2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

I am very suspicious of such data. How is 'child poverty rate' defined?
We also have the highest rate of immigration among industrialized nations, and, given the fertility rates of immigrants, that is very likely to skew this statistic. Industrialized nations in Europe have large populations of "guest workers", whose social statistics are not included in their various rates, while here the data includes legal and most illegal immigrants. That too skews the data.

Actually, the lates stats of child poverty in the US is estimated at 12.1 million with total Americans living in poverty at 34.6 million. The poverty rates increased during the past two years with blacks 22.7% and Hispanics 21.4% suffering the highest rates.

Of course, in Europian countries statistics include all of the there living population, especially those of "guest workers" (those are mainly EU-citizens since many years, and this term is used only in historic retroperspectives since years).

Not to minimize the real problem of poverty ... but how do the income level and lifestyle of the typical "impoverished American" compare with the incomes and lifestyles of similarly designated folks elswhere? I'd wager the American disadvantaged suffer somewhat less disadvantage than their foreign-dwelling brethren.

the term "relative deprivation" does not refer to kinship

Timber
Somehow saying that our poor are better off than those of other countries does not cut it. That said the poor, sick and elderly in the rest of the industrialized nations are better cared for than those in the US. Remember they are socialist societies.

You've prolly got a point there, au, as regards the industrialized West ... but actually, I'd be curious to see comparative data. I' might just research that.

Now, that's compassionate conservatism

.....

Socialism doesn't mean that the poor, etc. are better cared for. Usually it means that everyone is cared for equally badly. Under Soviet style socialism, the average person had a standard of living below what we would call the poverty level here. The more developed and intrenched social programs of European nations are facing enormous challenges as their costs grow both absolutely, and, more importantly given the low birth rates that prevail, relatively. They cannot be sustained. Rationing of medical care is the norm in Canada and other states with so called single payer health care systems.

My girlfriend teaches at a middle school, she just blew me away with this info. Her school consist of about 1100 students, 60% of which are on the free meals/supplies program! I asked her how they qualified, she said with a lengthy form, and that most of the families are extremely embarrased to give their income, or lack of, information. She said that some of the kids get their only meals of the day while they are at school!

I wasn't naive about the local impoverished population, but the percentages she quoted for the school system in this large county did shock me. I asked her if they ever run short of funds for the programs, she said, thankfully, no. She also said the number of kids on these programs has pretty much remained steady throughout her 13 year career.

How poverty is measured in the US by the Census Bureau.

Income

used to compute

poverty status: Money income

Includes earnings, unemployment compensation,

workers' compensation, Social Security, Supplemental

Security Income, public assistance, veterans' payments,

survivor benefits, pension or retirement income, interest,

dividends, rents, royalties, income from estates, trusts,

educational assistance, alimony, child support, assistance

from outside the household, and other miscellaneous

sources.

Noncash benefits (such as food stamps and housing

subsidies) do not count.

Before taxes.

Excludes capital gains or losses.

If a person lives with a family, add up the income

of all family members. (Non-relatives, such as

housemates, do not count.)





Measure of need

(poverty thresholds): Poverty thresholds are the dollar amounts used to determine

poverty status



Each person or family is assigned one out of 48 possible

poverty thresholds



Thresholds vary according to:

Size of the family

Ages of the members



The same thresholds are used throughout the United States

(do not vary geographically)



Updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index

for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).



Although the thresholds in some sense reflect families needs,

they are intended for use as a statistical yardstick,

not as a complete description of what people and

families need to live

many government aid programs use a different poverty

measure, the Department of Health and Human

Services (HHS) poverty guidelines, or multiples thereof



Poverty thresholds were originally derived in 1963-1964,using:

Full story

Oh sure, sure.

George, For those who badly need to be cared for, the best available care is better than no care -- something which hardly needs to be said. But of course the canard lies in that "equally badly."

"Equally badly" could just as well be stated "equally well." In most countries that I've had any experience of, countries with some semblance of national health system, no one prevents individuals who have the money from using it for private care. So let's take this boo-socialism canard apart from its feathers inward and admit that both socialism and capitalism have their points, and a savvy mixture of the two makes for the most humane and intelligent society.

I agree with you on that one (well - in the last sentence it depends a bit on whether you look at Communist Romania or the GDR, for example, but in principle, I agree) ... which is why its extra important to point out that, unlike what au said, the West-European countries are not "socialist societies".

In fact, Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Austria and ... Norway, I think, are currently governed by various Conservatives and Christian-Democrats - as most W-European countries have been, most of post-WW2 history.
Socialism is something very different from social-democracy, which has had an impact on post-WW2 W-Europe - and the "welfare state", again, is a different beast. Many Christian-Democratic parties (like the Catholic Party here) have worked hard to build it!

And though you may be right, georgeob, about the welfare state's programs "facing enormous challenges", right now, they had precious little in common with "Soviet style" healthcare - and did contribute their share to our child poverty rate being lower.

(And yes, of course our former "guest workers" are counted in the stats, like Walter said - immigrants and children of immigrants now make up some 15% of the legal population in the Netherlands, for example).

