Oklahoma Ranks DEAD Last in Health Care!!

[okclee]

Interactive: U.S. Health Care, State by State - Newsweek Health - MSNBC.com

Newsweek - Oklahoma ranks 50 out of 50 states in the US in health care.

Why is it that Oklahoma always has to be at or near the bottom in health related issues??

[John]

I think they have a little anti-south thing going on...

[SuperScooper]

Probably because our state does not dump a large chunk of money into free public health care. Not to mention there is not a charity hospital or an abundance of free clinics like there are in other states.

The one thing that disturbs me about health care is the fact that most Americans want excellent health care at cheap prices. While at the same time they refuse to follow preventative measures recommend by their doctors and health advocates.

[NE Oasis]

Most of the categories listed in the survey data involve personal choices, not "evil empire" health care companies nor heavy handed government agencies. If Oklahomans, based on that criteria, avoid doctors and spend thier health care dollars in other areas so be it.

[HOT ROD]

I wouldn't get too fired up in the panties about this, look at most large/populated states are red - so it is probably more of an indication about access or lack thereof rather than the health care system in OK or other populated states are poor.

[Kerry]

The Commwealth Fund that paid for the study is pushing government funded universal health care. This probably explains several things. First, this is why the NE rated so high (they have extensive public support health care). Second, the choice of blue for best and red for worst coincides with red and blue representations for Republican and Democrat voting states. Third, this is why it appears in Newsweek/MSNBC.

If you don't think this "survey" is politically motivated your nuts.

Here is the funny part:
Disclaimer on the report
Support for this research was provided by The Commonwealth Fund. The views presented here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of The Commonwealth Fund or its directors, officers, or staff, or of The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System or its members.

Here is who wrote the report:
"The differences we found between the top and bottom states were shocking, often a two- to three-fold variation or greater," said co-author and Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen.

Here is who testified before congress:
Our nation's failure to provide adequate health insurance to millions is a major factor in the inconsistent performance of the nation's health system, testified Commonwealth Fund vice president Sara Collins, Ph.D., before the United States Senate.

I thought the report didn't represent the view of The Commonwealth Fund

[SuperScooper]

I can just see Universal Health Care in action now.

I am bleeding like a stuck pig because I was just injured in a car crash. Hospitals 1,2,3 and are on divert status because its Flu season. (Why would you spend $30 at Walgreens and treat yourself at home when the local hospital is free.)

EMSA rushes me to a hospital number 4 (which is 30 minutes away) just so I can die in the Ambulance Bay.

Before we jump the gun and create another goverment money pit, how about we learn to live healthy lifestyles, learn basic first aid, demand responsable pricing for health services and allow reasonable repayment plans. Those simple steps alone will save consumers and taxpayers millions.

[okclee]

Does anyone plan on seeing the Michael Moore movie, that shows all of the problems in the US heathcare system, "Sicko"???

MichaelMoore.com : SiCKO : 'SiCKO' News : 'Sicko' to open early in New York

[Karried]

I plan on seeing it.. I can't wait. Health care is so outrageous. And horribly frightening to think of something catastrophic happening without proper insurance.

[jbrown84]

You know it's bull sh** when Texas is #49.

[SoonerDave]

I love these self-serving, inflammatory "studies" that end up becoming "news."

Without even looking at the "study," I'm going to make this wild guess that it's primarily based on how much free (translated: government-paid) medical care each state provides.

There are manifest problems with health care, but "studies" and "news" like this doesn't help them.

-soonerdave

[jbrown84]

Gotta love the headline:

"Don't Get Sick in Tulsa"

Like if you get sick there, there are no hospitals or something.

[okclee]

Here are a few other rankings with Okc near or at the bottom in health related categories.

The Best & Worst Cities for Men 2007 - Men's Health - MSN Health & Fitness Oklahoma City ranks near the worst at 92 out of 100.

Metrogrades: Ranking America's Cities - Men's Health - MSN Health & Fitness Oklahoma City ranks worst at #98 out of 100.

