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India Woos Medical Tourists
aspelling writes "It's not only quality hardware and software that can be done in India for a fraction of the cost. BBC reports that India has a generation of world class doctors capable of doing joint replacement, heart, neuro and cancer surgery at their state-of-the-art facilities. Don't be surprised when your physician prescribes you a trip to Bombay. Indian officials are working hard with HMOs around the world to make this dream come true."
What is an HMO? Isn't it a facet of the American private health care system? There are no HMOs in the country where I live (Canada).
Free curry on your 3rd bypass.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
which essentially means that people in developed countries just so much overpaid for what they do it is unbelievable!
a cruel joke of the capitalist economy, as our socialist friends would say...
Not to knock the healing hands in India, but I just can't snicker at the thought of my HMO telling me that they've outsourced my hip replacement to the cousin of the guy who replaced my job as a programmer.
--- have you healed your church website?
I hate to admit it, but they do have a point. Savings can be had by lower paying doctors, nurses, facility costs, you also get to eliminate malpractice suits. Real savings with the last one. Your real cost will be to ship the patient back and forth (around $800 to $1200).
Hmm, Im torn between feeling bad for doctors/nurses, and happy that there will be less need for lawyers.
later,
epic
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
Oops.
As an Indian myself, I actually found this funny.
Oh well.
This is in stark contrast to the jerk who 'helped' me in SF. "Yeah, drink a lot of water. That'll be $400"
It didn't work so well for my friend Mr. McGregg, with a leg for an arm, and an arm for a leg.
So you go to Bombay to get a kidney
removed and they remove the healthy one.
Can you sue them for malpractice a-la US?
I'm afraid not.
I read that some HMO's are sending xrays
and cat-scans to india for diagnosis via
internet.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
i've heard they can be very painful.
After spending any time in India (for medical treatment especially), this is a must.
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
all parents tell they children that when they'll grow up they'll be doctors. Of course they say that thinking about how a doctor can make and not on how important and honorable (at least it was) to be a doctor.
... give me a break ... Some people study during all their lifes and don't make the money some surgeons make in a couple of days.
Several Med. freshman are not worried about saving lives and helping people, just to get out of the hospital with a Mercedez in the way to their house in the beach. Sometime they say that it is expensive because they had to study for 10 years to be a doctor
Some concepts must be reviwed.
Yeah. Why fly halfway round the globe, if you can have all this (power outages included) in your own country, for twice the price!
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ice. Bath. Kidneys.
If you needed open heart surgery or a liver transplant, would you still go to India to do it because "it costs less money"?
Are doctors in India "certified" by the government? do they get inspected regularly for standards of practice?
I don't want to bash Indian doctors or criticise anyone's decision to valuate medical work purely based on its cost; I just feel the readers should be informed of the potential risks associated with getting major treatments done in other countries just because of financial reasons.
What if I pick a bad doctor and he messes me up or whatever? Who can I sue? In all likelihood hed be gone after I left.
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
Power outages are normal.
Daily power outages, however, are not.
If you're looking for cheap healthcare, to go Mexico. At least their power grid is stable, and your life won't be at the mercy of Prakesh the bicycle errand boy who fetches gasoline for the generators.
It just surprises me how many people in this country go with HMOs.. I'll stop short of calling them idiots, but....well, no. I take that back. They are idiots.
Just yesterday a friend of mine with an degree in economics was talking about the push in that field to move much of the work offshore.
This applies to any profession - there is no "safe" field. Look at law - despite what television tells you, most people with law degrees aren't engaging in clever courtroom rhetoric all day, or even at all, but doing "back office" stuff. This, too, can be offshored in time.
I'm not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, or that I have any answers, but it *is* obvious that saying "just get a new career in accounting/law/marketing/whatever!" is naive because there is no strictly "safe" field to start with, and never will be.
While, as an Indian, I am flattered by your opinion, your argument is flawed. I think that the Indians you've met are good at the math and sciences because their parents pushed their children to become engineers.
Furthermore, almost every culture that has existed for thousands of years has had a few great scientists. Are the British inherently any smarter because Issac Newton was British, or the French any wiser because Pascal was French? Obviously not!
More like a bane.
I am a medical student. I still got a few years to decide but looks like surgery is not the way, maybe now I should become an ER doctor. I would be very surprised if they are outsourced in the near future.
90% of the physical products you buy will be built in China, and possibly designed there too.
90% of the services you use will be provided by India.
It's ironic that the West leads in one main field, namely agriculture, which should have been outsourced a long time ago were it not for the farming lobbies.
There is no moral to this story except that everything you use and buy - except food - will get cheaper and cheaper.
The staff at my family doctor's office has already been replaced by immigrants from India! I guess that saves me a lot of money on a plane ticket! Wait a minute...
In India, its always BEEN Mumbai.. just the west that called it Bombay!
Is India now a geek-news subject just because of outsourcing?
I personally welcome this. Maybe it's because of the bad taste left in my mouth by seeing the local orthodontist brag about how he only worked a couple hours a week, right before he jumped into his multi-million dollar Mitsubishi turbo-prop. My mom just paid several thousand dollars to have a root canal/tooth cap.
Perhaps it's not the best bet for open heart, but for some of the more insanely priced operations like that I think it make senses.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Contrary to the claims of the council, Dr Baru believes there will be no trickle down of money to the impoverished public health system, which currently receives just 0.9% of India's gross domestic product. The MTC's plans may well benefit the doctors and patients involved, but it is currently unclear how a country that still suffers from malaria and TB will reap the rewards of a new wave of medical tourists coming to India.
India has a long way to go before Americans are going to accept their HMO's forcing them there.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Laws need to be passed to protect the people. These insurance companies are evil. We would be better off with a state run health insurance system than the hyena's that currently run the insurance companies.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
The only issue I have with India as a "doctors" country is the poor record they have on transplants. I've read (sorry don't remember the source, try google), that many poor Indians are willing to sell their (or even their children's) kidney's just to get some cash. And the article went on about how some of the poor and unimportant people that no-one would miss are used as cheap and reliable sources of hearts and liver for transplants.
So yes, joint operations are fine, I'd be vary of the ethical consequences of getting a cheap transplant in India.
On the other hand if any of you lot have lost jobs due to outsourcing, what a great way to get even, "Kill Bill style".
Also relate is the article in last week's Sunday Times (English ones) about English people going to Budapest to have their teeth fixed for a fraction of the cost.
A friend of mine worked on a project for one of the local hospitals here that helped to move: most of billing, most of radiology, almost all of the folks that read the MRI's -- to India. The hospital still charges you the same amount, they still bill your insurance an amount 1/20 of what you would pay if you paid cash. The only thing that changed is a mess of radiology workers are out of work here & some of the accountants took a forced early retirement.
You still have people physically running the machines, but the people who interpet them are over there.
I wonder what they will do if they get DDOSed?
This is more a problem of OUR system, than anything better about theirs. I've got a cheaper solution: Build a Cruise-Ship/Hospital and park it 4+ miles offshore, offer first class medical help without all the US bullshit... you could cruise up and down the shore and hit more locations.
meh
I think that the Indians you've met are good at the math and sciences because their parents pushed their children to become engineers.
You're partially wrong. The other part of the reason is that Indian primary schools are real schools, not the socialized babysitting locations America has. If you measure a child from America who's been homeschooled (or was lucky enough to go to a _real_ school) against an Indian child who went to random primary school X, they'd probably be about the same.
The real irony of all this is that costs us (Americans) more to have the socialized babysitting centers than it would to have real schools.
Of course, when you see an Indian student at a University studying to be an engineer, it's no mistake that he's there. Smart people get to go to college*. You never meet the stupid ones.
[*] Rich people get to go to college too, but they go into business school.
Don't be stupid. While there are bad, bad slums in India, there are also neighbourhoods which look like a middle class area in the US. Power outages are not that common either.
My mother went through angioplasty at the Escorts Heart Research Institute (New Delhi, India, http://www.ehirc.com/). Not only did the operation go smoothly, the total cost of the whole procedure (including stay, doctor's fee, consultations, actual procedure, angiography etc) came to under $4000. Out of this $2000 was for the medicated stent used, which is imported from the US.
(PS: This particular hospital performs over 20 angioplasties and around 8 bypass surgeries daily)
--
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
Do I need to point out Bombay is called Mumbai? Sort of a Instanbul/Constantinople thing.
See this page for information.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
and maybe it'll push prices down here (wherever you/i are :)
People in the US sell their blood for personal profit. Or their babies. Or hire out their wombs. Selling parts of yourself for financial gain isn't exclusive to India, or even the developing world in general: it happens in the developed world too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
My goodness, sooner or later the whole world will end up in india! theres short term bonuses to be had at the moment, as its a poorer country, but surely if this keeps happening they'll eventually be as rich as the USA because of the amount of work and they'll want to outsource to here, as it'll be cheaper! ...maybe ;)
Medical Tourists.
It's official, we live in a wierd science fictional dystopian society. "Medical tourists", It sounds like a term akin to "Organ Leggers" from Niven's Known Space. Go back, oh, 20 years and speak the term "Medical Tourist" and people wouldv'e given you blank stares. Not to long from now they will say, "Had my hip done in India, and my plastic surgery in Mexico."
Since we live in a sci-fi world, I can't wait to get fitted for my one piece jumpsuit, and eating my soma infused soylent big brother.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
People are already being shipped abroad (not to india, but france the netherlands etc.) in Britain for treatment because the NHS cannot cope with the number of patients on the waiting lists. Also some are travelling to countries like Poland for cheap cosmetic surgery.
Operations can and do go wrong and its not much good if your surgion is half way around the world when you get rushed into hospital. Also hospitals do plan for readmittance, which obviously they cannot do unless you are treated by them.
Also I'm sure I don't need to spell out the problems that will be encountered if the patient needs ongoing treatment.
In the UK when private operations go wrong the patient often gets dumped on the National Health Service.
P.S. If you want my opinion, the US could do a lot worse than get itself a National Health Service. Access to healthcare should not be based on the ability to pay or what is covered on your insurance policy (if you can afford one.)
Philip
Signatures are broken
Boy, the process just accelerates every day, doesn't it?
Given that large multinational companies are now figuring out how to outsource pretty much everything that Americans make a middle-class living at... How does a geek plan for the future?
Not to be Mr. Negative-Pants, but the future appears to be one where a thin layer of prosperity on the level of a Pakistani bricklayer is smeared around the globe.
So... how do we plan for this? Any creative ideas out there?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania. Or maybe you were talking about California.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Or you just disapear like many children in India to become an unwilling organ donar.
Never trust anyone who shits in their own drinking water.
I have a question that may look like a troll, but I'd like some real thoughts. I assume that hospital visits, operations, etc cost so much because of how much the hospitals must pay for their equipment. So, are there any ideas why hospital equipment costs so much? I thought I heard MRI's run in the hundreds of thousands. Heck, Maine has a mobile MRI bus.
But even with this taken into consideration, hospital visits that don't touch any expensive machines are still very expensive. Is this to lower the cost of visits that do use expensive equipment? I still think this is explanation is on shaky ground as a $500,000 MRI might be used several thousand times. Does it really cost that much more for upkeep?
Thanks for any info on this matter. It just doesn't seem correct.
I had better tell my brother. He is a doctor and it would be funny to see him realize that all the time and money spent going to med school was a waste. I guess we will both have to become lawyers and sue our way to riches........
Which airlines will carry a person,
who tells them - up-front - that
they have a heart or other serious
medical condition?
(And any insurance may not cover
them if they don't tell them...)
But Australians are smart because we.... um ... split the beer atom!
So lets not use that as a measuring stick. Malaria isn't, but the only reason is the temperature and lack of Mosquitos.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
WOAH
There's a differerence between selling some plasma--actually re-producing some fresh blood can be a good thing, and having a couple of guys jump a guy and cut out his heart.
Lets get some fucking perspective.
The real blame if something like this REALLY happens is the doctors themselves...
Here in Detroit, the costs of medical care are completely outrageous.
I have had the "opportunity" to have some relatively benign medical proceedures done and the costs of these proceedures was astronomical
Proceedure 1: Partial removal of ingrown toenail. $778.00
Proceedure 2: earwax removal: $190.00
I personally know that the ear-wax removal can be done for $50.00 at a place about an hour away. When you consider that the proceedure consists of the doctor looking in your ear (yep, there is a lot of wax in there), dumping a few drops of a chemical into your ear canal, telling you to lay on your side for 10 minutes (doctor leaves the room at this time to do something else), doctor returns after 10 minutes and squirts a lot of very cold water in your ear canal and the wax is now gone. Total time: 20 minutes.
It's no wonder that someone would consider it reasonable to send medical work off to india. With the amount of overcharging that is "the way things are done" here, it's only a matter of time before things get shaken up...
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
The problem is, India faces major food shortages right now. They can't wait for outsourcing to bring them the money they need. That is where my proposal comes in.
If we ship overfed American women to India, and then import the unfortunate, thin, and quite lovely Indian women back to the USA, we will finally have achieved social justice. Thank You.
*rant*
Yknow what? I'd rather take my chances with a hospital in the US instead of being flown halfway across the world to India for ANYTHING - surgery, checkup, prescriptions - ANYTHING having to do with the medical profession.
We're not talking about outsourcing code writers, or a call center here - we're talking about my life. The people who've been there, and had something done - great, glad for you, wonderful to hear it - but there's quite literally NO damn way I'm getting on a plane for ANYTHING in India. I don't care HOW clean they might claim to be, or how state-of-the-art their facilities are. Not going to happen.
Find me Kevorkian before that happens.
*/rant*
Ummm, I think the difference in the things you listed is that they DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DIE, such as giving up your heart is wont to do.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Beleive me, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and other East Europeans countries have much better dentinst then States. The quality of work is excellent (once American materials became available). Don't forget that these dentists are trained as full MD first and then spend three years specializing in dentistry.
Hey neat. If I ever need a kidney, now I know where to go.
Maybe everyone is scared that the entire western world is being undercut by a bunch of people in some country half-way around the world who will work 10 times harder than any of us, accept a fraction of the wages and probably even do the job better! i dont know about you guys but that thought scares the absolute shit out of me, i reckon its time to join the exploiters at the top of the corporations - you've gotta make the fast buck now and retire or your job is gonna go - its time to kick everyone else off the ladder and scurry up now.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It's going to be interesting to see what the US doctors do when HMOs start sending patients abroad. HMOs require their doctors to carry malpractice insurance. And this takes up a considerable chunk of their income (some are as high as $250,000/annually, heart and neuro are the highest). If Indian doctors are not required to carry malpractice and thus undercutting USian surgeons I can see the shit storm coming from the AMA about this.
Pay lawyer fees and awarded lawsuit damages in Indian Rupees.
I'd be recommending checking out the great social welfare system that our western money buys the Indians. Or, wait? Will you see extreme powerty on your way from the luxery airport to the luxery hotel, and then from the luxery hotel to the luxery hospital?
Well guess how they can be so damn cheap, I'd wager that the programmers are happy as hell that they aren't in the slum, and the companies are happy that they don't have to pay to clean up the slum.
Think about that, next time you want to outsource something to India... Maybe you should demand that they spread our wealth a bit better when they get a piece of it.
If there are no good jobs in the US for people, who in the fsck to you plan to sell to? Good jobs == good money! If everyone is flipping burgers, then who will buy high-tech products and services?
There are certain pieces of medical equipment which cannot be exported outside of the US. Should doctors in India require these pieces of equipment for some ultramodern procedure, they may not be able to perform such procedures. I suppose this is what law makers and HMO execs would be chirping about when it comes around to this - Don't worry about these "low-level" jobs going offshore, we still have the "high-tech" stuff here to fill the niche!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
There are US hospitals which send their MRI images electronically to Indian companies which have a 24/7 staff of radiologists to interpret the images and send back the results. It is supposedly cheaper and faster according to a television show I saw, can't recall the show, it may have been on Tech TV. I do believe medical regulatory boards consisting of US doctors are going to make decisions which benefit US doctors. If the outsourcing trend became a major threat, I believe US doctors would employ some type of regulatory action to justify halting the trend. Doctors have had positions of status and wealth in the US for a long time and I don't think they are going to allow that positions slip away without a hard fight.
I know of people who fly to places like Belize or Jamaica to do surgery, paying for everything out of pocket at a cheaper rate than if they stayed in the US and paid the 20% their insurance companies required them to pay. Or their insurance doesn't cover the specific condition at all, so it works out much cheaper to fly overseas to get it done.
