Chris,
It would seem to be true that anyone who survives umpteen years of medical
school in order to get a job for $7 a week is not in it for the money. But,
the way the Soviets used to work was to give perks - such as a good
apartment. Or, to provide a luster to certain desirable occupations.
On the other hand, I really don't care how much the doctor gets. I just
want him to know his job, to practice skills on me which are well practiced.
You suggest that:
"The still-increasing excesses of
the medical-industrial complex in the West illustrate quite "well" that
public health and profit-making is rather *inversely* related."
In the US, medical and hospital services aren't bad at all. My experience
has been very good over the 38 years I've lived in California.
The other day, I took my wife into my HMO to see her doctor. She needs a
wheelchair, so I dumped her inside the doors, while I parked the car in a
structure. I picked her up, wheeled her to the doctors waiting room, where
she was seen immediately The doctor gave her a careful and friendly
examination then we left with a couple of prescriptions. I dropped them off
at the pharmacy (the 10 pharmacists and a bunch of assistants were pretty
busy) and took her down in the elevator to the laboratory.
There she provided blood and so on for testing, whereupon we went upstairs
for the prescriptions which were ready. Then I left her inside the door
while I went for the car. Picked her up and we drove away. We had arrived
there at 10.15 am and we left at 11 am.
Doctor/patient appears to be excellent. In fact last month, I went in for a
look at my bladder. He put a camera inside me while he examined it. He
asked if I would like to see what he was looking for. The nurse hooked up a
monitor to the camera and he took me for a tour of the inside of my bladder
- explaining as he moved the camera around.
I found it fascinating and asked a number of questions. But, the point is
that there is an easy relationship between doctors and patients.
Oh yes - the prescriptions cost a standard $7. They are all generic. The
cost of this service - medical and hospital - is about $40 each month,
deducted automatically from each of our Social Security payments.
I bet that isn't a lot different from the taxes that must be paid to
support the "free" national health systems. It seems to me that a large
lump of their Budgets goes to Health. Though, back when, I can't imagine
the bladder bit happening to me in the UK's NHS.
While most people seem satisfied with their medical in the US, there are
bound to be bad spots. The inner cities have a lot of government money sent
in to improve medical treatment. Much of the problem seems to be lack of
education among the people there. Nurses complain that they have great
difficulty getting mothers to take the kids in for shots and suchlike.
Clinton said he intended to press legislation so that no child in America
would be without the shots he needed. What he didn't know (?) was that
there were already programs in place to do this.
Problem was to get the mothers to cooperate.
All medical services have problems. The US system isn't all that bad
Harry
_________________________________________________
Chris wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Harry Pollard wrote:
> > Every year a bunch of US cardiac specialists went to the Soviet Union and
> > for two weeks, they would work solidly in a Moscow hospital doing, I
> > suppose, triage as they took patients from the multitude to operate and
> > save lives. I remember one comment from a US doctor. He couldn't believe
> > that the Head of Cardiology at the Moscow hospital got a salary of $7 a
> > week - about the same as a bus driver. A sure way to attract the best
> > people into medicine.
>
>Harry obviously said this last sentence in jest, but it's actually true:
>Giving doctors a small salary will attract the best people into medicine --
>those who become doctors to help and heal people, instead of those who are
>"in it for the money" (as in the West). The still-increasing excesses of
>the medical-industrial complex in the West illustrate quite "well" that
>public health and profit-making is rather *inversely* related...
>
>Chris
>
>
>
>
>To quote from an earlier posting on this list:
> >
> > Report Says Profit-Making Health Plans Damage Care
> >
> > July 14, 1999
>
> > WASHINGTON -- Patients enrolled in profit-making health insurance plans
> > are significantly less likely to receive the basics of good medical care --
> > including childhood immunizations, routine mammograms, pap smears,
> > prenatal care, and lifesaving drugs after a heart attack -- than
> > those in not-for-profit plans, says a new study that concludes that the
> > free market is "compromising the quality of care."
>
> > The research, conducted by a team from Harvard University and Public
> > Citizen, an advocacy group in Washington, is the first comprehensive
> > comparison of investor-owned and nonprofit plans. The authors found that
> > on every one of 14 quality-of-care indicators, the for-profits scored
> worse.
>
> > "The market is destroying our health care system," Dr. David U.
> Himmelstein,
> > associate professor of medicine at Harvard University Medical School
>[...]
