"Medicine" in America

[secretkeeper12]

One problem with our system is that yes the price of surgeries, procedures, etc. are very expensive, but it's mainly because hospitals know that the government will foot the bill so they can charge a lot more. I'm not sure about ambulances being weird about payment like that, but no hospital in the U.S. will refuse a person in need, and if the person has no insurance the bill will get passed on to other taxpayers. The root problem isn't that people here are too greedy to pay more taxes, we just know that medical providers charge way too much for services because they can, it's the same problem with our University system and student loans.

I don't know all the answers, but I don't care about the politics and what not, in the U.S. we cannot get universal health care without changing how the hospitals can charge medicare/medicaid whichever they do. I wish everyone could get every bit of health care they need, but I know that the systems others in this thread are talking about have some pretty bad shortcomings. Here in California it would be a nightmare to implement universal healthcare, other states could do it for sure, but I don't even want to think about that train wreck.

If the government handled all medical services, they'd have no reason to inflate the prices like private companies. There's no significant difference between our medical services and say Canada's, except in how it's distributed, so it's only logical to conclude that that's our problem.

 

[clippen05]

I'll never forgive America for what their fucked up healthcare has wrought upon me. This year, I was involved in a sports accident that resulted in my finger being broken. Sure, seems like no big deal, but not only was it broken, it was bent significantly to the right. I had a chance to get surgery, but the out of pocket costs would be too steep for my family, who was going through a rough economic situation at the time. We have health insurance provided by my parents work; that doctor didn't use our insurance or something. So I was "treated" by another doctor who did accept our insurance. All he did was really just wrap my finger up in a ace-bandage. Now my right small-finger permanently bends to the right. I can still move it, but it can get in the way when grasping things and makes things like driving somewhat uncomfortable. If I lived in the U.K. or Canada, I wouldn't have to deal with this, but unfortunately I was born in the good old USA. Whoop de Doo.

So glad I'll be getting out of here for college, hopefully for good.

 

[xaszatm]

One problem with our system is that yes the price of surgeries, procedures, etc. are very expensive, but it's mainly because hospitals know that the government will foot the bill so they can charge a lot more. I'm not sure about ambulances being weird about payment like that, but no hospital in the U.S. will refuse a person in need, and if the person has no insurance the bill will get passed on to other taxpayers. The root problem isn't that people here are too greedy to pay more taxes, we just know that medical providers charge way too much for services because they can, it's the same problem with our University system and student loans.

I don't know all the answers, but I don't care about the politics and what not, in the U.S. we cannot get universal health care without changing how the hospitals can charge medicare/medicaid whichever they do. I wish everyone could get every bit of health care they need, but I know that the systems others in this thread are talking about have some pretty bad shortcomings. Here in California it would be a nightmare to implement universal healthcare, other states could do it for sure, but I don't even want to think about that train wreck.

Speaking as someone who has been studying the medicine, been an EMT and who have multiple family members in medicine, this isn't the main reason why hospital bills can be so expensive. As an EMT, you have the most JOYLESS job in the universe. You get paid a horrible wage to cart people who recently dies or watch living patients die before your eyes. Add to that is the fact that the ambulance service is TERRIBLY underfunded. Them asking for such programs? They are THAT desperate for money because most EMT centers can't sustain themselves. It has nothing to do with greed.

Same goes with doctors themselves. They are under the Hippocratic Oath. While I agree with the Oath, it also means doctors can be sued if they don't provide the very best in medicinal care to you. Why am I suggesting an MRI for your chronic headaches? Because there might be a slight chance that it is something serious. Not because I like loading you with extra bills. Most doctors, nurses and even hospital businesses never even see a penny from those bills.

Now, if you want to talk about the overpricing of medicine by pharmaceuticals or the messed up legal system of how healthcare is run, then yeah I agree with the problems of medicine in America.

 

[amartin_109]

This thread makes me very sad face. What part of free market equals competition equals reduction in price has been forgotten?

http://www.surgerycenterok.com/about/

Interesting little project. I hope it takes off.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

You know that obscenely huge military they have? You know, the big one.

Take like 5% of that budget, and there's your universal healthcare. No extra taxes, just the money redistributed elsewhere.

