Why US Healthcare is so messed up. (1 Viewer)

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Mile_High_Saint said:
Just drink your ills away. It will be cheaper and more pleasant.
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..so not true my saints friend... one of the worst things you can do would be to mix alcohol with some over the counter pain relievers such as tylenol,aleve... even bayer aspirin..that mix will do a number on both your liver and kidney functions..also cause stomach bleeding. bottom line if you are in that much pain for something..you need to see somebody..pills/drugs are just a quick fix and they wont get to the root of the problem

peace and good luck.

signed,

dr. kevin :)

p.s.-i need to take my own advice

roger that..out
 
I am not really geting into this debate, but I do want to make a comment.

My daughter is a doctor. She is 37 and finished medical school and residency about 2 years ago. She has a student loan debt of about $250,000 that she will have to pay over the next 30 years. She has to pay medical malpractice insurance, which I am sure is quite high. She has to pay annual licensing fees and other medical organizational expenses.

She sometimes works 36 hours straight, and all her shifts are a minimum of 12 hours. She makes just under a gross income of $200,000 annually. Yet after taxes, student loans, medical business related expenses, her net is under $100,000 (I am not quite sure how much under).

She went to undergrad for 7 years before she finally got her degree (part time while she worked as a New Orleans Paramedic), 5 years of medical school (private school), and 3 years residency.

If you want to know why doctors are so expensive, look at what she had to do. She will have to work until her mid-60s before the student loan is paid off. While doctors gross a lot, most do not get much of a net. With Obamacare, she expects that she will see her compensation decrease further, meaning she will have to see more patients for a shorter period of time (ergo, less quality care).

AS I said, I am not trying to enter the discussion, but remember that while doctors seemingly enjoy a great financial life, it is not always what it seems.
 
so that's why it costs $26 for each Advil while at the hospital..

Sent from my Samsung Infuse using Tapatalk 2
 
saintfan said:
I am not really geting into this debate, but I do want to make a comment.

My daughter is a doctor. She is 37 and finished medical school and residency about 2 years ago. She has a student loan debt of about $250,000 that she will have topay over the next 30 years. She has to pay medical malpractice insurance, which I am sure is quite high. She has to pay annual licensing fees and other medical organizational expenses.

She sometimes works 36 hours straight, and all her shifts are a minimum of 12 hours. She makes just under a gross income of $200,000 annually. Yet after taxes, student loans, medical business related expenses, her net is under $100,000 (I am not quite sure how much under).

She went to undergrad for 7 years before she finally got her degree (part time while she worked as a New Orleans Paramedic), 5 years of medical school (private school), and 3 years residency.

If you want to know why doctors are so expensive, look at what she had to do. She will have to work until her mid-60s before the student loan is paid off. While doctors net a lot, most do not get much of a net. With Obamacare, she expects that she will see her compensation decrease further, meaning she will have to see more patients for a shorter period of time (ergo, less quality care).

AS I said, I am not trying to enter the discussion, but remember that while doctors seemingly enjoy a great financial life, it is not always what it seems.
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This is a point I was alluding to earlier. Right off the bat we drop physicians into the mix with a heavy debt, the have to charge twice ad much in order to be level with other educated professionals.

No one ever seems to think this is an issue, but it is a root cause.

FWIW, Because of insurance cost issues, and law suits. Ohio lost a ton of OBGYN physicians over the years.
 
Optimus Prime said:
Very interesting article.
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But in healthcare, if you think you need care, regardless of actual physical acuity (severity), you can go to a hospital and they have to give you the best care they can provide, by law, and for FREE!.
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Nice try, but this statement actually isn't true. The Emergency Department is only required to stabilize a patient and only those patients presenting with an emergency medical condition as required by EMTALA. Although very expensive, the concept is a very good one for society. When you have a patient that comes into an ER in a severe condition, then that's not the time to perform a wallet biopsy to determine their ability to pay, citizenship status or some other paperwork. They need treatment right then and there, so you sort the paperwork out afterwards. They are still billed for their services, but that does not necessarily mean it will ever result in actual payment and often the hospital will have to eat those costs for a self-pay patient. Therefore those costs are passed on to whomever does actually pay. Is it fair? That's debatable, but there's a lot of value in that for everyone. Even if you can pay, do you really want to delay treatment until you can prove you can pay?

