National health systems: too much vs too little medical care: which is worse? (regular, suspect)
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How have you verified that the example never happens? To simply state that it never happens, when you have no way to know that, isn't very credible.
Most tort reform schemes are perks for the 1%. For tort reform to be the answer, it has to be designed to benefit everyone.
As for Obama being owned by trial attorneys, the best solution to that kind of problem might be a constitutional amendment that attorneys can't get involved in politics. Once you get licensed as an attorney, you should forever be prohibited from being a politician, lobbyist, or bureaucrat. Just like separation of church and state, we need separation of attorneys and state.
LOL nothing in this hypothesis is a serious argument. All of your responses to data (like the person who's family died from staph) are random stream of consciousness musings that really can't be debated.
Like this:
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Such as, who made the decision not to treat it soon enough? A doctor? A caregiver? And what length of time did you mean by not soon enough? And what kind of treatment did he eventually get? And how bad was the infection when the treatment was finally started?
Some people get staph infections periodically. If they have to spend thousands of dollars for treatment of each one, it could cause them major problems, which could be solved by treating the infections more efficiently. The "not soon enough" might actually be the main problem, rather than how costly and fancy the treatment is.
But I don't actually know much about staph, and am wondering why people's immune systems don't adapt to it. I would think, if the immune system adapted, the 2nd infection would be less severe than the first, and the 3rd even less. But, no, it doesn't seem to work that way for staph. But I'm wondering why not.
You also lack medical knowledge. Not every antibiotic treats every bacteria/condition. There are several classes of antibiotics. That's why they do cultures which take 5 days minimum.
LOL! Tort reform is a total sham. Many states already have limits on tort awards and neither health care costs nor malpractice insurance rates are much affected by them. What is affected is the number of doctors per capita. Otherwise, the whole issue has been done over and over and over again, and the bottom line is that it's just a joke.
Remember that the Republicans finally did send their "health care" plan (tort reform and interstate insurance marketing) off to CBO and it came back as MORE expensive than Obamacare while not -- over a period of ten years -- reducing the percent of uninsured Americans at all.
I don't care enough about the topic to debate it. Everybody knows that the PLAN was to creep into government control of healthcare 100% after this iteration fails. And it's doing a GREAT JOB failing. Obama is on video saying so, not to mention Gruber's revelations.
There is no logic to importing millions of legal and illegal immigrants - unskilled, uneducated, and illiterate - to be reliant on government benefits while claiming to care about "uninsured Americans". What a JOKE.
There are still 29 million uninsured people living here. Three guesses who they are.
Free market capitalists argue single-payer is anti-capitalism. But what kind of capitalism involves negotiations with patients whose brains are affected by fever etc.? And what kind of capitalism requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions? Capitalism in medical care is nothing but a stupid pipe dream of capitalism purists.
I don't see how single-payer is anti-capitalism.
For example, let's say Medicare is the single-payer insurer. Medicare has a fixed rate of $30,000 for a knee replacement surgery. You as the patient are free to go to whatever hospital you want to have it done. Hospital A charges $32,000 for a knee replacement and for that you can stay up to 3 nights in a shared room. Hospital B charges $40,000 and for that you get up to 5 nights in a private room. It is your choice - "A" will cost you $2000, "B" will cost you $10,000 beyond what Medicare covers. Hospitals A and B are in competition with each other. Perhaps a 3rd hospital comes around and offers the knee replacement at $28,000 in order to attract more patients. Capitalism is working perfectly.
The only part that is not capitalistic is insurance companies have largely been replaced with Medicare. But that is necessary since insurance relies on a large pool of insured people to work and currently the pool is just not working - healthy people are opting out. It is the healthy people in the pool who allow the unhealthy to be subsidized. But many people don't believe in helping the disadvantaged. Unfortunately the only way to solve that is fund the single-payer system with taxes, which you cannot opt out of.
Maybe because they know the doctor is going to refer them for wasteful testing to be sure they're 100% healthy. If you don't have an obvious medical condition, you have a choice of two different risks. First, there is the risk that you have a hidden medical condition that might get a lot worse. Second, there is the risk that testing might falsely discover medical conditions you seem to have but don't really, and those might end up bankrupting you, when you might have been fine without them. In recent news, even a lot of cancers were false positives, causing huge cancer treatment expenses, that seemed to be successful, because the cancer was gone.
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This is nonsense. Americans are not afraid to go to the doctor due to a fear of the doctor sending them for frivolous testing, that's ridiculous. The problem is the opposite: doctors refuse to administer tests when a patient is struggling with chronic illness, and they don't refer patients to specialists. And the likelihood that a doc performing a cursory annual exam would turn up a hidden condition is extremely slim. However, as is the case in my town, where there's only 1 colonoscopy clinic, if a patient gets a ruptured colon from the procedure, none of that person's friends will ever go there for a colonoscopy. It's a small town, and word travels fast.
For example, let's say Medicare is the single-payer insurer. Medicare has a fixed rate of $30,000 for a knee replacement surgery. You as the patient are free to go to whatever hospital you want to have it done. Hospital A charges $32,000 for a knee replacement and for that you can stay up to 3 nights in a shared room. Hospital B charges $40,000 and for that you get up to 5 nights in a private room. It is your choice - "A" will cost you $2000, "B" will cost you $10,000 beyond what Medicare covers. Hospitals A and B are in competition with each other. Perhaps a 3rd hospital comes around and offers the knee replacement at $28,000 in order to attract more patients. Capitalism is working perfectly.
The only part that is not capitalistic is insurance companies have largely been replaced with Medicare. But that is necessary since insurance relies on a large pool of insured people to work and currently the pool is just not working - healthy people are opting out. It is the healthy people in the pool who allow the unhealthy to be subsidized. But many people don't believe in helping the disadvantaged. Unfortunately the only way to solve that is fund the single-payer system with taxes, which you cannot opt out of.
Medicare is a great deal for insurance companies as it takes the segment of the population which are the biggest consumers of health care off their books and onto those of the taxpayer. Fact is, the taxpayer is already picking up the tab for most of our healthcare costs:
"Tax-funded expenditures accounted for 64.3 percent of U.S. health spending – about $1.9 trillion – in 2013, according to new data published today [Thursday, Jan. 21] in the American Journal of Public Health."
In reality, taxpayers are subsidizing the profits of insurance companies. There is an argument that we would be better bringing everyone into the public system so that younger and healthier citizens can subsidize Medicare and Medicaid rather than the insurance companies.
For one thing, Americans in general do not like to go to the doctor. You have to harass them to get them to do as much as getting an annual physical exam or taking such basic precautions as periodic eye exams or colonoscopies after 50. Under-consumption of health care here is a far more serious problem than over-consumption. Don't forget that the US still has one of the worst rates of death from treatable causes among developed nations.
Could you provide some support for your claim? I've never known anyone with insurance who didn't go to the doc at least for their annual exam. They may be out there, but there are also people who spent years desperately trying to get medical help who eventually gave up and either became disabled or had to resort to practitioners outside the insurance-based system, whether MD's or alternative health practitioners.
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Originally Posted by Pub=911;
As for imaging technology, there are many more imaging machines per capita in Japan than in the US and utilization rates there are high. An imaging session in Japan however costs about one-fifth of what it costs in the US. Japan has no problems with crushing health care costs.
The purposes of GP's are to treat small problems, to maintain a baseline of your general health status, and to do referrals to specialists when the need for one arises. A GP after all is a generalist. He or she has some knowledge about a lot of things. It is specialists who have the deep knowledge of one or just a few things, and those are the people you want to see when you have one of those things.
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Many GP's have areas of specialization, though, and list those on their websites. Too often, though, that turns out to be meaningless; they still wave patient concerns aside as non-existent or trivial. And they don't refer to specialists. Patients whose insurer is an HMO can't access specialists without a referral from their GP. And some specialists aren't knowledgeable or experienced with some conditions that fall under their specialty. Some specialties are strictly controlled by insurance as to how they can practice and what tests they're allowed to order or prohibited from ordering.
