A Thought About Healthcare

[Littlejoe]

Yes something the Democrats fight against everytime it is brought up Tort reform. get rid of frivolous lawsuits and you cut the cost of malpractice insurance which will cut the cost of health care.

I think tort reform could help, but when you have over 250,000 deaths a year to medical malpractice, you shouldn't eliminate it...

And if you have socialized medicine, can you still sue over malpractice? Since a Dr. would be a government employee, would you not be able to sue them?

[Starlight]

I think tort reform could help, but when you have over 250,000 deaths a year to medical malpractice, you shouldn't eliminate it...

But do lawsuits actually eliminate it? From what I can see, doctors just take out insurance against malpractice suits, which pays out when they are sued. So I am not sure it changes the frequency of malpractice. It just gives lawyers and insurance companies a lot of money, and costs the doctors (which they pass onto the patients through higher charges) money in insurance bills.

And if you have socialized medicine, can you still sue over malpractice?

It is 100% variable by country. Some countries have it, some don't.

Here, as part of a much broader system not particularly related to medical malpractice, all lawsuits for personal injury of any kind are banned and instead the government acts as a national insurer via taxes and pays out the compensation money you would otherwise have gotten from a lawsuit. In the specific case of doctors, this means they don't need malpractice insurance because they can't be sued. If a doctor does do malpractice, you submit a complaint to a government medical investigative agency, and they may fire the doctor or ban then from ever practicing again if it's serious enough. So basically, if you're bad at doctoring, you will get fired, but you don't need to pay for insurance to protect you against expensive lawsuits.

[JimL]

What is being ignored is the number of Canuckistanis who come to the U.S. to get various operations and procedures taken care of because they really can't afford to wait and hope things haven't gotten progressively worse during the interim -- or even die.

No, it's not being ignored, the number of Canadians coming to the U.S. for care is very small. And the reason for the wait times in Canada is because care is based on priority and need, in other words triage, rather than who has the most money.

[JimL]

Yes something the Democrats fight against everytime it is brought up Tort reform. get rid of frivolous lawsuits and you cut the cost of malpractice insurance which will cut the cost of health care.

And who should determine what is or isn't a frivolous lawsuit?

[carpedm9587]

I really, really hope that you get what you wish for.

Thanks, Moss. I do too. With any luck, I might be able to retire a little sooner.

[carpedm9587]

A lot of folks living paycheck to paycheck fell through the cracks and discovered the hard way that despite the rhetoric it wasn't all that easy getting an exemption

Yes - in bureaucracies, some people fall through the cracks. Do you have nay evidence that they are "falling through the cracks" at a greater rate in countries with universal healthcare? The evidence I find is that people in those countries are MORE satisfied with their healthcare - across the board.

It is hardly speculation to say if someone else is paying the bill for your defense that this allows you to spend your money elsewhere and if you had to pay for it yourself there won't be as much money for these other things.

Unless, of course, we live in an age where people/countries have decided that massive military budgets are no longer really warranted, and have elected to focus more on social needs. That the U.S. has invested such an amazingly large amount on its military is a U.S. decision. I don't find it a particularly compelling argument that our massive expenditure is responsible for other countries shifting to social programs. Many of us would like the U.S. to do the same thing.

My favorite carpism. Let's all say it together folks, it's nothing but a right wing meme

[ATTACH=CONFIG]28375[/ATTACH]
If handwaving off things you don't like was an
Olympic sport, carpe would easily take the gold

Well... if the shoe fits...

BTW - there are left wing memes too. Both sides are particularly good at it. After all, repeat a meme long and often enough and it gets adopted by a huge segment of the population as "fact." Once it achieves that status, it's usually impossible for actual facts to dislodge it. Most posters here lean to the right, so we hear more right-ring memes than left-wing ones.

[carpedm9587]

If there is "no merit" here, then why was I unable to get an exemption despite at times not even having money for food?

This is a fair question, given your experience. I cannot speak to the details of your situation because I do not know them. And I have already noted that bureaucracies sometimes lose people in the cracks. But the broad statement that was made had no merit that I could find. I was not arguing that every human being was fairly treated with. I was merely noting that the ACA included provisions to help the poor pay the premium, and exempt those who had no insurance for hardship reasons.

[carpedm9587]

This is the actual answer. carpe's post seemed to imply that they were a panacea that would prevent anybody from slipping through the cracks.

At no point did I say that. I noted, multiple times, that people slip through the cracks. And if the Republicans in your state opted-out of the medicaid expansion that would have given you the insurance you needed,can you really lay that at the feet of the ACA?

[mossrose]

I think tort reform could help, but when you have over 250,000 deaths a year to medical malpractice, you shouldn't eliminate it...

