Delicious LiveJournal Links for 5-27-2010

[andrewducker]

• Plan to link retirement age to life expectancy
  (tags: society age pension)
• BMJ article: Head and neck injury risks in heavy metal: head bangers stuck between rock and a hard bass
  (tags: music science health)
• Republican ask for advice from the internet...and get it.
  (tags: politics funny internet republicans technology)
• Plummeting Marijuana Prices Create A Panic In California
  (tags: economics california agriculture law marijuana)
• Answering 96 questions about Lost
  (tags: Lost tv funny)
• An explanation of the Lost Finale
  (tags: lost tv)
• Allies Forces to U.S.: Get Over Antigay Policy
  (tags: military usa gay rights)
• IT Crowd gets fifth series run. Fourth season to be screened this summer
  (tags: comedy geekery tv)
• 'Being fat is no worse for you than being a woman' - BMI discredited (yet again)
  (tags: diet BMI science health)
• Vincenzo Natali to make Neuromancer
  I like him a lot - Cypher is one of my all-time favourite movies, and Cube is pretty damned great too.
  (tags: movies books scifi)
• Trauma leaves its mark on immune system genes
  (tags: health psychology science stress genetics)

Comments

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

"Though exposure to head banging is enormous, opportunities are present to control this risk—for example, encouraging bands such as AC/DC to play songs like "Moon River" as a substitute for "Highway to Hell"; public awareness campaigns with influential and youth focused musicians, such as Sir Cliff Richard."

Haven't laughed quite so hard all week :D

[andrewducker]

I was thinking of you when I posted it :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Ah, but as we already learned from Kate, BMI isn't actually used for measuring health: it's used to measure how gross you and your friends look.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's awesome news about Vincenzo Natali, I've loved the Cube movies and Cypher.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The BMI piece uses number of people taking prescription medicine as a proxy for illness-- pretty weak logic.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I would agree that saying that the correlation between health and medication isn't necessarily completely overlapping and so the "BMI is bollocks because of this" claim is somewhat tenuous.

However, taking into consideration the common claim that overweight/obese people are specifically more prone to chronic complaints (early onsert diabetes, joint and back problems, asthma, heart disease, high blood pressure), virtually all of which require prescription medication, if these people aren't on medication, what 'extra strain' do they place on the healthcare industry? And if they are, for example, managing diabetes with their diet, then surely said fat epidemic financial strain is at worst heavily mitigated?

I would agree that the correlation isn't necessarily completely direct. But is it really weak logic to say that the more medication people take the iller they are? Can you provide evidence to suggest that ill fat people could logically be expected to be less likely to be on medication than ill thin people?

I can think of one, incidentally: I'm anecdotally informed that stigma attached to extra weight is such that fat people may well be less likely to be put on prescription medication because doctors will first tell them to lose weight even in a situation where a slim person will be given medication without a second glance. Of course, again, dieting doesn't exactly put a strain on the healthcare industry. Well, except when said diets are so ridiculous they harm you. What a tangled web we weave, eh?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Your points are reasonable, but there's one more pointing in the opposite direction-- women are more likely to trust the medical system than men (amazing sexist spin put on this in comments to the article), and therefore probably more likely to get prescriptions.

One more supporting your third paragraph-- in the US there's job discrimination against fat people, which means they're less likely to have insurance and less likely to be medicated.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Yet again, though, fat people not being insured, not being medicated, this points to them being less of a drain on the healthcare industry rather than more of one and this is the big thing they're damned for. Furthermore, although the medication gap widens apparently post-40, the statistics on health beyond that point, if it's true that fat people pre-40 aren't getting care that they should, are then severely impacted in their reliability compared against non-fat figures given that these people may be requiring more medication as a result of repeatedly untreated ailments due to fat-stigma.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Yet again, though, fat people not being insured, not being medicated, this points to them being less of a drain on the healthcare industry rather than more of one

While I see and understand your logic, it is unfortunately Earth logic, which has nothing to do with how the health care industry is run in the US.

People who are indigent or uninsured are actually pretty likely to be a drain on the health care industry, because they will go to hospital Emergency Rooms and get treated for free rather than going to a primary physician. There, they can't be turned away, but because that process is awful and time consuming, they tend not to go until they're really "sick enough to need it." Thus we (taxpayers) tend to end up paying for the expensive results of long-untreated illnesses, instead of the relatively much cheaper preventative or maintenance care that would make the person healthier and be cheaper.

