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Medical Care Gets Outsourced Too
Muppy writes "Here's the summary from the most emailed article in The Washington Post today -- about an American who went to India for heart surgery, which he could never have afforded here. U.S.: $200,000 total cost ($50,000 deposit required) for heart operation. India: $10,000 total bill, including hospital, air fare, and a side trip to the Taj Mahal. And the Indian doctors are probably at least as good as those one is likely to get in the U.S. From the article: 'Eager to cash in on the trend, posh private hospitals are beginning to offer services tailored for foreign patients, such as airport pickups, Internet-equipped private rooms and package deals that combine, for example, tummy-tuck surgery with several nights in a maharajah's palace...'"
I remember first hearing this about 2 years ago- along with the Catholic Priests in Bangalore outsourcing prayers for the dead.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Air fare? Taj Mahal? I saved a bundle by just having my heart shipped to India. Got it back in 6 weeks, good as new.
"Thank you...come again.!"
I have a friend who went to Canada to get her Laser Eye Surgery real cheap. Apparently the company has an office here in Seattle, and a shuttle to Vancouver, B.C.
Now we don't have to worry about having doctor's in the US anymore, also... we can just get on a plane and go to India for medical care.
Add sarcasm tags where appropriate.
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
£0, but some serious taxes and a wait on a waiting list.
Even so, I must say I prefer universal healthcare.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
I went to Asia Minor and all I got was this lousy Left Ventricle...
I sent my sinuses to Arizona
I sent my liver to Peru
I sent my lungs and my kidneys
For the summer to Sydney
But I'm sending my heart to you!
There are India doctors as good as American ones. Most of them seem to be in the US as opposed to India. I also know somebody who was misdiagnosed while in traveling in India and nearly died.
Caveat Emptor!
Places like india and south africa end up supplying plenty doctors to western countries and i'd feel pretty confident that they'd do a good job.
Makes me wonder why someone doesn't just get a ship anchored in international waters off the coast of california to offer similar cut price procedures.
As someone who has had three open-heart surgeries due to a congenital heart defect, I can see this as a viable option if I ever have to have another surgery. I've had my aortic valve rebuilt once (valvoplasty) and had it fall apart, replaced with a Hancock prosthesis (pig's valve) which calcified when I went through a growth spurt at 16, and then had it replaced with a Saint Jude's valve. I've been ticking (literally) for the past 22 years. Yes, I had my brother tell me that I am like a Timex watch :->
My first surgery cost about $5,000 (in 1969); the second about $30,000 (in 1976), and over $80,000 (in 1982). You can thank the insurance companies for the cost of health care today. Malpractice insurance for doctors and surgeons in the USA can top $1,000,000 a year depending on their area of practice. The more delicate the organ they work on, the more they pay. In order to stay in practice, they have to charge the patient more. The patient's insurance company pays more, they raise the cost of the insurance, someone sues the doctor for leaving a sponge in them, their malpractice insurance rates go up, etc.
IANAL and I don't know about India's legal system, but I don't think they have the sue-for-every-mistake mentality we do here. Remember, doctors are people too and they sometimes make mistakes. If they doctors in India can do as good a job as the ones in the USA at a lower cost, I'll be traveling overseas if I have to have another surgery.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
And injured patients just get to suffer?
What?
My wife and I considered going abroad for the treatment we where facing too. We where in need of IVF (in vitro fertalization) and this is typically not covered by insurance companies in the US. Some numbers suggest up to 2 million americans are in need of this procedure. Looking at about $15,000 per procedure without a guarantee of success we considered getting treated in Canada (less then $10k per try) or even going back to the Netherlands where it is insured by law reducing the patients cost to ~$1200 per try.
Given that I am in the top 5% income bracket we opted for just taking the treatment and paying for it. Still not a great thing considering that it could take several treatments after which there is still no gaurantee of success (other then losing the money).
We got lucky. First time was a success.
I have been wondering how the millions of other couples in america for whom this procedure might be the last chance are dealing with the cost. Going abroad maybe?
The surgeons may be almost as good, but how good are the hospitals? Where's your recourse if they fsck you up? Sue for malpractice internationally for a pittance?
Things may be bad in the US, but not that bad, I hope.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Reuters reported this morning that this guy died yesterday.
First World health care at Third World prices
That really looks like it was taken from a sign on the Simpsons.
Off topic, yes, but, it's Friday.
In an effort to cut rising energy bills, enforcement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics has been outsourced to various parts of the Indian sub-continent. "The second law of thermodynamics was getting in the way of refuelling cars by driving them backwards", an anonymous White House spokesman said.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Maybe the HMOs will smarten up and not hold you hostage for your money then - that's basically what HMOs do.
What am I thinking??? HMO's own enough of congress where they can get bills passed to prohibit that kind of behaviour.
That's the best thing I've heard - global competition on health care.
But then again, it's all free in Canada - I spend $800 a year to have the right to any emergency or critical care in Canada. That's not too bad IMO.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Something economically is going very wrong in our medical system when everywhere else in the world is getting the same goods and services we are for much less...
Remember, perscription medications are very much an IP-based business. The first pill costs millions in research and approvals. Once the pill is ready for mass production, the actual ingredients cost very little to gather and put together. That's the reason why there has to be patents on medications... without that IP-based protection, nobody would pay to do the research that creates new drugs.
Still, when Canada's getting the medications for less than they're being sold in the USA... something's very wrong. It feels like every other first world country has set price controls that the drug makers are bowing to, and because we don't have price limits, they charge us to make the money.
It's an interesting dilema... if we pull out of funding the world's research, that research just isn't going to get done. On the other hand, we're funding the research that the rest of the world is benefiting from and not paying for.
I don't understand all of this "outsourcing" outrage. Doesn't India "outsource" manufacturing of soft drinks to American Coca Cola and Pepsico? Isn't it just progress, that anyone can do what one can do best, no matter where one lives? Why discriminate against people of any given nationality instead of cooperating globally? This is a perfect example. Why should people not be able to get the best medical care only because it is not available in their homeland?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You even get to pick which street person will be the lucky donor.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Yada yada. Without opportunistic clients the lawyers are never hired.
... and the list goes on...
Without opportunistic suppliers of over-expensive medical equipment medical costs could go down too.
argan0n
The USA already outspends Germany and Japan per student. The problem isn't that we spend too little, it's that the money gets pissed away on administrative costs instead of compensating teachers adequately. Add to that the NEA's tooth-and-nail resistance to anything resembling competition or accountability, and you get the mess that is American primary education today.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This has been going on for years in Mexico & US. You can go to Mexico and get Lasik by one of the worlds top surgeons for a fraction of the price.
Dental visits, etc are cheap too
And the Indian doctors are probably at least as good as those one is likely to get in the U.S.
Well of course! (notice this is just sort of thrown in as if it is settled fact with not one shred of support) Why, it's just like the programmers! So now, we've made the M.D. useless and worthless. Good to know we former programmers are just as worthless to our neighbors as the good doctor who works 22 hour shifts in the emergency room.
"Mom? Dad? I've decided to go to medical school! I just got accepted to UCLA!"
"Wouldn't you rather have a career in a field where it's easier to find a job? I hear Wal-Mart has a management program"
We are slowly, systematically and deliberately destroying the value of all education, and nobody sees a problem with this. Nobody sees a problem. 50% of the people who live around UCLA are illiterate, and nobody sees a problem.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
American medical care is expensive because of artificial supply constraints at every step. When I went through pre-med in college, anyone could tell you that the process is designed to "weed out" the pool of potential doctors; that phrase is the mantra in every course. The weeds are people without sufficient profit motive to survive the often arbitrary, abusive process. That includes foreign doctors who move to the US for freedom, but without the financial or competitive advantages needed to get recertified. That limited supply of doctors, including less competent ("malpractitioners") in medicine, but committed to their paying careers, means extra demand for doctors for second/third/etc opinions, fixing mistakes, medical makework... If America invested more in educating doctors, the supply/demand crisis would be calmed at both ends, and medical treatment would cost less. Then we'd just have to worry about unnecessary prescriptions, pharmacy profits, insurance profits, and career malpractice fraud lawyers.
--
make install -not war
For the $10,000/child/year we spend now on public education, you could probably send your child overseas and have him personally tutored by people with PhDs.
if something goes wrong, you can't sue! How am I going to make my millions if I can't sue anyone? I can just see it now... "Hello? Larry Parker? Yeah, it was a doctor in India!" ...click
Homer no function beer well without.
Everyone is going to go off on how we should pay higher taxes to subsidize medical care and be protectionists.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Seriously, he should have gone to Bangkok. Last time I visited, I met an Aussie who'd retired to Thailand for the cheap healthcare, and heard of several "surgery tourists" who also did the same. Reportedly the hospitals (at least the ones a paying tourist would use) are spotless, with english-speaking nurses and excellent care.
;)
On a less serious level, it's long been a well-known spot for budget travellers to get some dental work done, or pick up new glasses, cheap, safely and reliably.
It's even (IMO) a nicer place to visit. Sorry Indian readers
Why would it cost $200,000 to get heart surgery? (Or $100,000, or whatever).
I'd definitely go to India rather than face that kind of horrorific bill. It makes me think medical costs are truly out of control, and frankly, I don't want to pay them.
D
Eager to cash in on the trend
Doesn't this just about describe all of business now? Doesn't this just about explain why business is so UTTERLY FUCKED UP right now?
All about short-term gain at the expense of long-term value, and the Dow is off 101 to the lowest close of the year.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
India is also the place where the locals bring their own sharps to the hospital to avoid contamination from inadequately sterilized second-hand needles. They've also got a really major AIDS problem.
But this isn't too far from reality. There was a group of cardiologists who decided to totally refuse any kind of third-party payment. No Medicare/Medicaid, HMOs, or even health insurance. If you wanted service, you paid for it, in cash, at the time of service. Their patient volume, as might be expected, fell by about three-quarters. Their income doubled.
Why? Because the government only pays about 30 cents on the dollar. This means that HMOs and health insurance companies pay a few cents less than that. So if the hospital bills for $200k, they're unlikely to get more than, say, $70k, which is only a little more than the total cost in India. If the hospital knows a procedure is going to cost $10, they'll bill for $30, because that's the only way they can cover their costs.
Governmental intervention in healthcare has shafted the very people it was designed to help: the poor. If you don't have health insurance and aren't eligible for Medicare/Medicaid, you're screwed, because while the government and major health insurance corporations can force providers to take a bath on two thirds of their costs ("Oh," says Uncle Sam, "Don't like what we're paying? Turn down a single patient and you can't treat Medicare/Medicaid patients for years!"), you can't.
Want to cut down on the spiraling cost of healthcare? Start paying what it costs rather than having bean counters in Minnisota who have never been to medical school and never treated a patient in their life determine, without any first-hand experience, what your surgery is supposed to cost.
I don't know which is worse: insurance companys, lawyers or salesmen.
And what recourse would he (or, rather, his next of kin) have had if he'd died as a result of a botched operation? At least here he (they) could take legal action against the surgeon or hospital without costly enduring hotel or phone bills.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
For 2 weeks of daily accupuncture and massage, and neck and arm x-rays, it was a total of $72 USD. In Boston, accupuncture alone is $45-$70 per session.
I got the Chinese rates as the hospital since I had a friend who had a girlfriend working at the hospital. The Foreigner rate is much higher, I was told 3x.
Fight Spammers!
*companies
Ok, I'm not too surprised by the idea (though having a country that does this where you would actually trust the doctors is a bit new) it does raise a question in me that I haven't really asked myself before.
What exactly is cause of the price difference? One would thing that the cost of supplies (heart, blood, needles, sutures, etc) wouldn't be that much different. Certainly the salary of the doctors and nurses there would cause some of it, but surely not all of it. We're talking including airfare and a trip to the Taj in with the bill...
Has anyone seen a good site that breaks down where the money for a standard procedure actually goes? The difference just seems too large to just be caused by simple labor prices.
Here's the weird thing about the Canadian academic medical system.
Fact 1: Canadian doctors, especially rural family doctors, are in critical shortage.
Fact 2: It is hard as hell to get into Canadian medical schools (GPA: 3.8, MCAT 30-31 + Extracurricular)
Fact 3: There are hundreds of immigrant doctors in Canada driving taxi cabs.
If you said "WTF?" you're not alone. The reason why it's hard to get into medical school is easy enough to explain: When the government pays 70% of your tuition, you're gonna get high demand for a fairly well paying job (about $7000 USD/month).
But what makes very little sense is all these perfectly good doctors roaming the country with crappy little McJobs. The reason is because they can't get into residency programs to get certified. And they can't get into residency programs because Canadian graduates get first pick, and whatever's leftover goes to the immigrants. Since there's always never enough residency spots, and the one's that go to the immigrants are less desireable (family medicine).
That means we could have the world's best opthmalogist living in Canada, and the most he can hope for is it run a rinky-dinky clinic off in the boonies, if he's lucky.
Not sure how it relates to the story, but an interesting tidbit nonetheless.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
That's what all the media tells me: Canada's healthcare is falling apart! Canadians pay more! Canadians have hoooje waiting lists! The sky is falling!
Pah.
Canada may not have perfect healthcare, but we sure as hell aren't (a) paying for heart surgery; and (b) taking off to India to get it.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
For example, we're seeing software engineers' salaries inflate wildly, so much so that I've heard a factoid that it will no longer be profitable to hire them over United States engineers in only a few years time. Presumably the same would happen with Indian doctors, as they suddenly have all this money to spend, and competition gets fierce.
Presumably other factors would also need to be included in the model, such as the fact that China will simply take over from India once it gets too expensive. But, how long will this take? For us the United States, how long will we be waiting until we can compete on level terms with those from other countries again?
- Lots of great Hospitals with excellent doctors and state of the art facilities/equipment
- Low cost (atleast in USD)
Negatives:
- Lots of quack type hospitals/doctors out to lure people.
- Low malpractice_insurance/legal liabilities (though this may be construed a good thing looking at the frivolous lawsuits and skyrocketing insurance in the US of A).
Bottomline: there are great and affordable medical facilities available (from personal/family experience), but you have to be careful in separating the grain from the chaff. On the other hand, facilities in USA aren't exemplary either.
If anybody's really considering this, feel free to post to my Journal, and I'll try to provide my objective view from personal experience/knowledge. Some of the well known hospitals : Wockhardt (cardiac), also google for "manipal hospital", "bombay hospital", "NIMHANS"(mental hospital :) for the trolls).
Just my $0.02.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Perhaps for a routine non-emergency procedure this is a great choice. My Indian buddies tell me it takes 24 hours to get to India from Los Angeles, so this is definitely not for emergency procedures.
Lucky:
"Would you like a Squishie?"
Unlucky (as the next patient walks up):
"OK, paper mache mix, pipe cleaners, pig intestines and sparkle paint."
Really Unlucky:
"Be careful when we capture him! We cannot claim the reward unless we have 51% of the carcass."
Of course it helps that Im from Brazil, but I live in the US and I go back home once a year
and get all my dental work done and any blood tests/whatever for maybe a 1/8 of the price I would pay here.
I have been to a dentist in the US and IMO the Brazilian ones are much better...
I have family members down there who got hair implants/breast implants/eye surgery/whatever for a much lower price than it costs here and they are all still alive, well, and had no problems with the work performed...
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
The school district here, decided that it was a good idea to spend several million dollars for football field upgrades. Until we decide that education has a higher importance in our EDUCATIONAL system than playing games, we are screwed.
I haven't seen a school yet that hires an economics teacher, and has them fill in as a coach, but they all seem to be fine with hiring a coach and asking them to fill in as an economics teacher.
So when do the poor and oppressed of the thrid world nations start offering their spare kidneys, lungs and children to the wealthy elite?
Why did you have to bring another hell-spawn into this already overpopulated world? Maybe the fact that you couldn't have a kid was a sign from god that you are not fit to raise children
Though your response is most likely simple flamebait I will bite.
The world isn't overpopulated (yet). The problem is the uneven distribution of resources.
There is no god.
Nobody knows up front whether they are fit to raise kids. I think I stand a decent chance to do the right thing though. I am very educated (MSCS), have worked hard to build up a decent career, can support myself and my family and am more then willing to pay the taxes to support people who are not as fortunate as myself. This also goes for my parents, my parents in law, my siblings and my siblings in law. Alltogether a rather happy and healthy bunch of people that will provide a wonderfull environment for my kids to grow up in.
