Essentially nobody in the US (except the very elderly with dementia) dies from malnutrition. This would make the malnutrition profile of the US very unusual relative to other developing countries with similar rates of malnutrition as we claim on self-id survey.
The reality is that, compared to other constraints (like housing), food is widely available in the US and even if you are really struggling you can generally get food.
Our surveys classify many families making >$100k as food insecure. [0][1]
> Hospitals are incentivized to diagnose malnutrition by the Inpatient Prospective Payment System, which uses Medicare Severity Diagnosis‐Related Groups to identify a “payment weight.” When severe malnutrition is included on a patient's diagnosis list, a major complication or comorbidity (MCC) classifier is almost always added to the hospitalization claim. 5 Adding an MCC classifier increases reimbursement
If you look at the table, there is almost no relationship between income and likelihood of being marked as a malnutrition case by the hospital receiving reimbursement. (top 25% of income = 20% of cases, bottom 25% of income = 30% of cases).
The median age of these people with severe malnutrition is 70 years old. This is completely consistent with the claim I made around dementia, especially when you consider these people are repeatedly hospitalized oftentimes.
I think it's stated elsewhere that people are overweight yet malnourished due to calorie-dense but low-nutrition food. This leads to overweight health issues that can be attributed to malnutrition but don't fit the profile of "starving to death". The cause of death are other nutrition-related afflictions like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and even some forms of cancer.
So yes, they're not bones-through-the-skin malnourished, it's more complicated than that.
We're not talking about famine, we're talking about people living in poverty? What's your argument here? That because nobody dies of malnutrition we don't have true poverty?
I was not the person who changed the conversation from ‘relative poverty’ to hunger - the person who replied to me did and I just engaged in that on the merits.
My argument is that you should expect a similar ratio between famine and malnourishment across countries if you are measuring the same thing when you use the word ‘malnourishment.’
I think it is fine for different societies to consider the poverty level to be at different places (e.g. the “poor” in the first world are nothing compared to poverty in many parts of Africa, for example).
Having said that, how do you think about poverty in Britain (or the US)? What, for you, is the poverty line?
Essentially nobody in the US (except the very elderly with dementia) dies from malnutrition. This would make the malnutrition profile of the US very unusual relative to other developing countries with similar rates of malnutrition as we claim on self-id survey.
The reality is that, compared to other constraints (like housing), food is widely available in the US and even if you are really struggling you can generally get food.
Our surveys classify many families making >$100k as food insecure. [0][1]
0: https://cosm.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Economic-Cha... 1: https://cosm.aei.org/why-the-usda-is-justified-in-ending-the...
There are millions of hospitalisations in the US every year where the patient is malnourished: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11613653/
From your article:
> Hospitals are incentivized to diagnose malnutrition by the Inpatient Prospective Payment System, which uses Medicare Severity Diagnosis‐Related Groups to identify a “payment weight.” When severe malnutrition is included on a patient's diagnosis list, a major complication or comorbidity (MCC) classifier is almost always added to the hospitalization claim. 5 Adding an MCC classifier increases reimbursement
If you look at the table, there is almost no relationship between income and likelihood of being marked as a malnutrition case by the hospital receiving reimbursement. (top 25% of income = 20% of cases, bottom 25% of income = 30% of cases).
The median age of these people with severe malnutrition is 70 years old. This is completely consistent with the claim I made around dementia, especially when you consider these people are repeatedly hospitalized oftentimes.
I think it's stated elsewhere that people are overweight yet malnourished due to calorie-dense but low-nutrition food. This leads to overweight health issues that can be attributed to malnutrition but don't fit the profile of "starving to death". The cause of death are other nutrition-related afflictions like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and even some forms of cancer.
So yes, they're not bones-through-the-skin malnourished, it's more complicated than that.
We're not talking about famine, we're talking about people living in poverty? What's your argument here? That because nobody dies of malnutrition we don't have true poverty?
I was not the person who changed the conversation from ‘relative poverty’ to hunger - the person who replied to me did and I just engaged in that on the merits.
My argument is that you should expect a similar ratio between famine and malnourishment across countries if you are measuring the same thing when you use the word ‘malnourishment.’
That's disingenuous; I did not focus the conversation only on hunger.
I think it is fine for different societies to consider the poverty level to be at different places (e.g. the “poor” in the first world are nothing compared to poverty in many parts of Africa, for example).
Having said that, how do you think about poverty in Britain (or the US)? What, for you, is the poverty line?