The Fast-food capital of America: Oklahoma City - Apr. 12, 2007 We all know this one Okc ranks #1 as "Fast Food Capital"

The fittest and fattest cities - Fitness - MSNBC.com Here Tulsa ranks #14 as the fittest city, and Okc ranks #17 as the fattest.

The Best Walking Cities of 2007 Here we have the top 100 Best walking cities, Okc comes in at #83 out of 100.


Are all of these lists biased against Okla. or Okc??

Do they all have hidden government agendas??

[jbrown84]

No.

Those are completely different. They are saying that Oklahomans are not living healthy lifestyles, essentially. No one's arguing with that.


This list purports that our health care is of poor quality, as if we have no good doctors or nice hospitals or state of the art treatment facilities. And that is insulting and not true.

[okclee]

I think that it all goes hand in hand. If the people of Okla lived healthier then I think that you would see that our Health Care would be held in a higher regard, and we would not place 50th in the US with poor healthcare.

I have heard over the years that many of our top doctors have been leaving the state of Okla because of lack of tort reform. It was only a year or two ago that doctors of Okc had a stand in at the legislature trying to get help with malpractice suits and insurance. I don't know all of the facts but I don't think that anything has changed since then, at least I haven't heard.

[mecarr]

I think that it all goes hand in hand. If the people of Okla lived healthier then I think that you would see that our Health Care would be held in a higher regard, and we would not place 50th in the US with poor healthcare.

I have heard over the years that many of our top doctors have been leaving the state of Okla because of lack of tort reform. It was only a year or two ago that doctors of Okc had a stand in at the legislature trying to get help with malpractice suits and insurance. I don't know all of the facts but I don't think that anything has changed since then, at least I haven't heard.

Tort reform is a joke in my opinion. A big part of the tort reform movement is to cap "non-economic" damages at $300,000. Can you imagine going in for an operation and some doctor negligently cuts off the wrong arm or negligently treats your loved on resulting in death? I'm not saying that we should go off and reward every injured person $1 million, but let's at least let the jury decide what damage amount is appropriate and not the politicians in our state capitol.

[Easy180]

Tort reform is a joke in my opinion. A big part of the tort reform movement is to cap "non-economic" damages at $300,000. Can you imagine going in for an operation and some doctor negligently cuts off the wrong arm or negligently treats your loved on resulting in death? I'm not saying that we should go off and reward every injured person $1 million, but let's at least let the jury decide what damage amount is appropriate and not the politicians in our state capitol.

Problem is juries many times hand out enormous awards based mainly on their dislike of our health care system...Everyone hates how expensive our coverage, copays and deductibles are and they go in looking to get some payback for us common folk

I am definitely for a cap on everything but the most aggregious acts

[betts]

Tort reform is a joke in my opinion. A big part of the tort reform movement is to cap "non-economic" damages at $300,000. Can you imagine going in for an operation and some doctor negligently cuts off the wrong arm or negligently treats your loved on resulting in death? I'm not saying that we should go off and reward every injured person $1 million, but let's at least let the jury decide what damage amount is appropriate and not the politicians in our state capitol.

Letting the jury decide would be a wonderful idea if you truly got a jury of your peers. First of all, for a physician, who would your peers actually be? If not other physicians, other professionals?

Have you ever sat on a jury? Or have you, like most of the people I know, figured out a way to get out of jury duty because you had to work, were too busy with children/ illness in the family etc? That leaves the people who are thrilled to get out of work, the unemployed and the few truly civic minded people around to sit on a jury. Then, how many of them have even the rudiments of knowledge necessary to understand most malpractice cases? I'm a physician, and the questions my educated friends (in fields other than medicine) ask me are frequently frightening for their lack of understanding of basic medical facts.

Trust me, there are very few cases that come before a jury that involve the lopping of the wrong limb and other very serious cases of malpractice. Most of those are settled long before they come to court and most of those physicians (our motto: first, do no harm) are happy to compensate people who have truly been the victim of malpractice.