This, incidentally, is one reason so many people are against health care reform in this country; the reasoning is that because there already is somewhere to go and get treatment when you're really sick, people are "already covered".

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Which of course still brings us to the final conclusion that any way up, we (well, the US, but us too to come extent no doubt) are doing a vast disservice to our fat people. Either we're stigmatising them by holding to a pointless, false, arbitrary marker for their health and stigmatising them for it, or we're stigmatising them using a genuine marker that still causes them more harm and us more expense.

I say 'they' despite being a fat person because I would bet money that I'm in the bottom 1% of the population in terms of my own use of/drain on the NHS, and therefore I don't really count in this context except to skew the figures unrealistically with my disgustingly good health.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'm fat too. I don't see doctors much, certainly no more than I did when I was uninsured; I just am healthy and don't see doctors much, period, and never for any reason relating to my weight.

Therefore I don't show up in the statistics, which only measure the fat people who go to doctors for some reason. But the statistics tell all my neighbors that I'm unhealthy.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I find it incredibly difficult to understand the continued emphasis put on BMI when we know that at the level of the individual, it's not particularly useful.

I think it's also pretty well known that it's useless, which could mean that while some people do get worried needlessly, others choose to completely ignore a message about bodyfat which they would benefit from addressing. Whichever it is, the BMI message doesn't work.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Iain Duncan Smith seems to be talking about linking the retirement age to average life expectancy. That's good, but I think we need to go further and link individual retirement ages to individual life expectancy.

[andrewducker]

So if I get cancer I get to retire?

I can't see that being terribly workable...

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Once it's terminal, yes, whyever not?

The private pension companies manage to take individual life expectancy into account, so why can't we do that with the state pension as well? Admittedly, I don't know whether private pension companies start paying out when you get terminal cancer.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Once it is diagnosed as terminal, I doubt many people would be capable of working anyway.

You can't currently cash in your pension before 55, but if the law were changed and you could do so at an early age, the annuity you purchase will not pay much out unless you have a definitive life expectancy. That's going to lead to all sorts of complications put in place to cover those who defy medical expectation and recover.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

That's going to lead to all sorts of complications put in place to cover those who defy medical expectation and recover.

Not really - you just adjust their life expectancy to fit with when their pension pays out.

In other news, an Irish suckling babe can make a delicious meal for even a large family.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

At that point you might as well scrap pensions altogether and call the whole thing incapacity benefits - one of the incapacitating factors being age.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Funny, I got onto just that tack myself for what i thought might work better than what we have now. No pensions based on age, just on health.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

And since women live on average 4.2 years longer than men, will the retirement age for men be lower than that for women?

[mooism.livejournal.com]

On average, yes.

My motivation is more that e.g. Glaswegians should receive some compensation for their appalling life expectancy.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Decent chippers.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Have there been any feminists who have said this? Perhaps via a Rawlsian approach to justice?

Pensions were initially based upon (male?) life expectancy anyway, in Bismarkian Germany: Give you something, calculating you'll only live to collect it for a year or so.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Not as far as I know. Even I was only suggested it in jest.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

We need tax laws to encourage people to kill themselves before drawing their pensions / becoming ill / a burden / whatever.

Could help reduce the deficit: If you love your country kill yourself for it!!

Andy: Do the Lib Dems support the invidual's right to decide how and when they should die?

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

That Lost explanation almost works but still hasn't convinced me it's not all poo!!

Republicans

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

"A 'teacher' told my child in class that dolphins were mammals and not fish!" a third complains. "And the same thing about whales! We need TRADITIONAL VALUES in all areas of education. If it swims in the water, it is a FISH. Period! End of Story."

Ohgodohgodohgod....

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure of the Economics involved, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to tie retirement age to unemployment.

At less than age 60 I retired (being disgusted with my employer and discovering that the combined pensions & savings/investments would provide an income adequate for living in modest comfort), and thus provided a job opening for some younger person. (Haven't regretted this decision for more than the occasional moment, though the fantasy of winning 17 million dollars (after taxes, of course) in the Lottery does crop up now and again.) OTOH, I'm constitututionally opposed to any _mandatory_ Retirement Age.