I work for a healthcare organization and one of our hospitals is in Bellingham, WA. We get a reasonable amount of business from Canada. Evidently there are people who aren't fond of waiting lists.
You mean the one I keep hearing about that cost $299 per eye? This may be a bit off topic. Some say cheap surgery carries risks. Well, for eye surgery, perhaps I would travel and only get one eye done, that way if they mess up, I still have another one I can use.
A friend of a friend (Canadian) lives in Saudi Arabia and word is the hospitals there are phenomenal...and look more like a glitzy shopping mall than a hospital to boot!
has been concoted by doctors unwilling to police themselves, afew bad lawyers and cases, who out of hte millions, get overreported, and most of all, the GOP/right wing conspiracy to shift this country into a darwinian dog eat dog capitilist mode.
I used to pay $200 to $300 for rimless glasses and single-vision lens. Now I buy them online from Hong Kong. I get the same frame and great lens for $23.90, shipped. I have bought two pair plus a tinted third pair for sunglasses. I've been doing this for about a year and have also got some family and friends doing it as well. So far everyone is very happy. I am not sure how this would work for very complicated prescriptions, but, for a simple Rx, like mine, it's been great.
http://www.busyweather.com/
The United States of America (our medical establishment) is primarily concerned with symptom/disease treatment. This is especially apparent in obesity and obesity related illness, where Insurance companies (for the most part) would rather dodge paying for expensive heart surgeries than a gym membership. As the saying goes, 'an ounce of prevention prevents a pound of cure.'
Costs are high because of several factors, first is the medical billing system. In our country we have countless carriers and each has a different form and another person you have to higher in order to understand what they will and what they won't pay for. This can add up to about 40% of a hospital's operating budget. A single payer health care system could take care of this, or a more standardized set of forms and practices.
Second is malpractice insurance. We are a lititgious society (in the United States) and punitive damages can get out of hand much of the time. For the most part, doctors are not being willfully malicious when there is an accident, or mistake. It is a high pressure job and they are there trying to help people. WHile they should be held accountable for their actions, this accountability should not become a barrier for treatment. Rather than capping punitive damages, Good Samaritan laws could be strengthened and applied to doctors and other emergency service workers, but that's just my opinion.
A single payer system isn't going to fix the problem, it's going to take a lot more than that, and we're not even talking about health care access.
some like Japan have negative birth rates
You keep using those words, "birth rate"
I don't think you know what they mean.
Are Japanese women really going around, squatting over little children. sucking them up and injesting them? Because something like that is the only way you are going to get a negative birth rate.
What would you do if you needed heart surgery ?
The Raven
Medical malpractice is less than 1% of the total US bill. Try again, and this time without simply mimicing GOP talking points.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
If you are interested in this sort of thing, check out this post from last year on getting dentistry done in Mexico.
but we sure as hell aren't (a) paying for heart surgery
If you think that you aren't paying for your health care in Canada you are sorely mistaken. You are just paying for it in a different way.
As far as which system is better, I really don't think anyone here is qualified to answer that question.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Not an emergency case or anything, but he was fully treated and out within 2 months of the initial diagnosis despite having to have a complication fixed first.
Deleted
Reason being I personally know one of the world's best heart surgeons who currently practices in India. He has done thousands of open heart surgeries, on people from virtually all rungs of life, politicians to business magnets to children from Iraq.
Infact I have been thinking to start my own little medical tourism practice on the side to encourage people to seek medical help in India. India has some of the world's most renowned doctors and some of the cheapest rates. The care you will experience will be top notch as well. Most people (uninformed as they might be) tend to think "unhygienic" when they hear "India". However the private hospitals are luxurious, has the best doctors your money can find and you will receive the best care your money can ever buy.
I am not trying to discount the experience or the ability of doctors here, but when your Insurance wont pick up the tab, and your surgery costs around 100k, and you can get it done by a top notch physician/surgeon sitting half way across the planet for 1/10th of the price, you would be crazy not to take notice.
If you want to receive additional information, email me.
Rapid Nirvana
s
just what you want a couple of days after surgery...
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
There are two factual errors in your post.
1 -- the cost is not 0, it's about 7% of your income on average
2 -- healthcare is not universal, it's a matter of where you live and how busy the resources are
Other than that, I agree with you that the UK system is superb. Replacing it with a system whereby one can actually purchase health care in some way would be just plain silly.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
There is a combination of factors driving up health care costs. Lawyers and bureaucratic overhead is one of them. About a year ago I took my mom to the ER room and I was amazed that the devices were still not networked. There is still a boatload of paperwork in the health industry. The lawyers are driving some doctors out of the field. One neurosurgeon told me that the lawyers and malpractice were driving them out of Ohio. While I agree there is role for the lawyers there needs to be some balance. Capping pain & suffering is one of them. As for overall reform I believe medi-save accounts are the way to go. It's rather ridiculous that visit the doctor and then they hand you or the insurance company a bill.
is Dr K M Cherian. You can find a wealth of information on him, if you care to google.
Rapid Nirvana
There are some pills out on the market that have "high manufacturing costs."
Yes, it's still a high up-front cost, but it's not "pennies a pill" for every medicine. For some, it's dollars or even tens of dollars a dose to manufacture. Take the flu shot for example. I'm not sure the exact marginal cost, but it involves sterile chicken eggs and they aren't cheap.
Your point is well taken though. In many cases, the patents are the only thing keeping the prices at 5x+ the marginal cost to make and sell the pill.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The article says "a New York heart surgeon 'has to pay $100,000 a year in malpractice insurance.'" If he does 2 operations per week, that is $1000 each for insurance, which is __ 1/2 of 1% __ of the $200,000 price. Even with your larger cost, that is still a small portion of the cost of the procedures.
The US market for doctors is a monopoly. The AMA gets final say in who is and is not a doctor. They limit entry into the field. They regulate those that are in the field.
The existance of a monopoly has more effect than even insurance. There is little to no competition among doctors because the number that the AMA allows to be licensed every year is so small. I've heard all the stuff about limiting the number to make sure they are all competent, but that is a crock of shit. How do I know? Because I know some very competent doctors that were rejected a few times before they were accepted. There simply weren't enough spots for them in the schools. Eventually, they got in, became doctors, and lived happily ever after.
The situation reminds me of the cab drivers here. The city council created a fixed number of licenses. Then, they made it so that the license holders have control over new licensees. The effect is that there can never be any new licensees unless the law changes. So you have to pay someone for their license, and they are running at about $40,000 each. That's right, because the people whose income depends on their ability to restrict others from the market are in charge of that market, they will exclude everyone else to increase the value of their license. It is the same with the AMA putting doctors in charge of licensing doctors, and getting the force of law behind it.
Of course, if you try to add medical schools (which have to be AMA certified) they will balk that you will kill people with all the unqualified people that will get in. FUD, it's not just for breakfast anymore.
Oh, and the medical insurance costs don't help, either. And most of the problem with that is the juries. "Shit Happens" should be a valid medical defense for most of the suits. They are cutting you open and moving things around, things will sometimes not go right. If you have a problem with that, don't go in. If they operate drunk, sue them. If you agree to a proceedure and decide later that if it were done a different way the outcome may have been different, then you should sue yourself for being stupid and not getting a second opinion.
Learn to love Alaska
without lawyers putting doctors out of business medical care is efficient and effective. think about that.
..its quite fassionable over there.
oh you mean - in the usa -
Hivemind harvest in progress..
and you have a education system ripe for failure. Numerous school systems across the country do not have honor rolls because it might offend someone who didn't make it. Some have gone so far as to remove Valedictorian titles or worse having dozens of them per class.
We coddle are children so much and insulate them so much from the real world through their schooling its no wonder when they get out they think they know everything and deserve anything they want. They are never forced to deal with the reality of live - which is, there are winners and there are losers. Which one you are depends on how much effort you put into yourself.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They are outsourcing the Total Information Awareness Project to Global Information Group Ltd. in the Bahamas.
Be afraid... be very afraid.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
No, they just get paid actual damages.
In the few cases where there SHOULD be "punitive damages" (i.e. due to gross negligence rather than things that just happen because medicine is and never will be perfect), it should be awarded to the state to benefit everyone, and the lawyer should get no cut of it.
I disagree. Americans are medically-obsessed. I work at a boarding school, and I end up in the dorms fixing stuff quite a bit. I have yet to see a room without a bottle of 'scripted antibiotics in it. The school newspaper just made a joke about how much ritalin and adderal is abused for 'studying'. We overpay for every piece of plastic and metal that goes into medical care. The list goes on.
When I got a fungal ear infection and my doctor prescribed me antibiotics, which are exactly WHY I got the fungal infection, I stared thinking about it. I haven't taken a prescription since.
When I had to get my wisdom teeth out, I decided to do it at the dentist's office instead of the oral surgeon, I saved over $1200, and the fact that I was awake and could cooperate with the dentist meant that the surgery went smoother and safer, and I recovered much faster because they can really 'beat you up' when you're unconscious. I walked home with some cotton to soak up the blood and a bottle of advil for the rest of the week.
Why on earth would insurance pay for a full-on surgery to extract wisdom teeth? It can be done easily at the dentist's office for a third of the cost.
I really don't think the problem is litigation, it's certainly a problem, but not the major factor in medical costs. The major factor is American aversion to reasonable amounts of blood and pain, coupled with excessive trust in the medical institution and it's practitioners.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
God or no god, you're just fucking up the natural balance of things. I think the fact that you bitch about the price but then talk about your 'MSCS' just goes to show that you are an arrogant prick, and I hope your kid catches a case of the crib-death.
Sweden
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
How the hell do the lawyers get paid then?
High-end medical equipment may costs the same, but the "overhead" of the building, electricity, air purification equipment, and such is probably a lot less.
Salaries are probably a lot less too in dollar terms, although possibly higher after cost-of-living adjustment.
Legal and administrative costs are lower, but the protections they afford, such as the ability to sue for meaningful damages is less.
Your $100,000 goes to pay for more than equipment and salaries, you know.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wasn't the AC, and perhap the US is not OVER populated, or even the world. But we *are* growing at an alarming rate, whether that be by birth or death rate is no matter if there are more mouths to feed and more toilets to flush.
argan0n
These factors add a TON of cost to the insurance for hospital bills in the US. Combine that with the fact that poor people with no health insurance use the emergency room for their personal health clinic, because they cannot be refused care. They can't pay, they have no insurance, the hospital eats the bill. Hospitals eat the bill on an IMMENSE amount of treatment.
These 2 factors are just part of the reason why health insurance is so expensive.
And I can't imagine that a gov't controlled health care system would make it any cheaper. I work for a gov't contractor, there's no way it will happen.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Do you have evidence for this? With all the unborn children murdered every day, I find this very hard to believe.
Luke-Jr
If some thing goes wrong then how can I sue the crap out of them?
...instead of 10 times as many injured would be patients.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
So you don't pay taxes?
Where does the money come from in Canada to pay for the medical care then?
THe costs of healthcare are being driven up by doctors and CEOs making millions, too. Better than some poor people get a little money via the lawyers, rather than the rich people getting it all.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Yup, the media certainly loves to lie, doesn't it?
What I find extremely funny, is that the US government pays more per capita to fund its public medicare program than we do to fund our entire system, and they force their citizens to pay for services on top of that.
In truth, we're doing pretty good for out healthcare system, though it is a hot topic and it behooves our nations medical workers to keep it that way. You can get any medical treatment in Canada, but our only real problem is our treatment waiting lists which need a boost. And really, we don't need to spend so much to eliminate them immediately, but a relatively modest funding boost would be enough, if spent correctly, to reverse the trend and start shrinking the lists. All we need to do is start performing more procedures than we have new cases and we'll be fine.
This is not a sig.
If a couple lacks the native ablilty to reproduce unaided then perhaps it is for a reason, no?
That hurts man. Seeing that someone believes that crap about 'devine reason'. If it was available, would you have gotten the flu vaccine or is it meant to be that more people will die this year because of the flu vaccine shortage? If a condom can stop VD's and prevent unwanted pregnancies, are you really claiming that we shouldn't use them? Do you take responsibility for your actions? Do you think for yourself? Columbine or 911, was there a devine reason?
My wife has Endometriosis and there is no reason for this. IVF provided us with the ability to raise our biological offspring. Why is this important? Because our brain makes us think it is. Yes it is hardcoded in our brain to produce offspring, and though we have the capability to ignore our basic instincts it takes an effort. Going with the natural flow of things is, well, natural.
So do your sister a favor. Let her listend to her body while you listend in private to your god.
Have a happy life.
All those countries have govt healthcare...and tehy LOVE IT! Polls show that over NINETY PERCENT of Canadians prefer their GOVERNMENT-run healthcare to the American healthcare.
I am sure you can go over to Rush Limbaugh's website and cut and paste some spin from his website as a rebuttal to my post, but those who are reading this and who have not yet made up their minds on this issue, please think about it. Canadians speak English; they get American TV channels there; they are WELL AWARE of our system. But they would NOT prefer ours to theirs....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I'm glad to see this - it'll force the insane medical costs down in this country. Additionally the medical malpractice lawyers need to lay off, so doctors and hospitals can afford to pay malpractice insurance; the savings will be passed on to the patient.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
I know a guy right here in the States who will perform that same operation for only $129.99.
All hail open competition! Sad to say, but I don't see this helping with the cost of medical procedures here in the US. Nothing is going to be done about our overpriced medical system until we hit rock bottom.. that means doctors leaving the states entirely. Medical insurance is out-of-hand. We need serious tort reform.. better educated practitioners which dips into the mess that is US public education. Something must be done.
Unfortunately, our government is dominated by puppets, politicians pandering to their major funders (and no comments about Bush, either.. they ALL do it) just so they can stay in office. We need politicians not concerned about re-election. We need to take away some of their perks.. that's why they stay in government and we all know it.
Bleh.. I could go on forever about this as it is all linked together. Perhaps I'll begin a paper about it or something.
What is your penile percentile?
By "Medical malpractice", do you mean just the lawsuits or does that include insurance premiums as well? And can you give us the source of your figure?
According to this report by GAO, it seems that the malpractice premiums are going up but the insurance comanies' net loss is growing as well. That leads me to believe that only one who's profiting from this are the lawyers. So try again, and this time without simply mimicing Democrate talking points.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
CORRECTION: We where in 'want' of IVF. Not in 'need' as so many people have pointed out so nicely :-)
B: One can't justify a death by arguing they "might've" died anyway: If I scare you, and you die of a heart attack because of fright, I have killed you. It doesn't matter that you might've died ten minutes later, anyway. I'd still likely be found guilty of third degree murder, at least. There is a principle in law that essentially requires you to take people as they come and not as you expect them to be.
C: Godwin's Law, yes. Except I am not comparing Canada's Prime Minister to Hitler. I am noting that an observation Hitler made that makes perpetuation of heinous crimes far more likely than one would otherwise expect (and bolstered by his very perpetuation of heinous crimes against humanity), applies to Canada.
You could've hired me.
Beautiful troll dude! 22 responses (so far) and untold numbers of up-mods from the right wing and down-mods from the left. Too bad the slash code doesn't show the number of mod points you grabbed. That would be interesting to see as well.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I call bullshit. My employer builds a next-generation EMR system (electronic medical records). Our two top executives are doctors, and I think there's a total of about 14 on staff, from a number of different specialties (since we need data for our created for doctors in all the different specialties we want to sell to).
All of them have horror stories about how hard it is to find specialists for certain fields, particularly in rural areas (which Texas, which I'm in, has a lot of), because the cost of malpractice insurance is so high for those specialties.
So no -- malpractice insurance is a real problem, and a big one, I'm not using GOP talking points, but rather hallway-conversation with my coworkers who've genuinely been there.
says it all
Vote for Pedro
There are some rather strange effects of current international banking relationships that make the US dollar artificially high relative to the currency of of places like India and China. China has a clear, official policy of keeping their low relative to the dollar(this has an effect similar to a tarriff or export subsidy but gets around GATT rules).
I can easily imagine that under more market driven conditions, the Indian currency would be 4 times what it is now. Much of the rest of the difference in price may be related to regulatory differences, property value differences that haven't responded to policy changes--and to real or perceived differences in care.
