Level Extreme platform
Subscription
Corporate profile
Products & Services
Support
Legal
Français
Best Healthcare system in the World?
Message
From
16/05/2007 16:49:09
John Ryan
Captain-Cooker Appreciation Society
Taumata Whakatangi ..., New Zealand
 
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01225794
Message ID:
01226168
Views:
20
US healtcare is good in one way - lots of new technology and all the latest stuff. The bad part is that no one can afford it.

IMHO there has to be "rationing" in healthcare- an unrationed healthcare system will gobble the whole GDP and still clamor for more. ;-)

In the US, cost to individuals/payors has become a de-facto rationing scheme. The sky is the limit, controlled only by the height of your ladder (bank balance/insurance coverage). But there's also an inverted pyramid of non-clinical cost with an army of hungry lawyers who are in the end paid by patients/policy-holders, as are bumper profits extracted by various managing entities. So you're seeing costs +++ without a matching increase in bedside delivery.

In Universal care schemes, the sky is lowered to whatever point voters/funders are willing to accept. Rationing occurs primarily by the "waiting list" and by unavailability of treatments which are judged ineffective or inefficient, but can still be purchased by people determined to have them privately. Sometimes that's attacked as a "2-tier system" but IMHO it only goes bad if the sky is brought so close to the ground that you always have to pay for decent treatment. Obviously that isn't going to happen in a wealthy stable democracy.

There is always room for reform, but IMHO the US system isn't as awful as it sometimes sounds. The big problem is what I said above- too much cost for the service provided, and little to stop cost continuing to rise. Problems like "access" flow directly from the high costs, and issues such as high infant mortality flow on from that. Cure the disease, not the symptoms, right? ;-)
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us.
"
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
Previous
Next
Reply
Map
View

Click here to load this message in the networking platform