And if you have socialized medicine, can you still sue over malpractice? Since a Dr. would be a government employee, would you not be able to sue them?

You can sue doctors here but I don't hear about it happening very often. They all have to have malpractice insurance.

[Sparko]

As has been noted in previous threads on the subject, the percentage of Canadians who dislike their healthcare system is around 15%. Mossrose is very much a minority in her views.

To give a similar example to her one, one of my best friends here had a heart problem detected and she had an operation to fix it the next day. Free of course.

One thing Mossrose doesn't seem to realise with her complaints about waiting is that a lot of people in the US have to wait forever, because they can't afford the procedures. In single payer countries the doctors do triage and process patients by severity of need, whereas the US does a wallet biopsy and if the size of the wallet is lacking the operation doesn't happen. Canada is a little unusual among single payer countries because the law there actually forbids people going private and paying to skip the queue in some circumstances. Here if you're rich and the wait time upsets you, you just pay a private hospital to do it.

That isn't true. In the USA they will take you even if you can't pay for life threatening conditions. And even if it is not life threatening, most hospitals, especially university hospitals will take care of you if you don't have insurance. I have a very expensive medication ($1200/month) and when my insurance wanted to charge me full price (I had not met my deductible for the year yet) the hospital pharmacy gave it to me for free and wrote it off.

[Sparko]

Well - I too have family that lives in such a country, Sparko - and they love it. They also love that they can get a college education for their children without having to go into debt in six figures.

And, BTW, "expert testimony" is still only one person's experience. And example is not an argument.

An example IS an argument. Your saying is one of the dumbest I have ever heard.

[Littlejoe]

But do lawsuits actually eliminate it? From what I can see, doctors just take out insurance against malpractice suits, which pays out when they are sued. So I am not sure it changes the frequency of malpractice. It just gives lawyers and insurance companies a lot of money, and costs the doctors (which they pass onto the patients through higher charges) money in insurance bills.

I think it does, usually, until a Dr. gets sued for malpractice, it's not even noticed or discussed. In the medical industry there's the equivalent to the Blue Wall (that police get accused of). Hospitals are afraid to bring it up because they can and will get sued as well. Once a Dr. is sued, the AMA often reviews it to see if it warrants removing the Dr.'s credentials. How often that happens, I have not researched...I do know it happens.

It is 100% variable by country. Some countries have it, some don't.

Here, as part of a much broader system not particularly related to medical malpractice, all lawsuits for personal injury of any kind are banned and instead the government acts as a national insurer via taxes and pays out the compensation money you would otherwise have gotten from a lawsuit. In the specific case of doctors, this means they don't need malpractice insurance because they can't be sued. If a doctor does do malpractice, you submit a complaint to a government medical investigative agency, and they may fire the doctor or ban then from ever practicing again if it's serious enough. So basically, if you're bad at doctoring, you will get fired, but you don't need to pay for insurance to protect you against expensive lawsuits.

It a decent system but I can still see the "good ole' boy" network could be a factor in letting bad Dr.'s keep practicing...but that's true of pretty much any self-policing system.

[rogue06]

That isn't true. In the USA they will take you even if you can't pay for life threatening conditions. And even if it is not life threatening, most hospitals, especially university hospitals will take care of you if you don't have insurance. I have a very expensive medication ($1200/month) and when my insurance wanted to charge me full price (I had not met my deductible for the year yet) the hospital pharmacy gave it to me for free and wrote it off.

And if you are a hardship case the Pharmaceutical companies are known for providing medication at no charge. Unfortunately I only discovered this after my mother went into in-home hospice and was no longer getting a drug that was costing over $600/week (without insurance it was somewhere between $1200-1600).

[Sparko]

And yet you just provided an example for an argument [ATTACH=CONFIG]28358[/ATTACH]

Doncha know? He means "other people's examples are not arguments"

[carpedm9587]

An example IS an argument. Your saying is one of the dumbest I have ever heard.

An example is simply an example. "Aunt Betty tripped on the sidewalk in front of our house" is not an argument for digging up the sidewalk and replacing it. What exactly did Aunt Betty trip on? How stable is her walking? How many other people have tripped on that sidewalk at that place? At best, Aunt Betty's experience is a trigger for examining the issue. Does something need to be done?

People like Mossrose put forward their personal experience as if it is the defining factor and there is little/nothing anyone can say to suggest perhaps their experience is not the norm. The data seems to support the fact that wait times are long. Analysis suggests that wait time is actually an intentional trade-off for cost containment. And the overall breadth of studies suggests that people are generally content with the service, and contentment is higher in these countries than countries without such a program.

When the weight of that broader evidence is being ignored because "I had a bad experience," the person needs to be reminded that an example is not an argument.

If you prefer - an example is an incredibly weak argument in the face of all of the data that says otherwise.