Yeh, in re: to Tartarin's post as well, I find this talk of "socialism" confusing.

When georgeob1 was saying, "Socialism doesn't mean that the poor, etc. are better cared for", I was thinking of the Soviet, communist countries - "real existing socialism" - and I would agree, in that case. Soviet health care was a drama.

Only thing one can dispute him on in that context just makes it worse: of course not "everyone was cared for equally badly" - the Party elite had its own clinics.

A system in which you have either a National Health Service, like in the UK, or a national health insurance program, like in Holland, that covers everyone, while those with the means have the additional option to go "private" in their healthcare, has little to do with "socialism" and a lot with social-democracy - freedom of choice but with a safety net for everyone.

And I'm with Tartarin on that one - you can complain about the quality of the NHS (in that sense I think our national insurance program is a better deal) - but if you can afford it, you can still get more luxurious care, and for those who can't, the NHS is a hell of a lot better than what health care the uninsured masses of the US are getting.

nimh, I don't know how other states or counties take care of poor people's health needs, but the county hospital in our county takes care of everybody - with or without health insurance. The Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center is a very good hospital with dedicated staff and the latest in medical equipment. As with most hospitals in the US, they are also short on Registered Nurses. As a member of the Grand Jury, we were able to visit the hospital last month. Even their premie nursery with the latest equipment and nursing care saves 97.5 percent of the babies that comes to their hospital. They have a burn unit and toxic emergency care unit. The Valley Medical Center is now building three clincis in our county to provide health care services closer to the residence in outlying areas. It was impressive to see first hand what kind of medical care our county residence receive whether they have insurance or not.

Thanks to Walter and Nimh for correcting my error concerning the inclusion of non-citizens in employment statistics in Europe. Thanks also to Nimh for adding a distinction between socialism and social democracy that should perhaps have been made in my post above.

I think it would be very difficult for any of us to factually and quantitatively compare the relative advantages& disadvantages of the government-controlled, single payer systems that generally prevail in Canada and Western Europe with the complex and mixed private/insurance pool/government systems in operation here.

It is far less difficult to make roughly accurate but unquantified assessments based on the built in features of each. Government and pooled systems tend to ration the supply of medical services to contain costs. Value judgements about who should get what, the basic triage decisions, are made by government bureaucrats or insurance managers, based on their own peculiar needs. On the other hand, everyone in the pool is treated (approximately) equally, although it can help a lot if a friend or relative has access to the levers of control. A free market system significantly increases the amount of medical goods and services available and provides maximum incentive for innovation and improvement, however it leaves some people out in the cold. Triage is based on wealth and willingness to pay, while competition drives prices down without limiting supply.

The system (if that is the word) in the United States is a complex mixture of the two. Given the increasingly heavy hands of government and insurers, we no longer have a truly free market for such services, although we retain more of it than do the systems of the other countries cited here. Critics of our national health policies tend to focus only on what is done or not done by the national government, ignoring the often substantial roles and programs of state and local governments. This often leads to gross exaggeration of the number of people here without access to health care. As Cicerone has pointed out, a great deal is done at the local level.

One segment of the health care establishment, the development, manufacture and distribution of medical drugs, highlights both the differences between the systems and their secondary interactions with particular intensity and clarity. A disproportionate share of new drugs are developed in the United States. No surprise - the profit potential in the relatively free market here is significantly greater than it is in other countries which practice various forms of government price control for them. The growth of international commerce and internationally owned pharmaceutical companies has led to a situation in which, in effect consumers in the United States are financing the development of new drugs for the entire world. This is a situation that is not likely to last very long - someone will do something to limit its effect. It will be interesting (to me at least) to see what unfolds in this area.

At the end, most of us merely spout value judgements about which system we prefer, based on their intrinsic features, without - any of us - truly knowing which actually works better.

I don't have a link handy, so this is mereley annecdotal, possibly even apocryphal, but I have heard, from folks in the profession, that $0.67 of every $1.00 spent on healthcare in the US pays for something other than hands-on healthcare or medication. Mrs Timber, who is an RN, frequently grumbles about "The Paper People", by which she means those who deal with paper as opposed to dealing with patients. A good freind of ours, a doctor, recently gave up the OB/GYN/Pediatric aspects of his 30-year-old practice due to obscenely increased insurance premiums ... and he has never had a claim.

Don't know what the % is either timber but just last night the misses and me were talking about this very issue. Went something to the effect of:

Insurance going up 13.3% for next year, largest increase ever. And, this cost is all for these people to go to my doctor and talk him/her into charging me x for a visit instead of x+y. Why can't the doctor just charge me x to begin with and leave out the y and the middle man.

That's the problem I have with our overt capitalism, too many middlemen. They get the big bucks and the doers get the pittance :sad:

While some of us are trying to pay our bills and worrying about the cost of prescription drugs etc. the 'Bundlers' --ie. 'Pioneers' and 'Rangers' --are busily extort... err... 'collecting' $2000 'contributions' from their subordinates, business associates etc.

Don't go to this link if you become nauseous easily:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/2003-10-15-cover-bundlers_x.htm

:sad: