I hate hospitals!!!

[jdbnsn]

That is entirely unacceptable medicine. Doc's do rely on nurses quite a bit to get the baseline vitals and background, but no doc should have that minimal a role in his/her patient's care. Flu 4 times in one year? Not likely, though remotely possible.

[d_stilgar]

My dad has been out of medical school for 20 years and still has over $100,000 in student loans. I've worked at his practice for over eight years and our dinner conversation has often centered around his work. My mom is an electronic medical records trainer. She travels around the country and gets practices up to speed on EMR. She was the manager of my dad's business for almost ten years. She quit because her training job paid alot more and the demand has been going way up. She knows more about the business side of medicine than anyone I know.

It's hard to say that a family practice doctor is overpaid. They don't make that much (compared to any other job in the medical field that requires an MD). It's specialists and surgeons that are overpaid.

I agree that it's time the insurance companies were cracked down on. Most of the time you can fight and they will cave. They know they are in the wrong and a simple threat or incessant badgering will get you the coverage you've been paying for. Nonetheless, I think this can be solved with some legislature or a few court cases. The reason none of this has gone to court yet though is that they always cave if you keep bugging them.

[d_stilgar]

I think its just kinda ****ty for the HP to be hounding patients now because of a proposed bill making its way through congress when in the past a simple bill and follow up phone call did the job just fine.

That's pretty nice coverage I must say.

This same thing happened with cash for clunkers thing. People held on to their crappy cars for a long time waiting for it to be passed. Dealerships and car companies reported horrible sales from the time the bill was rumored until it passed. 250,000 people used up all the money in the first weekend (because they had been in the market for months, but held off for so long). The government called it "an overwhelming success" (not sure when less than 1/10th of one percent of the population became a majority) and quickly extended the program. People didn't haggle as much because they were getting $4000 off the car, and the car dealerships and automakers had been suffering for months in part because of this bill.

So while 99.92% of the population doesn't benefit, the car companies finally make the sales that they would have been making consistently for months, only they don't have to haggle and government pays the only real discount the customer gets.

On top of that, 250,000 old cars are off the road. Most of these ran and had value, but they had to be destroyed. I love how the government is literally willing to throw value in the garbage.

What will this do the used car market? Well, my guess is that new cars will depreciate in value very quickly.

What about people who couldn't really afford a new car? Because of that bill there are 250,000 people with car payments that didn't have one the week before. Their car gets repo'd and now they have no transportation, or they sell it at a loss to get out of the payments they can't afford.

My point? When the government meddles in the market they affect more than they usually realize, like the hospital acting all crazy for no reason.

[Kayin]

Well, having what is essentially a terminal medical condition (Marfan's Syndrome) and being unable to get medical care, I'm predictably interested in the bills right now. I want to live, jackasses-I'm not too concerned about continued profits.

I'm not a strict capitalist-I believe in more of a meritocracy, which is the best service get paid the best. If I could afford the ridiculous charges that medicine wanted, I'd be willing to pay those who were actively working with me to help me, but around here they're more likely to kill you with neglect if your insurance isn't good.

[simon275]

Australia's health care is all right. I have been to the ER at my local hospital a few times and there has been like no one there. We have a lot of medical centers here where people can go for there day to day ailments but for major things and sugery's we have public and private hospitals. Unless you get an injection or something a trip to the doctor is usually free. As the doctors just bill the government.

You can get private health insurance which you can then claim expensive things against such as dental and surgery etc. If you do not have health insurance you can pay the money for say surgery and go on a waiting list.

It is explained here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(Australia)

[d_stilgar]

Well, having what is essentially a terminal medical condition (Marfan's Syndrome) and being unable to get medical care, I'm predictably interested in the bills right now. I want to live, jackasses-I'm not too concerned about continued profits.

That sucks. I know that my idea of keeping it private but requiring everyone to be insured does not give you the best coverage. I will say, however, that you wouldn't likely get the coverage you deserve under the current proposed plan and that my idea would get you better coverage than what you have now. It really isn't about profits, but getting the most value for cost. In the end it has to be sustainable no matter how it's done.

[slytherock]

You also envy Canada because it's just generally a great place to live. We also have great beer, better hockey teams, etc etc.

... and Luke... and me... etc...

[mDust]

However, American doctors are probably paid too well all things considered.

I live near the 'medical mile' in GR, MI. Spectrum Health is the corporation that owns most of the hospitals in west MI, and they spend billions in this city alone every couple of years putting up new buildings and parking, buying properties, forcing people out of their homes, etc...and yet they are extremely profitable. I can't even imagine the amount of money they are raking in by the day. And they pay their doctors VERY well. It isn't necessarily just the doctors that are overpaid...

Although I don't have health insurance due to being mildly sick only every 5 years or so, I think it is a good idea for a law to be passed to require every US citizen to be covered by health insurance. With such a huge customer base, insurance rates will be forced down to being incredibly affordable. And it's good to be covered anyway since accidents do happen. I've had some pretty close calls with traffic on my daily walk to and from work. (After we get the health care issues straightened out, we need to concentrate on the ***holes that are giving out drivers licenses like candy to any idiot that wants one.)

And as for government health care, I've seen incredible amounts of fraud with the current system. There was a popular local doctor that was recently convicted and imprisoned for insurance fraud and unsanitary practices. He was double billing insurance companies for procedures that were either never performed, unnecessary, or both. It's not a good idea to allow the billing of the government without a system that monitors and prevents such fraud. All contractors in existence already bill the government exorbitantly because "it's the government, they have plenty of money". Well, idiots (not you, gentle reader), all that billing adds up! People will brag about how they sold the government a hammer for $1000 and complain about taxes in the same breath...

All of this points to the old adage: "greed is the root of all evil".

[DaveW]

1. The health care system in the UK is NOT free.... We all pay for it through taxes - specifically National Insurance Contributions which we pay on top of Income Tax - as well as this we have to pay a contribution towards medicines - sometimes that contribution is nowhere near the actual cost and sometimes it is radically higher - we pay exactly the same small fee for a couple of aspirin as for a 6 month course of very expensive meds. Irrespective, free it is NOT.

This is a good point, but most people participating in this discussion will know that 'free' in this context means freely available, and not free of cost. I really should point out that in the UK, it's extremely difficult to be in a position where you can't afford prescription medication. There may be subtle differences between Scotland and England, but in Scotland if you can't afford to pay you'll usually fall into certain brackets, of which there about 15. These brackets mean you can get free medicine for a variety of reasons-a payment exception certificate, over a certain age, under a certain age, currently unemployed, currently unable to work because of illness, prescription is for contraception, etc. In Scotland, there's an upper bound to how much you'll pay for medicine. I buy a year's 'pre-payment' certificate, which means I pay about £80/$134.30 (I think) for my year's prescriptions, regardless of what I take.

I don't think we have a bad system, and I don't think the Americans, Canadians, Russians, etc. have a bad system either. Yet there is that general feeling that it could somehow be improved; it's just no-one seems to know how.

-Dave

[Airbozo]

Not a whole lot to add, but I am for overhauling the medical and insurance industry. However they are 2 separate issues that need to be dealt with separately. I don't feel that both systems need to be scrapped and re-invented. Things just need to be fixed.