First off, part of the increased malpractice costs are from the poor performance of the stock market (money paid to insurance companies gets invested; with low returns, rates need to rise). Although my memory was wrong; it's less than 2%, not less than 1%.
n ce =0
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4968&seque
And if you're going to resort to the "defensive medicine" claim, as the CBO mentions, "evidence for those other effects is weak or inconclusive"
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
In the real White House, we know that Dick Cheney's the one giving the orders to Bush the Lesser... :/
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
That is the problem, emergency rooms can not turn anyone away. However by the time someone needs to go to the ER whatever condition they were in has most likely become much more expensive to treat. Thus it costs us MORE to not have a true single payer health system.
On the contrary, it's US companies who're hurting the developing countries by monopolizing new drugs, and making sure that nobody else can produce them.
Heavy handed patenting is killing millions of people and forcing countries to buy drugs from these Companies who care shit about anything other than profit (like saving lives for example).
I could refer you to examples, but it's Friday night, and I have people coming over. Drug companies in the developing world have taken to developing *alternate techniques* to developing a drug to escape the clutch of these pharma companies.
The heavy-handed, litigation/IP oriented, corporate funded policies of the US Govt are hurting people outside of just the USA.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I am an Indian living in the US. My parents are both doctors - working in one of the hospitals mentioned in the article. Here is their take on the entire Indian medical system.
... and Indians are taking a cue from the US and filing malpractice lawsuits in increasing numbers. So, if you are looking to India for cheap medical treatment, better go there quickly. It isn't going to remain that way for a whole lot longer!
The very best Indian doctors and hospitals are, for all practical purposes, as good as any in the West. Unless you are looking for technologies and treatments that are on the very bleeding edge, chances are that it is available in India for a lot less than you would pay here.
The average Indian doctor and hospital are, however, a lot worse than what you get here. Over here, I can walk into any doctor's office, any hospital, and can be assured of a fairly decent standard of treatment. That is not so in India. Outside of the few top hospitals (most of which are located in the major urban areas), it is a total crapshoot. You may get a good doctor but it is equally likely that you will get a complete incompetent who would have had his license revoked many times over in the West.
I lost an uncle of mine to such a quack - in Bangalore of all places (where you would expect a decent level of medical expertise). He was hit by a truck and the idiot doctor who attended to him did not realize that while he didn't look too bad externally, he could be bleeding fairly severely on the inside. So they just sat and watched him bleed to death over the space of several hours.
As far as the cost advantage is concerned, it is there but will slowly get less over time. Medical treatment in India is getting dramatically more expensive each year
- HCE
By all accounts, that's a fair statement.
Actually, you're (a) paying for it, in the form of high taxes, and (b) not getting it in Canada, so a lot of Canadians are going to anywhere but Canada and paying for it again!
The amazing part is that many clinics on the U.S. side of the border are there just to be convenient to their Canadian customers, who could eventually get the same care in Canada, if they survived the wait.
I've investigated moving to Canada, and healthcare is one of the things that keeps me in the U.S.
See what I've been reading.
So, if the US has so much defensive medicine practiced, why is our lifespan so much lower than other industrialized nations?
In the US, we have a problem with doctors *not* performing tests that they want to perform because of fears that the patients' insurance companies won't cover them.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
You do have a point but you're also ignoring a fact from the very source that you quote.
The other one-third of malpractice insurers' costs comprise legal costs for policyholders who are sued and underwriting and administrative expenses. Those types of costs have also increased. Like claims payments, legal-defense costs grew by about 8 percent annually during the 1986-2002 period, from around $8,000 per claim to more than $27,000.
As I stated on the other post, you lose with either Bush (pro-insurance) or Kerry (pro-lawyers).
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I work for a company dealing with dental products (no names, but I think it'd probably take 3 guesses, seeing as how there are only about 4 out there)
/ex
I was working on our consumer customer service line for a couple weeks, and had a call from someone who had gone to thailand to get all of his teeth crowned-- Trying to get that hollywood smile.
The dr didn't seat them right, and so this gentleman was in tremendous pain. Not only had he spent $8k going there to have it done, they did it improperly, then said "too bad for you, We'll do it over, but you'll have to pay again"...
He ended coming back to the good ol' U S of A to have a dr here redo it. They hadn't taken care to keep his teeth isolated and moisture free. He ended up having to go to three different doctors till one took pity on him... The first two docs took a look at the mans xrays and said "not touching with a ten foot pole, there is no way I can do this without opening myself up to lawsuits, and it's not a life threatening thing". They ended up having to (IIRC) completely remove and implant 4 teeth and the rest (24 crowns, plus the implants, I think) had to have the crowns removed and replaced (at $800 per crown and probably $2000 per implant).
Then again, I had second hand stories of brothers and friends and such going overseas to russia, philipines, and random other places with no problem...
and I heard at least two horror stories of US dentists, but at least with the US ones, you have the option of lawsuit if the dr doesn't "make it right" if something is screwed up (and if they're using a decent lab, most doctors get a 1, 3 or 5 year warranty on any porcelain product they put in your mouth.)
All I can say is buyer beware, it may be cheaper, but this gentleman probably only needed $4000 worth of work to begin with, went all out, and it ended up costing him somewhere over $30k
All of them have horror stories about how hard it is to find specialists for certain fields, particularly in rural areas (which Texas, which I'm in, has a lot of), because the cost of malpractice insurance is so high for those specialties.
Big surprise that well educated, highly paid professionals don't want to live in rural Texas. If malpractice were really the problem, then there would be no specialists in Houston and Dallas as well. After all, they could come to California where non-economic damages have been capped at $250,000 for 2 decades. By the way, health care costs are skyrockting in California as well even though we have those damage caps.
It's plaintiffs lawyers (like John Edwards) suing doctors with junk science, judges not doing their jobs, and gullible juries. And of course the "defensive medicine" (runing every test just to CYA) that doctors practice to avoid suits.
And of course, legitimate malpractice claims.
Insurance companies just run the numbers and tack on a profit - they really are the least responsible.
If they doctors in India can do as good a job as the ones in the USA at a lower cost, I'll be traveling overseas if I have to have another surgery.
A BIG "if." What evidence do we have of this? Medical school admission in the US is extremely competitive, likely the most competitive academic process in the US. I'd like to see some evidence that "Indian doctors are probably at least as good as those one is likely to get in the U.S." There are competitive schools in India, but to make a blanket statement about Indian doctors is ludicrous. After all, don't a lot of brilliant Indians come to the U.S. to attend grad school?
Of course, if something goes wrong, don't look for a lawyer to sue - they are all in the U.S.!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
You just gave an informed, nuanced, spin-free, opinion about the American healthcare system.
Someone's head might explode.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
"THAT's the maharaja? A kid?!"
"Maybe he likes OLDER women"
"I spoke with your assistant and managed to secure three seats. However, there might be a *slight* inconvenience as you will be riding on a cargo plane full of live poultry. "
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Argue with the Congressional Budget Office about the accuracy of their figures, not me. I'll take a detailed study over a number-lacking personal anecdote any day.
Part of the reason that your sense is off due to the anecdote is that equipment, supplies, salaries, and other operational costs make up such a large portion of the total bill. You're looking just at the comparison between the doctors' salaries and the insurance costs - but there's a dizzying array of other costs involved that comprise most of the bill - everything from the salaries for the army of nurses, lab techs, equipment techs, and even billing office clerks; to the cost of keeping the hospitals clean/stocked/powered/etc; to the cost of the incredibly expensive pieces of equipment like CAT scanners, MRI machines, etc. An MRI, for example, will cost you a few hundred thousand dollars up front, plus an extra 50-100k$ a year to keep it running.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
8% annual growth from 2% of costs, assuming that medical costs are stationary (which they're not - they're growing very fast) means that in 20 years time, it'd still be under 5% of total costs. More realistically (without the no-medical-costs-growth assumption), you'd probably be at around 3% by 20 years from now. Still not a big deal.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
The US suffers big time because of insurance companies and lawsuits. I'm actually scared to go to the doctor because my health insurance is basic student insurance provided by my university. The doctor is scared to treat me because he's too afraid of getting sued. Who benefits from all this? Lawyers and insurance companies. The US does have the best healthcare equipment and technicians. But the costs are INCREDIBLY high because of insurance and lawyers. I'm originally from India, and I can vouch for the fact that healthcare is awesome there but the equipment is not as good and as up to date as the hospitals in the US. There are also less doctors per patient there but at least you're not scared to go to them and they're not scared that they go bankrupt whenever they make a mistake.
Blaming high health care costs on malpractise is the easy explanantion. It's a part of the problem but but can not alone explain higher premiums. The fact is that, and some conservatives might not like this, that the private health care system in USA doesn't work that well. Even with this "private" system where one have to buy health care privatly, public spending on health alone is higher than public spending in the UK and just 0.1% percentage (of GPD) below Canadas.
And overall spending (private+public) on health care is some 45-70%* higher than in Canada or any country in Western Europe.
But then again since all the free-market tinky-tanks says the system is so effective I guess they are right.
*GPD or Per capita PPP
(And BTW if the current trend continue you will reach the 20% of GPD spent on health care before 2010 and 25% before 2015.)
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
CONFIDENTIAL ATTN: ORGAN/PATIENT DEAR SIR, THIS LETTER MAY COME TO YOU AS A SURPRISE, PLEASE TREAT IT LIKE A LIFE DEATH AFFAIR. YOUR ADDRESS WAS MADE AVAILABLE TO ME BY A GOOD FRIEND WHO WORKS WITH THE NIGERIAN CHAMBER OF MEDICINE AND INDUSTRY, HE ASSURED ME OF YOUR VIABILITY AND CAPABILITY IN ORGAN TRANSACTION. I THEREFORE PICKED A KEEN INTEREST IN THE IMPORTATION OF YOUR LIFE AND ALSO TO REQUEST FOR THIS RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU. I AM DR UDEORJI THE PRINCIPAL PHYSICIAN WITH THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE (NNDOM). I AM WRITING ON BEHALF OF MY COLLEAGUES IN THE NNDOM AND HAS BEEN MANDATED TO SEEK FOR THE ASSISTANT OF A RELIABLE FOREIGN PERSON THROUGH WHICH WE CAN TRANSFER THE ORGAN, FOR ONLY TEN THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS ONLY (USD$10,000 .00). THIS ORGAN IS NOW DEPOSITED IN THE NNDOM ACCOUNT WITH THE CENTRAL ORGAN BANK OF NIGERIA.
ORIGIN OF THE ORGAN:
THE SUM AROSE FROM THE DELIBERATE OVER-INVOICING OF A CONTRACT AWARDED BY THE NNDOM TO A FOREIGN FIRM FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF ORGAN BANK PLANT (OBL) IN BONNY, SOUTHERN NIGERIA DURING THE LAST MILITARY REGIME. THIS CONTRACT HAS BEEN COMPLETELY EXECUTED AND COMMISSIONED AND THE CONTRACTOR THAT HANDLED THIS CONTRACT HAS COLLECTED HIS FINAL PAYMENT THUS LEAVING
BEHIND THE ABOVE STATED ORGAN.
WE HAVE BEEN SAFEGUARDING THIS ORGAN WAITING FOR CONDUCIVE TIME FOR ITS TRANSFER TO YOUR BODY.
THE CURRENT FAVOURABLE POLITICAL CLIMATE SINCE THE ASSUMPTION OF DUTY BY THE NEW CIVILIAN ADMINISTRATION PRESENTED AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THIS MONEY TO BE TRANSFERRED INTO OF THE COUNTRY.
HENCE THE NEED OF YOUR ORGAN IS NOT PARTICULARLY RELEVANT TO THE SUCCESS OF THIS OPERATION . ALL WE REQUIRE IS YOUR WILLINGNESS TO PRESENT YOUR BANKING INFORMATION SO THAT THE MONEY WILL BE TRANSFERRED INTO OUR ACCOUNT.
FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN THIS OPERATION, I AND MY COLLEAGUE WILL TAKE 60% WHILE 40% WILL BE SET ASIDE TO OFF-SET ANY EXPENSES WE MAY INCURE IN THE COURSE OF THIS OPERATION. NOTE ALSO THAT SOME PART OF OUR OWN SHARE WILL BE USED FOR IMPORTATION OF PRODUCTS INTO NIGERIA WHILE THE REST WILL BE USED FOR MEDICINE YOU MAY ADVICE ON. IF YOU ARE WILLING TO ASSIST US IN THIS OPERATION, PLEASE SEND THE
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COMMUNICATION.
THIS INFORMATION WILL ENABLE US FILE AN APPLICATION FOR ORGAN APPROVAL TO THE CONCERNED MINISTRIES AND FINALLY TO THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA AND IT IS GOING TO LAST BETWEEN 7-10 BANKING DAYS STARTING FROM THE DAY WE RECEIVE THE ABOVE INFORMATION FROM YOU. ALL MODALITIES FOR THE TAKE-OFF, OF THIS TRANSACTION HAS
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IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO ASK ME IMMEDIATELY ON THE FOLLOWING TRULY YOURS,
DR . ANTHONY UDEORJI
All your Sybase are belong to us.
I've lost two teeth, so I was thinking of installing implants to fill the gap and prevent other teeth and jawbone from deteriorating. Total cost in the US is $7K. Total cost in a good clinic in, say, Russia is $2K. Airfare to Russia is $2.4K (two round trips). There would be $2.6K left to blow on expensive toys.
The deciding factor was that my medical insurance would not pay the bill if I went abroad for medical treatment. I would also be unable to deduct the money using flexible spending account.
If I were in a need of a heart surgery, however, there would be no question whatsoever. I would not pay three times my yearly salary for 12 hours of someone's time.
Our medical industry is a monopoly. Schools have been threatened to keep the number of medical graduates down, which lowers the supply of doctors, hence the price goes up. Free market economics (a la Mises) is in action here.
s ub mit.y=0&&q=health
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Then, you have a federal bureaucracy which forces employers to pay medical coverage for their employees. Forcing anyone to do anything increases costs (the insurance companies love the idea of forced coverage).
Then, you remove any semblence of tort limits and allow radical injury lawsuits which make it even more expensive.
Then, you increase premiums by requiring coverage by Medicare (which means private individuals are paying for the public welfare).
Then, you force hospitals to cover anyone, whether or not they have health insurance. Premiums go up.
No one makes money in the industry anymore, except for the lawyers. And who gets elected to office? Lawyers. How many doctors are in office? The on that I am aware of is Dr. Ron Paul of Texas, the M.D. And he votes AGAINST all the corporate welfare that goes into these industries in the end.
The free market DOES work for health care. We're just pretending to ignore the facts that are out there.
http://www.google.com/u/Mises?hl=en&submit.x=0&
http://www.google.com/custom?cof=LW%3A500%3BL%3
Something I'd rather here more from my girlfriend than my doctor.
Talk about malpractice!
All of them have horror stories about how hard it is to find specialists for certain fields, particularly in rural areas (which Texas, which I'm in, has a lot of), because the cost of malpractice insurance is so high for those specialties.
It isn't that the cost is too high, it is that the number of procedures to amortize the cost over is too low. If you buy insurance for a car for $1000 a year, that's not too bad - about average. But if you only use that car once a year, then you are operating at a great loss. It would make much more sense to rent a car for that one day, buy the LDW for $30 and be done with it. The same goes for rural doctors. They will see so few specialty cases that it makes economic sense to not be able to treat them. The insurance cost wouldn't be high if they saw one a day. But at one a month, the cost per patient is so high that the caps put on by insurance carriers would have all the patients traveling to other places, rather than pay the surcharge he'd be forced to pay.
So yes, insurance is killing the small-town doctor. Just as All-Children-Left-Behind is killing the rural schools. The laws are written by big-city people with big-city visions. The small towns are getting the shaft. On top of that, Bush was pressing to get rid of the Universal Service Fund, which would lead to big spikes in telephone cost for rural areas as well (not picking on him, both parties are about equal in their press for the city vote at the cost of the rural areas, but that is just another recent example).
Learn to love Alaska
There are issues such as the privacy of information that is processed by others overseas. Though this is an issue with data processed anywhere, it might be harder to hold someone liable for problems if they are located overseas.
Furthermore, even before drug companies were advertising on TV, they were advertising to doctors.