The cases that come to court are usually those the attorneys for the defendent think are defensible, or the ones the attorneys for the plaintiffs think are good for publicity or large off the wall damages. I've been lucky enough never to have been sued, but I've sat in court on one ridiculous case that even the jury was smart enough to realize was foolish. They returned a not guilty verdict in less than 10 minutes. Do you want to know how much it cost the insurance company to "win" that case 15 years ago? Approximately $90,000. Sadly, some of the other juries on equally ridiculous suits have not returned a not guilty verdict, frequently because the jury feels "sorry" for the plaintiff, regardless of the facts of the case. And, because they know the physician isn't paying, they frequently award ridiculously high damages, not realizing that we're all paying. Higher malpractice fees result in higher costs to the rest of us when we seek medical care.

I've been in court much more frequently as an expert witness, and I've seen how often lawyers for the plaintiff and defendent (in child abuse cases) twist medical facts, seek out obscure journals with one article that vaguely supports their case and try to overwhelm the jury with facts I can guarantee you most of them don't understand. So, the winner may end up being the one with the lawyer with the best courtroom presence, rather than the best case.

The best jury I've ever seen is a military jury. There at least the defendent gets a jury of his peers. The jury can actually ask the expert witness questions if they have them, and the witness can educate the jury in layman's terms. I wish we had more like them.

Sorry for the rant, but frivolous lawsuits are hurting all of us. I would have no problem with all cases in which the lawyer for the plaintiff truly thinks his/her case should be worthy of an award greater than $300,000 being reviewed by a panel of several doctors and several lawyers, and a special exception being made in those cases. But trust me, it would be the minority of cases right now.

[jbrown84]

The fact that Oklahomans are fat and lazy doesn't mean that are doctors suck or that our hospitals don't have the most up-to-date equipment on the market.

It's hogwash.

[okclee]

Here is another ranking, Okla. is 2nd in the U.S. behind Mississippi in Strokes.

Strokes strike South the hardest - Heart Health - MSNBC.com

[Tim]

Lee, I gotta sorta agree with jbrown here. I think we're talking apples and oranges. The partisan study bemoaning the state of our health care system has little to to with the sorry state of our health. That's like saying "If they built better cars, I would be a better driver." Our health care system is not without flaws, but I don't believe it's as bad as the report would have you believe.

[SoonerDave]

Well, only way to find out what biases may exist is to look at the foundation of the report. Let's look at the "Best Walking" cities.

Tops on the list of what makes a place "fitness walker friendly" are safe streets, beautiful places to walk, mild weather, and good air quality.

Here are some of the specific criteria we used. Each criterion was weighted as heavy, medium or light in terms of importance.

• % of pop that walks for exercise
• Use of mass transit
• Parks per square mile
• Points of interest per squre mile
• Avg winter/summer temperatures
• % of athletic shoe buyers

Let's see. "Beautiful places to walk?" Boy, that's not subjective, is it? Parks per square mile? How could an Oklahoma, with far less land area than, say, a Texas or a California, ever be successful here? "Points of interest?" What's interesting to you isn't interesting to me. More subjective criteria. "% athletic shoe buyers" - so the only "legitimate" walkers are those who pay >$100 for a Nike swoosh on the side of their sneaks? And they say only that they weight the criteria as "heavy, medium, or light," but don't tell you which they decided get what assessment.

The point isn't to villify their survey, or to say that OKC or Tulsa is or isn't a good place to walk; its to point out that I can come up with a dozen subjective criteria, plop it on a blog somewhere, and trumpet as "The 10 Most <Whatever> List," and no one can dispute me. It doesn't mean anything.

As far as this survey goes, what about "miles of sidewalk per house?" or "miles of sidewalk per capita?" Or "average discretionary time for walking" per capita? Maybe they're relevant, maybe not, but the point is that saying a given city finished low on the "walking list" doesn't mean squat.