You should probably look after the people in your own country before making something to kill the populace of another.

But without more military spending, how can we protect our political careers the people from actually doing something the terrorists?

 

[Maevine]

When it comes to healthcare, our country is just sad. There's not much else to it. It's just. Really sad.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Honestly, I find the concept of Medicine and medical attention being a "Business" fucking abhorrent. You have to be a real Asshole to charge someone a ridiculous amount of money after saving their life.

Why? It is a business. No different whatsoever from lawyer, CEO or teacher.

Besides, you can imagine what's going through those doctors heads: "You deserve this. You went through 6 years of school so you could earn shitloads. You were reading books when the rest of your highschool class was getting drunk and laid. You're smarter than everyone else... etc etc"

 

[Gennadios]

An ambulance is not a fucking taxi and healthcare is not a money making enterprise. If you lived in a civilised country your healthcare would be paid for in taxes and government funding

America had 40 years of spindoctoring to purge that mindset out of the public. The non-mentally handicapped way of looking at Healthcare would be seeing it as a fire department or a police force, a public enterprise for the greater good.

Nowadays, public healthcare is just seen as communism and the people that hate the concept are the ones that stand to benefit from it the most.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

It seems to work here in the UK and a lot of other countries. Sure the system is far from perfect and the wards arent like a five star hotel but it does the job. What is america doing so wrong that we are doing right...or vice versa?

Healthcare is just insanely expensive here, way more than any other country. I could guess at some reason why but I'm sure the root causes are a topic of discussion for more educated individuals. I just have to leave it by saying "That's how it is here"

It's why the analogies to other countries with working healthcare systems don't always work. The government cant afford to provide all its citizens with a free MRIs when an MRI costs 10 times as much as in other countries. I think its been shown that America actually spends more on healthcare than many other countries yet has less coverage, all because of prices.

I wasnt using other countries as an analogy i was just asking if there is something fundmentally different in america because i dont have a clue. My guess would be that people are willing to pay an arm and a leg (for want of a better term) to get surgery. If you think about it someone says to you "i can save you or your families life but its gonna cost you 1 million bucks" you can garuntee that you will be doing everything in your power including whoring out your sweet little ass at every truck stop to get that million

However ever when you pay your taxes and the government takes the tab you no longer have the "ill sell you your childs life for as much as i want" mentality. Then prices go down as a result

Edit: hospitals in america are basically buisnesses and are there to make a huge profit whereas in the UK they actually run at loss or break even

Honestly, a lot of it is our legal system. Every country that has Universal Health Care have also stomped down HARD on people being able to sue for medical malpractice. Obviously, this can lead to some undesirable outcomes. When my uncle's kidney transplant went south in Germany because of a ****-up during the procedure, his only option was that he could get on a second accelerated list with only a 2-year wait.

Americans are unwilling to give up the ability to sue which drives up the costs both with medical malpractice and with unnecessary preventative medicine that is more aimed at thwarting lawsuits than the health of the patient.

From my observations, it's kind of a trade-off. If you're confident in your doctor, then you want to go with UHC. However, if your doctor screws up or you're in the 1%> with some rare condition that preventative medicine helps, you want to be under the American system.

 

[Vausch]

So the problem isn't insurance companies a lack of a health care system. The problem is that those guys in the Ambulance, the doctors that treated you, and the hospital administrators, are all a bunch of greedy assholes. If the government wants to help us it should bring the hammer down on all the doctors and Ambulance drivers. Force them to do their job for a set price or go out of business.

Or the government step in and pay everyones healthcare with tax payers money. Sure you pay more tax but you know that when you go to hospital you dont have to pay a penny to get healthcare

The relevant question is this, why don't you pay for your healthcare out of your own pocket. You don't because you cant afford it. In America at least, the cost of healthcare is so high that nobody can afford to pay it. Nobody can afford to spend $2000 to sleep in a hospital bed for one night.

This is why universal healthcare wont work, at least for America. How is the government supposed to use our money to pay for something we cant afford? If their isn't enough money in our pockets to pay the bill then how can the government, which gets all of its money from our pockets, afford to pay the bill?