For the procedures offered, the care is usually quite good. Many of the doctors studied in the US. In fact, I'm surprised that more people don't take advantage of less expensive medical care overseas, rather than sitting in the US and dying because they can't afford it.
Having said that, US insurance companies should not be in the business of demanding that their customers go overseas before they'll pay for treatment. US insurance rates are based on the costs of treatment in the United States, so that's what policyholders should be given.
It it is true that other countries can provide cheaper medical care partly because their laws don't allow you to file large malpractice lawsuits. Very often in the US, half of the cost you pay for a surgery is just to cover the risk of a malpractice suit. That is something we need to work on here in the US if we don't want to see the health care system reduced to nothing but emergency care and plastic surgery for the rich. Shakespeare said "let's kill all the lawyers", but the lawyers are killing us by driving medical costs out of the reach of millions of Americans.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
India is becoming a superpower, I guess. ...
Indians are good at hardware and software.
Now, they are good at medical field.
There will be more coming soon, I think
They could set up hospitals/clinics on the Mexican/Canadian borders, Barbados, Cuba, or hospital ships just outside territorial waters. Surgical cruises!
My mom goes down to Nicaragua pretty regularly with a civic group...the last trip she had a filling replaced by a dentist down there. She said it was the most pleasant dental visit of her life, and it cost $25...so it's not just India where things are going to be exported to.
Having been to India four times myself and having had business colleagues have medical and dental work done while there I am of the conclusion that I wouldn't do it.
Just to take the dentistry as an example, one colleague's implanted teeth are cracking and will have to be replaced, another colleague had a very bad infection from having had surgical material left under a tooth cap. Yes these things could happen in the US as well but in my direct experience every person I know who has had work done in India has had a complication or problem from it.
I'm not sure if this isn't some sort of self-grandstanding on India's part. Listen to Vajpayee sometime and get an idea of the arrogance of some of the government there. Vajpayee one time told the world that India had the solutions to all of the world's problems, all we had to do was ask.
After having travelled there several times I'll take our solutions any day.
People in the US sell their blood for personal profit.
They pay you for blood? In Canada they do it out of a sense of the common good. Selling one's blood to save a life is absolutely repugnant.
Quit worrying so much and just go outside. Don't worry about being "prosperous"; be a poor person. Contrary to what tv, your mom, and other tv watchers tell you, being poor's not bad, going hungry sometimes is not bad, not being able to impress/fit in with people with a car or your clothes is not bad.
India's inherently lower cost clan/cast social structure (something the West dispenses with as "nepotism" at best and "racism" at worst) is how they are winning economically. The west's monetization of even its women's years of fertility in the work place (resulting in the lower fertility rates here) has imposed inherently higher costs of life itself. The only question is whether the West has anything left after deracinating its peoples, substituting money for blood. I think it still has the edge on innovation simply because the process of selective breeding against inventive subpopulations has not had its full negative effects. Software has to be innovative everytime you sit down to solve a problem with it. Unless you are just translating a program (and even there to some extent) the only way someone gets to solve a software problem is if you either didn't really solve it or if someone is stupid enough not to profit from your having solved. But in application of invention in an unchanging environment, such as the human body, all you need is the ability to follow rules to some extent.
Now the dangers of this approach to medicine are subtle and profound. The most obvious subtle danger is that as you shift resources away from the original populations that invented the technologies, it is unlikely you'll have the same rate of innovation. This is bad but at least you don't necessarily regress. What is worse is the fact that different human ecologies have different and sometime incompatible approaches to life. The fact that people are unaware of these approaches, and their incompatiblity is what may have caused the autism epidemic and left Indians in a position where they cannot be trusted to fix the problems they bring with them to the West.
Seastead this.
as a practicing ob/gyn, i hope they outsource some lawyers. preferably to antartica.
there are some things that can't be outsourced still. trauma surgery and the Burger King Drive-through, for example
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
... stopping the relentless rise in heath care expenses. It could save the domestic airline industry -- I can envision package deals wherein US airlines tie in with Indian medical facilities to deliver patients to the doctors.
...
And I can all-too-easily see the US insurance companies and employers (of what few employees don't get "off-shored") pushing medical care outside the US.
If only we could manage to "off-shore" our corporate management and lower the ratio between CEO and employee compensation --
Now there's a bubble that's ripe to pop
And to think, in ten years, there won't be any jobs worth a crap left in the USA for them to contract out to! Hooray!
The working man is so screwed in this country.
I think you need to realize something America. Those jobs ain't coming back. They ain't coming back ever. Limited trade works. It helped Japan not get swamped by American goods and then destroy their economy. It keeps it expensive, but it keeps Japan ALIVE. Now? This is just insane. You can't have an economy to give money to India if you don't have Americans working. Japan HAD to do this or get crushed under our industrial output. America has to do this or it will get utterly crushed by India and China's labor output. Period. This is akin to China and India being Wal-Mart, and you as Americans being the single shop owner. You have to think about it this way, the very lifestyle that you live will be dead in a generation if this keeps up. The floodgates are open. The decision if you want your city to be under water is obvious about what you have to do. Does it mean that your plastic crap from Wal-Mart is a little more expensive, yes. But this is predatory business. Don't think otherwise.
I don't want to hear some Adam Smith crap about this. Adam Smith was about free market economy, this is destroying choice in the economy to the point that all tech support will come from India, and soon so will all manufacturing. Economies have to be regulated because individuals in massive corps will destroy choice and freedom in the economy, and this is happening. This is about keeping America from destroying the middle class, which keeps this country, and the freedoms, the education of it's system, and all of the free choices you have with your life.
These practices destroy huge swaths of the middle class. Talk all you want about it, but without the middle class supporting your property tax in schools, you have CRAP SCHOOLS. Can't be done if you don't have a job. If you want to go to college you can in the middle class, can't be done if everyone is poor.
In a generation, everyone will be much poorer. This is not a good thing for the next generation.
Face it people. We peaked. The world now sees that and is trying to get there too. The bad part? They have fifty cent hours and six times the people. We have to watch what our free trade situation is.
Right now it is damn near a free labor situation.
Wow! I can start to see the boomer generation being warehoused in India instead of the nursing homes in the US. Then you will need all the support services (drugs, McDonalds, CostCo, Bruce Springsteen, etc.) shipped out there as well.
We can have an absentee country! Much better than the Paved Earth idea (everyone gets issued a RV and we all live in the parkinglots of Wallmart). The more I think about it, anything can be shipped overseas, even shipping.
I look forward to the future.
And all the politicans who created this mess being left behind (well, I guess prostitution won't be outsourced after all).
How do you say "Fuck me you big silly" in Hindi?
If India worked so hard...
They would have built their own country up by developing their own domestic infrasture the same way Americans did. Instead, they have to hock off their labor force as cheap to other countries because they no initiative to do anything with their own.
India's and the rest of the third world's export market to the US is a bigger get rich quick scheme than even US corporations foist upon the world. If the people in India want to work so cheap that they will provide the goods and services of the United States for the price that we dole out on welfare, for a currency backed by nothing, then we should let them.
Chop chop little buckaroos, build me more stuff. I got $5, I want a car. The chinese will do it for $4. Can you match!
This is my sig.
4 "years" of Med school (typically 2-3x the work load of what most colleges will limit students)
3-6 "years" of residency (again working 80-130 hrs/week - one-two days off a month so it's equivalent to 10-15 years job experience)
Most surgeons I know work 80 hours/week(think of it as 2 jobs) and are on beeper call 24/7 to their patients, except on rare ocasions.
..........FULL STOP.
Is playing third world countries off against each other to force ever lower salaries. The US is the greatest organization ever made. We made ourselves rich, and now the rest of the world wants a piece, so now, we get to play with our dough, doing nothing, while we say: "oh, Indian can do it for $10, but the Chinese can do it for $9, can you match!"
After India has its little boom and starts to get pricey, then, we will start training computer programmers and doctors in Latin America and Africa.
Hah! In the meantime, when you take my job as a programmer, just keep in mind that when I'm pumping gas I'll still be making more than you! And if you think you are going to get more, we Americans will replace you with people from Africa, then from Latin America, and then we will build robots, and then make robots to build our robots for us, and we won't need you any more.
Your dream of becoming a first world nation based solely on exports is a false one.
