How to promote a social agenda with medical statistics

If I were to tell you I still have my 1955 waist measurement, I wouldn't exactly be lying, but I would be measuring my thigh and not my waist with a tape measure and my fingers crossed. So it is with "developed countries" medical statistics like this one--"The U.S. spends more money per person on medical care than any other developed country in the world." (JAMA, July 28, 2010 citing OECD 2009 statistics). Notice, that's "per person" and not per citizen as it is in most countries. Someday I'd like to see a breakdown, by developed country, of non-citizens in their health care system, people who arrive with exotic diseases, not knowing the language, and with unfamiliar cultural patterns. Of course, it's a bit difficult to flee to Ireland or Finland from Guatemala or Haiti, isn't it?

And since we have so many ethnicities in the USA, I'd like to see a comparison of health and disease of Scandinavian Americans as compared to their 2nd and 3rd cousins once removed in Norway, Sweden and Finland, or 2nd generation middle class Mexican Americans compared with their peasant cousins still living in the home village in Mexico. Or Haitian American doctors and rock stars compared to working family in Port-Au-Prince. Oh, those aren't developed countries are they? No, but those new Americans had American healthcare resources at their disposal.

Obamacare trumped up measurements did not just come in since he took office in 2009--his plans have been in many government plans and planning for decades. Here's one of three "medical models" (the others being clinical and public health) currently in place, according to JAMA, July 28 (Commentary, p. 465, R. H. Brook)

1. Redistribution of wealth; 2. meaningful guaranteed jobs for all adults to have the income to pursue healthy behavior; 3. helping children feel safe and be healthy and ready to learn; 4. empowering women and communities so that they can work more effectively to increase the health of the population.

I'd truly love to see a medical study of Americans with meaningful jobs, able to afford the best health care and education who are politically empowered, who also are obese, who smoke, and who engage in dangerous and risky behaviors. Now that would be a study for the books, because I know a lot of people with unhealthy lifestyles who have all the perks of life that Dr. Brook describes in his commentary.

The deep desire to control others' behavior and lives (for their own good and the betterment of society and mother earth) is not just ingrained in the government--it's in medicine, academe, education, religion and just about any other field that requires a college education.