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re: U.S. ranks last in quality of health care system
Posted on 6/18/14 at 6:41 pm to scrooster
Posted on 6/18/14 at 6:41 pm to scrooster
quote:
Reagan warned us about socialists and socialized medicine ... MASH HERE. It's 10 minutes worth watching and he gets right to it in the first two minutes.
sigh. another right wing propaganda
every developed countries except US have so called "socialized medicine." but mark my words, health care cost in the US will NEVER go down because of greed. we're pretty much stuck with what we got here.
short video of Japan's socialized medicine
cliffs:
-Japan is roughly the same size as the state of Montana and has population of 150 million. very high population density but average Japanese see the doctors 3 times as often as Americans do and the wait time is even shorter.
-No HMO network bullshite and no gate keeper. You can walk into any specialist without a referral from your primary care physician.
-every year government negotiates and regulates prices for each and every procedure. Whereas in the US, Fortune 500 insurance companies have enormous control over the medical industry. They set all rates of reimbursement for all medical services no matter how trivial.
-Result? $10 a night hospital stay in Japan. try that in the US. in the US it could add up quickly to $10k if you stay just a few days. $90 MRI of your neck (around $1200 in the US)
-everybody is covered and they don't kick you out or jack up the premium 10X when you get really sick
-prescription drugs are around 5X~10X cheaper than US.
-In Japan, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit. anything left over is carried over to the next year and if there's a lot carried over, premium goes down.
-Insurance premium is around $280 per month for a family of four and it covers everything under the sun. and employer pays at least half. $140 for a family of 4 sounds very reasonable.
-Japan has fabulous health statistics and people are highly satisfied with their healthcare system.
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Posted on 6/18/14 at 7:33 pm to Phat Phil
So move to Japan
Posted on 6/18/14 at 7:44 pm to Phat Phil
quote:
every developed countries except US have so called "socialized medicine."
Every other developed country has worse disease outcomes.
Again, you get what you pay for. The average lifespan after a breast cancer diagnosis in Britain is 9.4 years. In the US it's over 15. We have a nearly two fold higher rate of remission across all forms of cancer than the second closest nation. You are twice as likely to survive a heart attack here as in Japan.
This post was edited on 6/18/14 at 7:46 pm
Posted on 6/18/14 at 7:51 pm to Crimson
quote:
So move to Japan
Great answer. frick fixing our healthcare system, move elsewhere.
Anyway, I think most health problems could be at the very least be drastically curbed by proper diet and exercise. And by people not taking every pill prescribed to them for some of these bullshite diseases.
Sick people are big business, and a boatload of money is being made from keeping people sick.
Posted on 6/18/14 at 8:06 pm to Phat Phil
Hell i agree with some of what youre saying. It is ridiculous that some damn middle man decides how much a doctor gets compensated.
If you want a way to cut medical costs in America, take a look at sales reps. I have no idea why a rep that may not even have a college degree gets paid out the arse to stand in an OR and tell a surgeon what screw goes in what hole. Sometimes the rep may make close to or even more than the surgeon. I have several buddies who are reps, and i know they are just trying to make a living, but goddamn. Rather than cutting the pay of the man who has spent his entire life in school, why not look at the middle men?
If you want a way to cut medical costs in America, take a look at sales reps. I have no idea why a rep that may not even have a college degree gets paid out the arse to stand in an OR and tell a surgeon what screw goes in what hole. Sometimes the rep may make close to or even more than the surgeon. I have several buddies who are reps, and i know they are just trying to make a living, but goddamn. Rather than cutting the pay of the man who has spent his entire life in school, why not look at the middle men?
Posted on 6/18/14 at 10:09 pm to reservoir_dawg
quote:
Look at the profits, pure profits, of those health insurers during the recession. Think about how many businesses fell on tough times and how many folks went unemployed. Then realize that most of the big health insurers are profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. Not per year. Per quarter.
Seems strange right? At the exact time that everyone is struggling, they are making huge profits. Not only are they making huge profits, but they're increasing their premiums as shown in the article to make even larger profits.
What was the percent of those profits to their expenses?
I know UNH was around 8% profit margin during that time period. I'm a share holder.
For the math-challenged like yourself, that means if they made $800 million in a year, they took in $8 Billion and spent 7.2 Billion generating that revenue and paying claims.
Or something like that...
Dollar amounts on profits are irrelevant without the context of the total financial picture of the company.
You fricking communist.