This is my sig.
Hi,
lets leave the cost factor aside for a moment.
Too many people consider medicine as a well defined science. It isnt. To a large extent it is an empirical science with a lot of guesswork, albeit educated guesswork, on the part of the physician. After a lot of diagnostic tests, the physician is given an incomplete list of symptoms. Based on those, the physician has to decide what the root cause is, and how to treat it.
In the US and in many other developed countries, little or no leeway is given to the physician to make mistakes, especially when they have only a single attempt. If they fail, they are hit with a huge lawsuit.
In less developed countries, physicians usually have more leeway. In addition, they usually treat a much larger number of patients, and this experience gained helps them make better guesses.
In summary, medicine is still an emprical science, with a hell lot of guesswork involved. Any one who expects 100% accuracy is misguided.
Come on guy, get real! The few bucks they give out to entice people to give blood is hardly something that generates personal proffit. As a U.S. resident for the last 33 years I've yet to see these "baby stores" or "womb rentals" you speak of.
Trust me friends, they will be comming here. My last THREE HMO doctors were Indian. One was great, the other two....well not so much. Its far cheaper to bring them here and pay them less then it is for us to go there. Besides the whole medical scene is changing anyway...my last doctor wanted people to pay a retainer fee on top of everything else. I think not. There is something wrong when I get X-rays and a Cast and the bill is over 3 grand for less then 20 min of work. Ok..better stop talking about this, my blood pressure is going up and i cant afford our doctors.
India is going to get it right, unless USA gov gets the fuck out of health care business here and lets companies here get it right... Indians are going to create a large city that will be like a car manufacturing plant. It will be cheaper and better to go there and go on this assembly line of tests and procedures that will cure most of your problems. Why do expensive procedures in 30 cities in the usa when you can just fly the people to a place for cheap and have the procedures done in assembly line kind of way. Economies of mass production, the costs of travel compared to the savings in the redundancy in medical stuff will be huge. An amazing benefit to humanity at the expense of current medical bureocracy. I cant wait for my future yearly visit to Bombay wwhere all my medical problems will be loked at in one long visit for a fraction of the cost
Nurses are a different market - schooling is widely available, and even though society is much less sexist than 30 years ago and women have more job choices besides nursing and teaching, there are still lots of nurses and their pay is quite low. That doesn't mean that hospitals and HMOs don't try to minimize the number of them they use, of course, but they aren't a big part of the cost base.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, it'll take a while before shipping is cheap enough that items as heavy as major appliances can be shipped for repairs, but it's not inconceivable. Right now, customers ship items as large as CRT monitors and microwaves back to the company for repairs. Sticking a fridge on a truck and driving it to Mexico is the next level.
There is no such thing as a permanent economic niche. The most you can hope for is that your occupation is not made obsolete until you retire.
If stuff can be done more economically someplace else, thats where it will get done. If we make that illegal, it will just get done illegally.
The transition is going to be painful for the 'First World', and ultimately we will be somewhat poorer. That's just how it is.
It's not the end of the world...we will all make less money, but that will drive down prices. We are in for major deflation in the next decade...and places like India will see major inflation.
We won't starve or freeze to death. Most of what we buy with this excess wealth doesn't enhance our lives much in the long run anyhow. Driving a sloppy road whale or watching sitcoms on huge plasma tv's is not exactly the path to happiness and enlightenment.
You won't need a real estate agent if the only person in the country who can afford to buy your house is the well driller -- hopefully you kept their business card?
Seriously: why can't a well driller be replaced by a robot? Or by someone who flies in from overseas? Neither of them will want to buy your house.
My Mother-in-law twice went to China to have operations that would have been far too expensive for her in the US.
Table-ized A.I.
This is no dream, ITS A NIGHTMARE! Is this how the Republicans intend to fix our healthcare system? This is beyond crazy.
2) Your cost of living is also (much) higher, which is one of the reasons that guy in india is less expensive.
3) The next outsourcing dream destination is probably Iraq or Afghanistan.
4) This will probably reduce the overall number of cars in the USA and increase them elsewhere. As there are more people in other countries the overall number of cars in the world will go up. Since we will eventually control the entire world's oil supply soon (I bet we're looking for an excuse to invade Saudi Arabia...) our oil companies will soon become the richest entities on the planet.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've got ferrets. I'd be happy to let one help you eradicate that ear wax for $40! They seem to go for that sort of thing... They'll also clear out any boogers you have (This would make a great Dave Barry feature...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I repair *physical* things each day as do the 29 other (wo)men that I work with each day. You can't really ship a fridge or air conditioner to India, fix it, and ship it back.
As soon as the bandwidth gets up there a ways, Spirit and Opportunity-like remote robots may be doing that stuff, with stereo vision and microscopes. Don't count it out. Physical stuff may be even easier to offshore because it may require even less English skills, unlike software development. Thus, the "remoters" can be from a country even cheaper than India.
The only "safe" career seems to be sales and marketing for trendy items. These require subtle knowledge of local culture, something a foreigner would not have easy access to. Unfortunately you will likely be fired when you get "too old" to be "hip" though.
Not a good century to be a worker in America.
Table-ized A.I.
Doctors please join the unemployment line over there right behind those programmers.
do not mess with Indian health care. The quality of health care over there is very low. You don't want to have anything done there. Stay away at all costs.
The medical holiday trend will be accelerated even more if the religious boneheads in the U.S. manage to get much of the stem cell research banned, and it all goes to India and China.
Or, an Indian research consortium might empliment the proposal outlined at; www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/ and make the entire health care system as we know it today obsolete within 10-15 years.
Since the religious, luddite, and other wankers in the U.S. are hellbent on trying to regulate or ban these technologies; all the biotech and nanotech will be outsources to Asia as well. So, these turkeys will really crater the U.S. economy.
People in the US do not sell their blood for personal profit. The whole point of "blood drives" is to get people to donate blood. If cash were offered in exchange for blood, the Red Cross would never have to urge people to donate blood, would it? Blood != Sperm. RTFM!
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
The same principle applies to programming as medicine and anything else we ship overseas. They can charge lower prices because it's cheaper to do business over there. They don't have US taxes, US work place regulations to deal with, US insurance rates or US courts. You make 900 a month over there you're upper middle class. 900 a month here you're sharing a trailer with three other people while riding your bike to work. And you're hungry most of the time because you're trying to figure out how to feed yourself on 200 a month.
I think some of the extra cost of doing business here happens to be worth it not to live in a cardboard box ghetto.
I'm wondering where this is all going to end and what's going to be left of our country when we get there.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
ahhahwhahahahawahhaha
Indian docs are way better than american ones because of the vast number of patients they treat.
I live in Bangalore and can rant about how bad the roads, pollution, traffic, infrastructure is..
/.
but I can personally tell you that medical facilities are among the best in the world for 1/5th the cost.
I was in the US for 2 years. During that time, my wisdom tooth made my life miserable. I could not get the tooth removed in my town because there was no qualified dentist. I had to go to a town 3 hours away if I wanted it removed. And it would cost me 350 $ because I was not eligible for dental insurance.
Also, I was told that recovery would be 2-3 weeks.
Guess what, during the summer I took a plane home and a week later and for 29 $ the dentist removed my wisdom tooth in less than 5 minutes.
I'm not saying that going to India was a good idea but the cost difference is phenomenal.
Medicines that cost 50 $ in the US are available for 5-6 $ and those that cost 100-150 are available for 8-10. And these medicines are made by the subsidiaries of Aventis, Glaxo Smithkline etc.
I can make a prediction that will eventually come true- if the dollar does not depriciate against the yuan, yen, etc, expect a growing chunk of your medical research to come India's way. Oh, and if bush gets re-elected.
Medical Research might be in its infancy but it offers 10 times the cost savings compared to the US. Serious.
It is cheaper(4/10ths to 1/2 than in the us) to get medical treatment here.
One point about the BBC story- medical treatment is very cheap compared to the US. but it is very costly for a majority of Indians.
I do not expect them to get good medical treatment from government hospitals except in a few states for a nominal cost. This is changing but it will take a lot of time.
--
Posted AC because got too many friends here on
I've heard of people being paid to give blood, but I've never met a person who has done it. I have met many people who have donated blood out of a sense for the common blood. I'm one, but my body doesn't take to donating blood, so they told me I didn't have to. I have sold plasma, which is blood parts, but that is a different thing. Plasma is taken twice a week, and it takes a lot longer (3 hours vs 1 hour), so it is fair to get some payment for the time. I'd give plasma for nothing though if there was a place nearby to do so.