Another way of looking at this... from a business perspective. Why would drug companies need to create and push lifestyle drugs? Why can't they be profitable creating drugs to treat deseases?
Think about it as if you ran the company. You could invest this years profits in creating a cancer drug or a erectile disfunction drug. You choose the latter because you can create more demand through marketing. By expanding your consumer base, marketing enables you to sell more, thus LOWERING the price because of economies of scale. Marketing, in other words, creates cheaper drugs, but only those which can be sold through advertising, not as a cure.
So I think it is incorrect to blame drug prices on the costs of marketing. If anything, drug companies are probably resorting to lifestyle drugs because they are more profitable.
forgot where:
"the us is a good place to get a heart attack, and canada is a good place to get cancer"
mainly because the us healthcare system is set up in such a way that sudden major healthcare crises are well handled (pay later), but chronic long-term problems are not well-treated (pay first)
meanwhile, canada is the opposite
the fact is, in spite of this article, the rich of the world come to the us for their healthcare, because although affording american healthcare is difficult, it really is top notch in the world (mainly because of all that money)
there's no such thing as a free lunch, and eventually we all die, so healthcare, no matter how you slice it, is a triage system
always was, always will be a triage system: you have a limited amount of money to spend, and you have to decide where to invest it, and there are infinite ways to spend the money, because someone always has a health complaint
therefore, we will always be unhappy with our healthcare no matter what we do, because of the nature of the beast: we are human beings, we fall apart every day, and none of us have enough money to ensure all of us fall apart gracefully
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is precisely the reason why most civilised countries reject the US "user pays" model for healthcare, education and so on.
Wake up guys, this sort of thing was inevitable and will probably only increase in time until the vested interests buy off some more of your politicians to legislate against it somehow.
It's such a shame that the US public at large has been victim to the levels of subtle indoctrination that they have been over the last 50 years. A good example, the main reaction to this sort of news coverage by the Good Ol' Boy flag waving American when told of other countries superior healthcare systems is "Ahhh..but that's SOCIALISED medicine!, like SOCIALISED childcare or education, and that's SOCIALISM, which is tantamount to COMMUNISM and if we go down that path next thing we'll be waking up with Russian tanks on 1St Avenue and Stalin in the White House because Fox News told me so!" which plays right into the hands of the multinationals.
It's all about balance people, balance! I call myself a capitalist, I'm a small business owner actually, but that doesn't mean I agree with rampant, unfettered rapiciousness by the Big End of town. Have you ever wondered why genetically modified foods didn't take off in places like Aust/NZ and Europe?....because we're all greenie, hippy, leftie communist Luddites??..think again!
It was because the populace here is sophisticated enough to realise the bullshit being handed out by the US multinationals was just that, bullshit.
Large American (lets face it, most of them are American) companies are interested in only one thing...shareholder profit!. That's it, not you, not me, not the country, just their earnings and shareholders. That is why the government must ensure they are kept on a short leash. Do you think the pharma companies give a rats ass about you, in Hicksville USA with your sick wife ??, you're just a CONSUMER to them. If they can rope you in and then jack the prices up wayyy high, squeeze you so hard you bleeed, well, all the better for them.
THIS is why the USA is garnering so much distrust now around the world. It's perceived as falling more and more into the sway of a small group of insanely powerful corporate interests who would ring you out to dry if they thought there was a dollar in it and they have a pet Administration in the White House that is allowing them to do just that !
The idea that the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever known can't even adequately feed, clothe or house and educate ALL its citizens while its multinationals run riot and avoid paying their fair share of taxes is just insane.
I'd cap them at $150 per hour. But I can imagine some much better ways for lawyers to get compensation than a large % of the finding for cases over $1,000,000.
Learn to love Alaska
ER surgeons are typically independant contractors, so hospital operating and equipment costs (and the expenses of hiring supporting technicians) has nothing at all to do with how feasible it is for them to stay in business as the independant operators they are.
I'm not discussing the percentage of total health care costs, but rather the percentage of operating costs for the doctors themselves -- an entirely different number. If you're using Budget Office figures for the former, it's really quite irrelevant to the issue here (that being whether the MDs themselves can profitably stay in business).
You know what they say about lies, damn lies, and statistics? If I have doctors telling me that people they know have been driven out of business by malpractice costs, I'm inclined to suspect that any statistics which would imply that this is infeasible are, even if accurate, not directly on-point.
Don't put the blame on the doctors but in the bad habits as a culture.
A culture whereas the person prefers to ride the car to the grocery store two blocks from home and eat a 2,000 kcal dinner is likely to have a lower expectancy of life than those who follow a healthy style of living.
When things start to get this strange, it's a sign that a bubble is about to burst.
In this case, the bubble is probably the artificially inflated value of the US dollar - the value of the goods and services exported by the US haven't matched up to those we're importing for quite a long time - and this latest binge of buying labor and services will probably be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Soon will come the soft *pop*, followed by the idiot press weeping and wailing about double or triple digit inflation combined with stock market crash and interest rates through the roof as foreign lenders withdraw from the dollar.
Imagine the impact on your 401K of the stock market taking a 50% hit, followed by 100% inflation over a few years. Oh - and you'll still owe capital gains tax on any "profits" - even though in real value terms you've lost 75% of your principle.
Americans Willing to pay more taxes to support health care
Death Rates Higher at For-Profit Dialysis Centers: Study
V-A Diabetes Treatment is better than private for profit treatment
62% of americans want universal health care
Rich people demand and get more treatment, but it doesn't help them
Studies Show U.S. Spending Doesn't Get Best Health
US Health Care Costs Rising Quickly - Health Care Becoming Unaffordable for many
US Middle class barely treads water.
Women more likely to die in the US [than Canada] during childbirth
Enjoy.
STFU about slashdot bias.
If malpractice were really the problem, then there would be no specialists in Houston and Dallas as well.
There aren't none -- but there are less than there should be. That said, I think this post provides an explanation which is consistent with most of the positions voiced here.
I'm sorry that I don't have it in a percentage form but I'll still respectfully disagree with it being a percentage of the cost because But even doctors who have never been sued are facing premiums that can reach $85,000 a year in Kentucky.
Here are some other facts from that article:
Other doctors have seen their premiums more than double in a few years. Dr. Kimberly Alumbaugh, an obstetrician/gynecologist who heads up the local chapter of the ACOG, said some local obstetricians pay $45,000 to $50,000 a year for malpractice insurance, compared with $25,000 to $30,000 three years ago.
Dr. Gerald Harpel of Cynthiana, who said he never had an obstetrics claim filed against him, saw his premiums rise from $27,000 two years ago to $85,000 this year.
Now I'm not saying that you are wrong as there are other costs (i.e., hospital overhead, drug cost, etc) that's not factored in.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
If something goes wrong, can you hold someone responsible? This is an issue in the USA, but it might be more difficult overseas.
A lot of "gringos" came to Colombia every year to have a cosmetical surgery due to highly professional doctor, very high medical standards, reasonable prices due to low cost of human capital, etc.
Do you want free trade? let the workplace free too!
>My sister wanted in vitro due to her Endometriosis. We fought 'round and 'round about my lack of understanding just WHY she thought she deserved a child, "just because".
Maybe when you grow up you'll understand. Then again, maybe you won't.
>Our planet is quickly becoming overpopulated
That is very much open to debate. Also, population growth in most industrialised countries is already zero to negative. It's rather like your mom saying "Eat up your dinner - there's starving kids in Afria": very true, but irrelevant.
>and our resources are dwindling.
Possibly, but that's more due to consumption per capita than the capita. Ditch your Hummer, have a child, and your family resource consumption has probably improved.
>It is terribly irresponsible to bring yet more humans into the mix.
That is your opinion. I'd hazard a guess that your sister has the opinion that you are an insensitive, uncaring clod. Both are equally valid.
>If a couple lacks the native ablilty to reproduce unaided then perhaps it is for a reason, no?
Perhaps. If you have appendicitis, which frequently used to be fatal, perhaps that was for a reason, too. Maybe there was a reason for Pox, Diphteria, the Plague, polio etc, too. And I'm sure if you contract cancer, you'll be happy to decline expensive medical treatment because "perhaps it is for a reason".
>Take the blessing you have of being in the top 5% and donate $$ to a Foster Children fund or adopt an already born child.
Good point; but there's no reason not to do both.
no taxation without representation!
But we don't have the wait times Canada does for relatively routine operations. In fact, many wealthy Canadians simply come to the U.S. so they don't have to wait. Is there a problem with our Health Care System? Yes. Is a public system the answer? No.
Yes, the Canadian healthcare system is less responsive overall. No, that doesn't change the fact that their healthcare indicators are better overall. For the *vast* majority of people, good access to regular preventive healthcare services has a far larger impact on overall health than the responsiveness of emergency services.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That depends on what body part was operated on.
Don't confuse the doctor's fee with the total price. Most of that $200,000 goes to the hospital, which has to provide operating rooms,nursing, critical care monitoring, high tech imaging, etc.etc. And the hospital has to carry its own malpractice insurance.
To add to my previous statement: don't think that you aren't paying for it too. Canadians spend about $2000 per capita per year on healthcare, while we spend $4000 per capita per year on healthcare. Sure, for Canadians that money is spent in the form of taxes, and for us it's in the form of health insurance payments, but at the end of the day, that's an extra $2000USD out of your pocket every year.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Look on the shelves. There's this little white pill that everybody and his dog made (and still makes)- it's called ASPRIN.
No patents, yet everyone still makes the damn stuff and makes loads of money on it (or else nobody would bother with it...).
Discard your cherished notions of what will/won't be done with or without "IP"- the current notions about it are really, really recent in history. The thinking you espouse is a very nasty double-edged sword. With all this IP "protection", there's no benefit for anyone except the biggest players to make ANYTHING since it's already "Patented", "Copyrighted", or "Trademarked". The biggest players really, really don't have much incentive to make new stuff because it'd take money away from the stuff currently making money and it could temporarily cut off a cash cow (in spite of it maybe making a hell of a lot more money in the long term...).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'd say the WHO is qualified to answer that question, and based on health indicators in the two countries, they rank Canada 30th worldwide (France is 1st), compared to the US which is ranked 37th. Of course, they pay half as much per person to get that 30th ranking!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You can argue that if healthcare were "free" people would go to doctors first before the problem got to an emergency state, but I don't think that's the case.
True, lack of money will make you think twice about seeing a doctor. But there's also just plain fear, laziness and overall bad attitudes to health in this country to begin with. (AKA Super Size Me)
Plus, you'll get the current problem they have with 911 (the emergency phone number in the US) where everybody and their brother calls up the line to get the time, their cat out of a tree of whatever.
For example, a couple of years ago a member of my family woke up one Sunday morning with horrible pain in her joints. She could barely move. I took her to the emergency room. We walked in without an appointment (I actually carried her), signed in, and she was seen in about 10 minutes. They gave her a couple of shots and some pills to take over the next few days. She was fine by that afternoon. Total cost? $120. I paid it out of my own pocket.
Not only is it cheap, effective, and readily available, it also warms the heart of this libertarian. It's almost completely private, people generally pay for service from their own pocket at the time of service. "Insurance" is rare and when it does exist, only covers the most extreme cases. Government doesn't regulate it any more than it regulates any other business. Prices are set by the free market. While government buys the occasional service from the system, it does so as just another purchaser, buying only a tiny fraction of the output, certainly not enough to significantly distort the market.
There's only one problem with this amazing medical system: It's only available to animals. The human system is much much worse.
However, the American veterinary system shows that you can have a private, for-profit, cheap, and efficient health-care system.
1. Healthcare is expensive in the US because of high malpractice insurance. ... Moreover, he added, a New York heart surgeon "has to pay $100,000 a year in malpractice insurance.
From the article: Trehan, 58, a former assistant professor at New York University Medical School who said he earned nearly $2 million a year from his Manhattan practice
This guy was making $2mil a year, and paying $100K for MI; just 5%.
2. Doctors there are bad
The founder (as quoted above) was an Asst Prof at NYU, making $2M a year. In fact, a lot of the doctors you find here (in the US) are graduates from the same Indian schools. And many of them working at these top hospitals are those who returned from US/UK. You'll find a good number of them holding advanced degrees (like FRCS) from institutions in US/UK. A good friend of mine (an Indian who finished his residency here) is going back because he couldn't get into the top school he wanted for research. He has his choice of places where he can practice, but he prefers to go back because he says "if I'm going to practice, might as well do it at home". There, the good doctors are put on a pedestal and have a lot of clout in society.
3. Facilities are bad
The hospital mentioned, Escorts, is top-notch and was founded by an Asst Prof at NYU who gave up a $2M/yr package to go back. Here's another quote from the article: Escorts is one of only a handful of treatment facilities worldwide that specialize in robotic surgery,
4. Quality of care will be bad .8 percent. By contrast, the 1999 death rate for the same procedure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where former president Bill Clinton recently underwent bypass surgery, was 2.35 percent, according to a 2002 study by the New York State Health Department.
From the article: the death rate for coronary-bypass patients at Escorts is
5. It is cheap because it is bad
Again, from the article: For example, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan costs $60 at Escorts, compared with roughly $700 in New York
I will relate a personal story. A very good friend of mine hurt his back (slipped disk) while travelling in India in 1997. He had to be hospitalised, and operated upon. After operation, he got 1 month of in-home nursing care. The total bill? $4000.
When he came back, he told his insurance company about this. They asked him to go to a local doctor. He checked him out, and said that the job the Indian doctors had done was as good as anything they would have done locally. And the insurance company paid the $4K even though he hadn't followed procedure (called them and sought approval), saying that just the MRI alone here would have cost $4K. There, the MRI, surgery, post-operative care, etc. all came at the price of just an MRI here.
At the last company I worked for (a small consulting firm), we had a meeting where we collectively chose the best health care plan we could find for the company. We all had full medical, dental, and vision benefits. I was under the impression that we had gotten some of the best coverage available, and even had some receptionists comment to that fact.
However, when it came to dental, we got screwed. I went to get my ancient fillings replaced, and was told it would cost something like $6-7000, and my "insurance" would only cover half. Furthermore, my "insurance company" was so bad at paying their bills, the dentist had hired a full-time person solely to try to get them to pay. It had gotten so bad that the dentist refused to honor the insurance... I would have to pay in full, then they would give me the appropriate paperwork, and I would have to seek restitution from my "insurance company."
Cut to: I go to Colombia. Guess what, they have the same high-tech dentists' offices as in the USA, some with bilingual dentists trained in the USA. And to replace my fillings only costs a few hundred bucks. Cash.
Let's see: $6-7000, plus a raftload of paperwork and headaches to try to get my worthless, deadbeat "insurance company" to pay up. Or, $1400 for airfare and an awesome week's vacation, plus dental work.
Like Mr. White says, ain't no choice at all.
I overheard an interesting conversation today, in which a gentleman discussed this exact statistic. I'm pretty sure he's an actuary, and apparently wrote an article about this data for some unnamed publication.
He mentioned that the 2% number is bogus, and went on to explain why. He commented that the numerator in that division was comprised of all doctors' malpractice costs, and that the denominator was all costs of all health care institutions, including doctors' offices, nursing homes, hospitals, etc. His conclusion was that if you corrected either the numerator or denominator of that equation so that they both measured costs for the same group of individuals/institutions, the picture wouldn't look appear quite so insignificant.
This wouldn't surprise me in the least, given the inaccuracies and misleading-at-best statistics that seem to run rampant in what we hear from politicians and the media. I sometimes wish there was a group of non-partisan accountants and statisticians who could analyse all this stuff for us and point out the glaring omissions we don't often see until reading the full text of such reports ourselves.
There is a south park that describes this very well if you truly don't understand...
e rv let/showid-344/epid-327673/
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageS
Watch it and pay close attention to Randy Marsh.
Interestingly, it's cases like these that highlight who the bulk of the uninsured are in the U.S. -- that is people who have jobs and make it over the poverty line, but whose employers can't afford to offer health insurance (typically small businesses). Medicaid covers those below the poverty line, through state and federal funding; Medicare covers those over 65 and the disabled; and private insurance covers the bulk of the working-but-not-poor population. There is also a small percentage who pays "out of pocket", i.e. doesn't use any type of insurance but still manages to pay for health care. The incentive system is therefore a little bit problematic, then. For instance, if you wind up having a serious health problem, you may be better off quitting your job and spending down your assets. You'll then go below the poverty line, and then receiving Medicaid insurance which will pay for your doctors fees, hospitalizations, nursing homes, and even prescriptions. Then once you're in the Medicaid system, you stand to lose all these benefits if you actually do try to go out and get a job again.
