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"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
[Related]: The need for health in all policies in Canada
(Score: 5, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:43AM (6 children)
I am absolutely serious. I have a "Housing First" apartment whose rent is paid by the Federal Housing and Urban Development administration.
When I was homeless, or from time to time staying in my Mom's guest room I was always getting picked up by the cops who would take me to a mental hospital - while wearing handcuffs.
The concept of Housing First is that it's far cheaper to pay the rent for homeless people than it is to pay for mental hospitals and jails.
I don't have a clue how many times I was put back in the booby hatch while I was homeless. I'm serious: I have lost count.
I've been in my apartment since May 2016. I'm not on Section 8 it is "Permanent Supportive Housing" which means my rent will get paid for the rest of my life if I'm not able to pay for it myself.
My electricity too.
Having a stable place to live enabled me to get back to work as a software consultant [soggywizards.com].
I used some of my pay to purchase a Mac mini and an iPhone 7. I will buy a MacBook Pro sometime soon. That will enable me to use the two-machine debugger to develop Mac OS X drivers.
While working out of my paid-for-by-the-government-tit home.
Having this work enables me to pay a portion of my rent. I expect to pay the whole thing after my next income recalculation.
I'm also going to buy a car. It's not so I can get to my current client's office - because of traffic it is faster to take public transit.
But having a car will enable me to take on clients whose offices aren't on any of the bus routes.
It will also enable me to pick up dates in my wheels rather than asking them to meet me somewhere they have to get to on their own.
And finally it will enable me to perform at Open Mics. I own quite a good quality but very lightweight keyboard.
Some of my possessions don't jive with my homelessness. For example I keep my bus pass in a hand-stitched Italian leather card wallet that I bought at the Men's Furnishings department at Macy's.
Before I went looking for a card wallet I was completely unaware that there even was such a thing as Men's Furnishings.
I inherited a really top-quality contractor's table saw from my grandfather. Saws like that cost a grand or too.
It's not common for homeless people to have enough tools that they could build a house with the aid of just one low-paid helper.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 24 2018, @02:51PM (5 children)
I'm waiting for an anonymous coward to argue that this would ultimately lead to a reduction or elimination of homelessness. It could even lead to universal basic income. And god forbid that poor people might get health care! What would our society come to without poverty, homelessness and hopelessness.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday January 24 2018, @03:00PM (4 children)
> What would our society come to without poverty, homelessness and hopelessness
What would you hope for if you had everything?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 24 2018, @03:23PM (3 children)
Taking a lesson from observing the lives of people who are on the opposite end of poverty, people are never satisfied. Always wanting more. There is no amount that is enough. These might be people who you could say "have everything". Yet they are unhappy. They may be "medicated" by lots of toys and distractions. But still basically unhappy.
Trying to make everyone happy should not be a goal. But one goal could be to try to reduce the wealth divide. Raise the bar of the lowest income to a level where their own drive to have more will enable them with the opportunities to better both themselves and everyone else with their efforts.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @03:51PM (1 child)
There is probably quite a bit of selection bias in that sample. What kind of people would seek to make that much money after they've already far exceeded the point of simply living in luxury?
Studies have shown that there is a diminishing return in increased happiness with increasing income and beyond a certain, not so high, point they stop being correlated.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 24 2018, @09:01PM
As for the continuing to seek making more money, what you say is for people not insane with greed. Some people never have enough and are compulsively driven to acquire more wealth -- and probably not by "earning" it but by figuring out how to game systems, exploit others, etc. Those people will continue.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Wednesday January 24 2018, @05:18PM
> But one goal could be to try to reduce the wealth divide.
Which wealth divide?
The one where the richest 5% of the world complain about the richest 0.00001% having too much, or the one where the richest 5% use a quarter of the resources and 80% of the world lives on less than $10 per day? Reducing the former doesn't help most of the world, reducing the latter would make almost everyone in the developed world pretty _un_happy.
Or maybe you want to address the wealth divide organisations like Oxfam tend to refer to - using net asset value, which makes out that the poorest people in the world are recent ivy league law and medical graduates (a very flawed measure, see e.g. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/04/stop-adding-up-the-wealth-of-the-poor/ [reuters.com] )
Maybe you could just address absolute poverty - say take half the wealth off the top 10 richest and use it to eliminate world extreme poverty, except it wouldn't take that much any more (you'd need half roughly the wealth of the top 10 today if it was 1980ish, but now you'd only need about a fifth, why? - because the amount of absolute poverty has been declining fast anyway, even as the world's rich have got richer - see e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Since-1820.png [ourworldindata.org]
Maybe it is all a matter of perception of poverty (from https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty [ourworldindata.org] ):
- in other words those in rich countries believe poverty has increased, those in poor countries believe the opposite, so are things actually getting better or worse? Kind of important to know that before changing what we are doing...