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Doctors, Revolt

nytimes.com

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Re: Doctors, Revolt

#101

Post by propman »

araes wrote: post #6

Health care and education are IMO the next two major car wrecks coming for America. Both are like patients with similar symptoms (indicative of the general disease of America.) - They treat the customers like replaceable widgets - Costs are spiraling out of control. ($2-3000/day hospital, $3.4 TRILLION in total health spending [this equals the entire federal budget]) - Doctors / teachers often don't seem to communica…

Was charged $70k for a procedure that should have cost 5k max even with nurses and doctors and materials. I also was under the impression it was covered by my insurance because the front desk said she would call me if it wasn't. I was also given wrong information about what type of treatment I was going to get and when I requested to check with the doctor, I was given the option of "do you want the procedure or am ai going to just cancel it" and if it was cancelled, the next available appointment with the doctor was in 5 months.

I payed just $3k, but that was ridiculous to be surprised by and I'm still confused what the treatment plan is because front desk didn't schedule me until July. The doctor is great but support staff has become so beuracratic...

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#102

Post by zoom6628 »

Stories like this are not uncommon in so-called developed countries. Makes you realise why medical tourism industry does so well. From my own experience i would prefer to return to Guangzhou or Shanghai for procedures rather than anywhere else. Not really that much cheaper but at least i can determine up front the size of the bill. Added to that is that in spite of factory-scale medical care in China(remember there are basically no private medical practices - all doctors are linked with hospitals), they are actual (in my personal experience) quite caring and dont charge unnecessarily.

But as with all things YMMV.

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#103

Post by k__ »

robbiep wrote: post #95
araes wrote: post #6

Health care and education are IMO the next two major car wrecks coming for America. Both are like patients with similar symptoms (indicative of the general disease of America.) - They treat the customers like replaceable widgets - Costs are spiraling out of control. ($2-3000/day hospital, $3.4 TRILLION in total health spending [this equals the entire federal budget]) - Doctors / teachers often don't seem to communica…

It’s not relearning but making sure you get the facts from a primary source. The ICU motto is ‘trust no bastard’ - if you rely on what is written down without asking the patient directly, can you be sure that it is correct? I have personally come across many instances where what has been recorded is inaccurate or misses important details that careful questioning elicits. I will always take my own history from a patie…

lol, I was once in the hospital because I hit my head. I had a panic attack at university, hyperventilated and passed out.

They asked me what happend and wrote down "was drunk" so everyone I met at the hospital was like "uhuu was drunk at the uni... one of those guys..."

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#104

Post by HillaryBriss »

motohagiography wrote: post #59

The health sector is the Afghanistan of the tech business. It's entire history is of empires arriving to solve its problems, and after a decade and massive losses, they leave, mystified at how something so contained could be so intractable. The only people who survive there are the ones who don't try to change it. When you can send your diagnostic images to get a consult from 2 clinics in India and an expert system f…

not sure where your confidence comes from, though i hope you are correct. i don't see it yet though.

in the US healthcare market the payment model will have to change before Indian healthcare market prices have an impact.

in other words, US legislation that takes money away from the current system of providers would need to be passed. (i mean, why doesn't the US medicare/medicaid system take advantage of the lower costs you're describing by flying US patients to hospitals in other countries for major, expensive procedures and other treatments? they could save a lot of money, but US law does not currently allow payment to providers all over the world.)

US hospitals, doctors, pharma, etc have created a closed system wherein they are the only service and product providers. i think they like that aspect of the current system. they've built themselves a moat and globalization cannot enter.

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#105

Post by gaadd33 »

propman wrote: post #101
araes wrote: post #6

Health care and education are IMO the next two major car wrecks coming for America. Both are like patients with similar symptoms (indicative of the general disease of America.) - They treat the customers like replaceable widgets - Costs are spiraling out of control. ($2-3000/day hospital, $3.4 TRILLION in total health spending [this equals the entire federal budget]) - Doctors / teachers often don't seem to communica…

Was charged $70k for a procedure that should have cost 5k max even with nurses and doctors and materials. I also was under the impression it was covered by my insurance because the front desk said she would call me if it wasn't. I was also given wrong information about what type of treatment I was going to get and when I requested to check with the doctor, I was given the option of "do you want the procedure or am ai…

Why should it have cost $5k max? Did you price out the labor/facilities/equipment to do it yourself?