India may be far less expensive, and the care may be adequate, but there is a reason that so many are still coming to America. The medical care here is still number one.
One thing that India does have over the USA, I'll bet, is a MUCH lower rate of high-cost medical malpractice lawsuits. I live in Ohio, and the cost of their malpractice insurance coupled with frivelous lawsuits is driving doctors out of my state in droves.
Love sees no species.
...when we're talking about tech or IT jobs, but its really good when ordering medication or getting healthcare that is 'as good as here'? Make up your minds people.
The next person who holds up Canada as the only alternative to the current US health care system to my face will get my fist in theirs.
Japan has multiple public and private insurance programs, way more affordable than the US. They're not perfect (payments are capped on some so that for example, people get what should be one or two trips to the dentist turned into 4 or 5...), but they're good.
In everything they do RIGHT (which is a damn sight short of everything) they're probably a better model for the US than most other countries, having a somewhat similar economy, and similar tax rates.
In the few cases where there SHOULD be "punitive damages" (i.e. due to gross negligence rather than things that just happen because medicine is and never will be perfect), it should be awarded to the state to benefit everyone, and the lawyer should get no cut of it.
In many states, it is. The damages that are often in excess of actual damages (which the injured part would receive) are things like loss of consortium.
What?
Which is nice if you can afford it. To relate to TFA, some people apparently can't, and see no other viable choice than to take the risk of getting critical surgery in the third-world. I'll stay on my waiting list, thank you.
The whole point of a public healthcare system is not the cost, it is the universality.
:wq
Canada is population-wise a much smaller country than the USA by a factor of 9-1 so to some extent it's natural that some Canadians will shop around in USA rather than wait. Without having knowing much about the medical details I would think that USA because of its size have a broader spectre of available services.
And even in those countries with public funded health care most allow some private clinics to ecourage competition. Since most of the population is close to the US border it's natural for them get the stuff in the USA.
Also, in some cases the Canadian government buy operations is the USA because they don't have enough capacity on the short term due to natural variation in demand.
When all that is said I'm not so sure a public health care system would work in USA, due to various reasons. ;-)
And the system in Canada is far from perfect just because it suck less than in USA.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
So, I looked into it and ended up going to Germany for the two surgeries required. Cost, including travel, was 20.5K versus at least 50K in the states. 50K would have bankrupted my one person corporation. Of course for an American Germany does have some limitations such as lack of air conditioning and they apparently have never heard of ice :)
Lawsuits have nothing to do with insurance rates or the cost of health care inflating. Instead, lawsuits are the justification that insurance companies use to raise prices for both malpractice insurance and procedures.
The real reason health care prices are outrageous is simply corporate greed. Malpractice lawsuits are a 1% expense for the insurance company. Corporations get richer and stock holders get happier while doctors and patients suffer.
So if India is cheaper (and probably better) it's only because India's insurance companies (assuming they have them) haven't learned how to be evil fuckers yet.
I think we do need some tort reform, and I do think that if it is done right, that it will result in significant savings.
The bulk of costs are not in settlements but actually in legal fees (discovery, court costs, etc). Therefore I propose the following changes:
1) Doctor's insurance covers patients up to a certain dollar ammount due to medical error. Dollar ammount is set by a government regulatory agency.
2) Patients also can purchase additional insurance for medical errors covering them up to a larger dollar ammount. This will be included, presumably, in the medical insurance.
3) Malpractice should be limited to those cases where one can demonstrate that the doctor should not be practicing medicine. However, medical error should automatically provide the patient with an insurance settlement.
Now--- I don't think that that I trust any candidate to do this so....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Yup.
I guess that it quite a short responce, but I was extremely happy about the outcome of that meeting and what it would mean for our health care. We just need to make sure that its spent in the right places.
This is not a sig.
Damn it, I know 4 * 100k=400K, I had a sentence about do you then go on to a fifth time or not, but I deleted it. Now I'm going to get 20 people posting that my math is wrong and therefore everything I said is completely invalid.
Health savings accounts. Yes! Think about the original meaning of insurance. It's shared risk of infrequent events. My auto insurance doesn't pay for new tires (although it does pay for the wreck if I drive on bald ones). Why do we give the insurance company 15-20% of every $50 office visit? And I don't lose my auto insurance when I change jobs. Why is it like this? Answer: The tax break. The "insurance" dollar passed from employer to "insurance" company is a business deduction to the employer and not taxable to the employee. This throws you into passive dependence on others for your health care and works against personal responsibility and the development of a true competitive market. What we need is high deductible policies for catastrophic events plus tax advantaged health savings accounts for routine medical care.
I don't think that capping damages will have any real beneficial effect. We need a systemic change which protects everyone's interests but removes expensive legal proceedings as much as possible.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
During the debates in the US this year, we heard numerous questions about "should we be allowed to import drugs from Canda" rather than asking about the real problem: "Why should we even need to consider importing drugs from Canada?"
Why should the same drugs cost so much less in Canada?
Maybe one of the candidates would have actually spoken intelligently on patent law at that point.
I thought it was that Canada negotiates lower prices for prescription medicines, not that they actually put funds into buying the drugs.
This site says that the drugs are cheap in canada due to price controls and bulk buying.
The problem with this is that they base the price on the per unit production cost, not including research/development/certification costs. For a reasonable return, the company has to make it up somewhere, mainly in the USA. Drugs in the USA are cheaper once the generics make it to market.
I don't read AC A human right
That's what your girlfriend says to me all the time.
You wouldn't die ... if you were unable to conceive.
Your genes, on the other hand, will die with you should you fail to reproduce.
Adoption, while also expensive, is also a viable option.
Then why don't health insurers offer to fund adoption for people who are diagnosed as needing technology in order to conceive?
I have been thinking that the American system of healthcare is a direct violation of the Hippocratic Oath but after some cursory study, I find the oath to be wanting as it is translated into English.
The United States allows abortion and I personally think that is a good thing (allowing it) because of a study finished some years ago by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities that showed women find their value in society increases in direct correlation to their access to contraception.
It is my opinion that, if society is going to make a mistake in its laws, those mistakes ought to be the kind of mistakes that increase the worth of the citizenry of that society, not decrease their worth. Thus I feel that abortion should remain legal as a "last resource" method of contreception and in cases of rape or incest in a society that claims to value women.
The hippocratic oath specifically prohibits that: ..."
"I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.
So I don't know what doctors are swearing to.
I think that the healthcare system in the United States uses two methods of triage: financial and injury or disease. The idea behind the hippocratic oath is that doctors will work to save lives and to serve and educate people, regardless of their standing, without prejudice and with honor. This is certainly at odds with the American system of healthcare delivery.
Lawsuits are not necessarily to blame just as the level of medical education and the quality of the medical schools aren't either. I will agree that there is disfunction but one cannot point to one sole cause for the price of healthcare in the US.
Perhaps it's the "what the market will bear" attitude we have here that we apply to everything, including the public welfare. That, combined with a "survival of the fittest" ethic coming from our government these days, has created a system that is not fixable from within the system. The solution must come from outside of the system and it would appear that the global market might do that.
We cannot buy drugs from nations that control the prices of dtugs because "those drugs may be unsafe" (according to politicans and the drug companies). Never mind that these drugs are perfectly safe for the citizenry of the non-US country and are made by the same manufacturers. Drug companies tell us they're doing research when they're really researching how they can take over other drug companies and laboratories to get their patents as well as how they can use the US court system to extend their existing patents to maximize their profit cycle. They have stopped educating doctors and started using advertising to "educate" their potential customers, all the while passing the cost of national television and magazine advertising campaigns on to the customers.
Doctors have to request additional tests to protect themselves from litigation which results in more waiting for treatment that works, and adds about 1 to 2% to the costs of healthcare.
And the poor don't see a doctor in a timely way, winding up in an emergency room with an acute illness because they cannot afford either health insurance or the cost of a doctor.
In the meantime, we have lobbyists writing our laws and taxpayers footing the bill for a system that works for most but is very costly.
If there is a doctor in the house, I would specifically request a copy of or a link to the actual hippocratic oath now sworn to. And, perhaps, we need patients to swear another oath, to see a doctor regularly and to treat him as a good samaratin.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
* Works well compared to either system on it's own - our public health is a horribly under-funded mess, but it's better than nothing...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."
s/television/the_media ?
- It is simple to make something complex, and complex to make it simple
how is someone who makes $25k a year supposed to live? Do you feel that they are not of enough value to society to live at all?
If an employer feels that an employee is valuable enough, then the employer will invest in the employee by buying catastrophic health insurance for the employee.
This is not a troll, I'm just asking. What's funny about the parent? Seriously, it just restates the obvious observation. I don't know why this deserves (Score:3,Funny), let alone (Score:5,Funny). Am I missing something here?
Funny thing, if you put people's money into a pool, and a Central Committee doles it out and dictates what can and can't be done, we call it Socialized Medicine -- EVIL!!
But if the people who dictate what can and can't be done also get to own the whole thing and rake off enough to get rich, we call it an Insurance Industry -- GOOD!!
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
It's amazing how the old argument of "vote in this tax increase for the kids!" fools the masses so often. It's probably one of the oldest tricks in the book if you're looking for ways to get people to agree to give government more money.
In reality, what "jcr" (parent poster) just said is the root of the problem. When we spend TOO MUCH money on the school systems, it just encourages corruption. (Administrators see the total dollar amount coming in and realize they can skim some off the top and still keep the system basically running, so they often do. Then, people complain about some maintenance that's been skipped over in the building, or teacher's poor salaries, or what-not, and greedy folks in charge counter with "We're going to need more money to do that!" If they get it, the process continues and the corruption grows.)
What *really* needs to happen is some unbiased, outside accounting done to see what it REALLY would cost each school district to run efficiently, and ensure they don't receive any more tax money than that. If administrative staff realizes that there's no longer any "wiggle room" to scam, the scammers will go elsewhere. (This accounting estimate should include reasonable guaranteed min. salaries for the teachers too.)
One major cause is in the demographics. America (as is most of Western Europe as well) is getting older on the average, and old people cost a lot more to treat than younger people. That's only going to get worse over the next 30 years, and it's going to get far, far worse. Medicare is going to collapse under the promises it made decades ago, and nobody in Washington has the balls to do anything about it for fear of angering the AARP. The end result is that the system will come close to collapse under trillion dollars of debt, and it will have to be made up out of emergency tax increases on those of us younger than baby boomers and our children. I predict we'll see the Medicare tax go from it's already high levels to over 25% or even 30% of your income within my lifetime. The cowards in Washington DC are simply allowing this to happen.
The other big cause American health care costs so much IMNSHO is simply that it's a "for profit" system. "For profit" means that somebody is making money above and beyond the basic costs of providing the care. Look at the stock price graphs of the major hospital mangement companies, HMOs, and pharmaceutical companies. Every single point of increase in that stock price reflects a huge profit above and beyond the basic costs of providing health care. A lot of the increase in costs is going into investors pockets (including mine since I have held shares in pharmaceutical companies in the past, though not currently).
The supposed benefit behind the idea of the US system of private health care is that the profits are more than offset by the benefits of 1) competitition between different providers, and 2) increased efficiency and decreased corruption as compared to a governmental system. For various reasons, these benefits have not panned out.
Re: #1 -- Competition exists only to a certain extent between providers. The problem in health care is that the end-consumer of health care (who is insured) is relatively price-insensitive to the actual costs and bills generated from their care. Once they hit their deductible they don't care what it costs at all. The newest and most expensive thing must be the best, so we'll all go for the most costly stuff around. Supply and demand for physicians also doesn't quite follow the simple economic principles we all know and love. One or two interesting studies done some time ago (I don't have the references handy) found that physicians basically create their own demand. Even in areas supposedly "saturated" with doctors, adding more doesn't decrease the prices, it just creates more demand.
Re: #2 -- Increased efficiency is sometimes seen in private hospitals over public ones, but having worked in both I can't say that it's a big difference. Since there's little price sensitivity, why bother ever lowering your prices? Jack up the bills and buy more expensive toys! Efficiency is further decreased in American hospitals by the absolutely amazing explosion in the number of administrative (non-patient care) staff to do the paperwork, file the claims to a slew of governmental and private insurance companies, twiddle their thumbs, or whatever. American hospital CEOs make far more than their European counterparts, and they have much larger highly paid staff than in Europe. I've never worked in a hospital where the hospital CEO made less than two or three times what I do, even if they manage the hospital
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
The main reason people drive to the grocery store is that it ISNT two blocks away. It's more like 2 MILES if you're lucky.
Hey, ever notice how many morbidly obese people there are at a typical Walmart super center? The more of those get built, the more likely you are to be one of them.
Oh, yeah, and if you bought a house in some rats nest of cul-de-sacs in suburbia, 30 miles from work, and safely removed from unsightly commercial areas, way to go, you're a huge part of the problem. I hope you enjoy your heart attack.
Me, I'll continue my quest to find someplace livable in the US, or just say "fuck it" and move someplace where heroic medicine isn't required to give me my 75 years.
If that's what you consider the "highest standard of living" you're welcome to it.
just 3 days after Merck anounced the recall of Vioxx 5 lawyers here in Corpus Christi, TX were on the 5:30am [drive time] news. One has already been slapped by the others because he went and a telephone number 1-800-##V-IOXX. Really dumb they didn't sue him. The only winners of any litigation are the lawyers...period. see http://www.groklaw.net 4 years ago I had my -Firestone Disk-, 3-4 vertabrae disk blew up and created intense pain. Anyway the best surgean here did the work. When I left the office, after scheduling the surgery, I asked him about how much so I could prepare for my 20% co-payment from insurance. His answer.....I don't know - what ever your insurance pays. Well I lucked out. Hospital including all materials and 1.5 day stay $15,000us. Surgeans bill ----- $10,000us Scheduled at 7:30am I asked at 7:35 talking to nurse where he was and when this gets going. A voice on the otherside said I'm here and then the -sleepy doc- didn't even tell me to count, just you'll feel something cold and about halfway up to the elbow zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. At 8:55am the doc came out and told my parents he was done all well and good. At 11:30 I was talking on the way back to the room and raady for lunch. Moral to the story..... about $4,000 of the $10k was for a Lloyd's of London insurance policy for this procedure on me. So $4,000/hr is not bad considering his practice/office/employees/insurance/etc [I know about LoL policies because I work for 911 administration and we get $1mil policies when needed] Just my $0.075us and I don't want to start a rant on side topics of this -- just my last experience.
The doctor who treated me in Mass. was charging $70 per accupuncture session. The muscular therapist that was treating me was charging $60/session.
Fight Spammers!
Emergency care is available for all. I ought to know... I provide that kind of care.
People frequently come to the ER as a convenience ("I didn't want to wait to see my family doctor," or "I couldn't sleep," or my favorite "I wanted a second opinion"). ER care is abused, and people often will NOT do what's needed, and bounce back to me for the same problem I've already treated. I saw a girl a few weeks ago who bounced back to me 3X for her pelvic inflammatory disease (Gonorrhea and Chlamydia, if you must know), all because she didn't take her antibiotics... she finally admitted it when I confronted her on the last visit... she ended up being admitted to the hospital. I see all kinds of people bounce back because they won't stop drinking/smoking, or won't follow my instructions. It's frustrating to spend time teaching patients, only to have them ignore you and come back even sicker. Don't laugh... you're paying for them.
There are many people who won't do the right thing for themselves no matter how much you try to help them. Single payer has no cure for human stubborness and denial.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
So, you're saying we canucks pay half as much as you, giving us universal coverage while you have 20% of your population uninsured?
True, it's not perfect, and it does hurt to have 1/3 of my salary going to the tax man every 2 weeks. While I'm not under any illusion that I'm not paying for healthcare, I still think we're getting a much better deal.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
How would offering vouchers to everybody for the education of their kids amount to welfare for the rich? If my parents had been able to afford it, they would probably have sent me to a private school. Some of the other kids in the neighborhood went to a private religious school, but that was subsidized by the church.