It seems to work here in the UK and a lot of other countries. Sure the system is far from perfect and the wards arent like a five star hotel but it does the job. What is america doing so wrong that we are doing right...or vice versa?

Part of it is we don't have set prices. A surgery in San Francisco can cost 5 times what it would cost in Alabama, even if both doctors are equally trained and skilled.

Another is pharmaceutical companies have direct control over the prices set. You know how in some places you guys pay maybe 5 or 10 bucks (pounds?) for any amount of pills? Over here it's not uncommon for a necessary prescription of something for bronchitis to cost 300 bucks after the hospital visit (personal experience there). It makes treatments expensive as well, because of anaesthesia and antibiotics jacking up the overall cost. Further, pills from other countries that do the same thing are illegal. We could get our pills from Canada or Mexico for much less, but if we brought them home we'd be arrested. Heck, some have tried to make the government pass bills to prevent generic versions of medicines to be made after a certain amount of time.

Your doctors are also government employees (right?). Ours are free-market.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Speaking as someone who has been studying the medicine, been an EMT and who have multiple family members in medicine, this isn't the main reason why hospital bills can be so expensive. As an EMT, you have the most JOYLESS job in the universe. You get paid a horrible wage to cart people who recently dies or watch living patients die before your eyes. Add to that is the fact that the ambulance service is TERRIBLY underfunded. Them asking for such programs? They are THAT desperate for money because most EMT centers can't sustain themselves. It has nothing to do with greed.

Same goes with doctors themselves. They are under the Hippocratic Oath. While I agree with the Oath, it also means doctors can be sued if they don't provide the very best in medicinal care to you. Why am I suggesting an MRI for your chronic headaches? Because there might be a slight chance that it is something serious. Not because I like loading you with extra bills. Most doctors, nurses and even hospital businesses never even see a penny from those bills.

Now, if you want to talk about the overpricing of medicine by pharmaceuticals or the messed up legal system of how healthcare is run, then yeah I agree with the problems of medicine in America.

I agree the legal system situation when it comes to malpractice is abyssal if I'm being generous. Don't get me wrong, the actual doctors, nurses, EMTs etc. wanting great compensation isn't my problem with our system, not many people could put up with the awful things they must deal with, myself included. However the higher ups treat it too much like a business, and will be able to ask for lots of money from the government because they can, because of the way everything's set up. As for finding a way to lower costs and keep the system sustainable, I really wish I had an answer for that, but the current system would not allow for lower costs, and complete coverage. I would say cut wasteful spending that both political parties like to protect, and raise taxes a bit more, but that would only do so much.

The U.S. is such a different beast than most of the countries with universal medicine, with the population, and tax break down, we could not do the same thing, we would need to tear down the current system(if that is even possible) and reform it in such a way that in the end would not please supporters on both sides of the argument. Again, I have very few answers, I won't claim I'm right, but this situation is not as simple as both sides try to make it out to be.

 

[LetalisK]

Honestly, I find the concept of Medicine and medical attention being a "Business" fucking abhorrent. You have to be a real Asshole to charge someone a ridiculous amount of money after saving their life.

Why? It is a business. No different whatsoever from lawyer, CEO or teacher.

Besides, you can imagine what's going through those doctors heads: "You deserve this. You went through 6 years of school so you could earn shitloads. You were reading books when the rest of your highschool class was getting drunk and laid. You're smarter than everyone else... etc etc"

...6 years? Ha! Try 11-19 years, depending on the specialty. Not to mention doing 80 hours a week is expected almost the entire time after their undergraduate years[footnote]Though realistically considering the studying they still have to do then, it's not much more free time.[/footnote] and spending those years taking on massive amounts of debt, more than most people's mortgages probably, on just their education alone instead of actually building a stable financial base. Though that last problem is more of a systemic problem with the education system itself. It's just exacerbated by being a future doctor in that system.

 

[Callate]

First off, my sympathies for what sounds like a really scary experience.

Secondly, please note that in many respects, emergency rooms and ambulances are about the worst way to experience medical care, particularly the financial ones. Hospitals in general aren't great; half the reason insurance companies exist is just to negotiate the utterly ridiculous web of fees and overcharges that a patient paying out of pocket at a hospital (typically having one or more of the worst days of their life) would never consider to haggle or out-right refuse. Many- perhaps even most- hospitals, if they can charge you $100 for Tylenol, will.

