Re: Russian health care

["Chris Doss" <nomorebounces@xxxxxxx>]

Hari:
>
> Reply:
> Chris - I am not disputing your main thrust in your attack on NYT versions of Russian doom.
> However, your note above bears some additional remarks:
> i) There is rather a lot of abundant epidemiological data re the drift down in longevity from the change-over from socialism to restored-capitalism.

I do not dispute that the shift and concommitent economic crash are significant factors, almost certainly _the_ most significant. I simply said out that the drop in (male) life expectancy is only slightly related to and decline in the healthcare system (except maybe insofar as anti-alcoholisms programs have been dismantled). It is mostly the result of (male) peasants drinking themselves to death.

>
> ii) "The majority of the excess deaths are middle-aged men dying from cardio-vascular diseases (not from "hunger-related diseases"
> I cannot cite to you data re diet in the USSR today.
> But your dissociation of diet from CVS deaths - is misleading.

Diet is a part of it. But then why does this affect only men?

>
> iii) No doubt 'blat' -'gratuity'-'payment' - operates reasonably well. But there is undoubtedly a difficulty with getting admissions for emergencies.

Anecdotally, victims of the fire at People's Friendship University had to pay bribes to get ambulances. I do not know if that is true -- my impression is that emergency cases are much more likely to receive bribe-free attention, for obvious reasons.


> I have a lot of friends here in Canuckia that are ex-USSR docs working as lab techs & whatever they can find.

Yes. State doctors earn almost nothing.

> I admittedly have not seen whether the younger generations have filled that older emigre-left 'technogap'.
>
I doubt it. The same goes for the sciences -- the average age of a Russian scientist is somewhere over 50 (I think). (They tend to vote for the Communist Party, BTW. The 2000 Noble Prize for Physics winner is also very high up in the KPRF.) To study medicine today, you have to either be very committed, or you are doing it because studying medicine (as opposed to something like computers or advertising) is free; then, after you get your degree, you can go do something else, like work in a bank.