Re: capitalism and health care quality
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
Re: capitalism and health care quality
Harry Pollard wrote: 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. You're confusing public *health* with medical services. A high volume of medical services doesn't indicate good public health, rather the opposite. Ill persons need much more services than healthy persons, and treating symptoms is much more expensive than avoiding/preventing causes of illness. True health care maximizes public health, not profits. In the U.S., the medical sector has by far the highest percentage of GDP among all OECD countries: 14%, compared to e.g. 8.7% in Sweden, which doesn't have unhealthier people at all... Chris
Re: capitalism and health care quality
And, hence, my encouragement to read the opening and ending paragraphs of Richard Wilkinson's 'Unhealthy Societies' (Routledge, London 1998-ish). (Synopsis: the more unequal a society is, the more unhealthy its inhabitants - all of them!) Thus: reduced inequality = good (for every body !! ) e-hugs j * -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christoph Reuss) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: capitalism and "health" care quality Date: Tue, Feb 22, 2000, 1:53 pm Harry Pollard wrote: 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. You're confusing public *health* with medical services. A high volume of medical services doesn't indicate good public health, rather the opposite. Ill persons need much more services than healthy persons, and treating symptoms is much more expensive than avoiding/preventing causes of illness. True health care maximizes public health, not profits. In the U.S., the medical sector has by far the highest percentage of GDP among all OECD countries: 14%, compared to e.g. 8.7% in Sweden, which doesn't have unhealthier people at all... Chris
Re: capitalism and health care quality
I think this goes a little deeper. Medicine like charity, theoretical art, scientific research and space exploration have a problem with profit. The physical "worth" of the marketplace rarely accrues to the creator, discoverer or practitioner of the profession. An exception being surgeons in the current situation. The economist William Baumol has been doing work on this problem and has not arrived at any solution in the current free market. It is the Achilles Heel of Economie of Scale and eventually leads to a revolution where the creative practitioners are forced to destroy the system just to keep creativity flowing. If something is highly needed like surgery or practical, like the current technology for the information revolution then it works for a while but eventually the middle money men take over and the process repeats. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a humorous piece on it in the 19th century with a name something like the "Strange Case of Dr. Tarr and Mr. Feather" and likened it to a mental asylum. REH Christoph Reuss 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 [...]