And that famous "fast food capital" survey? Take a moment and look at how the results are couched:

Last year, well over half (55 percent) of Oklahoma City fast-food patrons dined in establishments like McDonald's or Wendy's

Note that the result is taken from a subset of the population - 55% of Oklahoma City fast-food patrons **not** the entire population. It doesn't say anything about the absolute rate of fast-food consumption or rate of visitation. Maybe the pool of fast-food patrons is higher or lower here, or there, but the point is you can't make a conclusion based on these half-baked statistics. The previous "winner" was Greenvile, South Carolina, with a gasp-inducing rate of 59%! Horrors!

But let's look into those numbers a bit more deeply. First, a "heavy user" was someone who visited a fast-food joint for "burgers and fries" more than 12 times per month. What's special about 12? What about 11? Would the statistical percentages and/or "winners" have changed if the number was changed? Is going to fast-food for burgers and fries 11 times a month suddenly considered healthy? How do OKC and Greenville's numbers compare there? Don't know, because the authors arbitrarily deemed them to be irrelevant.

Wikipedia reports that Greenville, South Carolina has a population of 75,000, and the greater Greenville metropolitan area encompases close to 207,000. Oklahoma City's population is listed at 531,324 (core), an 1.17 million (metropolitan).

Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that 100% of the population in both cities is a "fast food customer," even though we know by the presentation of the data that's not the case. 59% of the "core" population works out to 44,000 people in Greenville, and about 292K in OKC. What we're finding out now is that we're comparing population bases that differ by a factor of about six. But since the authors chose not to tell us what those actual numbers are, we're left to draw the conclusions they intended for us to draw.

Are we the fast-food capital of the country? Only way to find that out is to determine a raw per-capita consumption rate of fast-food items. And that number is nowhere to be found in this article.

I'm not saying we do or don't consume too much fast-food. That's not the point. (I personally do not buy into the villain-food theology, but believe in moderation in all things. The idea of 12 trips to Mickey D's in 30 days makes me want to barf). The point is that we must be willing to analyze surveys for the ultimate purpose they are designed to serve.

Lastly, in that "Men's Fitness" article, they based their "fattest cities" list on things like "gym memberships" and "time spent in traffic." Heck, I'm dumb enough to believe that if you sell me a survey about "fattest cities" you've gone to the trouble of measuring average weight, standard deviations from the mean, and other statistical analyses, not my gym habits or my driving tendencies. I could be a member of 3 gyms and never visit them, and I could commute to-and-from work 100 miles a day but still run 5 miles every night. The point is that the criteria are arbitrary and meaningless, and the points of each predetermined. Men's Fitness wants men to lose weight; that's great. So what if I live in a city they think is "fat?" The Commonwealth group wants socialized medicine, so they put out a survey about "worst" health care. Someone wants to blame TV ads for making kids fat, so they release a study that shows a correlation, but not a causation and since no one bothers to understand the difference, some people start running around like a headless chicken thinking we suddenly have to "do" something about TV ads - completely igorning the fact that TV ads have zero calories.

Sorry to rant on about this, but I get so tired of junk science, junk surveys, and manipulated statistics based on arbitrary criteria that are then used to make or reinforce premediated conclusions. If you want to convince me of something as fact, give me factual, absolute research, not this claptrap our USA Today "Poll of the Day" graphic pseudeo journalistic subculture has inspired.

-soonerdave

[okclee]

Does anyone remember a year or two ago, the sit-in that local doctors had at the state capitol??

What was that all about??

If I remember correctly many of our top doctors do leave the state because it is to costly for them to practice medicine in Oklahoma.

[okclee]

2006 best hospitals list, nearly 200 listed not one from the state of Okla., again with the agenda or bias against Okla.

usnews.com: Health: Best Hospitals 2006: A-Z Hospital Index

[CuatrodeMayo]

Preach it, Brother Dave.