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posted by martyb on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the move-or-die dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:53PM (#479744)

    The ACA, modified or not, is not the first problem.

    It's the anything for profit payment system in the US.
    This results in crazy, opaque pricing and a focus on doing stuff instead of healthy outcomes.

    The first thing we need is one price for all instead of the used car salesman mentality.
    The second thing is to eliminate the overhead of work, insurance, and for profit hospital and pharma in the middle of the payment path.
    Then rethinking the monopoly of the AMA and pharma.

    The only problem is if you think these take a big skim and do crazy things, wait until Washington is the path.
    Canada evolved to the mentality of govt doing a good job. Washington is more the VA's plan.
    The question is how to transition to something sane with all the entrenched interests pulling in the opposite direction.

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