This post was edited on 6/18/14 at 10:11 pm
Posted on 6/18/14 at 11:15 pm to deeprig9
quote:
Great answer. frick fixing our healthcare system, move elsewhere.
I am just sick of hearing about how much our healthcare system is broken and 'sub-standard' to the rest of the industrialized world. I take care of the sickest, most complex patients on a daily basis who would be left for dead in other countries or who would have died of complications from their conditions long before their current state of affairs from 'rationing' or lack of highly specialized care. Part of our problem is that we do a great job of keeping people alive a lot longer - this is not so we can make more money as an industry but because of patient preference. Believe it or not, given the alternative, people like living and we have found a way to keep the sickest individuals alive indefinitely (Left Ventricular Assist Devices for end-stage heart failure or modern solid-organ transplantation or stem-cel transplantation for hematologic malignancy).
As evidence for this, look no further than the article cited a few posts back. We have cured Hepatitis C. The private market set the price quite high for this therapy The private market also knows how expensive it is to take care of ONE patient having multiple admissions for the complications of cirrhosis (hepatocellular carcinoma, hepatic encephalopathy, GI bleeds, spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, ect) and the definitive cure for cirrhosis: a liver transplant (not to mention all of the myraid complications post-transplant).
A second example is Statins. The American College of Cardiology just released its new guidelines on the use of Statins in preventing heart disease. The immediate reaction is that these new guidelines will cause millions to be placed on a statin and that doctors and drug companies are greedy. Forget that statins have repeatedly been proven to reduce heart attacks in very well done randomized controlled trials. Heart attacks are expensive. Statins are less expensive.
If you want less expensive health-care: move to Japan or get your surgery done in Mexico. I'll be here when you return septic with your wound dripping pus ready to save your life with evidence-based medicine.
This post was edited on 6/18/14 at 11:35 pm
Posted on 6/19/14 at 1:18 am to Crimson
The problem is people mistake cost and accessibility with quality.
Posted on 6/19/14 at 10:27 am to Prettyboy Floyd
quote:
Sham lawsuits are a big reason why and the amount of money people collect from these lawsuits is astronomical.
This is the go-to argument for a lot of people when discussing health care costs. I don't know what the percentage of health care costs goes to 'astronomical' damage awards but I think it would be surprisingly low.
A lot of this is being addressed with med mal reform, but that doesn't keep people from parroting this argument every opportunity.
Consider the most horrendous medical malpractice you can think of: the wrong knee is replaced, the wrong testicle is cut off, back surgery gone bad...and you are limited to 250k recovery! What if you are the victim?
If I ruled the world. The first thing I would address to control health care costs is advertising by Big Pharm.
Posted on 6/19/14 at 4:10 pm to Robert Goulet
quote:
Anyway, I think most health problems could be at the very least be drastically curbed by proper diet and exercise. And by people not taking every pill prescribed to them for some of these bull shite diseases. Sick people are big business, and a boatload of money is being made from keeping people sick.
People are keeping themselves sick. No one is forcing them to not diet or exercise.
Posted on 6/19/14 at 7:00 pm to the808bass
quote:
No one is forcing them to not diet or exercise.
What is this term 'diet'? What's its relevance?
Anyone that is on a 'diet' is doing it wrong.
You're either eating right, or eating wrong.
Diets are short term nonsense that aren't healthy and sustainable, kinda like every other 'solution' in this system.
This post was edited on 6/19/14 at 7:01 pm
Posted on 6/19/14 at 7:10 pm to the808bass
quote:
People are keeping themselves sick. No one is forcing them to not diet or exercise.
No doubt. I don't mean to absolve people from personal responsibility at all. Someone mentioned it in another thread and I agree. The general ignorance on what is healthy and what isn't doesn't help either.
Does it seem right that the very organizations that are there to safeguard the general populous (and are generally trusted) are helping push prescription drugs? And my god, the amount of processed and shitty foods that are "ok" according to the FDA? Idk man, sure seems to me that they're fine with folks staying sick.
This post was edited on 6/19/14 at 7:13 pm
Posted on 6/19/14 at 7:16 pm to Robert Goulet
quote:
Does it seem right that the very organizations that are there to safeguard the general populous (and are generally trusted) are helping push prescription drugs? And my god, the amount of processed and shitty foods that are "ok" according to the FDA? Idk man, sure seems to me that they're fine with folks staying sick.
This is important.
The grid is set up so that it's very difficult to eat well, and not just well in the sense that you won't get fat, but truly well in a life affirming way.
Our food system is not just bad, it's criminal.
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