Comments on: Marketing Health Care

by: maha

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:28:27 +0000

matt — You don’t understand the problems and the issues, including the difference between “single payer” and “universal health care.” Although to be fair, many on the Left don’t, either. Based on the examples of other countries, what works best is a mixed public and private system, like the French health care system, rather than pure single payer. However, as long as the health insurance industry is allowed to determine who lives and who dies (you can that “freedom”?) there will be no meaningful reform.

by: matt

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:32:49 +0000

Did you see the Bunk study stating 2/3 of doctors in America want National Health Care. The doctors who did this study also conducted one in 2002 and found that the majority of doctors did not want national health care, the problem with this is that the 2 question surveys drastically differ in there 2nd question. I found this article, 60% of Physicians Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan, It's worth a read.

by: steve from cannukistan

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:33:38 +0000

I recently made an appointment for a medical with my Doctor in Chatham-Kent, Ontario. I was able to make an appointment within 3 weeks. My Doctor has 3200 patients. His practice is closed but he occasionally opens it up to new patients. I am lucky because 40% of the population in my area do not have a primary care giver. They go to the emergency room if they get sick. Ontario is also recruiting foreign medical school graduates and also pairing up nurse practitioners with primary care doctors to take some of the patient load. The problem is no one wants to be a Family Doctor. Each municipality has to recruit new doctors on a constant basis. I’ve been in Florida for a couple of months and my American freinds are complaining about having to wait for a physical longer than I had to wait at home. From reading the local newspaper and talking to people here what strikes me about health care in Florida is how routine it is to be denied coverage by the insurance companies. Also even if you have have insurance there are waiting lists. We have horror stories back home but it is usually about a high tech life saving procedure that isn’t covered…the patient has to go to the States for treatment (I think we should have the option of paying for high tech in Ontario if that is what we want). The other horror stories involve not having access to family doctor. In Ontario if you need to see a specialist the wait is longer here in Florida. Back home the primary care provider provides some level of triage and refers the patient on a more urgent basis if that is required (I’m talking from experience here).Those who can wait are required to wait longer. I get the sense here in Florida that the business case for the “Medical Industrial Complex” is very dependent on denying care to ensure profits are maximized by only providing coverage to healthy folks. What a sweet deal! If you’re sick and do not have insurance you get shuffled off to the emergency room and hope they don’t tum you away. I get the sense that many people with no coverage do not bother and get no treatment as a result. What a disgrace. While Canada’s system definitely has it’s faults I think on the whole it is better than here in Florida simply because we’re not tossing anybody under the bus. I believe our system could be improved if we adopted something similar to France (mix of private/public). Perhaps that would work here in the States as well and could be self financed by forcing the insurance companies to take a hike. I think that Paul Krugman has it exactly right in regard to solutions to the health care crisis here in the USA. Hopefully Barak is paying attention.

by: Longhairedweirdo

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:53:41 +0000

Re: the market not providing the things we need

Nod. The idea behind an Adam Smith based utopia is that there’s unlimited capital and unlimited entrepreneurial ability. If there’s a two cents per dose profit to be made on anti-malarial meds, someone is going to chase down that profit. Why not? It’s money, right? And millions of folks suffer from malaria, right? So two cents a dose could add up to real money. And did I mention that it’s two cents a dose *profit*?

But there’s only so much capital, and only so many resources, so the money will go somewhere else, where it can make a bigger profit.

On a personal level, this is much more obvious. If the up front costs are essentially the same, which will you pick? A job as a lower paid GP or as a higher paid specialist? (A specialist might graduate with higher loan totals, but I’m guessing s/he also walks away with at least a proportionately higher salary.)

by: Tom Hagan

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:23:44 +0000

Primary care shortages, educational shortfalls; worthwhile subjects, true, but they pale in comparison to the need for better understanding of how big is the immense WASTE of the present system. As a businessman, I was staggererd to learn just how big it is, and also how ignorant we all are of its magnitude.

The other day the NY Times devoted some 20 column inches to the awfulness of earmarks, and how they cost $35 per person per year, much (but not all) of it wasted. Suppose the waste is $20; that’s one column inch per $ of waste. The newshole is about 1/3 the paper; so to produce proportionaltely the same coverage for the $1,000 per year per person of waste imposed by the overhead attributable to the insurance companies, the NYT would have to print 1000 column inches in the newshole. That would be a 30 page section of the newspaper, devoted to the $300+ billion of waste the present system pours down the drain every year.

For more, see http://whatsnotso.blogs.com/whatsnotso/2008/03/the-great-brain.html

by: bruce in oz

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:26:08 +0000

hi maha,
hate to write with a complaint, but i know you well enough to think that your words were not well-chosen. i have terminal colorectal cancer. 3 years ago, i was told i had 12-18 months. i’m still here.

as fucked up as i think things are, and i am way radical, i’ve still got to tell you, 4.3 months more of life sound utterly delicious.

peace and love, bruce in oz.

by: KingGeorgeTheTenth

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:32:45 +0000

Something not even mentioned in all this is the rural places with dwindling populations and increased competition from urban hospitals. These are in the worst shape of all of them. The sooner we figure out there is not free market fairy with a magic wand that flies around correcting wrongs the sooner we can get on with making a more just and equitable society.

by: felicity

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:26:11 +0000

I can’t find a definition of ‘market forces.’ Is there one? Sounds like some kind of perpetual-motion machine - runs itself, except that it doesn’t run at all.

by: Bonnie

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:13:19 +0000

If nothing else, this is the ideal area where the two Dems can say what they are saying about health care. And, then, when elected, take the dick cheney attitude–we don’t have to let what we said in the campaign dictate what we do.

by: Jake

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:49:30 +0000

One hospital in Chicago’s southwest suburbs just announced that it’s closing. It had been a respected and active cardiac care center, but it’s uninsured/underinsured patient population was just too high. The Catholic organization that owns the hospital couldn’t sell it or even give it away. Other hospitals in the area will be absorbing the overflow of those patients into their already overcrowded emergency rooms, leading to who knows what results.

Of course, if you look at the comments on the newspaper’s website the fault is all the “illegals” - very little awareness of the contribution of America’s broken health delivery system, very little self-awareness of just how lucky those with a good paying job with good health benefits are. Those folks, of course, are smugly asserting that people who can’t pay for their health care are lazy and undeserving. Pretty sad.