2) If universal healthcare helps exports, the mechanism by which this occurs is not nearly as intuitive as you are making it out to be, and moreover, the mechanisms by which you are trying to argue that it would help exports ("PEOPLE HAVE TO EAT! NOBODY WOULD EVER QUIT A JOB IF THEIR MARGINAL BENEFIT DECREASED! NOBODY HAS EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MAN CHOSEN TO BE UNEMPLOYED WHEN THEY FEEL THEIR MARGINAL BENEFIT FROM WORK IS LESS THAN THEIR MARGINAL COST!") show a very poor understanding of even the most simplest micro-economic principles.

That you are continuing this argument and trying to insist that you are "right" just makes your lack of understanding basic micro-economic principles even more apparent. Your final conclusion may very well be correct. Yet, you are no more right than the kid who sees a drag race the first time and says "I think the blue car will win because BLUE cars are always faster!" Just because the blue car wins, does not make him any more right, nor does it make the people who said "The driver in the blue car is inexperienced. He is not likely to win. Even if he does, it isn't because the car is blue" wrong.

[Straybow]

Finally hunted down what that statistic is. It's the mortality rate divided by the incidence rate. Crudely, it can be thought of as one over the "average" survival time with the disease from diagnosis to death (there are a couple of problems with this view, but it's not terrible as a heuristic).

You're a ****ing idiot, Straybow.

No, apparently you are the idiot. You found the report and still didn't understand the numbers.

The incidence rates simply report the number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer in a given year. Prostate cancer mortality rates report the number of men who died of the disease in a given year. Neither speaks to length of survival, and that figure can not be calculated using the others.

Yet, prostate cancer doesn't just go away. The number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer over that length of time is still going to average out to the number of men who have prostate cancer over that length of time.

Unless you are claiming that a significant number of men in the UK are dropping dead and only found to have prostate cancer in the autopsy. They wouldn't show up in the incident rate, since it was not diagnosed, only in the mortality rate. That, of course, would be another problem to consider.

Or perhaps it is your claim of lead time bias that is still crap. Lead time bias only skews the statistics when early diagnosis does not significantly effect the end result. According to this hospital, "Because so many prostate tumors are low-grade and slow growing, survival rates are excellent when prostate cancer is detected in its early stages. Cure rates are as high 98%." According to the National Cancer Institute study of 12 reporting areas, in 215k cases from 1988-2001 the survival rate when still localized at detection was 100% to eight years, and only dropped below 100% at ten years for those 75 or older when first diagnosed. By comparison, metastasized prostate cancer has a one-year survival rate of only 83%, and a five-year survival rate of a dreadful 35%.

That means early detection is critical to successful treatment. Your claim is plain wrong. You said that the methods neglected in the UK and Canada that detect prostate cancer earlier are insignificant. That's what you get when nationalized healthcare decides to save money by skimping on "expensive testing" (PSA tests cost less than $50).

[Guynemer]

you ****trumpet.

[Lorizael]

Yeah, I was too confused to know if I should be reprimanding him for that.

[Guynemer]

Stray:

Actually, many prostate cancers nowadays aren't treated at all, precisely because of the fact they are so slow-growing.

Prostate cancer is typically something men die with, not from. All the PSA screening and aggressive treatment, etc., has not had any significant improvement in quality-of-life, life expentancy, etc. It has, however, driven costs way up.

[Guynemer]

Christ, someone needs to get this thread back on topic.

Okay then:


Sarah Palin: thorazine, or electroconvulsive therapy? What route should we take?

[RGBVideo]

how many threads were there about smearing john edwards in 2005?

This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between posts. Please try again in 4 seconds.

yes? this is so ****ing predictable. side (1) loses election. side (2) starts to aggressively smear the candidates of side (1) with noise in order to eliminate their chances to ever run again, facts be damned

also, the daily show has degenerated into a carbon copy of o'reilly, just on the other side of the political spectrum. who remembers stewart's pledge to continue making fun of the "ruling party" even after the democrats will win the presidency anymore? these days their "humour" is dishonest and self-congratulating bull****, mostly revolving around strawman fallacy.

also, looks like i've outgrown the OMGG DA POLITIKKS IS DA BOMB -phase of my life, congrats me!

[Guynemer]

Dude, are you serious?

Palin is getting "smeared," "facts be damned"?




You can't really be serious, can you?

[KrazyHorse]

Unless you are claiming that a significant number of men in the UK are dropping dead and only found to have prostate cancer in the autopsy.

Actually, son, unless there is some sort of mystery about why they died most men DON'T EVEN GET AN AUTOPSY.

[KrazyHorse]

Holy ****, son, it's not that hard. The statistic you gave is RIDICULOUS. And the reason you can see that is that the 1997 figures (the date on which the statistic you gave was based) for mortality rates in the US (deaths per 100k per annum) from prostate cancer were actually QUITE SIMILAR across OECD countries. The difference was that in the early 90s incidence rates were not that different in the US and UK, but as the decade wore on the incidence rate in the US grew enormously as screening became commonplace, while in the UK it remained relatively constant as aggressive screening DID NOT become the norm. Yet this dramatic change in incidence rates in the US had very little effect on mortality rates.

[KrazyHorse]

As you can see, there IS a mild downturn in mortality rates that was only beginning in the late 90s. If you compare the change in the US mortality rate relative to that of the UK (as I previously explained a number of pages back) you can probably get an estimate of the scale of the difference in the effectiveness of the two health systems in treating prostate cancer.

What you cannot do is to make the statement that "57 percent of Britons who get prostate cancer will die"

[Guynemer]

And that goes directly to the fiscally conservative argument for meaningful healthcare reform.

By most statistical measurements, the quality of US healthcare is on par with UK healthcare. But the Brits spend 40% of what we Yanks do.

If one car dealer is offering a new car for $20,000, and the dealership across the street is offering the same car at $8,000, why the hell do we keep paying $20,000?

[KrazyHorse]

The incidence rates for the UK increase as well, but remain less than half of the UK incidence rates. The difference REALLY IS men who go to their graves without getting a PSA test and who likely aren't even diagnosed with it upon death because they don't get an autopsy in most cases.

[KrazyHorse]

And that goes directly to the fiscally conservative argument for meaningful healthcare reform.

By most statistical measurements, the quality of US healthcare is on par with UK healthcare. But the Brits spend 40% of what we Yanks do.

If one car dealer is offering a new car for $20,000, and the dealership across the street is offering the same car at $8,000, why the hell do we keep paying $20,000?

Because the UK health care system does appear be a used car. (Just not the lemon that Straybow and the similarly ignorant keep claiming it to be)



The mortality rate from prostate cancer has dropped faster in the US than in the UK