One question, Tom, what was the most serious health care problem you had while in the Dutch system? And where did you get it taken care of?
(03-10-2013 07:40 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote: The US has massive limits on lawsuits for years.
False. The European civil law system is much less prone to large damages judgements than our common law system. This is a major factor in keeping costs down in places like France. I would personally favor Swedish "no fault" malpractice; the only people hurt by that would be plaintiffs' lawyers. Basically, our malpractice system is a huge wealth transfer from the medical profession to the legal profession, and does relatively little to protect patients.
Quote:Reducing Med/Mal exposure has done nothing to contain costs.
False. Costs have continued to rise for any number of reasons. But the cost component attributable to malpractice has declined. And even where there has been malpractice reform, insurance companies have driven the increase in defensive medicine. They'd rather pay for an unnecessary procedure than pay the malpractice claim if the procedure is skipped.
Quote:The European systems are much more regulated than ours.
Partly true, partly false. Some European systems are much more regulated than ours. They tend to be the ones with the worst health care. Others are actually more free market than ours.
Quote:
All we get is less coverage and higher salaries for health care executives.
Again, partly true, partly false. The executives for the non-profit German lander systems tend to make more than their American counterparts.
Quote:The problem is that when demand is inelastic, there needs to be some constraints on costs, otherwise the prices can be raised without consequence, to the great detriment of the economy.
You do understand that when demand is inelastic, that putting constraints on supply leads to shortages, not cost containment. This is the problem that every centralized system has, they can't control costs without creating shortages. The French system is the best solution that I have found. The Bismarcks (the best systems in Europe--France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and a few others) all tend to be more expensive than the single-provider systems (Europe has no true single-payer systems), but cheaper than the US. They are sort of the middle ground, and they make basic health care affordable to everyone, but more advanced stuff has to be paid for (like here) if you get it from the "pay" system or waited for if you get it from the "free" system. If you're really sick, never go to the "free" system.
Quote:Besides, its not like the taxpayers aren't paying 'welfare' to the medical industry in the form of subsidized hospital and medical school building construction as well as many other taxpayer supported benefits to the medical industry.
And of course the docs and the profit-seeking parts of the health care industry play plenty of the taxes that support these "benefits."
Quote:In the US system, we already get healthcare from the 'lowest bidder'. We just pay 2 or 3 times what other wealthier nations do for cheapo healthcare.
We don't really get cheapo health care. Cheapo health care is what you get in a UK NHS facility (go visit a few and see what they look like). Most Americans would have a cow if they were placed in a typical NHS hospital or a French "free" hospital. We're used to a lot more TLC, and that costs money. A French "pay" hospital would be pretty close to what Americans expect.
The biggest reason our health care costs so much more is the extreme steps that we go to in the last days of life. Docs and hospitals have to do it to avoid malpractice (a cost of malpractice that is never considered in any of the analyses that say it's minimal, and the ones that do consider it come up with conclusions that malpractice costs are a major cost driver). That's the thing, when you have studies attributing the cost of malpractice to be anywhere form 2% to 40% of health care costs (the extremes I've seen) then clearly you're talking about different methodologies.
A lot of our costs are administrative and are driven by the cost of compliance with federal regulation (and I'm talking about paperwork regulations here, that have nothing to do with quality of care). And the insurance companies just piggyback on top of the federal requirements. These costs will go up, not down, with the additional regulatory agencies created by Obamacare. In Europe, there are maybe 20% as many administrative personnel as here.
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Jesse Jackson is at Hugo Chavez' funeral.
