President Obama's health care--

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by fishbones

Johhny,
A huge part of the crazy cost of healthcare is malpractice insurance for doctors. These costs have to be passed on to patients by doctors and hospitals. I know you work or worked in the medical field, so you must have some knowledge about this. Many of the best doctors coming out of medical schools now go into research because it's almost financially impossible to go into private practice and make a living while paying off student loans. That's why you see so many doctors trained outside of the US practicing medicine here.

On the other hand, an entire industry has been created helping American patient's travel to other countries for medical operations because the costs in the US are too high.

You are absolutely right that malpractice suits and the cost of insurance are a huge issue for doctors. Another part is the ridiculous price of pharmaceuticals.

Limitations need to be put into place with regards to malpractice suits and doctor liability. The slightest mistake and the doctors are found guilty and ordered to pay insane fines, where as only gross negligence should make them liable for amounts over $125k.

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

You are absolutely right that malpractice suits and the cost of insurance are a huge issue for doctors. Another part is the ridiculous price of pharmaceuticals.

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Cost of pharmaceuticals is a 2 edge sword that most don't want to see.

On one hand people look at the price and say "you have to be kidding me" not
realizing the cost effectiveness of keeping them out of the hospital and increasing their quality of life and reducing mortality.

They are expensive and people don't want to pay $5 or $10 a day but are willing to pay $7.50 a day for a pack of cigs or who knows how much for booze or illegal drugs that are killing them.

These drugs are very costly to discover, research, do clinical trials and get FDA approval. Pharm will not be willing to develop new life saving drugs if we go with a government controlled health care program.
Pfizer has already discontinued their cardiovascular research as they see the handwriting on the wall. So the new and best pharmaceuticals in the world will certainly become few and far between.

That leaves generics of existing drugs as a mainstay, which many will be manufactured by companies that do nothing to improve health care or provde the quality drugs made by the large Pharms.

The FDA used to issue The Green Sheet which showed drug recalls each month.
In almost every case the FDA inspections initiated the recalls for the generic companies where as the Pharmaceutical Companies would initiate recalls on their own before inspection. There aren't enough FDA Inspectors in the world to inspect every batch of generic drugs coming off the line.

Government controlled health care will take the best medicine in the world and at the very least make it mediocre.

[scottw]

it already has everywhere but here....so far...we'll get there...soon...

Back in the 1960s, Claude Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."-
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice." these are extraordinary views, especially coming from Castonguay. It's as if John Maynard Keynes, resting on his British death bed in 1946, had declared that his faith in government interventionism was misplaced. IBD

In 2006, a Canadian court threatened to shut down one private clinic because it was planning to start accepting private payments from patients. According to The New York Times, although privately funded clinics are illegal in Canada, many clinics are opening anyway, because patients don’t like the long waiting lists in the government system.

In a 2007 interview on ABC News, Professor Regina Herzlinger of Harvard Business School said, “Many clinics all across Canada are illegal for-profit… They know they can’t get the health care they need from the legal system, so they’re complicit in creating an illegal system that’ll give them what they need.”


Americans have been conditioned to believe that someone else should provide a magic card that they can flash at any doctor, hospital, dentist, optometrist etc.. and recieve whatever they are in need of...for free...for life...this is insane...

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by justplugit

Cost of pharmaceuticals is a 2 edge sword that most don't want to see.

How about the doctors I know personally that have been fired from their jobs because they wouldn't sign off on new drugs because he (and the pharma companies) knew the drugs were unsafe for the public?

Big pharma has more skeletons in the closet than the public will ever know about. The corruption, lobbying and back-alley deals are more than can be discussed here.

Some cancer medications can cost up to $17,000/month.

[scottw]

if you get the chance check out the PBS Documentary "Sick Around the World"

they explore the various alternatives already in practice around the world..the top two they determined were Taiwan and Switzerland....Taiwan was engaged in huge deficit spending to keep theirs afloat because the politicians refused to tell the public they had to pony up more to support the system for fear of being booted from office, my favorite quote regarding Taiwan was when an administrator was asked how they handle people that "overuse " the system..it was explained that they "go to their house or call them in and have a little talk with them"...Switzerland was dealing with a population of only 7 million people...Germany and Japan were also near the top of the list..

[spence]

Most comparisons to other countries appear to be fear mongering for the most part. While you certainly hear the horror stories you rarely hear the positives, and speaking with many people in other countries over the years they're often very satisfied with their health care.