The quality of service from hospital to hospital varies dramatically. And the blood supply is not trustable.
I can't belive all the negative on this. It sounds like a good idea. If my HMO offered me a choice: get your care at the local hosptial, or we will fly you to India, and you can get the same thing there, plus the nurses will spend more time with you, and the quality will be at least as good. I'd go for it. And I'd make sure that my flight back was delayed for a few weeks while I toured a country I've never been to before.
Assuming the medical care is just as good, where is the downside?
Speaking of costs and capitalism, there have been some nasty spats between India and US pharmaceuticals companies if I recall correctly. It's not difficult to recreate a drug - the only protection the US companies have is patent law. India baulked at the costs that were demanded, weighed up the choice of letting people die or violating copyright and (good for them) started knocking off the drugs themselves.
What I'm interested in here however is, should more spats happen, will this weaken the pressure that the pharmaceuticals companies apply to doctors. I know that in Britain, GPs (General Practioners) are routinely courted with hotel stays, fancy meals and any other way they can get around the UK's laws on these issues; and from what I've heard they have much greater sway in the US.
So are you less likely to be perscribed something you don't need in India? And if their healthcare is socialised, does that mean the doctor is more likely to have your interests at heart? It looks that way.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Not unless you live in New Jersey. You can't pump your own gas because of a state law, which explains why all stations over there are full-serve only. What's the reason for that law anyway?
Heed the word victims of outsourcing, there is a reason to move to New Jersey!
Yeah, and having travelled from one end of India to another, I've never seen a "hearts for sale" sign anywhere. Furthermore, I've yet to read of even one person who's obtained a heart or other critical organ from a healthy developing world donor in exchange for cash. Yet I have heard (several times, in fact) of people in the US arranging to have babies for other people and being "compensated" for their efforts or of surrogate births.
In other words, what the original poster said about organs for sale in India is pretty much hearsay but there's documented evidence of blood, babies and wombs for rent in the US. If you don't believe that this stuff happens then just click some of the links that appear when you google for the word "surrogacy".
QED.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
They are mistaken saying that medical facilities in India are on par with those in the United States. This just isn't true, unless you count the facilities that India has for large scale treatment of the many widespread ailments which plague the country, like diarrhea.
no way..
No way in hell, ever. These people have no concept of sanitation. They throw their dead in the same river they bathe in, drink from, and wash clothes in.
I would rather DIE than go to that country for even a paper cut...
Cool. I can gas up my car, get a Squishy, flip through a porno mag, and have my heart valve replaced all at the neighborhood 7-11. You know, maybe capitalism can work out a way to ship all the Americans to India, and bring all the Indians to America!! Think how much money that would save a company! electricians, programmers, nuclear scientists, garbage truck drivers, hookers, everything would be so much cheaper!
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
If you've ever seen someone go through the process of a hip or knee replacement, then you would know that a 12+ hour plane ride with their knee in a prone position is just not possible.
I'm sure some medical things might be able to be outsourced, but not replacement surgery.
Everything about Doctors in India is as good as any doctor anywhere else or maybe better but theres a slight problem like someone said in this postt.Its sanitation n hygiene. .I have experienced this myself.I was admitted to a sub standard hospital but only because the orthopaedic surgeon there was the one of the best in bombay.And you def want a better Doc than a better hospital when you are going in for a dozen surgeries(like i did) and a small mistake can leave you handicapped for life.
The standard of hygiene is very different from hospital to hospital.Somethings can really shake you
But things are improving and most big hospitals here are world standard.
Lord of the Binges.
The sky-high cost of American medicine, and consequently the cost of insurance, and therefore civilized life in America, is governed mainly by supply and demand. As a former premed student, I know that much of the medical "education" program is a system to weed out those who aren't sufficiently motivated (usually by cash) to complete the certification. Having worked fulltime in NYC-area hospitals, large and small, as well as with private doctors, I know that the filters produce a workforce of moneygrubbing party-liners, with bare competence to heal, and a small percentage of "stars" who create the reputation for excellence that the rest of their industry rides on.
The best change for consumers of medicine in America (practically all of us) would be merely to open more schools, graduate more doctors. That process could be jumpstarted by perferring for admission certified foreign doctors from countries with comparable medical educations, filtered by standardized tests and interviews. Right now, foreign doctors typically must throw away all credit for their foreign educations and careers, no matter how worthy, when "starting over" in the US. If we doubled or tripled the supply of certified doctors, we could cut the costs through the resulting competition. Instead, we have price fixing among a cartel which mainly acts as bouncers for insurance companies and pushers for drug companies. As our demand rises, we should see economies of scale, not a debilitating crisis of artificial scarcity.
--
make install -not war
Ok, you're a cowardly fuckwit hiding behind an AC post. Good, let's play.
"Yah, in the United States of America, "high caste" and "low caste" are called "white" and "black."
There are lots of poor white people with no power or money here. And lots of Black people with gobs of both.
"How many black software developers have you met in your lifetime? I've spent 25 years in the IT business, and in that entire time I've only ever met 2 black software professionals. "
Ahh, the racial holier than thou thing. I've NEVER met a black software developer. Come to think about, I can only recall a handful of black guys in CIS classes back when I was in college. BUT....there were plenty of black guys IN college, just in different fields.
So what does this mean? Frankly, I think geeky things just don't appeal to most black males. I know very cool b
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Given that large multinational companies are now figuring out how to outsource pretty much everything that Americans make a middle-class living at... How does a geek plan for the future?
Not to be Mr. Negative-Pants, but the future appears to be one where a thin layer of prosperity on the level of a Pakistani bricklayer is smeared around the globe.
So... how do we plan for this? Any creative ideas out there?
Why not join an Open Source project? That way, instead of having your hard work outsourced to India, you can screw those Indians over because you're willing to work for free.
Too late for most people to see this, but here goes.
My wife is from the Philippines, a place which has decent medical care. When we had a trip over there a couple of years ago, we asked the insurance company if they would cover us while there. The lady said "Yes, it's not a problem, just send your medical bills in when you get back and we'll reimburse you. And, by the way, we recommend Makati Medical Center if you need a hospital, but anywhere will be reimbursed."
Now, coming from an insurance company, that sounded wierd. In the US, you have to go to certain facilities, etc.
Anyway, long story short, my son ended up with some horrible virus and had to go in to the hospital for three days. The total, bill, which was padded when they realized my wife lived in America, was about US$200.
I joked with my wife then that the insurance company will probably require us to go back there for care if it's not life-threatening. Given the cost of a hospital room in the US, it would be cheaper to fly over there (about $1K/ticket) for anything more than an overnight stay.
Anyway, I saw this coming. It'll force the insurance/medical industry in the US to start competing, which is a good thing.
Do you have ESP?
Discovery channel now announce the latest program for the next season: "Iron Surgeons" where top surgeons compete against challengers to do complex operations in the least amount of time.
Why not join an Open Source project? That way, instead of having your hard work outsourced to India, you can screw those Indians over because you're willing to work for free!
Oh, pooh. MANY CEOS have given up their hearts and still keep on going without dying. Hello, Carly?
I'd consider your rant to be a typical one for clueless anticorporate types.
3 832 ) and general health degradation in the US caused insurance to experience losses.
HMO is a desperate (and failing) attempt to control skyrocketing medical costs. Traditional system includes the insurance company and doctors as separate entities with the doctor making any decisions they want and insurance just footing the bill.
Unfortunately, newer expensive treatments ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96859&cid=828
So, they decided to hire their own doctors and put them through the cost-control through the approval of procedures.
Eventually many other non-HMO companies followed suit. They now need to approve certain medical procedures beforehand, otherwise the doctor is not getting reimbursed.
Even despite all of this crap, the costs for the customers (i.e., these who pay premiums for the healthcare) continue growing. Major cause: expensive drugs and more people requiring them permanently.
To the contrary to the popular belief, lawsuits are not he culprit of the major cost rise at the medical insurance level, but they greatly affect doctors themselves and their malpractice insurance causing many doctors to drop out of practice in certain litigious areas.
