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Want a Healthier Population? Spend Less on Health Care and More on Social Services

posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 23 2018, @11:51PM   Printer-friendly

AnonTechie writes:

"Spending more on health care sounds like it should improve health, but our study suggests that is not the case and social spending could be used to improve the health of everyone," says Dr. Daniel Dutton, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta. "Relative to health care, we spend little on social services per person, so redistributing money to social services from health care is actually a small change in health care spending."

Health care costs are expanding in many developed countries like Canada, and governments are seeking ways to contain costs while maintaining a healthy population. Treating the social determinants of health like income, education, or social and physical living environments through spending on social services can help address the root causes of disease and poor health. However, health spending continues to make up the lion's share of spending.

[...] The commentary author suggests governments should allocate social spending fairly for both young and old to ensure that the younger generation is not being shortchanged.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180122104016.htm

[Paper]: Effect of provincial spending on social services and health care on health outcomes in Canada: an observational longitudinal study

[Related]: The need for health in all policies in Canada

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:00AM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:00AM (#626999) Journal

    How can you be fair to the younger generation when there's all these generous giveaways to older generations like health care and public pensions?

    Having a balanced budget and controlling/regulating the markup for pharma [statista.com] and heath services [medicfootprints.org]?

    How do you think USA got to have a life expectancy under 70 [wikipedia.org] and yet the highest cost of heath care per capita [wikipedia.org] by far?

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:34AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:34AM (#627011) Journal
    Well, I'm sure it'll get better. Because the older generations are looking out for the younger ones, right?

    Further, you might have missed the part where I mentioned the entire developed world. The US isn't the only culprit here.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:50AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 24 2018, @06:50AM (#627015) Journal

      Further, you might have missed the part where I mentioned the entire developed world. The US isn't the only culprit here.

      May not be a problem common to the "the entire developed world" as you suggest.
      Seems like Finland has quite a good school and healthcare (which includes elder-aged) without putting the two in conflict. Which suggest it is possible to not experience "this [is a] huge problem".

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      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:54PM (#627252)

      Whataboutism, the last resort of the clueless.