Besides, the US is a unique country and as such any health care reforms will probably not look exactly like a EU or Canadian model.

Most people have dramatically different views on this subject whether they have insurance or not. I know my father certainly had his eyes opened when his work sponsored retirement health care was cut and he they had to go on Medicare.

I agree that TORT reform is needed, and liked John Kerry's 2004 campaign idea to get malpractice cases into Federal courts. People complain about malpractice but remember the big corporations have used malpractice to snuff out the neighborhood doctor. Join my HMO or else

The simple fact is that living under a system where so many people have insurance (or taxpayer funded insurance) has allowed the system get incredibly expensive, without any incentive to streamline...and we have an aging population that's consuming a disproportionate amount of the services...and the AARP is a very big voting block.

I'm not for single payer systems, but I also recognize there's plenty of money in the system to improve it. The path we're currently on isn't sustainable even for those with good insurance.

-spence

[scottw]

Originally Posted by spence

Most comparisons to other countries appear to be fear mongering for the most part. While you certainly hear the horror stories you rarely hear the positives, and speaking with many people in other countries over the years they're often very satisfied with their health care.
-spence

fear mongering

appear to whom?

WHERE IS YOUR PROOF

how many people Spence? which countries?

...I've talked to many Americans and haven't talked to anyone yet who is unsatisfied with their healthcare...

you can cite occasional horror stories from the American healthcare system but rarely hear the positives....

seems to me we went through an entire presidential campaign and the only stories cited were both bogus...one brought up in a primary debate by Edwards about a denial of care in Cali. that turned up to be a very premature report of the facts and was never heard from again as well as the whopper that Hillary was running with that she supposedly heard and was repeating on the trail that turned out to also be false....this is not about providing healthcare for every American, they already get it if they need it(and the illegals too) this is about the government taking over and controlling a sector that represents 17% of GDP...this is a WHOLESALE CHANGE...not simply tinkering to improve what is the best and most advanced healthcare system in the world and assured to be a disaster on the scale of all the other social programs begun under the same auspices that now have us 65 trillion in the red in unfunded obligations...
it doesn't matter whether the world's citizens say they are satisfied or not...it's all that they know for the most part...who do they complain to, they have no options once govt. takes over? their systems by and large are unsustainable and collapsing and rationing has begun....do some reading Canada, Greece, England, Spain, France and on and on...better yet, look at the US states that began their own little versions of socialized medicine and the strain on their budgets....

two of the best supposedly

The Japanese healthcare system
The issue is to solve the "tragedy of the commons" without making another

The Japanese medical insurance system has a unique combination of characteristics that has led to the overuse of tests and drugs, unconstrained demand from patients, and an explosion of costs. Unless the system of medical insurance and reimbursement of healthcare providers changes, the combination of increasing technological advances, an ageing population, and unconstrained demand will produce a crisis in Japanese health care. Japan is only belatedly waking up to this crisis.

Is the German healthcare system setting the right incentives to provide the best patient care?
Posted by eucomed on 29/05/09

An exclusive roundtable hosted by Johnson & Johnson during this year’s Hauptstadtkongress debated the question whether the current healthcare system in Germany should compromise between the need to standardize treatments due to scarce resources and increasingly informed patients demanding the best treatment possible. Although panelists agreed that Germany may be leading in terms of standards of treatment when compared with similar sized systems across Europe the group felt there was still room for improvement.

Rolf Koschorek, member of the German Parliament, made the point that the uptake of innovations could be faster. This would help ensure patient access to the best treatment possible. Professor Carsten Perka of renowned university hospital Charité made clear that price is currently the decision-making driver in hospitals. Perka believes that price of products is not the main thing that hospitals and healthcare systems should be concerned about. As long as physicians continue to be measured based on cost per patient treatment (and product) other crucial aspects that might ultimately benefit the patient such as physician training will fall short. A shame, really, isn’t it?

[justplugit]

Almost a month now since Obama promised Health Care reform info on plans so
the public could have input.

All that apply for Government Health Care, and are not working, should have the same rules that apply to those seeking Unemployment.
-- Ongoing prove where they are seeking work.

Being many American workers are required to take random drug tests in order to work, and therefore pay taxes,
it should be the same rule for Government Health Care applicants, take random drug tests to get and keep the insurance.

Seems only fair, but it's probably not PC.