P.S. I used to contract at a small healthplan company.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
My girlfriend and I were on a "super-deluxe" bus in India travelling from Jaipur to Udaipur. About halfway into the trip the bus came into a 90 degree corner way too fast, left the road and flipped over demolishing a small brick building. A man nect to me was killed as was the woman in front of me. Ny girlfriend ended up with a displaced vertebrae as well as 2 splinters on c5.....but this wasn't discovered until we got back to small town Canada. the doctors in New Delhi, at one of the best clinics recommmended by the Canadian consul completely missed the injury. They said my girlfriend had whiplash and needed rest. she was in the hospital for a week and when she was released we tried to keep travelling. She still couldnt sit up by herself and after 2 weeks we finally decided to return home. She was in so much pain that when we got home she checked into the local emergency room in Kamloops and after an xray they said she wasn't leaving. They found the splinters and dislocation and fused 3 vertebrae the next morning. I couldn't believe that the supposedly expert doctors in Delhi failed to find what the ER doctors in small town BC found immediately. As far as I'm concerned the Delhi doctors were incompetent and more interested in their next European vacation than practicing medicine. Scary to think that people might actually go to India for treatment!!!!
And the small hospital near the scene of the bus crash was an even bigger horror show. The "doctor" there (he said he was "23 and a half" years old) was sewing up people without using anaesthetic, rats came out of the toilets, they gave me a blanket to sleep on (under my girlfriend's bed) that was covered in lice, i got an electric shock taking out my contacts when i accidently touched an instrument sterilizer (the thing had a short and was "live"!)...we booked out of that hospital the next morning and headed straight for the airport to Delhi......
Look out for those "super-deluxe", menaing they drive faster-than-hell buses...and try to stay clear of Indian hospitals. Anyway that would go all the way to India for one has to be out of their mind (imo!)!!!!
Sage Report
Trial Lawyers, Inc
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
...whilst millions go begging for health care in India, wealthy foreigners can buy first calss care.
The same thing is happening in Australia.
Whiltst many young Australians miss a chance at a tertiary education every year, wealthy foreigners can buy a place in a degree course. Lower standards for fee paying students extend to 'no fail' policies.
It is scandalous but still the government of the day sails on...
I am an indian studying in Australia. Couple of years ago, I had to get a root canal done. The local orthodontist was going to charge me AUD$2300 for root canal (that was after a 15% student discount).
Guess what? the air ticket to india AUD$1200 , cost of root canal in Delhi AUD$350 , meeting family and friends again for a mini vacation PRICELESS.
It's probably not well known that people of Indian origin have a predisposition to heart problems. Last year on ABC's, Foreign correspondent, Domonique Schwartz did a story on Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Cardiologist/Heart surgeon, of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore.
In a country with such a distorted wealth distribution, telemedicine allows outlying areas to access to access western trained cardiac specialists to supply top level care that was not previously possible.
Do not dismiss the expertise of these professionals. The products of top western hospital training in the UK, Australia and US, their expertise tempered by the shere number of operations they perform. The most salient point to consider is ....
- A government hospital run by the government of India, about 85 to 90 percent of their budgetary allocation goes for salaries. In the Western countries, about 60 to 70 percent of the yearly expense goes for the salaries. In our hospital, it's 20 percent or 22 percent.
[Foreign Correspondent, ABC, India a big Heart, aired: 18/02/2003]peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Even though some might want to outsorce psychologies by the means of a tele- or videophone, I still believe that it will be impossible to do so because of human contact that won't be there.
m l ).
And the US will need a lot of these since people are really screwd up (don't erceive it as a flamebait, just look here: http://www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaLanguage.ht
you'll need to work on your personality though.
Sales is also something that will stay to some extent, even though it is probably not for geeks.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
A lot of crap happens with people because they don't work out their issues and don't follow their purpose.
To describe it in a simple way, imagine how a patient with a leading archetype of "Victim" comes to a doctor whose main archetype is "Guilt". The probability of something going wrong is much higher when their hidden desires contact. And this is just one example.
Another thing is finding and following your purpose. If you do it, everything helps you; otherwise some crap might happen in order for you to stop doing what your subconscious does not want you to do.
In my opinion, certain professions (such as doctors, pilots et al) should put a requirement of not only being able to read a certain amount of books and pass certain exams, but also be a different person who is psychologically healthy and does not have a hidden subconscious agenda.
This is probably true about all the population. At the same time, certain forces whithin the society REALLY do not want it to happen. F.e., Vultures at Law promote the "Righteous victim fights back (while enriching lawyers)" archetype, leftists inflict Guilt on everyone (think Duncan McLeod), and the government (not as republicans/democrats/green, but as a system) wants everyone to be stupid and controllable.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
In 70s (IIRC) the doctor himself was getting about 70% of all medical expenses, now it is just 15%.
Expensive drugs, a lot of expensive equipment, lawyers et al consume a very high share of the total medical expenses.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Exchange rates are.
India and China have artificially lowered exchange rate. Thus everything they produce is more competitive outside of their economy.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
The reason is a huge size and population of these countries.
Unlike the US with the federal "minimum wage" that makes the life approximately the same expensive (on a big scale, certainly), these countries can do it forever.
I have read an article about China that was telling how Shanghai and the coast are more expensive than some places deep inside the country, and how they start competing on cost with more established areas wooing Western and intraChinese investors.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Think South America and Australia/New Zealand.
They have already killed the American fresh-cut flowers industry, and they produce more and more good and cheap wines. Local (I live in Oregon) fruit and berries growers also can't compete on price.
All the lamb we get here is from NZ. Significant chunk of the farmed fish industry is moving from Norway and Canada to the South america et al.
When the government revenues fall even more, there won't be money to subsidize the agriculture anymore.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
They live in a different world where high mortality is necessary to offset a very high birth rate.
This is why they perceive death differently, not ike Westerners.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
And your +5, Insightful is made possible only by similar stupid leftists.
3 832 ) and general health degradation in the US caused insurance to experience losses.
HMO is a desperate (and failing) attempt to control skyrocketing medical costs. Traditional system includes the insurance company and doctors as separate entities with the doctor making any decisions they want and insurance just footing the bill.
Unfortunately, newer expensive treatments ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96859&cid=828
So, they decided to hire their own doctors and put them through the cost-control through the approval of procedures.
Eventually many other non-HMO companies followed suit. They now need to approve certain medical procedures beforehand, otherwise the doctor is not getting reimbursed.
Insurance companies can't be in the red ink, htey will just transfer the costs to their customers. This is why even despite all of this crap, the costs for the customers (i.e., these who pay premiums for the healthcare) continue growing. Major cause: expensive drugs and more people requiring them permanently.
To the contrary to the popular belief, lawsuits are not he culprit of the major cost rise at the medical insurance level, but they greatly affect doctors themselves and their malpractice insurance causing many doctors to drop out of practice in certain litigious areas.
If you want to "protect people", teach them how to be healthy. Otherwise the general population is just a hostage of these who demand expensive treatment when I (who is pretty healthy and spends a lot of time and money to stay healthy for the time being) foot the bill through my insurance premiums that keep going up.
P.S. I used to contract at a small healthplan company, so I know some shit.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
2 problems:3 832 )
1) Most of the people don't pay for the medical care themselves. Middlemen (insurance companies) do.
2) Thus, lawyers still will be able to sue someone, and the same certificaions will be required for you to be able to work with these insurance companies.
3) The culprit is not the expensive healthcare but sick population (problems strt with mental health, many people subconsciously WANT to be sick: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96859&cid=828
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
At a time when developed countries pay a lot of money to the underdeveloped ones to store nuclear waste there, they can also pay some money to store radioactive lawyer waste in a reliable containers! ;-)
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
better chasing tennis balls for food money...
than not chasing tennis balls for no food money.
although you are using this as an example of the oppressive Hindu caste system... in reality this family may have just wanted to help some kids out and let them do some chores around the house/court/etc. if they were really being cheap/evil I'm sure they would have let the girl pick up her own balls and let all the poor children starve.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
Not that surprising - the state of the art in joint replacement is at the same point it was two decades ago - there's nothing better in the labs than there is in people's kneecaps. It's a case of commercial development halting and marketing taking over, and people relying on the currency of their patents so they don't ever have to do any development ever again.
Sorry I am probably too late for someone to see my comments. Anyway...
