Speaking purely anecdotally, on a recent trip this summer to France and Italy I noticed a lot less smoking than I did on my previous trip to Italy, 12 years ago, and far less than on my previous -- 25 years! -- trip to France. I smoked then too, don't now. What were figures for W Europe and the US in 1995 and 1980?
FWIW the Chicago Trib has an article today on how obesity is increasing world wide, so I wonder if the idea that health care costs are higher because Americans are fatter and therefore sicker is true. Also the fat/sick Americans article says that cancer rates in the Us are twice those in Europe, but that's because the Europeans under-diagnose cancer. I just flat don't believe that, which casts a pall of doubt in my mind over the rest of the study.
I sorta suspect the study is part of the anti-single payer propaganda. It's not the fault of private medicine. It's our fault health costs so much because we eat like pigs! So pay your insurance premiums or get a job that does, if you can, and enjoy The Best Health Care In The World.
Query. Discussing single payer with a friend with a somewhat rare chronic disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I heard the objection to single payer that at least in some countries with national health -- England and Holland were mentioned -- the government as insurer exercises unchallenged, arbitrary, and monopoly control, barring either coverage for or even treatment with relatively new drugs and methods that are available here and may be effective in treating this condition. Certain drugs, I am told, are not even permitted by, e.g., the UK NHS. (Granted the NHS is not the model single payer system.) Does anyone know anything about this, and what things are like in other single payer countries?
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 2, 2007, at 12:15 PM, joanna wrote:
>
> > Yeah. Me too. When I was all over Western Europe,
> four years ago,
> > everybody was smoking everywhere. I noticed
> because I had just quit
> > and
> > it was tough to be surrounded by it.
>
> Ok, WHO sez about 25% Americans smoke, compared with
> about 30-35% of
> Western Europeans. The HA article was referring to
> over-50s who'd
> smoked at sometime in their lives.
>
> Doug
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