Despite the subsidation by the church, that school's students managed to outperform the public school just down the block(that I went to) despite spending less than half per student.
I don't read AC A human right
Not quite.
Canadian salaries are about 30% lower (after accounting for cost of living and currency exchange rate differences) than U.S. salaries for similar jobs. Taking into account differences in taxes, after tax income is lower still.
So, that extra US$2000 does not exist.
For a quick ballpack comparison, where one can earn (as a software engineer) CA$76.5k in Toronto, one can earn around US$100k in Seattle, and pay less in taxes, as a fraction of income. I haven't even included benefits (which cover a lot of health insurance).
You could've hired me.
I saw a troubling trend when I was in high school. When I started, administrativly there was:
1 principal
1 vice-principal
1 Secretary
2 Counselors
~40 teachers
When I graduated, there were:
1 principal
6 vice-principals
3 secretaries
8 counselors
4 "security guards" (I called it welfare for former college football players).
~45 teachers.
This was pre-columbine.
I don't read AC A human right
Im an Indian myselves and i have no clue how is India *SUDDENLY* doing well in IT business , Nuclear independence, Satellites,Students exported abroad , and now medical excellence.
Why is this all only now?
Where is India heading to ? Im jus curious.
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
I don't see what that has to do with anything. In terms of absolute dollars, our privetized healthcare still costs us $4000 a year, and their socialized healthcare still costs only $2000 a year. Now, if you want to factor in cost of living, then you can say their's costs less because salaries are 30% lower, but that still leaves you with an $800 margin. Of course, that's assuming that 100% of healthcare costs are salaries, which it isn't. The absolute value of medical supplies and medicine is still the same. So in reality, the real margin is probably well over $1000 a year.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The gist of the arcticle you site is that we really don't have any good estimates of what the costs are. A 1999 GAO study quoted in the article you sited concludes "Given the limited evidence, reliable cost savings estimates cannot be developed." Likewise a '94 OTA study mentioned concluded "it is impossible in the final analysis to draw any conclusions about the overall extent or cost of defensive medicine." So perhaps that the estimates are in fact too low, not too high.
The definition of "frivilous lawsuits" is slippery--there are plenty of highly paid "expert witnesses" who will solemnly swear that Dr. X egregiously breached the standard of care, when any other physician who hears about the case will call the allegations pure BS. Also note that frequently every doctor who saw the patient gets sued once the lawyers get started. So even if the suit itself may have some merit against 1 physician, 9 or 10 other pysicians are also sued without true justification, all in the same suit. Such suits may not be labeled as frivolous, but for 9 of the 10 defendents it is.
I'll grant that I'm biased on this. I am a physician, and I've been sued for malpractice once. By a patient who I had never seen who had been in a hospital I had never set foot in. Despite the fact that I had nothing to do with this person in any way, it took 9 months to get myself dropped from the suit (which involved ~10 other doctors and 2 hospitals for charges that were BS). So I've had an intimate experience with this issue.
Try finding a doctor in Toronto taking new patients. You pay that $2k without getting any service when you need it.
You could've hired me.
Pepsi is an example of a company that makes nothing. Pepsi Licenses out the rights to use their logo, name and recipie for surgar water.
An example would be, every regional commercial is brought to you by (Insert Bottling company here). Pepsi provides the marketing and howto, other people pay for it.
Hopefully that is coherint, kinda in a rush.
I will support Universal Heath Care when they come up with a system such that each and every citizen recieves the exact same heath care---starting with the President. If I have to sit on a waiting list for 6 months for surgery so should the President, Legislature, etc.
Knowing that is never going to happen I am completely against Universal Health Care. Do you actually think you and John Howard recieve equal care? Heck, politicans here won't even trust their kids to public schools let alone public health care!
Health Care--like food and land and every other resource--is a limited resource. Not everyone can eat lobster everyday and live in a mansion and afford to go to an Ivy league school. Not everyone can receive the top best healthcare. That is just reality.
What happens in "Universal Health Care" is that the powerful get their health care while what is left over is spread out thin between everyone else. At least in our system if I work hard enough and have a good job I can get good health care. To me that is much more fair than having my health care decided by whether or not I'm in politics or by "who I know".
Brian Ellenberger
The main reason healthcare costs so much more in the US is because of all the malpractice insurance, other insurance, and regulation by the FDA. For instance, a company with a drug that would be approved in Europe or Canada would NOT be accepted by the FDA. The company loses tens of millions of dollars under the US system, and because of the lawsuit mentality of many people in the US, this situation is not likely to change.
In the US, we get the benefit of certainty when we have medical operations or medications. However, with that benefit comes additional cost which the US imposes upon itself.
Other healthcare systems tend to favor the younger generations as opposed to the older. The US is the exception, where we try to keep people alive for as long as possible. As an example, an older patient might be set aside in favor for a younger patient who has a need. I don't know about the situation in India, but I know for a fact that Europe and Canada prescribe to the idea that if you are old, you have lived long enough, and we are not going to use any money to care for you.
>
Don't worry. This dothead wouldn't piss down your throat if your heart was on fire.
because that's the only explanation I can see. My stepfather had a heart attack and he had surgery almost immediately in calgary. They air ambulanced him there and he was back in town within two weeks to recover back with his family. Your horror story seems exagerated. Now don't get me wrong there are some inherent flaws in our system but to say the us has a better system by looking at individual cases seems a bit flawed... as well the thing about universal health care is that it's deseigned to help everyone based on need. It's part of the reason why people over seventy arn't put on a waiting list for a heart... the heart would be of more use in a person whom is going to more than likely live longer... if a person can pay to get to the front of a list then what's to prevent an eighty year-old from getting a heart that should go into a teenager? We have to decide what is worth it as a society. I know it doesn't always come down to money but to be honest if I had to spend 50 thousand dollars to save someone I'd pick the person who seems like they are most likely going to contribute as much back to the system as possible.
Except that the actual statistics don't bear that out. The health indicators show Canada's overall care is slightly better than ours, and they pay less. But sure, your personal examples are so much more convincing than WHO studies...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
PS: We have 45 *million* people without health insurance. Clearly Canada's health system isn't perfect (it's ranked 30th, after all), but they aren't the ones with the 7.2 per 1000 child mortality rate.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Call my all the names you want, it doesn't change the fact that no malpractice in the delivery of a baby can cause cerebal palsy. You can't even argue this to a jury in North Carolina anymore!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I think one of the reasons it may be chaper is because one f the major leaders in laser eye surgery was based out of calgary hence a lot of the early development came out of there and no doubt a lot of people have worked out of those offices -- people who happen to be canadian as well and probably went on to start their own practices. As a canadian laser eye surgery seems to be more "common" in Canada than I have seen it in the states. In addition, I have found that america charges a lot for professional services so it doesn't surprise me that it is more expensive in the states. As for more expensive being better? Well I kow Giumbel eye center is one of the first, and most respected ones, and they are based out of calgary -- if I was going to get it done, regardless of which was cheaper, I would be going back to Calgary to get it done. Pardon me if I just don't trust the idea of an American pointing a laser at my eyes! :)
RDL
I want folks who have money realize that it's in their best interest to outsource lawyers and higher management as well. A lawyer can charge up to $700 an hour. Some if not most CEOs cost even more. Just imagine the savings!
I was buying my cholesterol medicine from Canada Drugs online until Bush decided to make me a felon if I kept doing it, and my parents went to Mexico to a recommended dentist for some work they needed done. Since they were in Arizona for the winter, it wasn't a major trip...
Rather interesting read, all in all.
Seeing the canadians and Brits come on these internet forums and absolutely SHRED the Dittohead rightwinger bots and astroturfers with these personal testimonials is just FANTASTIC!
Please keep it up and do so at every opportunity. You are undoubtedly saving many American lives when you do so because your online testimonials are archived and can be read over and over again by curious and interested Americans. And online is the ONLY PLACE we Americans can really find out what is going on with the healthcare systems in other countries. Thanks to your contributions I am sure that eventually America will have universal healthcare.
What is happening here in America is that we are being extorted for healthcare...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The grandparent was saying that he was prescribed an antibiotic for a fungal infection. Antibiotics have no to little direct effect on fungi. They basically just kill off bacteria, which in some cases would remove competition pressures on the fungi, allowing them to flourish even more.
BR Just think about the fact that a large class of antibiotics are derived (at least originally) from fungi (think penicillin.) Fungi produce these antibiotics to kill the bacteria which compete with/harm the fungi themselves.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
True enough. Battlefield medics are constantly faced with such wrenching decisions. Having to make such a choice in the face of finite resources is what's known as triage. And it's the unwillingness to admit triage into the vocabulary of government-supported healthcare that dooms such programs to failure. The state of Oregon got it right several years ago when they created an exhaustive list of treatable conditions ranked by their likelihood of successful treatment per dollar spent. Near the top were things like bacterial diseases that respond to common antibiotics; near the bottom, liver transplants for alcoholics. Once they had the had the list and knew how much total money was available for subsidized insurance, they could draw a line. Everything above the line would be covered. Below the line? Tough luck.
No one denied that this was a dispassionate application of cost/benefit analysis. But the feds came in and smacked the program down. Why? Perhaps it was simply too logical for their bureaucratic tastes. But until we face the music that universal healthcare can't be truly universal in the face of finite means to pay for it, no government-supported or subsidized healthcare system can succeed. And any attempts to try will either collapse under their own weight or result in long delays for service, as experienced in Canada and England.
Thanks for the kind words. Yes we are extremely glad with our kid in the making. One of the big reasons I am looking forward to it is the look in the eyes of my own parents. They had 3 kids that are now all having kids of their own and living extremely happy lives. One lives in the Netherlands, one in Germany and one (me) in the USA. My parents spend a lot of time traveling to the 3 of us and enjoy doing so. We still get together with the whole family at least twice per year. Just for all that happiness I have wanted kids of my own (IVF or adopted would have been fine).
Weird how your honest feelings could be modded "Troll".
But sure, your personal examples are so much more convincing than WHO studies...
I personally find the reports by Canada's own media and its citizens more convincing that of WHO.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
A retired person is a tax drain.
You put 2+2 together.
You could've hired me.
And I trust that you stay away from doctor and dentist offices, hospatials, and other places where you can recieve artifical medical care? Hell, you should leave the band-aids on the shelf... just let nature run its course.
of course Indian doctors are as good as those you find here in the states. Many fine doctors I've run into here in Michigan were Indian. My oncologist is Filipino and he saved my life. A generation ago, the term "brain drain" was used to characterize the influx of smart guys to the USA.
If we really are in a post-geographic age, the notion of brain-drain or outsourcing fades in significance. There are only markets for talent. I'd rather be excellent than American, and I'm damned proud to be American. And I'm proud of my colleagues of foreign birth.
If my cancer comes back, I will want the absolute best treatments on the planet. If I have to goto Bombay for it, so be it. I believe in free markets and hope they will provide for my needs.
Nice comment. I couldn't have put it better myself, although I did try.
Only $4000 a year, that's a deal..
I pay $500 a month for insurance that has a $2500/yr
deductable. Why, because I'm self employed and dont have my employer paying part of the bill. Dont forget, in hte US, for the most part, you employer does pick up part of the bill.
The reason for keeping it, if I ever have to go in for anything, having insurance keeps the bill down. If I went in for anything and had no insurance, I'd have to about 3-5X more. That's the way it works..
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
"Canada has *actually JAILED* doctors for opening a private MRI clinic"
Please provide some supporting documentation for that.
"Not to mention the story about a Canadian who's son was gravely injured... he brought is son to the hospital, but he couldn't be admitted without a paramedic or an ambulance. So they waited... while the son died... for an ambulance to come from across down so he could be admitted."
Not mention that one.
I call bullshit.
Three Squirrels
Insurance costs for being an OBGYN in the Rio Grande Valley (south texas) is around $200k
if thats 1% of the cost, sign me up to baby delivering school
Parent is utterly non-factual and should be modded as troll.
Three Squirrels
as bad as it sounds, this discussion will be, non-existant, 5 years from now.
I totally agree, the vouchers would not only give a break for those damn Rich People, but some of the Commoners might also be able to afford better education! Horrors! Who will clean the drapes if some of Those Kids can actually afford education that works?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
people over 70 aren't put on the list for heart transplants... I think I had that in my original post but I'll restate it here... part of the perpose of a universal health care system is to prioratize people and triage them into whom needs it more. Money shouldn't be a dividing line between whom gets to survive and whom doesn't.
Health care in the US for the uninsured. 1. Find out how much your surgery costs. 2. Choose the appropriate lotto game whose jackpot most closely matches your surgical costs. 3. ?? 4. Win Big. 5. Get treatment.
Health care in the US for the uninsured.
1. Find out how much your surgery costs.
2. Choose the appropriate lotto game whose jackpot most closely matches your surgical costs.
3. ??
4. Win Big.
5. Get treatment.
It seems the Slashdot editors mayhaps read Dilbert.
If you can get many procedures in India (or other places) done for so much less, it makes you wonder when a health insurance company will be formed that takes advantage of cheap global healther care around the world - minor or emergency stuff could still be handled locally, but for any very expensive procedures if it were at all possible you might have to fly out of the country to wherever is cheapest and meets a certain level of quality.
It sure seems like it could reduce premiums by a huge amount.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My son had the same experience when he was 8. After rushing him to hospital from the doctors surgery in the family car, he collapsed and stopped breathing as we were standing at the front desk of the specialist asthma ward. He was immediately surrounded by people who knew what to do and saved his life. He had two more episodes the next day and my wife spent the next week sleeping in an army cot next to his bed in the hospital, she was not a replacement for a nurse, she was simply there because she was his mum. I belive the quality of the care also saved him from the very real possibility of permenent brain damage. I worked as a low-paid labourer / factory hand when my kids were young and it is because of Australia's Universal health care that my son is drawing breath. So where is the difference in the two tales? Well I paid nothing but my taxes and $1200 max per year for medicine. Now my son is 24 and has "outgrown" his childhood asthma. My working life has changed and for the last 10 yrs my wage has been roughly double the national average wage. Only a short-sighted, insular person in a good financial situation would complain that they pay twice the national average towards a system that saved his son's (or anybody else's) life. I have no real knowlage of Canada, from over here in Oz it has the perception of being more affordable and accessable than the US system but it sounds like it is suffering from either under-funding or deliberatley obscure admin. both of which are not confined to public systems. Every now and then these problems suface in Australia. They usually appear under conservative governments, but now "the system" has been working for 30yrs, they can't shake the idea from Australian heads that quality heath care FOR ALL is a basic right paid for by reasonable taxes.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It is not unusual for Americans to visit Asia to get cheap medical treatment + tourism. One of my uncles claim that the cost savings in medicine itself is enough to cover the ticket price. The drugstores don't ask for prescriptions, and you could buy a year's worth of stash easily. You could even buy Viagra over the counter.
Here's my personal experience from a drugstore in Bangkok. I see this dude walk to the employee of the drugstore and tell him that he has a rash and some other problems. The employee looks at the guy for a minute, and comes up with an ointment and some anti-histamines. The dude pays up and goes off. Cost of consultation = 0. He just paid for the medicine. I don't suppose this happens in the USA.
Heck, even Durex Fetherlites cost $2 for a pack of 10.
Total cost in Canada: C$0, but some serious taxes and a wait on a waiting list. :)
If I was impatient, though, and needed the surgery, I would very seriously consider US$10K for the Indian equivalent. The Indian people as a whole are highly intelligent, so I would put my trust in an Indian doctor.
both systems triage people and there are people whom quite simply will never get treated. So if it comes down to either system the problem we are arguing here will be in both systems. I just tend to think that fair treatment is more likely in a system where greed (ipo's and so such) arn't a factor
You have hospitals with 5, 6, and 8 day waits for urgent heart surgery! A freakin week! And who the heck has "Elective" heart surgery? "Yes Doctor, I would love to have that new heart upgrade installed" Sounds like a way to play with the numbers since you have to wait a month or more for the "Elective" stuff.
And Angioplasty at most of those hospitals is over a week, sometimes 2?
Glad we don't have your "wonderful" health care system here...
Brian
You're just wrong. Lawyers are putting very few doctors out of business. They're hurting the insurance companies pretty hard and making malpractice insurance more costly for all of us, for sure. But no physician that I know of in this country (and I know a lot of them) is starving because of malpractice claims.