People are talking about HMOs and Insurance saving money and also talking about liability issues. Yet, that is one side but the solution there is easy. If the insurance companies can get comfortable with the model, they would use it because the overall costs (medical expenses + liability costs) will be lower. I do not think the jury will say Insurance did a wrong thing by sending someone to India because most of the other cases worked.
However, I feel that a significant pressure will come from un-insureds. My newborn was in ICU for just over a week and hospital billed about $50K. The insurance paid $12K. Even that is too high, but if I was uninsured the hospital would have insisted on $50K. Now this worked out because I am insured and the deductible is low. How about the uninsureds? As you know, there are lots and lots of them in this economy. If someone needs help which costs $10K and the hospital asks them for $50-$100K because they are not insured, what would they do? Well they are not going to think about where it is done, just that there is someone available to help them for the price they can pay.
I am not saying the un-insured are causing the change, but a significant part will be driven by them. If you think farther, isn't this how Linux started...keeping the rhetoric of open source aside for a minute.
Think about something like automobiles - in essence, they are all the same, using technology that is largely 100 years old. They are all built using assembly lines, with the same materials and processes. Some may have doodads here and there (ooh - shiny!), but overall every car is identical.
Now - why do some cars cost $40,000, and others cost $10,000? Because the market (nee sheep consumers) perceives an artificial "value" in the more expensive vehicle over the cheaper model. It isn't too expensive (well, it is for me - but I am talking about those whom it is marketed toward) for the consumer to buy - but if it was any more (say, $60,000) - the market would shift away from that model to another, less expensive (but still "valuable") vehicle.
Another example are "enterprise class" computers. Overall, these computers use the same technology and processes as a typical consumer machine. Some hardware is special (ie, Fibre Channel, clustered disk arrays, etc) - but even it still uses the same processes and technology to build it. However, since it isn't marketed to consumers, it is priced accordingly. Indeed, many times it is priced at outlandish amounts. Sometimes, even the lowly components are priced outrageously (like a 9 gig SCSI drive running at 15K RPM going for $300.00 - when you could pick up the same thing for much less elsewhere). Lock-in on a per-vendor basis viea service contracts abounds - even so, many businesses think nothing of the crazy markup on these items, because they are priced for businesses, and not a penny more or less!
The true value of an item is generally perceived after it has hit the secondhand/used market - especially if it is being sold as "new surplus". It won't sell for the amount it used to sell for, generally it will sell for much, much less - but usually, it is selling for what it is truely worth, and what it should have been selling for originally. However, because things are priced for what the market will bear, most things (especially in niche markets like MRI machines for hospitals) sell for much more - even if the technology and manufacturing processes are matured to the point where they should be selling for less.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Read it more carefully. I state that this insurance greatly affects YOUR practice as a doctor, but it is change when calculating the health insurance premiums for insured individually and through work.
2 89 149
Here are two articles, you can find them here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96895&cid=8
As for capping the damages, IIRC, capped are not the actual damages, but "pain and suffering" ones. I'd also have eliminated "punitive damages" in this field thus eliminating most outrageous awards (it is especially bad because most awards are just absorbed by insurance that distributes them among all practitioners - good and bad).
And yes, you can't have both ability to sue for unlimited damages and ability have low malpractice insurance. The only way to improve the situation is to make cheaper lawyers. For now it seems to be impossible.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
You've never heard of plasma centers????
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Nice
So let's see, here: his evidence is stuff he's supposedly read; your evidence is stuff you've supposedly heard (several times, no less). I'd say you're both idiots!
Oh My God. You've never seen an article on the news or in a respectable newspaper about people paying to adopt newborn babies? You're totally unaware that there is a whole industry based around this practice in the US? Or that surrogacy is big business too?
Did you even bother to click the Google link that I provided and investigate some of the links supplied on that page for yourself if you were so skeptical of what I had to say? I provided the means for you to verify what I said but you decided to skip that, dismiss my contribution as hearsay and call me an idiot.
Wow. And they say that most AC posts are full of rubbish.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
If I only knew what mad props were, I'd give you some.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Why not?
You've ranted for two paragraphs, but you haven't given me any objective reasons.
The salt water of the Dead Sea, combined with the thicker atmosphere (prevents ultraviolet rays from actually reaching the earth's surface), is so effective against psoriasis that some European countries' health plans pay patients to fly to Israel, rather than use medications at home.[*] In this case it's a natural geographic feature of the world doing the healing instead of trained doctors, but the idea -- and the economics -- of moving patients to a more effective, more economical location are well set in the world of Western medicine.
[*] Bruce Feiler, ISBN 0-380-80731-9, odd travel writer. This fact struck me as so interesting that I hunted through the bookcases to find the reference.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Not exactly,
I'am an indian, i live in bangalore. My dad's a doctor, more specifically, a dermatologist.
When i told him, that i would do a BE(equivalent of BS) in CS, he was aghast! He couldn't believe, that i didn't want to be a doctor.
And, as regards health care in india, I know for a fact, that more doctors are actually interested in health care, than money. Quite a few of them go atleast once a week, for about 15 hours to a charity hospital, and treat patients there for free, absolutely free, yes, even stuff like Bypass surgeries are free.
Doctors in india are amongst the most highly respected people around, more respected than those with a lot of money.
Perils of Outsourcing The article is short and lucid....just read it! The effect on U.S. living standards is the same as what would happen if a cost-reducing technology in software production occurred. Living standards rise either way.
This shows that Indians (that doesn't sound right) really want to work. It is a shame but most of the western world have gottern lazy. They want a free ride and use things like trade unions and the fickle government system to do this.
I think we need less unemployment benifits, make people value having a good job again, and stop demanding more. I just keep thinking back to the story on the most over paid jobs, and can't belive we have let it come to this.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
I have a friend who lives in Saudi Arabia, but is not a citizen (so he does not have free health insurance there). His employer only covers local health for a certain number of dependants (and the guy's father is not among them)
...etc. that can be fatal.
His father needed heart surgery, so they went to India (Madras, now Chennai), and had the surgery done for a fraction of the cost of what it have been if they did it in Saudi Arabia, even after you factor in the air fare and the hotel costs.
He praises the Indian doctors for being knowledgable.
As a side note, in third world countries, it is not a bad doctor that would you in trouble, it is often the post operative care, infection,
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
So the next time a tourist comes to USA, he should help out a homeless person? I mean I guess he should also 'spread his wealth' to help your country right?
Well being an Indian, I disagree with u - there are just so many more Asians than Europeans/Americans, so the probablities are in our favour...
I have a different theory. I think Indians and Chinese ppl are better than Americans at Math/Science becoz they use the frikking metric system.
If u ask an American what the boiling/freezing poitn of water is, a non-science student is probably likely to tell u to go ask the slit-eyed yellow skinned kid in his/her science class. Ask the slit-eyed yellow-skinned kid and s/he will instantly respond with 0 and 100 degrees Celcius insted frickin' 32 and 252?? deg fahreinheit.
Plus 1 km = 1000 m = 1000,000 mm
instead of 3 ft to yard or something.... Just a personal theory.
What we need is a free trade zone for medicine. Kind of like a duty-free shop. Where foreign doctors can come and do their stuff and the patients dont need to travel.
Why do you need to drive anywhere if the robots will go there and do whatever it is for you?
Of course the real question is: will they be able to outsource the building and maintenance of our robot overlords?
"So... how do we plan for this? Any creative ideas out there?"
1) Get up to your eyeballs in debt. The hyperinflation and other fun stuff that will happen when the US gets its costs adjusted will wipe it all out and you'll be sitting pretty. Just think how small that $2500/month mortgage will seem when Big Macs cost $800!
2) Invest in barrels. These will be THE hot fashion item after the crash. Every newly bankrupted, homeless, jobless person who's lost even the clothes off their back will need one.
3) Keep in shape. To distract attention from the $800 Big Macs, there are likely to be a series of pointless wars. This could make the military one of the few places that's hiring.
4) Keep your membership up to date in radical organizations. Radicals tend to take over during times of disruptions. It's likelty to be neo-fascists or neo-communists; probably neo-fascists are more likely in the US. You want to be on the winning side and avoid any troublesome pogroms or purges so make sure the likely Supreme-Leader doesn't have you on his shit list.
Iz
he goes yelling 'CASTE'!!
sigh. wake up people. how many of you have been ever out of your own backyard?