Hopefully things will improve, but we still have a long way to go.

 

[Abomination]

There is no "fix" for the healthcare system in the United States. It's too expensive because of the sue-happy nature of the country which can result in malpractice lawsuits of incredible proportions. This requires doctors and hospitals to take out professional liability insurance which, due to the aforementioned sue-happy climate is VERY expensive.

Now that pushes the price of medicine up to a degree that the average Joe can not afford it should they fall ill. The issue is compounded due to the shit labour laws and receiving pay while incapable of work due to illness means you once again can not afford the medical treatment... so you have to take insurance.

The hospitals now realize that almost everyone has insurance... which means they can push their own prices up because insurance companies can afford to pay! This in turn pushes the insurance premiums up making them also near impossible to afford. What other insurance premiums are hit? The professional liability cover!

Congratulations, you've created a system that feeds on itself, everyone chasing each other for money and zero government legislation to ensure such things do not happen.

Who wins? Doctors, lawyers, accountants, banks and insurance companies.

Who loses? Sick people.

 

[MCerberus]

American Medical Care: Getting something fixed is prohibitively expensive, and nobody covers prevention (in fact a certain kind has a lot of nutjubs complaining about it, IYKWIM).

Nobody can set up an exercise regimen for our children to work off the vegetables (read: pizza) being forced at them (schools now banning outside food). But good news! Boner pills will fix that symptom of Diabetes, and you get a free scooter with Medicare!

If anyone tries to fix the mess, we have half the politicians sending out sock puppets to poison the well of conversation (history: the RNC actually did this for the ACA, and the mandate was even their idea).

 

[Ryotknife]

If many Americans weren't so damn gung ho about paying less taxes, then it wouldn't be an issue.

It's 2013 and they still have no universal healthcare. It boggles the mind that a first world country lacks such a system.

Here's a thought.

You know that obscenely huge military they have? You know, the big one.

Take like 5% of that budget, and there's your universal healthcare. No extra taxes, just the money redistributed elsewhere.

You should probably look after the people in your own country before making something to kill the populace of another.

5% wont even cover the lawsuits the government would get hit by, especially since the government's policy against lawsuits (or even the threat of lawsuits) is to throw money at the problem until it disappears, because hey its the government and they can afford it.

Say what you want about greedy douchebag companies, but they are not afraid to use their high priced lawyers. With the government being such a lucrative target for lawsuits, expect the number of malpractice and insurance/medical fraud cases to increase.

 

[Denamic]

My cousin got hurt when she was in the US. It cost her over $20000 because she messed up her shoulder in some stairs to the subway. I could build a computer with the money she had to pay for the fucking saline alone. And that didn't even cover her actual treatment. She chose to fly home to Sweden to get her surgery done here instead, so she wouldn't have to be a cripple for life or homeless. American healthcare is expensive because it's a business with customers that have no choice but to pay, no matter how inflated the price is.

I know capitalism is good in many ways, but it has no place in healthcare. Making a business out of people's lives is barbaric.

 

[frizzlebyte]

I'll never forgive America for what their fucked up healthcare has wrought upon me. This year, I was involved in a sports accident that resulted in my finger being broken. Sure, seems like no big deal, but not only was it broken, it was bent significantly to the right. I had a chance to get surgery, but the out of pocket costs would be too steep for my family, who was going through a rough economic situation at the time. We have health insurance provided by my parents work; that doctor didn't use our insurance or something. So I was "treated" by another doctor who did accept our insurance. All he did was really just wrap my finger up in a ace-bandage. Now my right small-finger permanently bends to the right. I can still move it, but it can get in the way when grasping things and makes things like driving somewhat uncomfortable. If I lived in the U.K. or Canada, I wouldn't have to deal with this, but unfortunately I was born in the good old USA. Whoop de Doo.

So glad I'll be getting out of here for college, hopefully for good.

Wow, that doesn't sound good. Actually, you can get that fixed, but it would require putting you to sleep to refracture the bone and set it properly, so you might need to wait until you can afford it. Just saying it doesn't have to be permanent.