Comment by janalsncm

11 hours ago

Perhaps there are many causes of heart disease and diabetes. It is likely that actionable information would require a case-by-case assessment. That is exactly what doctors do, so getting people time with doctors seems pretty useful.

Regarding other factors, American culture is fairly similar to Canadian culture. However Canadians have free healthcare, meaning more Canadians see doctors than Americans. So I wonder if they have lower levels of obesity, heart disease and diabetes, and if their lifespans have also been decreasing.

4 comments

janalsncm

throwaway2037 7 hours ago

    > However Canadians have free healthcare

I don't like this use of "free". It is paid for by taxes. That is no where near free. It is extremely hard in a highly advanced economy to provide quality healthcare at less than 10% of GDP. That is a huge number for any wealthy country.

Also, Canadians are pretty fat. It looks like 65% are overweight, which includes obese. Ref: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1317268/overweight-obesi...

janalsncm 6 hours ago
Fair point, it isn’t “free” of course. But it is accessible to everyone. No copay/deductible/coinsurance bs.
> It is extremely hard in a highly advanced economy to provide quality healthcare at less than 10% of GDP.
In the US we pay 17% of GDP towards healthcare and tons of people still can’t afford it.
- defrost 6 hours ago
  
  The general view of US healthcare is that not much of the money paid toward better health outcomes reaches the target.
  A quote from another comment here is:
  Australia’s health system far outperforms the .. US healthcare system, which spends nearly twice as much per capita as Australia to deliver far worse outcomes — including Americans dying five years younger than us.
- throwaway2037 2 hours ago
  
  > No copay/deductible/coinsurance bs.
  Many highly developed countries have copays in their national health insurance programme.