Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
- Thread starter bigarrow
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The medical industrial complex is the last remaining trade union.
Economically, thereâs no reason for this skill set to be more protected than any other.
Importing competent staff from other civilised countries will fix the problem.
Seriously, if we can build working jumbo jets in China, then we can also import "working" doctors from the UK.
Economically, thereâs no reason for this skill set to be more protected than any other.
Importing competent staff from other civilised countries will fix the problem.
Seriously, if we can build working jumbo jets in China, then we can also import "working" doctors from the UK.
[italics, mine.]
You're joking? Right! There is no free market in U.S. medicine -- It's a CARTEL!
The Cartel will not be broken anytime soon. Your vote does not count. You and I don't control "our" government. The 1% that own virtually everything are firmly in control. And they don't have any problem whatsoever paying their medical bills. They think things are just dandy.
no, I'm not joking, but I could quite possibly be wrong.
The point I was making was that if no poor person had insurance we would have a defacto single payer system, namely the rich who could pay their bills would pay for the poor who can't. You could keep the government out of it.
When the rich complain about their bill, the hospital blames it on the poor who default, and the rich ask the government to protect them. And the protection for the rich comes in the form of taxes on the poor. (and I define poor as anybody making 50% less than the national average.)
On this, I think you are quite wrong, indeed. It is not just the rich who pay when the poor go to the emergency room, the rich pay only a vanishingly small fraction of this cost. It is everyone else who pays the bulk of it. I pay for this and you pay for this, and the entire nation except for the poor, pay for it. There are more than just poor and rich in the U.S.
This is nothing like a single payer system. Those who pay, and only a tiny percent are rich, for this absurdly inefficient, and costly care for the poor have a number of insurance companies across the nation acting as third party payers for their own care, which according to the hospitals also includes the cost of treating sore throats of the non-payers in the emergency room.
And having to treat non-paying patients is certainly not the entire reason hospital costs are so high, as we will all discover if full fledged Obama care goes into effect and most of those who don't now have insurance then have it. I'll be absolutely shocked if we then see emergency room visits come down in price to what they are in any other modern country. I won't be surprised, however, if they don't come down at all, and the hospitals find something other than the poor to blame, e.g., high fixed costs, inflation, etc.
Americans take about 80% of psycotic drugs in the world.
As Supreme Dictator the main thing I would do is deregulate and open up medicine to competition and let the patient assume more risk. The details of how I would do this might take as many pages to describe as the Obama care legislation, so I'm not even going to attempt that, but my dictate would most definitely include repeal of the McCarranâFerguson Act, and an overhaul of the definition of a non-profit agency.. Medical schools would be forced to expand their class sizes to qualify for federal grants, and roughly half of the prescriptions that you now must go to a physician for could be obtained directly from a specially trained class of pharmacists known as "prescribing" pharmacists. Drugs approved for use in other countries with substantially the same requirements as here would automatically be approved for use in the U.S. Once you had a prescription you could legally obtain the prescribed drug from any country in the world. cavaet emptor!
I'd have so many changes to force on hospitals that even 1200 pages might not be enough!
Many will not like this because they want someone to blame if they make bad decisions. But I'm the Supreme Dictator. I'm well-educated and able to make good, informed decisions, once i've collected the information I need. If someone did not pay attention in school, that's not my problem. I can't be bothered with nitwits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran–Ferguson_Act
You can get them all day long whenever you need them for $450 if you pay cash.