About ten years ago they had a program comparing U.S. vs Canada health care. I can recall, There are more MRI’s in Seattle, Washington than in all of Canada. Another thing, Hospitals in the United States compete with each other. They all must have the latest greatest equipment. This leads to under utilization of equipment. The patient has to pay for the equipment and services.

Many doctors here have set up clinics. They have the most modern equipment. There are so many angles to this business we call Health Care.

A major hospital in San Diego used and perhaps still uses house keeping to hand out patient medication. They got into trouble, paid a fine and did it a second time that I am aware of.

Quick get the janitor! We need a brain surgeon for this patient!





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