India made caste system illegal as soon as it got independence. About the time when you were lynching blacks with abandon.
And oh, the other day I heard on radio about a jury sternly reprimanding a police officer that he should not be treating blacks like animals.
Says something about the caste system in america, dont you think?
Fase it, you have castes too - I think you guys call the different ones by names such as whites, blacks (ni**ers, is another name I heard?), spics, gooks, chinks, curries, patels, gandhis, injuns.. every single race that came to this country has been given an official caste name by you guys.
So, POT, stop calling the kettle black. atleast the kettle is trying to wash itself. OKAY??
Although the medical expertise and technology in India is not bad, there are some risks worth considering:
1. If a blood transfusion is required, be sure to consider autologous blood donation. India has reportedly taken steps to improve the quality of the blood supply however, it still draws on a population rampant with HIV, hepatitis, malaria, and various other blood born diseases. Remember, this is still a third world country.
2. Infection rates. They're much higher than in the west. Check out this recent bit of medical news:
3. Think about recovery. With a heavily taxed immune system, do you really want to face food and water born pests that make the most fit visitor to Mumbai extremely ill? On a recent trip, 5 out of 7 of my traveling companions fell ill. Yes we all drank bottled water (and yes we inspected the caps).
The saw bones may be cheaper over there but when your hide is on the line, don't forget to factor in the other risk factors.
reservations.. ah yes.
like that affirmative action thing you guys have got going? Or the money talks routine?
>> Not in my life would I trust my life with an Indian doctor. No sir.
I guess the rest of the world shoudl say that of american black docs then?
I travel to Canada a lot, often for weeks at a time. The last few years, I've gotten all my medical "maintenance" taken care of up there, because it's so much cheaper. An optometrist in southern CA costs over $100. Even in "expensive" Vancouver, it's $60 Canadian, or $45 US -- less than half the price. So I have a Canadian optometrist, dentist, chiropractor, and sports therapist. I'm thinking about LASIK, and I'd definately get that done up there too.
Similarly, a lot of Americans get stuff done in Mexico, particularly dentistry and plastic surgery. All we hear about are the wacky cancer treatments, but the market for the mundane stuff is many times bigger.
Note to all you contractors and self-employed people out there -- while the IRS lets you deduct all your medical expenses now, you still have to spend it first. And spending less is still spending less, tax deduction or no...
Except for gun powder those are ancient history and gun powder is nowhere nearly as current as the triode, computer, transitor and integrated circuit -- none of which even came from the West's elite institutions -- but from the US's agricultural cultures. Nothing comparable to those inventions has come out of anywhere in Asia during the time people have been claiming Asians are the new technical elites. Good businessmen, perhaps even great businessmen yes... but no invention of comparable magnitude.
Seastead this.
My CEO said he expects me to give my heart and soul for the company. Given that he is Indian, i am begining to wonder about what he really meant.
"but it *is* obvious that saying "just get a new career in accounting/law/ marketing/whatever!" is naive because there is no strictly "safe" field to start with, and never will be."
:)
Slashdot poster. Oh wait! too late.
Anyway the "retrain '
em" argument has a problem. The NIMBY problem. Once you've trained the 5.3 Million unemployed in a particular field. Then you have the "I do it for the love" in the respective fields complaining about all the "just doing it for the money" saturating the market, and driving formerly "dot com" salaries down.
Then there's the "insourcing" aka HB-1's were if your job isn't going out? It's being filled by imported "I do it for the love of low wages" labour.
Also there's the "twins" of "gott'em by the balls, work to death" and "meet your replacement, mr automated checkout line"
Plus more can be done "were there's a will, there's a way". Build a home? Buy a modular "made in china" home. fresh off the container ship.
Quite frankly now's the worst time to be labour.
I would recommend neither a socialist solution, neither the present one. Health accounts(1) (minus some of the stupid restrictions) couple with backup health insurance would work. Expose all medical goods and services to market forces, with the framework of laws to prevent the most serious abuse. The idea is that most of the problems will disappear when people control the outcome of their own health.
(1) Think of it as a 401K for your medical needs.
Sure... If you consider getting a slice of pizza or a couple cookies after you give blood "selling for personal profit..." Have you ever donated blood?
-Rich
a similar thing is happening in Brazil, where there are also state-of-the-art facilities and good doctors for several kinds of transplants and surgerys
it happens specially with people from middle east, rich people that usually went to the US for that kind of thing, but whom in the current situation don't want to go there
some go to europe, but most people don't like the kind of "doctors" in europe, the kind that is too profesional, to distant from the pacient.
they prefer "warmer" doctors, so Brazil gets to be the choice.
-- SouNerd.com
So you prefer to live in pain under perhaps a life threatening condition while you wait up to 18 months for your operation in the NHS.
You prefer that to a 12 hour flight and ac ouple of weeks at most in decent medical facilities.
Riiiigth.
And about the accents, wisen up boy, if I, who is not a natiove English speaker, can understand Indian accents, I am sure you can. Hell, I can understand now yordie, scottish, cornish and even some cockney accents.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Many Mexican industries just died because they were not protected against the more competitive counterpart in the US and Canada. Or the unfairly subsidized ones (agriculture).
Of course you guys ignore that aspect of NAFTA and only whine about "job losses" while during most of NAFTA existence your unemployment rate has been the lowest for generations.
Pure misinformation and under the hoods xenophobia.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
India was not Independent 60 years ago.
60 years after Independence half the US was still relying on slave labour to generate wealth.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I would rather go to Thailand simply because of better hygiene, and prices for medical procedures are similar.
I have used medical facilities in both countries, both expensive and inexpensive ones, and would never ever go to surgery in India. There's simply a total hygiene gap between India and Thailand, to the advantage of the latter.
It starts with the food, in India it is very easy to get serious health problems from food and water, whereas both food and water are very safe in Thailand, and ends with wiping your ass, with many Indians still using their hand, whereas Thais use a bidet shower.
There are many hospitals in Bangkok alone catering for foreigners. Most telling is that these hospitals do booming business with Indians, too. No Thai would ever even dream of going to India for health care!
Lack of hygiene in outpatient care can be an annoyment at best, but can kill you at worst, with surgery the risks are thousand-fold.
Those people are paying taxes (sales tax or whatever you call it) and contribute to the economy keeping full industries alive. If they can't pay for their own healtcare is due to US policies that close the eyes to the reality of migrant workers.
I wish you would get your unstated wish and tomorrow all the "freeloaders" would vanish from the US. The eonomic collapse of the South of the US would be an admirable spectacle.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You can remove the earwax very easily yourself, either with a special pump or just using a large plastic syringe (without needle ;-). With body temperature water you don't even necessarily need any chemical to soften the ear wax. Paying somebody money to do this is like paying somebody to wipe your ass.
Similarly, if your toenail is not extremely, hideously badly ingrown, you can cut it or file it yourself. Just avoid using shoes afterwards to avoid infection stemming from poor ventilation. Calamine lotion works wonders with toes, and actually any small cuts and bruises, especially in difficult humid places (only for external use).
It's not magic what doctors do to your body in small procedures like these, so sometimes a little hacking spirit goes a long way, both for your dollars and your knowledge.
But, if you fck it up, remember that fixing your work can cost more than have a professional to do it in the first place..just use some common sense and caution and you'll be fine (and no, you can't sue me if you fck up anyway).
The US middle class is far too rich and far too wasteful.
SUVx, obesity are just signs that US workers have enough range of manouvre to lower their salaries without their level of life diminishing too much.
That will make you competitive again, simply you have to be more rational about your expenses in order to be able to accept lower salaries.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... that iw ill not make any further comments about it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My mother in law did just that: hip replacement.
She was 80 years old at the time.
Of course YMMV, but is not an impossibility.
Funnily enough we later learned that one world authority on hip replacement actually lives in the thirld world country where she was living.
Oh well, it was money well spent anyway.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes, I have donated blood. But I live in a country where such donations are 100 percent altruistic. That's not the case in the US, however.
You may not have been paid for your donation, or you might not be aware that some donations are paid for, but it does happen in the US. At least one other person who replied to my original post has had direct experience of paid donations.
Just because you haven't experienced something first hand, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
On a personal note, my dad had two wisdom teeth crack on him recently. He priced out the local medical cost to $7,000. Then he priced the cost in India as $500, and a round trip plane ticket for $1200. He flew out last week.