In the midst of the Obamacare/Trumpcare debate, there's news from the Annals of Internal Medicine that Canadian Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients live more than 10 years longer on average than patients with the same disease in the U.S. — universal healthcare plays a large role in that survival rate.
According to the CTV News story one factor is that Canadians with cystic fibrosis were told ten years earlier than Americans to adopt a high-calorie, high-fat diet, to take pancreatic enzyme supplements and vitamin supplements at every meal, and that Canadians were more likely to get lung transplants.
But one of the key differences between the two countries is that Canadians have universal, publicly funded health care while Americans do not.
In the study group, Canadian CF patients as a whole had a 77 per cent lower risk for death than U.S. patients with no health insurance or who health insurance status was unknown. They also had a 44 per cent lower death risk than Americans receiving continuous Medicaid or Medicare, and a 36 per cent lower risk than those receiving intermittent Medicaid or Medicare coverage.
Wikipedia summarizes:
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs, but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine. Long-term issues include difficulty breathing and coughing up mucus as a result of frequent lung infections. Other signs and symptoms may include sinus infections, poor growth, fatty stool, clubbing of the fingers and toes, and infertility in males. Different people may have different degrees of symptoms.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:07AM (2 children)
Turns out, I am not one of their people? I am not at least a millionaire, with my own well invested rainy-day health-care hits-the-fan account? If only I had a tax break for the interest I get on my "I might die" money! Poors could have the same tax break, and TrumpNoCare could just pay for itself! Or was I just Paul Ryan dreaming? Dreaming of Ayn, again, oh no, not again! Get away from her, Greenspan! She is my goddess! Together, we will roll out blue steel and cut medicare and Social Security, and retreat to Galt's gulch, and then you will finally yield to my demands for fiscal responsibility, and realize that taxation is theft, and stick it to those damn collectivist Bolshevicks who stole Ayn's pony, the one she got for her 13th birthday! Communists! So Cruel! Well, at least we won't have to pay for their healthcare anymore!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:49AM
Good God, magister, seems you are quite depressive lately.
Too bad that pony won't be returned, though. Poor creature, 'twas used to make vaccines for those Bolshevicks
(Score: 1) by Mike on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:37PM
Or was I just Paul Ryan dreaming? Dreaming of Ayn, again, oh no, not again! Get away from her, Greenspan! She is my goddess! Together, we will roll out blue steel and cut medicare and Social Security, and retreat to Galt's gulch,
Perhaps Paul Ryan should discuss that plan with Ayn Rand's Ghost.
“Ask Ayn Rand - I believe you can still find her haunting the public housing she died in while on Social Security and Medicare.”
-David Cross