LuckyR

When you say "lung cytology" are you referring to bronchoscopy washings (from a patient) or samples taken from a cadaver (typically at autopsy)?

Well originally the definition of gods were that they had superhuman powers, it was only when Modern (monotheistic) religions were invented that gods were required to be omnipotent. So your focus on "most powerful" while common currently, was not a requirement back when the concept of gods was invented.

A pretty good demonstration of "what-about-ism". If you want to demonstrate that adding funding doesn't improve quality, I suppose you're prepared to show that cutting funding of Healthcare doesn't erode quality. Since the main expenditure of any Healthcare system is labor costs, having fewer, say nurses, in a hospital doesn't erode quality of care? Or replacing RNs with lower cost Nursing Assistants?

Yup, as said before, you get what you pay for (within the same system).

Yes you did (compare outcomes), alas doing so presupposes that levels of health are mainly influenced by Healthcare, whereas it is influenced much more (as you later acknowledged) by lifestyle choices/opportunities and genetics. Thus the high US expenditures reflect things like profit taking, the medicolegally caused "defensive" medicine and the higher acuity of their population. I agree that Americans in Denmark might improve their lifestyle choices but if so this only underscores the reality that the US Healthcare system is burdened with treating a more unhealthy population who are destined to 1) require more (and more expensive) care and 2) end up with worse outcomes, despite the extra expenditures. I apologize for being difficult to understand. I'm not "condemning" Medicaid, it does an incredibly tough job pretty darn well and IMO deserves better funding to do even better. My tangential comment was that better funding leads to faster care.

Oh cool. Glad to hear we're in agreement.

You said that "you get what you pay for" doesn't apply to the US healthcare system. I showed that within the US system it does. However it turns out you were only referring to comparing what the US spends compared to what other countries spend. As it happens, if you took the patients that the US healthcare system has to treat (a cross section of Americans) and put them in, say Denmark's system, the cost of treating them would be more than what Denmark pays to treat Danes and their outcomes would be similar to US outcomes. Because it is an error to suppose that healthcare outcome differences in the West are due to heathcare "quality", rather they're due to what the patient brings to the table. Or to put it another way, Danes are, on average healthier up front, than the average American. Just one factoid to ponder: Denmark has less than half the obesity rate of the US. Several things. First, I'm glad you personally have had great medical care across various insurance plans. Though your experience is anecdotal for the purposes of this thread. Second, Medicare (generally for seniors) has a great reputation in the insurance world, thus I wasn't referring to that. Medicaid (generally for low income folks) has many problems. Firstly, many docs don't accept it (as insurance) since it pays them sometimes below the cost of providing care. Second, the average denial rate of Medicaid managed care organizations is more than double that of Medicare.

So in the US those who have (higher premium) "Cadillac" health plan coverage don't get faster, better healthcare than Medicaid? We are in total agreement that when comparing different country's health systems, that how they're set up plays an important role. And I have heard nothing that discounts my assertion that all else being equal, that investing more resources leads to better care.

Well it used to be 15% (before Obamacare) and as I pointed out (and you conveniently ignored) that 8% number could be as low as 1.7% if states run by a certain party would have accepted the Federal expansion of Medicaid (under Obamacare).

Of course Denmark has lower wait times than the NHS. It has higher income and especially capital gains tax rates and a nominal Defense dept budget. It would be criminal if it didn't. You get what you pay for. It's not magic. That's why the UK is so instructive, private pay and the NHS are within the same economic system (unlike a Denmark/UK comparo).

The UK is an instructive model of the difference between private pay and public pay Healthcare. One can easily Google "wait time for joint replacement in UK" and learn the difference between the NHS and private pay. Basically there's no free lunch, you get what you pay for.

Actually since Obamacare only 8% of Americans are uninsured. And they are heavily weighted towards states that chose (for political reasons) to not accept Federal expansion of Medicaid. In states that did, like Massachusetts, the numbers are quite low, Massachusetts for example is 1.7%.

Oh, I see the issue. I take "wealth inequality" to mean a less even distribution of wealth such that if the highest and lowest were identical between two systems but one had a huge middle class, that one would have a more even distribution and therefore less "wealth inequality". But I agree with your postings if using your definition of the term.

I don't disagree. The percentage of the world population in this most dire of circumstances is lower today than in antiquity. In addition the size of the merchant (middle) class has conversely grown since the start of the Industrial revolution.

Not my point (that the homeless are, in fact wealthy), rather that Homeless guy in 2025 who gets appendicitis can go an ER and receive an appendectomy. Alexander, alas has a majority chance of dying. As to Joe Schmo, he uses the vast majority of his wealth. Bezos, OTOH will use a small fraction of his wealth. Of course Bezos is definitely rich, only a simpleton would attempt to say differently, but >90% of his wealth is essentially superfluous and in my opinion that portion, when used to compare eras, is more misleading than informative. Exactly. That is poverty comparable to previous eras. Therefore "low" (in the industrialized world) could be much lower.

A better question would be, if there actually are gods, are they among the 10,000 gods invented by humans, or some as yet to be thought of gods? And if they are among the 10,000, does it even matter which they happen to be?

Musk vs Bezos illustrates the point, it isn't itself the point. Musk, Bezos and their ilk are invoked when statistics such as: "the top 0.001% owns more wealth than the bottom blah, blah percent ". It's a great headline but when talking about those few individuals, most of their wealth includes huge numbers of dollars that I referred to (and that you apparently agreed with) that aren't as valuable as the dollars Joe Schmo uses to fill his car with gas (since those dollars will never be spent by their owners in their lifetime). As to your comparo between eras, homeless people in the US have access to goods and services that Alexander the Great couldn't acquire with all of his accumulated wealth.

Uummm... I'm not invoking government conspiracy for $7.

Well, the average monthly payout is $1975, the average bank interest rate is 0.42%, so we're talking about 69¢ a month. That's why I said: "no".

Sure, it's obvious if you're working on their home, but who gets to see the inside of someone's home (who isn't in the building profession)? No, I meant when you meet folks in real life, out and about. Well wealth inequity definitely huge in the US today BUT in my opinion, it is an error to treat every dollar of "wealth" equally. For example, if Musk has $429 billion and Bezos only has $241 billion, is Musk twice as wealthy? A statistician would say yes. To me they're equally wealthy because the amount of money they can spend in their lifetimes is essentially equal. In prior eras, with huge peasant classes and small merchant classes, wealth inequity was much greater, even if a statistician tells you that the sums involved were smaller, thus the difference between "rich" and "poor" weren't in the same realm as a Musk situation.

No. As you pointed out, benefit payouts are mandated by statute. The bigger question is: is it in your best interest to start taking benefits at this point or at a later time.

If that's the question, my answer is not only "no one", but a percentage of those who want to have children are unsuited to parenting (and thus "shouldn't" have children). If the world population decreases, great, there's way too many humans as it is.

Very reasonable. Similarly, free range chickens experience less suffering than factory farmed chickens etc.

Since the quality of being "justified" is a subjective one, everyone will answer this question (at least) slightly differently, depending on their personal perspective.

I get it. Of course when that was written, wealth inequity was much greater than today. That is, it was more obvious who the "rich" were.