FAQ on EMTALA

"If the patient does not have an "emergency medical condition", the statute imposes no further obligation on the hospital."





Also please note that there is already an active process of empowering lower level staff to perform medical care that has traditionally been reserved for higher levels of certification. It's a slow process, but it's definitely happening. There's a lot of moral gray issues here.

What may seem like a simple ear infection could actually be a sign of something even more complex that a Dr would recognize, but a nurse may not as a result of less training. How much extra risk are you willing to tolerate and for what costs? To date, our country has been extremely risk averse and have generally decided to pay more and more to lower the medical risks of care. At what point are the dollars worth more than the benefits offered from the increased care? It's a difficult question to answer regarding how care should provided.
 
I think this is a great thread. Extremely civil, which is remarkable because there is a lot of blame to go around. Im planning on addressing some of these topics in the near future, too.
 
sbadeaux said:
And Obama care regulations will only make it worse. If everybody has insurance, they will go to the doctor for everything. Why not it did not cost them anything. Cost will go up, lines will get longer, we will have waits to see a doctor, and there will be limits on what tests you can get done.
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better to just let the poor and ever decreasing number of folks who can afford insurance and deductibles die at home without care or pay for their treatment via the ER when it becomes chronic, eh?

Obamacare may not be perfect or even good, but what we had was unsustainable and aside from trivial rhetoric about medmal and tort reform there's been no effort to fix it other than what we just got.

something's got to give.
 
I recently had a heart cath as a preventive measure before a very long trip because a routine stress test was not conclusive. A 10 minute procedure cost $29,000. How can anyone (private citizen, insurance, or government ) afford procedures that cost $180,000 per hour.
 
The costs are high, and while I am certainly not bashing the medical professionals, the medical community as a whole is way happy to overcharge as much as they can. I am sure that they have their reasons, but when my aspirin in the ER cost me $13.99 I really think that there is a bit of price gouging going on. Of course it's not like you can shop around as most medical communities have no competition.

I also don't see the need to go to the doctor for each little thing. If I slice open my hand I don't need to see a doctor, the nurse will be the one to clean it and sew it up anyway. Wife went to see the doctor today for an ear infection. Does it really need to be a full office visit for that? I mean I understand if you are peeing blood or have chest pains but for run of the mill stuff why can't there be an easier/cheaper solution?
 
Opti, please move to the UK and tell the ideas-vacuum that is the British Conservative Party what their slavish devotion to Milton Friedman's discredited monetarist wet dreams will actually do to our world-class NHS.
 
seriously, I am 35 years old, when is the last time some of you my age or even older talked to someone around 21 years old? It is hard to find a person in that age group who isn't already lactose, has high blood pressure, anxiety, allergies to everything, ADD, can't sleep, can't wake up, can't digest their food right, isn't "regular", and guess what... they have had prescriptions for all of this already. Doctors have their hands tied because of the insane lawsuits that our government allows people to win so they have to treat whatever the patient claims to have. End result... a bunch of grandmothers and grandfathers with dementia, no health insurance and slowly but surely bankrupting their families adding to the problem.

We are screwed, think it's bad now wait 30 years for this generation to hit their 50's... wow factor is coming.
 
dtc said:
yep, but corporations are people and, as such, they have the right to free speech unencumbered by any responsibility for the truth.

Still, I agree. It also makes me sick that they're actively inventing ailments and illnesses so they can recycle drugs.

Restless leg syndrome.

wth
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If you really want to get fired up watch this about the psychotropic drugs being handed out like candy to everybody including children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UDlH9sV0lHU

I dont know how to link video
 

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