Before the current lottery in malpractice claims became all the rage, medicine was controlled largely by physicians from the 1970's and previous. There wasn't much about that system that was efficient and effective. Just 30-some odd years ago, but it was the dark ages in medicine, with so many medications and procedures used simply out of habit, and very little accountability, either legally or financially. Physicians did all sorts of things that we now know is not only useless, but harmful. Lots of people died unnecessarily. It was an age where the public had greater trust in their doctors and didn't question that everything was done correctly. If they only knew. Now they do.
Back in the day (as my older colleagues still say), you could basically bill the moon for even simple cases and get paid in full. The leaders of organized medicine failed to keep its house in order, and they hold some of the responsibility for the malpractice and billing messes we find ourselves in now. Not all of the responsibility by a long shot, to be sure, but the medical societies are far from blameless.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Ok, I was just in India last summer and this is the first hand experience I had regarding medical care, and medical education. First, if you are in top of your class on the STATE-WIDE medical exams... you are advertised in the local newspapers by each of the schools in which you were educated, bragged about in the local newspapers, and get the MOST ATTRACTIVE, and WEALTHY spouses. Yes... very simple, if you study and work hard, and get the top scores, you get a FREE education, (every school is REQUIRED by the state to keep a certain number of spots free for the top students) and you get the absolute BEST in life, respect, wealth (relatively), status, and power. Secondly, my father happened to need treatment for a throat irritation. He visited a local physician, at his HOME, on a SUNDAY, got a prescription for the SAME antibiotics you get in the States, and spent a total of 250 rupees = ~$5. Finally, EVERY student in INDIA aspires to be a doctor. All those outsourced computer programmers are actually the SECOND rank of students. If you can manage to do so, you Strive to get into a medical program. The average doctor makes between 30,000-45,000 rupees per month = ~$1000/month. versus a programmer who makes 15,000 rupees/month = $300, even when your working for US companies! (These are not numbers I am pulling out of thin air, I have relatives and friends that make these exact salaries) Finally, my wife, if she were in India, as a trained and licensed physical therapist in India, makes 750 rupees ($15) a week in India. (A man would make about a 1000 rupees) Here, she will earn about $1200/month. Also, my grandfather (86 years old) suspected that he had some sort of tumor in his foot. He visited a hospital in Trivandrum, which was established by American trained physicans from Texas. The facility was spectacular, and easily of the same quality as you would see here in the states. However, there was twice the staffing! He was waited upon by a physician (yes an MD) within the hour that he arrived. I was really impressed. My father in law, 3 days ago, had a mild hard attack. He went to intensive care, with 24 hour monitoring for 3 days! And the total cost is less than $200. So, it is not at all surprising to me that medical care is the next big shift. In fact, I changed my medical insurance to catastrophic coverage only. If I need anything kind of care that is not an absolute emergency, I will just go back to India.
Here in Oz you pay for having the wrong leg cut off by showing you govt. medicare card. When you heal enough to wear a fake leg they already know you have a card. You pay for the physio to use the leg by, you guessed it, doing nothing since they already know you have a card. You walk out of hospital, (I am assuming you have two fake legs by now since the other one needed to come off), and sue the pants off the incompetent moron who cut off the wrong leg in an attempt to make sure he never works in a hospital again, you pay for you lawyer through the nose.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We have a funny way of looking at things in Canada. If you can legally steal the money from someone else to pay for something, it makes it "free".
He would be rushed to the nearest hospital. In Australia that usually means a public hospital. He would recieve the best treatment available, just like every other joe six-pack. However after recovering from intensive care his minders would probably take him to the masons hospital where he could recover in luxury. This luxury is paid for by his private insurance not the govt. scheme, Universal means just that we all get the same treatment from the same system. If you want extra's then sure, but you pay for it and you still have to take your turn if you require the use of the high tech equipment found in public hospitals. "Health Care----Not everyone can receive the top best healthcare. That is just reality. At least in our system if I work hard ....". You have obviously worked hard and never been poor but WTF makes you think that poor people don't work hard and therefore deserve jack-shit? Don't tell me your measure of a person worth is based on something so fickle as a bank account?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Please. Let's kill all these sacred cows. We in the US cannot continue to charge such a premium for our supposed expertise. We are quickly being matched by foreign competition. The other thing I get from this is wow...our money system is really really farked up. It is not representing value anymore. It's representing the most powerful interests, which is not exactly value. Those with all the money are so stingy they will not relinquish it and the prices for everything is sky high because of it. There is no middle class anymore...just rich, richer, filthy effing rich, and the invisible. Money sucks, I hate these geographic price disparities. It's bullshit and something is going to change here in the USA soon. Count on that.
Some people can't wait the required time for a doctor to become available, so they end up doing flying over to India to get it done. Universal health care isn't perfect either.
So, in the UK, everybody gets health care, but the wealthy can choose when and where to get it. In the US, a large chunk of the population doesn't get health care at all, and the wealthy still can choose when and where to get it. Seems like the UK is better in pretty much every way.
Here in Australia we were early adopters of MRI in a big way because of govt. subsidies and Universal health care enforcing sharing of the subidized machines on a needs basis. Private vs Public always turns into a battle of details. What is required is an "system" that provides simple and affordable access to good quality care for those who need it but also satisfies the competing goal of funding to attract the best and brightest to the practice, research and technology of medicine. The Australian system is not perfect but it more or less meets those goals. I don't think that the "user pays / duty to shareholders" systems popular with the private sector can compete using those particular goals but they can be part of it. Private companies are however devestatingly competitive if the goal is "profit", an example of that "competitive spirit" can bee seen in the recent US-AU FTA agreement where-by Australia may soon agree to enforce the moronic US IP laws in it's territory.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Seven replies and a score of +5?! Geez, colour me surprised: I thought I'd get modded down as troll/off-topic!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Does anyone know or has anyone seen a study that states what percentage of America's medical costs go out as profit to Insurance Companies, HMOs, Drug Companies, Pharmacies and every other leech on the medical system? Once you stack the required (by Wall Street or your stock goes down the toilet)10% growth in revenues that each of these companies must post per anum it isn't too hard to see why we have the most expensive medicine in the world.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle." - Philo of Alexandria -
high taxes
Actually, no. When you compare US taxes + associated insurance costs, our Canadian taxes compare favourably and we get better and less-expensive (per=user basis) and truly inclusive healthcare.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
sounds like a form of sorting (ie triage) to me and basicly your saying you'd rather be in a system that the rich (or those whom are willing to pay extra) get preferential treatment. That's fine you moved to where you can get it. The main argument is still sorta moot tho... either system sucks it just sucks for different people...
Please do take note that the Canadian media is interested in promoting the idea that the health care system is failing: it sells eyeballs and it curries to their corporate advertisers.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Keep the PBS out of that slimy FTA, the "IP economoy" is just another "dot-bomb" type gold rush ticking away in the background.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The con that gate + concessions pays for the school sports doesn't wash. Every time the numbers get counted, there are huge gaps in the accounting. For example, I highly doubt that in the last decade the concessions and gates in my city have brought in even close to the 3+ million that the upgrades cost. Then there is the costs of power, water, staff, etc...etc...etc... As for the "I learned as much from playing High School Football as I learned from the classroom" comment....Either you are lying, or your school was so bad in the classroom, that you might as well not gone. Listen to what you are saying...You learned AS MUCH playing a game as you did in the classroom?!?!?! Don't get me wrong, there are thing to be learned screwing around, but your kidding yourself if you think it was anything more than that.
"However, the American veterinary system shows that you can have a private, for-profit, cheap, and efficient health-care system"
That's fine if you don't mind involuntary euthanasia...
No; those people simply don't understand the effect this sort of thing can have on a person's happiness and mental well-being.
That's hardly surprising here though, as a lot of people's priorities (judging from the overall impression I get from comments on the site) are somewhat in need of reassessment.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I work at a plastic surgery clinic in Romania and we have been approached by a local company that wanted to implement such a thing. People would come from abroad get a tour of some beautiful places and as a bonus a plastic surgery procedure. All procedures done here at the clinic are with recovery in 24 hours so their schedule wouldn't be disturbed. Their budget wouldn't be disturbed either as, from what I understand, the prices we have here are way bellow ones found in USA or in EU.
Actually, I didn't address the question of whether we're spending too much. I just pointed out that we already outspend Germany and Japan per student, but we don't get the results that they do.
What *really* needs to happen is some unbiased, outside accounting done to see what it REALLY would cost each school district to run efficiently, and ensure they don't receive any more tax money than that. If administrative staff realizes that there's no longer any "wiggle room" to scam, the scammers will go elsewhere. (This accounting estimate should include reasonable guaranteed min. salaries for the teachers too.)
Auditing is a good idea, but it's not enough. The heart of the problem here is the lack of accountability. It's almost unheard of for any NEA member to get canned for incompetence.
Hell, I had a physics teacher who couldn't even add vectors in a Fairfax County high school in Virginia (a rather affluent area, mind you). I had a few barely-literate english teachers mark me down for using British spelling, who refused to concede that they were wrong even when the alternate spellings were pointed out to them in the OED and Webster's.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Um, what? That made no sense. Yes, babies grow up to be taxpayers. But more of our babies die before age 5, as a percentage, than theirs. That's my whole point...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Polls don't mean more than objective analysis. Seriously, individuals don't have an objective outlook on the situation as a whole. Let me use a simple example: polls show that most Americans think that the US should spend less on foreign aid. Why? Because they think that the US spends 20% of it's budget on foreign aid! They think 5% is a much more reasonable figure. Simply: people don't know jack shit. Objective studies have a much better chance of at least being in the ballpark of reality.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
My foreign aid point would make much more sense if I had remembered to point out that the actual US foreign aid budget is less than 1%. The public's perception is actually way out of line with reality. That's why governing by polls is a dumb idea.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Blame pregnant women.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Surgeries, Side Trips for 'Medical Tourists'
Affordable Care at India's Private Hospitals Draws Growing Number of Foreigners
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 21, 2004; Page A01
NEW DELHI -- Three months ago, Howard Staab learned that he suffered from a life-threatening heart condition and would have to undergo surgery at a cost of up to $200,000 -- an impossible sum for the 53-year-old carpenter from Durham, N.C., who has no health insurance.
So he outsourced the job to India.
Taking his cue from cost-cutting U.S. businesses, Staab last month flew about 7,500 miles to the Indian capital, where doctors at the Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre -- a sleek aluminum-colored building across the street from a bicycle-rickshaw stand -- replaced his balky heart valve with one harvested from a pig. Total bill: about $10,000, including round-trip airfare and a planned side trip to the Taj Mahal.
"The Indian doctors, they did such a fine job here, and took care of us so well," said Staab, a gentle, ponytailed bicycling enthusiast who was accompanied to India by his partner, Maggi Grace. "I would do it again."
Staab is one of a growing number of people known as "medical tourists" who are traveling to India in search of First World health care at Third World prices. Last year, an estimated 150,000 foreigners visited India for medical procedures, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 15 percent a year, according to Zakariah Ahmed, a health care specialist at the Confederation of Indian Industries.
Eager to cash in on the trend, posh private hospitals are beginning to offer services tailored for foreign patients, such as airport pickups, Internet-equipped private rooms and package deals that combine, for example, tummy-tuck surgery with several nights in a maharajah's palace. Some hospitals are pushing treatment regimens that augment standard medicine with yoga and other forms of traditional Indian healing.
The phenomenon is another example of how India is profiting from globalization -- the growing integration of world economies -- just as it has already done in such other service industries as insurance and banking, which are outsourcing an ever-widening assortment of office tasks to the country. A recent study by the McKinsey consulting firm estimated that India's medical tourist industry could yield as much as $2.2 billion in annual revenue by 2012.
"If we do this right, we can heal the world," said Prathap C. Reddy, a physician who founded Apollo Hospitals, a 6,400-bed chain that is headquartered in the coastal city of Chennai and is one of the biggest private health care providers in Asia.
The trend is still in its early stages. Most of the foreigners treated in India come from other developing countries in Asia, Africa or the Middle East, where top-quality hospitals and health professionals are often hard to find. Patients from the United States and Europe still are relatively rare -- not only because of the distance they must travel but also, hospital executives acknowledge, because India continues to suffer from an image of poverty and poor hygiene that discourages many patients.
Taken as a whole, India's health care system is hardly a model, with barely four doctors for every 10,000 people, compared with 27 in the United States, according to the World Bank. Health care accounts for just 5.1 percent of India's gross domestic product, against 14 percent in the United States.
On the other hand, India offers a growing number of private "centers of excellence" where the quality of care is as good or better than that of big-city hospitals in the United States or Europe, asserted Naresh Trehan, a self-assured cardiovascular surgeon who runs Escorts and performed the operation on Staab.
T
Check out Chad's News
While India might be beating capitalism with capitalism today, don't worry too much! You under-estimate the power of economics and the turtle and hare race: Firstly, prices in India will rise and _eventually_ match US and therefore it won't be worth outsourcing any more. Secondly, India at the moment is the hare - while the US crawls along not changing much, and corporations are happy to fiddle the law to make themselves richer, India is booming - millions of skilled people are quickly taking a market share, but that always changes - when someone does well they get lazy and greedy and eventually India will become as fucked up as the US - the politicians will become corrupt, those great workers will start getting lazy and before you know it they'll be playing Quake instead of working, and they will be bullshitting their way through jobs like everyone else. You think they will prevail? You think their lifestyle and self-control will allow them to stay faithful? It never happens, everyone will succumb eventually.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
... from high-cost country! News at eleven, right after these messages from Medical Lobby Association.
Price differences between countries lead to across-border shopping, not only for goods but also for services. It's not "outsourcing" anything, it's just normal price-consciousness.
Vase in point: Beer in Europe. Norwegians buy in cheaper Sweden, Swedes in cheaper Denmark, Danes in cheaper Germany, Germans in cheaper Poland, Poles in cheaper Czechia. (Of course, now that both the latter two are EU members, everybody go to Czechia instead, I guess.)
Let me add my support to you and your kid in the making. Your free to use your money the way you want, and it's perfectly natural that you want kids.
The fact remains you can afford the expensive treatment. Probably they're poor and not in the top 5% bracket "for a reason."
Cheers.
Torte reform!
Exactly. But I could not afford medical care in the US (or India either, for that matter), so the Canadian system's waiting list at least give me the option of actually getting treatment.
Also, keep in mind that the complain about Canadian healthcare system waiting list are often grossly exagerated. I don't know about this guy case in particuliar (new treatment ? elective surgery ?), but the vast majority of people get treated in reasonnable delay. I had two relatives that got bypass last spring, and they both had their surgery within two weeks of being diagnosed. Complaining about healthcare is a national hobby here, not unlike complaining about the weather or the hockey players strike.
The Canadian system could be fixed quite easily. More candidate should be accepted in medical schools for a start, to fix the human ressource problem. For the rest, it's a matter of money.
:wq
Insurance isn't just a problem for small town doctors, it's an issue for anyone that practices in a "risky" medical field and/or is in a state that DOES NOT cap non-economic damages. Some states (like CA) that cap those damages have MI rates less than half or a quarter of other states. So it does matter. Of course it doesn't solve all the problems, but it certainly is a significant part of the problem, if not the largest one.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
The Chinese routinely tissue & blood type death row prisoners. Keep them alive until they can donate, often to rich foreigners.
IMHO there's some moral implications on this type of surgery. It can easily look like the developed nations are using the third world for spare body parts.
In reality, most of the "single payer" systems are able to squeeze prices out of the drug companies that are just above the marginal cost of the drug (cause selling just above that is better than nothing at all, especially since the fixed costs have already been incurred.) Basically, rich countries, (the US in particular) end up paying for almost all of the upfront investment/risk. While the rest of the world is able to dump that burden off on the US. (However generic drugs are cheeper in the US than almost any other place.)
Basically, you have a case of increasing monopsony (as an "Adverse selection effect" makes the drugs more and more expensive to those not covered by large group purchasers, which leads to more and more people covered by larger and larger groups ), which is just as "bad" from an economic perspective as monopolies are.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
care to tell me exactly what is and isn't reasonable?? There is a concept called risk/return, the more risky the investment, the higher your average returns need to be to offset the risk of large losses. Drug research is a much more risky business than something like retail, hotels, or even most IT, thus you would EXPECT it to be much more profitable than most industries? I don't seem how being "more profitable than average" automatically makes them unethical.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I was with you until you messed up and supplied us the gory details. Blearghh--I would happily pay $1200 to avoid all that.
