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by ajakate
1849 days ago
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Healthcare in the US. I went to the ER with my partner over a bit of a scare with some intense abdominal pain late at at night a few months ago. We were mostly ignored for about two hours in an empty ER room, and she received a chest x-ray and blood work. She had to go to the bathroom and one point, and they let her take off the pulse monitor on her finger. She didn't put it back on later and it was left flatlining for the remainder of our time sitting there. They couldn't diagnose anything, and they ended up sending a bill (after insurance) for 3k+ of "level 5" (apparently the highest) emergency room care. I don't claim to know much about how medical billing/expenses work, but it's just really sad and frustrating. |
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1) cost of avoiding litigation of large proportions, or even the spectre of it when possibly unwarranted
2) excessive cost of even basic medical supplies, partly due to (1) above, and parly due to the clubiness of the whole affair
3) excessive cost of developing drugs and the practices that allow minor repackaging of delivery systems to extend patents on existing drugs (no one wants to be the guinea pig, but the balance between risk and reward seems a little skewed when overall benefits to society are accounted for and people are dying from certain diseases anyway)
4) Overpayment of some medical staff, and underpayment of others, you can probably guess who. I get it, you want the best doctors and they should be incentivised to choose medicine and do well, but a doctor saves/kills one patient a time, usually, see (3) above. It is just as difficult and time consuming to become, say, a specialist engineer making key decisions where a mistake might kill dozens or hundreds of people. In my country there is only one job in government where the professional society gets total control over pay outside of regular guidelines, you guessed it doctors, and the relative amounts involved are frankly obscene.
When I see that medical misadventure is the third highest cause of death in USA now, it starts to appear hard to see how anyone can hink that the high salaries for some and the large amounts of money spent to keep people "safe" is not working, so why not spend that money in other ways.
It seems Obama got it wrong, the issue wasn't with insurance, it was with costs and general approach by the medical care providers. Many of these providers I am sure would desperately like to provide optimum care, but are just part of the juggernaut that seems to have no circuit breaker.
I would happily accept any criticism or correction of my views, as I am only relaying distant perceptions, some or all of which may be incorrctly founded.