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#106

Post by gaadd33 »

dkarl wrote: post #68
candiodari wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is MBA administrators looking at their little accounting tables and deciding that not letting patients actually see a doctor is their purpose in life, just so they can pay everyone at a hospital as little as possible. This of course leads to global cost blowups and worse care. Of course, by now there is no turning back, and the government has decided that actually training doctors must be prevented at all…

I'm talking about teachers with master's degrees and MD doctors, which means many years of education. We've made it standard to have access to these people (unless you have a scratch???) but it's not a panacea. Just got word that my father is seeing the same doctor that has fucked up his care multiple times, not out of creativity or being too smart but because of not guessing the simplest and most common explanation…

Your father's town's hospital only has 1 doctor? HN is pretty American-centric but I'm curious if that's in what is considered a developed nation?

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#107

Post by gaadd33 »

adventured wrote: post #80
curun1r wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more specific, the US government. Other governments seem to figure this stuff out, from time to time, but there's something about the FPTP, federal/state split or other such details that's sabotaged efforts here. We should realize that it isn't a fundamental property of government, just the one we have and we have mechanisms for making changes that we haven't yet tried.

The problem in the present US system, is that it's a bad mixture of private and government involvement. We have the negatives from both acting simultaneously. 5% of patients are half of all costs in the US healthcare system; 1% of patients are 22% of the cost. People over the age of 65 are a greater share of cost in the US system than in universal healthcare systems, because the US doesn't have a big lever for ration…

> 5% of patients are half of all costs in the US healthcare system; 1% of patients are 22% of the cost.

Is that including the entire population or just those on Medicare?

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#108

Post by gaadd33 »

candiodari wrote: post #41
OliverJones wrote: post #21

Let's be careful about nostalgia for the "good old days" of medical practice. Keep in mind that standardizing medical care process has done more to get physicians to WASH THEIR HANDS than all kinds of exhortations about relationships, partnerships, and healing. And washing hands has, since Semmelweis's discoveries 150 years ago, been known as the easiest way to promote healing that medical people don't do. Why do the…

This. Every healthcare system in the world needs to choose. We simply cannot have healthcare for everything, including rare, expensive and/or hopeless diseases (or all 3 at the same time). As long as that's what we demand, healthcare will go wrong. And let's please just stop pretending that this is somehow an America-only problem, caused by whatever (democrats: by not being public conservatives: by public largesse. A…

Why does [2] have anything to do with this conversation? Maybe google translate missed how it was related to the doctor missing something or the healthcare system not paying for treatment? Can you explain more?

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#109

Post by candiodari »

gaadd33 wrote: post #106
dkarl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about teachers with master's degrees and MD doctors, which means many years of education. We've made it standard to have access to these people (unless you have a scratch???) but it's not a panacea. Just got word that my father is seeing the same doctor that has fucked up his care multiple times, not out of creativity or being too smart but because of not guessing the simplest and most common explanation…

Your father's town's hospital only has 1 doctor? HN is pretty American-centric but I'm curious if that's in what is considered a developed nation?

I don't know for sure, but probably he means the primary care physician, not a hospital team.

Re: Doctors, Revolt

#110

Post by candiodari »

gaadd33 wrote: post #108
candiodari wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Every healthcare system in the world needs to choose. We simply cannot have healthcare for everything, including rare, expensive and/or hopeless diseases (or all 3 at the same time). As long as that's what we demand, healthcare will go wrong. And let's please just stop pretending that this is somehow an America-only problem, caused by whatever (democrats: by not being public conservatives: by public largesse. A…

Why does [2] have anything to do with this conversation? Maybe google translate missed how it was related to the doctor missing something or the healthcare system not paying for treatment? Can you explain more?

Well, there was a hospital in India, that when a patient came in feeling unwell in his abdomen and then ...

a) somehow this patient developed a ruptured liver and severe trauma to the skull (given that he survived the flight and was conscious we can easily conclude that neither injury was present before the hospital got involved)

b) missed that someone at the hospital has removed the heart and kidneys from the patient

c) signed off on a "natural causes" death certificate, no mention of what happened to the organs

(note that organs for transplant need to be taken out before death occurs, so it's not like they removed them with the family's permission after clinical death)

d) refuses to investigate how this happened

e) got the government to concur, and actually the government is helping them with d)

That's something that got reported last week, and this was a hospital in India, so third world healthcare.

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