Maybe because they know the doctor is going to refer them for wasteful testing to be sure they're 100% healthy.
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Originally Posted by Pub-911
I don't think this is an actual reason. An exam begins after all with the doctor asking for your own assessment and testimony concerning how you have felt lately. If you claim that everything has been peachy keen and in-office baseline testing suggests nothing to the contrary, you'll be out of the office in no time at all.
It seems to me that the real reasons people are reluctant to make an appointment with a doctor are things like the fact that they may be busy, they may also be a bit lazy, they may lack quality insurance coverage, or they may simply be intimidated by the notion of speaking frankly -- even though confidentially -- about personal matters to a medical professional.
While I'm sure you might disagree, I would suggest that the older you become, the more important it is to establish and maintain a regime of regular medical care. People die every day from what were originally curable diseases simply because they thought they did not have the time or money to go through a simple screening procedure. It's best not to become one of those people.
I remember a long time ago going to the "family doctor" and they actually looked at you and even TOUCHED you! They listened to your heart and lungs....looked in your throat, tested your reflexes...palpated your abdomen. Now you get your BP checked by a nurse who maybe checks your temp. But they are most interested in weighing you every single time you see them, even if you're only there a couple weeks later for a re-check. Oh and they love to confirm what meds you are on but can't even pronounce any of them...they chuckle a bit ....that gives me NO confidence in nurses or whoever is in that role.
But mostly you get hundreds or even thousands of dollars of tests and then not a word....nothing conclusive therefore I guess you're just fine!
And no, they don't have time to listen to you...if you do talk or try to diagnose yourself you are always wrong and advised to see another one of your doctors, it's never anything they can fix. I used to like and respect doctors but the system has gone bad.
There is an argument that we would be better bringing everyone into the public system so that younger and healthier citizens can subsidize Medicare and Medicaid rather than the insurance companies.
Bingo!
That is exactly the argument that I have been making in this thread. Medicare is a system that is in-place and it works well. It allows for add-on insurance ("Medi-gap" plans) for those who want higher coverage. It does not force anyone into public health providers like the UK plan - you can go to any doctor you want. It is mostly funded by taxes although there are small premiums, which are dependent upon your income level.
That is exactly the argument that I have been making in this thread. Medicare is a system that is in-place and it works well. It allows for add-on insurance ("Medi-gap" plans) for those who want higher coverage. It does not force anyone into public health providers like the UK plan - you can go to any doctor you want. It is mostly funded by taxes although there are small premiums, which are dependent upon your income level.
Actually, the UK system is both public and private. There is a parallel private system to the NHS if you want a higher level of service and/or choice. Interestingly, the existence of the NHS keeps the cost of private insurance and private health care in the UK quite affordable.
No, they are trivial cost factors. The principal driver of high medical insurance premiums in any specialty is a low level of competition in state insurance markets.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) ... Recently we announced that we spent more than 87 cents of every premium dollar paying for our customers’ health care – doctor visits, surgery, tests, medicine, eyeglasses, etc.
Most of the rest went to customer service and IT, and to taxes at the federal, state & local level.
The Medical Loss Ratio requirement (MLR), created by the Affordable Care Act in 2010, is aimed at preventing insurance companies from spending excessively on administration (including salaries) and other routine business costs. The MLR requirement means that health insurers can’t just increase rates as a way to increase profits.
In 2014, BCBSNC paid $365 million more toward health care expenses than was required by the federal government. This was the fourth consecutive year that the company MLRs exceeded the ACA requirements at 88.3 percent for individual, 87 percent for small groups, 91.3 percent for large groups and 90 percent for student groups.
The principal driver of high medical insurance premiums is the high cost of medical care. As we all know, we don't really have "medical insurance" in the USA; we instead of what would best be described as "pre-paid medical care." For example, most pregnancies are planned and due dates are known months in advance, yet we fund baby delivery services the same way we would the repair of a car wreck: through filing an "insurance" claim.
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