Why You Die

[GGT]

Nessus, I have never disputed what you're saying; I just disputed GGT's claim that we are 'sicker than ever' and that we neither heal nor cure anything. It was obviously wrong. Aggregate health has indeed increased by leaps and bounds - through medical technology and practice, public health interventions (e.g. smoking cessation campaigns), and modern civil engineering (e.g. water treatment, sanitation, etc.), and much more. To ignore that is to be guilty of this: snip

Dude, George C. Scott was saying that in the movie! Sorry if the lack of quotation marks confused you about my point. I was lamenting the fact that all of our advancements aren't available to all the people, and that even the 'aggregate gains' from public health and civil engineering are at risk because they're linked to an American aversion to taxes. (The same can be said for transportation infrastructure.)

I'm sad that "The Greater Good" has been so politicized that we can't agree on how to pay (tax) for things that benefit the general public, knowing full well that only the top tier can pay out-of-pocket cash (or bypass anything 'public'), but everyone else needs some type of subsidy. Whether it's a private employer or a state, those workers all get a subsidy and/or a special group rate that's not available to anyone else. Let's not forget WHY the PPACA was enacted in the first place: millions of people couldn't get group health insurance, and the private insurance market was exploitative.

I agree humanity is healthier than ever. Incredibly, our longevity has actually lead to the discovery of the new, and very expensive, age-related disease category.

And Louis CK is great. His show Louis was great. I'm bummed he quit making it...

I think GGT's complaint isn't really about the state of human health overall, and at the heart, it's not about healthcare at all. The rich have more and better healthcare access than the poor. Really? They also have more and better access to food, clean water, adequate housing, reliable transportation, education, technology, employment, entertainment, and on and on. And, oh by the way, this very human social arrangement isn't a hell of a lot different today from what it has been through the entire history of humanity, all the way back to when the tribal leader got to eat the best parts of the mammoth before anyone else.

As long as humans are in charge, I don't see this particular social arrangement changing.

Compared to other developed nations, the US is losing ground on quality of life and longevity metrics, yet we pay more. None of our (US) shortcomings can be viewed as the "natural" result of human behavior, since other societies have done better.