When my father had heart surgery, in the USA, about ten years ago; it seemed that the entire cardiac care unit was from India.
I guess you might as well go to India.
Investing 101 would tell you that it's all about RISK. Research intensity has little to do with it.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I know a guy who very recently went in for a vasectomy (sic?). Anyway the realitively simple operation was successful, but they gave him some kind of infection. It was the hospitals fault, they weren't careful. He went back, they had to drain all this, and wash out that, and in so doing, they gave yet another infection. He had to go back a third time. Now he is off work, and on his back suffering in pain.
I don't know a lot about surgery, but it seems to me that doctors just don't care and have become sloppy as all hell.
I forget what news program this guy is on, but thats the first thing I thought of. haha Living in NJ where the highest concentration of Indians live outside of India, I'm quite used to having my healthcare outsourced. A big problem in NJ is insurance for doctors. NJ has the worst (read: liberals and lawyers gone wild) insurance records anywhere. Nobody is really doing anything to fix it. You have some doctors leaving the state because they can't afford the insurance because they provide a service which is higher risk. Its no wonder you have patients leaving the US for better/cheaper healthcare too.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
In the UK, some hospital trusts cover the cost, some don't. Our local hospital wouldnt as my wife was over 35. Fair enough, its not a 'life-saving' treatment. So we paid 1200 pounds for the drugs and each attempt at IVF would have cost approx 3000 pounds. I was told that there was no profit in this for the hospital as such, it just covered the costs of the treatment and the people involved [all the money is paid back to the NHS in reality].
In the end, we were very lucky as my wife fell pregnant a week before she was due to start on the drug course - my 2 year old daughter is now playing in the next room. My point ? I live in a country that HAS a Universal Medical System, paid for out of your taxes. IVF is available free of charge in some instances - I suppose one of the arguments for providing the service is that it assists in keeping the population growth up; it promotes research and development in the field of assisted conception and finally - for many childless couples it means an [albeit not guaranteed in any way] answer to their prayers.
Should IVF be available on insurance etc ? No I don't think so. Its a hard choice, but there is only a limited pot of money to go round, and IVF treatment is surely not a high priority for those funds.
One thing - $15,000 dollars for each IVF procedure, knowing that you may have to go through 3 or 4 ? Someone in making some SERIOUS money on this ! That kind of price makes DAMN sure that only the rich can have IVF - sickening.
Reading people's comments it seems that there are a few things wrong with the world we live in.
Lawyers. Boy what did we get ourselves into when we started that profession. It sounds that they pretty much determine themselves what they get paid. Maybe lawyers should be outsourced from India so that they could get a reality check. Software developers for example don't get 30-50% of the money their company makes on their product even though the company depends on them to make it.
Doctors. Seems they make far too much money whether they are good or not. If you are good at what you do, you earn good. If average, then you're average, etc. Seems that we feel that extortion is ok if someone might save your life, then again they might just kill you.
CA's. The world is full of them running companies they should not be running. Full of themselves and overpaid, what can I say that you don't know yet.
Maybe outsourcing could normalize all these things to everyone's greater good?
Objective studies have a much better chance of at least being in the ballpark of reality.
If that's the case, why are proponents of univeral health use polls to argue that majority of Americans want some sort of universal health care? And only one of my link goes to a poll. The rest of the links shows what's actually happening in Canada.
I never said that I was against universal health care. In fact, I believe a tiered version of universal health care may be the way to go. I'm just against the idea of "Let's just copy Canada's version of universal healthcare because everyone there is happy!". First, there are plenty of people there who are unhappy with the speed of care and want access to private healthcare. Second, American has a problem that Canada does not; high cost malpractice suits (which forces doctors to practice defensively) and high levels of obesity (with related diseases).
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Please do take note that the Canadian media is interested in promoting the idea that the health care system is failing: it sells eyeballs and it curries to their corporate advertisers.
The typical "I don't agree with your facts, so your facts must be false" theory. Can you prove that any of the stories that I presented from the Canadian media is false? Where all those private clinics actually cardboard boxes made by the Canadian media to serve their corporate overloards? Maybe this whole thread is a sham because originated from The Washington Post as it's owned my American corporate media.
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Similarly, home owners insurance rates went up an average of 70% three years ago, supposedly for black mold coverage. The Leg. retroactively removed coverage for black mold and water damage two and a half years ago. My homeowner's insurance rates have yet to go down.
Trail lawyers are a scapegoat propagated by business interests so they can increase profits (or offset losses incurred by bad .com investments).
Everyone likes to blame "those damn lawyers" until they need one. Businesses blame a large number of "frivolous" lawsuits on increasing their legal bills. Who defines frivolous? Businesses still initiate 80% of legal actions in this country. And businesses are not hesitant to unleash lawyers on indivuals.
IANAL, I am a design engineer. But I'm tired of hearing Chamber of Commerce misinformation quoted like its unbiased. Lawyers look after their clients interests. Lawyers for businesses look out for the business. If you have a dispute and no lawyer, who is looking out for your interests?
... is the assumption that other costs will not rise to narrow the gap.
For instance, assume oil prices rise to $100/bbl.
What then, is the cost for avaiation fuel, and how many airlines will be still in existence, as their prices inevitably rise, and their passenger volume falls?
So maybe instead of going to India (or ?) for health care, perhaps we'll see a floundering cruise ship business bought out by the now-prosperous 3rd-worlders, anchored in international waters just outside the US, doing bypass surgery followed by a week or two of "rehab".
[ALERT] ideas appropriated from Larry Niven follow [/ALERT]
As medical technology advances, it's a short hop from bypass surgery to kidney/liver/lung/etc replacement from cloned (or "donated") replacements.
Of course, you'll have to wait in line behind all the US legislators, administration bigwigs, and itinerant billionaires getting their annual tuneups... or maybe D.C. will merit its own floating medical facility.
Healthcare in America used to be affordable, with everyone having plenty of options to choose from. These two articles go into how things got so bad.
100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom
According to the articles, the American Medical Association (AMA) was founded with two implicit purposes: to raise their brand of healer's (M.D.s) incomes and status. So they used the government to establish "licensing laws", and worked to close 1/2 the medical schools in the U.S. in the 20th century.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
It's interesting that you state we "should" have the best medical care. If you measure outcomes, such as infant mortality, we clearly don't. We tend to lag behind other industrialized nations in outcome measures. Insured people don't fare any better. It's fairly disheartening that people treat the assumption that our health care is the best as a fact. Is it nationalism, or is it just denial?
which is why the government should take care of it. The drug companies also complain about anti-biotics and how they can't make money off of them, which is why the number of anti-biotics in developement has dwindled. These are things that the government should take care of. If you can't do it right and do it profitable, then just do it right.
But it's only about an hour of your life, and while you're lucid, you are totally numbed-up in the mouth.
I think it would be good for people to experience that kind of thing, and it's $1200.
There's very little I wouldn't do for an hour to save $1200.
Wait, that's not true, there's a lot I wouldn't do, but if it's MY blood I don't really mind.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
http://www.calgaryhealthregion.ca/newslink/er_pack 052103/motta052103.html
It isn't that the cost is too high, it is that the number of procedures to amortize the cost over is too low.
Insurance companies base their premiums on risk. If doctors are doing fewer procedures, then the risk should be lower. Either the risk really isn't lower because the risk is that some of the doctors are lousy and are likely to make horrible mistakes no matter the number of producedures or the insurance malpractice insurance system is broken and all the anti-lawyer sentiment should be directed to the insurance companies.
Also, if rural doctors are doing fewer procedures, they would also be making less money regardless of the malpractice issues since they would be billing less. Considering how much medical school costs and the debt levels of graduates, attracting doctors to a rural area where there is less money is always going to be a tough sell.
Yeah, I've experienced the same on some of my trips abroad. I've paid about 20 dollars in Nepal and Brazil to see a doctor, a test or two, and drugs. In Greece, I received some emergency care for free.
Now contrast that with the US... I needed care for an wound+infection on my leg and had to pay 1500 !!! dollars for the privelege of maybe a full hour of their time, bandages, and antibiotics. Thank god it wasn't worse.
Now I don't think health care should be free, but I don't think it should cost thousands of dollars either. I can't believe how F'd up medicine is today.
I just wanna pay the true, fair cost for things, directly. That would probably be one hundred dollars or so for a minor procedure and 2 or 3 for something midrange like the examples above. The poor could be subsidized if the true cost was too much, maybe like foodstamps or something.
Until that happens, I guess I'll just have to drive to Mexico whenever I need medical care.
-Mike
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Second, I'm sick of the "billions of dollars in profit" screed. That doesn't tell me anything unless you know the amount invested and the relative risk of that investment, which is something that many people (outside of the finance and economics professions) don't seem to understand.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
f that's the case, why are proponents of univeral health use polls to argue that majority of Americans want some sort of universal health care?
What proponents are using that? From what I remember of the debates and the convention, they are using the frightening statistics of our healthcare costs and the number of uninsured people we have.
I never said that I was against universal health care.
My original comment had nothing to do with universal healthcare vs private healthcare. It was simply pointing out that according to key health indicators, Canada's system is working out better than ours, and they pay less. This remains true regardless of all the personal anecdotes about Canada's healthcare that people keep brigning up.
I'm just against the idea of "Let's just copy Canada's version of universal healthcare because everyone there is happy!".
I never suggested anything of the sort.
First, there are plenty of people there who are unhappy with the speed of care and want access to private healthcare.
In a free country, you really couldn't stop private healthcare for those want to invest in it.
Second, American has a problem that Canada does not; high cost malpractice suits
Statistics don't bear this out. The cost of malpractice insurance in 2002 came out to 0.4% of total healthcare costs for the year. Since the insurance companies are not going bankrupt, it's quite clear that payouts as a result of malpractice suits were even less than 0.4% of total healthcare costs. Malpractice suits are a red-herring in the debate about healthcare.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"a blanket anti-market bias...In the minds of public, prices apparently go up when businesses suddenly start to feel greedier. Economists, in contrast, expect businesses to be greedy year-in, year-out; but depending on market conditions, greed may call for prices to go up, go down, or stay the same..."
And if you don't think risk effects investment behavior, then I have a bridge to sell you in AZ.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Or did you have a source for that?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I had heard of the old British system, a family friend went through it, and with a bit more technological innovation, it could be quite a good teaching method.
Yes, this problem affects many other democratic countries. Here in Alberta, they first time most "normal" (not AP/IB/special students) can take any calculus is in grade 12, and this class is only required for engineering students. Most people with science degrees do precalculus as a limit in high school, and need to do all of calculus in university (usually first or second year). I could very easily see the introduction of concepts like limits much earlier on, perhaps when students are taught factoring (as a use of factoring, to solve limits). Derivation/Integration could be much better placed in physics (I had a high school physics teacher that said, for every student that solves the problem in calculus, they will get a bonus mark or two) as well as chemistry. Even things like Newton's method could be taught alongside regular mathematics as a form of estimation.
Technology is the bane as well as the bastion of growth though. As much as technology supports and makes effective and interesting teaching a lot easier, it makes students forget the fundamentals. This year in first-year engineering, I have been completely deprived of a calculator and are doing pretty good, but I am not sure if last year I could have told you things like the cosine (75 deg) without my electronic crutch. While after the test, and in the workplace you can have any calculator you want, but what use are you if you need to look up math more simple then + - * / of numbers less then 100. These skills are also very fundamental to advanced math, and despite the fact that it may seem archaic, it might be useful to force students to learn curve sketching at the same time as functions, and eliminate the massively overpowered graphing calculators high school students use (in the sense that students can master the technology, not the math skills). I am leery about this for one reason, technology is ingrained into our society, and ignoring it entirely may be a worse crime. What would most likely be ideal is to, like my grade 12 calculus teacher did, is to simply create problems that are either to difficult, or impossible for the technology to solve. This forces the introduction of better educators, and we eventually get back into a viscous circle of problems.
Science and technology got modern democracies where they are now. Through encouraging growth and freedom we have placed ourselves in the lead for many few years, but without re-investing and re-developing the fundamental EDUCATION that got us here, we might really be in a bad position in the future.
Medevo
Canada's system is working out better than ours, and they pay less. This remains true regardless of all the personal anecdotes about Canada's healthcare that people keep brigning up.
That doesn't seem so from the articles I've seen from Canadian media. For example "Hansen said the B.C. government turned to private clinics to clear up a surgical backlog created by last spring's week-long health-care workers' strike".
In a free country, you really couldn't stop private healthcare for those want to invest in it.
You are right on that statement because Canada couldn't stop its citizens from paying to seek faster medical care. "Pettigrew's comments appear to mark a big change from the position of former health minister Anne McLellan, who objected to such clinics and warned provinces to stop them from charging fees. Critics say the clinics violate the Canada Health Act because they allow quicker diagnosis of medical problems for patients with the ability to pay."
Statistics don't bear this out. The cost of malpractice insurance in 2002 came out to 0.4% of total healthcare costs for the year. Since the insurance companies are not going bankrupt, it's quite clear that payouts as a result of malpractice suits were even less than 0.4% of total healthcare costs. Malpractice suits are a red-herring in the debate about healthcare.
I should've been more clear on this. I didn't make that statement for the welfare of the insurance companies, but rather for the doctors who may high malpractice insurances. During the second debate, Bush confronted Kerry about this and Kerry himself even admitted that it's something that needs to be looked at. Malpractice suits drive the doctors out of the profession and that's why they are not red-herring in the debate about healthcare. Highly paid speciality surgeons can afford the insurance, but the lowest paid family physicians can't.
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I'm quite possibly quoting you out of context here, but the idea of hospitals competing makes it sound like they're being run as businesses. The problem I see there is that the fundamental existence of a business is to make money, not to provide a service. Personally, with things that are truly important such as health care, mail, and utilities, I prefer to have the government run them. Sure, it will be expensive and there will be some waste from bureaucracy, but you will get a result.
That said, I can understand what you mean by abuse of the system. In college, we received free medical office visits (medication and supplies [other than nasty menthol cough drops] did cost money, of course) and I'll admit that I got too used to it, stopping in whenever I had an ache or a pain. Sure, it was nothing a good half of the time, but just in case... *shrug* That said, in the absence of said free care, I almost never go to the doctor's office, which has occasionally led to me suffering for weeks for something that may have been cleared up if I'd come into the office. Anyhow, I'll bear testament that, with free medical care, one may feel inclined to come in for a visit for little things like a cold or a flu whereas normally you'd just tough it out and let it clear up on its own.
{takes deep breath} Right, back to the original subject of the topic, I see getting medical care overseas like this as being similar to buying off-brand computer components. It's a heck of a lot cheaper, but since the costs are often cut by reducing safety features and/or limiting your ability to recover damages if things go wrong, you run your risks there. *shrug* That said, my off-brand hard drive and off-brand DVD-ROM drive were a fraction of the price I'd paid at a computer store and I've not had any trouble with them. Similarly, it seems people are doing Ok with these Indian doctors. Although I would suspect that the AMA may be putting out a "study" soon to publicize whatever disasters they can find as a result of people getting medical care overseas. Or then again, maybe they'll just move to India and outsource...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Why did you have to bring another hell-spawn into this already overpopulated world? Maybe the fact that you couldn't have a kid was a sign from god that you are not fit to raise children.
Since you invoke "hell" and "god", I suggest you check out a Bible and see what it says about the virtues of raising children.
(Do you also advocate abolition of medicine? Are influenza or appendicitis signs from God that someone is not fit to live? Because they used to be fatal.)
Parents who jump through hoops to concieve using IV, and parents who wade through all the red tape to adopt, usually ensure that their children will be loved, something much less likely from parents that shun birth control, breed like roaches, and have so many kids they haven't the time to nurture them or the resources to feed them. If you're worried about global overpopulation, these are likely to have a much greater impact. If my neighbour has too many children, does that mean that because of that, I'm not allowed to have any?
Canada wants babies to live so they can pay taxes as they age and enter the work force. Canada wants those no longer paying significant taxes to die so as not to be a drain on services.
You could've hired me.