Re:Health Care Doesn't Affect Health (on the margin)
by mmt on Friday August 21, 2009 @10:19AM
(#777558)
>Lastly, he only considers length of life and totally ignores quality of life...
>
>False. The RAND experiment studied various health measures, not mortality.
That may be the case, but the author makes it clear enough that, even in this case, it is mortality with which he is concerned:
"The RAND experiment was not quite large enough to see mortality effects directly, and so the plan was to track..."
I must agree that there is a distinct absence of focus on quality of life, which I believe is the crux of the issue, especially at the expensive margins, near the end of life.
Pretty much right at the beginning he redefines health care to exclude things he admits work - diet, exercise, sleep, not smoking, etc.
No he doesn't. That was a bad choice of title on my part when I submitted the article. I should have titled it "Medical Care Doesn't Affect Health (on the margin)". But like most people, I use the terms "health care" and "medical care" interchangeably.
The bigram "health care" does not appear once in the article.
He also admits that increased social status improves health while claiming that increased medical spending does not. But it's well known that the rich can afford better health care, and doesn't explain how to (or cite any papers that) control for this.
This is simply not true. He cites a number of cross section studies which compare rich/poor/etc people receiving more medicine to rich/poor/etc people receiving less. He also cites the RAND experiment which was actually a randomized trial addressing the same question.
Lastly, he only considers length of life and totally ignores quality of life...
False. The RAND experiment studied various health measures, not mortality.