General > General Technical Chat
why is the US not Metric
tooki:
--- Quote from: boffin on December 09, 2019, 06:20:52 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on December 08, 2019, 03:51:23 pm ---...
It's like that NHS thing. The standard of care in the UK is to get an appointment in 12 weeks. In 12 weeks I could be dead! I can get an appointment with my HMO for the same day if the triage suggests things are serious. I can go to one facility for everything except overnight stays. MRI, ECG, Lab, GP, Specialists are all in the same facility. For the more serious stuff, I can go to any hospital emergency room and the cost is covered by my HMO. Sure, it costs more than a buck ninety eight per month but it's worth it. All socialized medicine accomplishes is to drag everybody down to the same level of misery. Same as socialized anything else!
--- End quote ---
Spoken like someone who's drinking the USA Kool-aid. Have you ever considered that the reason you see reports that (incorrectly) report UK, Canada, France health care as all 12-week waits is that they're sponsored by the very insurance/health-care business who's livelihood would be affected if there were real change.
If you have a serious issue, and you go into a hospital in the UK, in Canada, in France or almost any other 1st world country, you'll get treatment right away. As for 'any hospital emergency room', I'll bet you (and plenty of your American friends) have "out of network" issues, that just don't exist elsewhere in the 1st world.
This is why the UK, Canada, France etc; all have measurably better life expectancy, and lower infant mortality rates than the USA. (The USA lags even 2nd world countries like Costa Rica and Cuba in some numbers).
Last week my father-in-law was in town for a minor surgery. It was diagnosed as required (but not life threatening) a few weeks prior by his local GP in a very small town, and the surgery, plus the flight down to the big city, was all covered by our Canadian [according to you -- inferior] health care system.
The American "We're #1, we're better than you, we don't have to change anything" mentality, without examining the facts and looking at the rest of the world; is exactly why the USA lags the world in adoption of a single standard for measurement; and it's summed up in a single world
Arrogance
Aaron Sorkin summed it up nicely in the 1st five minutes of the show "the Newsroom"
https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk?t=94
--- End quote ---
As an American living in Europe, I completely concur with everything you said about healthcare.
rstofer:
--- Quote from: boffin on December 09, 2019, 08:34:23 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on December 09, 2019, 07:22:43 pm ---...
There is nothing government can do that is better than what private industry can do. Nationalizing anything is always a huge mistake!
...
--- End quote ---
Healthcare
The US has demonstrably worse Health Care than almost all other 1st world (government run) healthcare systems; as I mentioned; but you knew that already as you read my post.
Let's look at the G7; and use the two most common measures of the effectiveness of healthcare systems.
Life Expectancy (CIA World factbook 2017)
Japan 2nd
Italy 14th
Canada 17th
France 18th
Germany 34th
UK 35th
USA 57th
Infant Mortality (World Bank)
Japan 6th
Italy 10th
Germany 19th
France 22nd
UK 24th
Canada 28th
USA 32nd
and now compare that to costs
yet the US spends the most per capita on healthcare (OECD 2017)
United States — $10,209 - 1st
Germany — $5,728 - 5th
France — $4,902 - 11th
Canada — $4,826 - 12th
Japan — $4,717 - 14th
United Kingdom — $4,246 - 17th
Italy — $3,542 - 20th
Coming dead last while spending twice as much is hardly a case for "There's nothing the government can do better than private industry"
--- End quote ---
But you never ask why? How about the fact that infant mortality for 'crack babies' is included in the stats. How about the fact that drug abusers are also included. Life expectancy? Well that includes drug abusers as well.
Somewhere there needs to be a way to exclude overdoses or gang warfare from impacting the stats. Health care isn't the reason of the 40,000 gun related deaths, 60% were suicide, 37% were murder and 3% other. Yet these count toward mortality rate. We have about 50,000 suicides per year but this will overlap with other stats. Then too, 10% of our population are drug users.
We have a liberal society run amok. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back one day.
The healthcare itself is excellent. It's what is included in the stats that would lead anyone to think we are substandard.
MT:
--- Quote from: rstofer on December 09, 2019, 07:50:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on December 09, 2019, 06:32:00 pm ---The issue with the "senile old goats" is that they dream of a country that no longer exists. I recall visiting England in the 70's, as a child. The country had permanent sunshine and blue skies. Its inhabitants were lily white boys in neat school uniforms that I played football (soccer) with every day, on vast expanses of green, fresh mown grass. An ice cream van appeared every day and provided all the children with their daily sugar fix. From that perspective, what could you possibly not like about England?
Fast forward to today. The boys that played football in the everlasting summer are now at a stage in their lives where they can't read stuff on their cell phones without reading glasses. Their hair is thinning. They are generally overweight, overstimulated, and have to watch their blood pressure. Their doctors are telling them to take it easy.
--- End quote ---
And with more money than our offspring will ever have. We pillaged the system, accumulated a butt-load of money in our 401(k)s and home equity and we sit back living off Social Security and our pension(s) not even needing to tap our retirement accounts. If it weren't for mandatory withdrawals (on the order of 8% per year) we would probably never need to touch the money. I'm using my mandatory withdrawals to pay for my grandson's college education. Nothing else to do with the money...
There's nearly $25 TRILLION dollars in retirement plans - no wonder the .gov is looking for a way to get their hands on it!
https://www.benefitspro.com/2015/06/30/total-retirement-assets-near-25-trillion-mark/?slreturn=20191109144620
We got ours, now it's your turn. Show us what you got!
--- End quote ---
Not only that US has 24 trillions in debt and the entire finance system have been taken entirely black with FASAB56. Good Riddance! Read all about it here:
https://home.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/
https://constitution.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/
https://constitution.solari.com/the-black-budget-the-crossroads-of-unconstitutional-appropriations-and-reporting/
Catherine served as managing director and member of the board of directors of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration, and was the president of Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. Catherine has designed and closed over $25 billion of transactions and investments to-date and has led portfolio and investment strategy for $300 billion of financial assets and liabilities.
Catherine graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (BA), the Wharton School (MBA) and studied Mandarin Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She blogs for the Solari Report at solari.com.
rstofer:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 09, 2019, 09:44:15 pm ---At the end of the day there are a lot of reasons people can hate on America. And I suspect this is a part of the reason for the animosity towards America's continued use of the old imperial system.
If this is the reasoning, a US change to metric is only a symbolic gesture. If this is a good enough reason, then America could change. Is it?
Or would all of the America-haters complaining about imperial still hate America for the actual good reasons, of which there is no particular shortage?
--- End quote ---
Of course they would!
This whole thread started and continues as US bashing. It has nothing to do with metric, that is just a tag.
But the good news is that we (I) don't give a sh**. We're not going to change so keep on hating. Me, I've been retired for 16 years and don't really concern myself with details. Life is good!
But, if you really are hating the US, why not encourage your politicians to forgo our money and military? Maybe rebalance the trade? Cut the ties. Believe me, you won't be missed.
There are exactly 3 countries the US can rely on: Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain (maybe just England). Everybody else is just slurping at the hog trough. Taking the money, bitching about the banker.
Be honest about your hatred and quit relying on our support. We really do have better things to do with our people and money.
i would think Poland would be very worried after Tusk's little stunt at the NATO meeting. It might have been funny in the EU and, perhaps even London, but it didn't sell that well in the US. Given a vote, the US would have been out of NATO 50 years ago.
2N3055:
I wholeheartedly vote for this topic to be locked.
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