121–130 of 154 posts
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So everyone's wealth is free for the taking?
My wealth is already being used to fight insurgents in parts of the world we have zero business being in.
Having gone through all of this recently with my little brother, I can definitely relate. Her account of the pre and post surgery are spot on, as well as the worries around this operation (will he survive? will his personality change? will the operation be a success? what will be the consequences?). And I'm glad she had insurance, even more so considering she lives in the US. In our case he had it too, but where we l…
Even if the surgeon doesn't deal with the insurance company directly, you should at least be able to submit the bill to them yourself?
This creates a relationship where doctors get paid much less than they would normally charge (e.g. $20 for an insurance-paid appointment vs. $100 for a customer-paid appointment). But this way they end up receiving a steady number of clients from the insurer. And in most cases doctors have to accept this deal because they don't have enough demand on their own.
Naturally, that's not the case for top neurosurgeons. They have way too much demand and can make only a few surgeries per week. So virtually none of the top ones agree to being "accredited". They make an order of magnitude more money by charging the customer directly.
If you decide to use a "non-accredited" doctor you have to pay out of your own pocket. Typical insurers won't reimburse you in this case, and even the high end ones will give you back only up to 10 or 15%. They do cover for hospital expenses (room, nurses, meals, etc.), but these are a small fraction of the cost of brain surgery.
There are some different insurance plans that will reimburse your customer-paid appointments/procedures, but – since the cost for these visits is way higher – these are plans that only multi-millionaires can afford.
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Northwestern Medicine in the Chicago suburbs has a mobile stroke unit; if there’s evidence you’re having a stroke, they’ll send the stroke unit along with the ambulance and will perform a CT scan in the ambulance to determine what type of stroke you’re having and administer interventions while you’re en route to the ER. http://westmobilestrokeunit.nm.org/
I wonder why ambulances don't have mobile x-ray systems? I realize the radiation would have to be managed, but it seems like a great application of technology to perform the imaging and send it digitally while eh route.
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Northwestern Medicine in the Chicago suburbs has a mobile stroke unit; if there’s evidence you’re having a stroke, they’ll send the stroke unit along with the ambulance and will perform a CT scan in the ambulance to determine what type of stroke you’re having and administer interventions while you’re en route to the ER. http://westmobilestrokeunit.nm.org/
I wonder why ambulances don't have mobile x-ray systems? I realize the radiation would have to be managed, but it seems like a great application of technology to perform the imaging and send it digitally while eh route.
The mobile CT scanner is also not super helpful for much other than determining whether a potential stroke patient has a grossly hemorrhagic stroke. In that one case, it is beneficial, but I don't think mobile CT scanners are used for much else.
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I think the fundamental personal issue in this country is that nobody wants to be told exactly what their government-mandated health regimen should be, or have the government decide which procedures they'll be allowed to have for their condition. That ultimately means that they're locked into what their insurance company mandated health regimen should be. But at least they can sort of choose their insurer, or no insu…
When the government is responsible for your healthcare, and also has a fiduciary duty to it's taxpayers, then the government has a further responsibility to restrict what you can eat, drink and do (not just safe or unsafe, but to penalize snack foods and restrict sports that have a higher risk of injury.) All of a sudden, my choice to say, engage in martial arts or boxing, goes from a personal decision (Do I want to…
I've never seen anything about martial arts, or indeed about sports in general. I'm sure it costs more than £0/year to treat the resulting injuries, just not enough more to make it worth worrying about by comparison.
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And if you live in the US and don't have good medical insurance the entire thing might leave you bankrupt and homeless. The ingenuity of humanity is amazing, but we still seem to get in our own ways a lot.
You are still alive though, if it's any consolation. Now, many countries have this problem solved – for now. As the population ages, the solutions may have to change everywhere. What I find interesting is that the discussion is almost never framed to address the actual issue: the medical industry in the US simply overcharges with impunity. I was shocked to discover that labor (as in, doctors) isn't even the biggest l…
https://www.propublica.org/article/why-your-health-insurer-d...
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Awe inspiring is correct! My grandmother was born in 1888. In her lifetime, she saw the first automobile, the first airplane (propeller-driven, followed by jet aircraft!), radio, "talkies" (movies with soundtracks), television (black & white, then colour!), stereo records, indoor plumbing and electrical service, electronic computers, rockets, artificial satellites, the moon landing, refrigeration(!), vaccinations and…
> someone from the year 900 could still recognize life in 1400. Where?
Before the last century, the majority of humans supported themselves by farming, and farming didn't change that much until the advent of engines.
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Yours (if you are a US citizen), mine, the 1%, the other 99%...at least a government mandated reform of the private healthcare system should be able to enforce transparent pricing structures and fight graft.
So everyone's wealth is free for the taking?
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That isn't addressing um_ya's point because doctors are just a part of the overall healthcare industry but bear the brunt of the malpractice costs. This is just one small piece of a broken healthcare system, but how we handle malpractice in this country is certainly broken. Fixing it wouldn't resolve all our problems, but it would definitely help.
I don't think it's broken at all. Tort law, in general, is what we use as an alternative to more aggressive regulation. You remove tort options, the side-effect will just be more regulatory measures.
First off, this would kill of a huge part of the open source community (the free as in beer software would all disappear). Employee contracts might be structured in such a way that the employee is responsible for any potential liability. Any customer who felt wronged could sue the individual developer who wrote that code.
These lawsuits would then be decided by a jury of people who know nothing about software development. One of the biggest deciding factors in that case would be who could hire the best lawyers and which lawyers could bring in the best "software experts" to explain why the developer did or did not make a mistake. Even if it was ruled that the developer did not make a mistake, they would be unlikely to ever be able to recoup their legal costs. Meanwhile the payouts from the cases in the customer's favor are so large, people are now incentivized to sue over a much wider range of possible mistakes.
These developers just need to accept that these lawsuits and the wasted time and stress that results from them is simply a part of their profession. Regardless of a developers skill, a majority of developers now won't be able to make it through a career without being sued at least once. Eventually the software developers turn to insurance which costs tens of thousands of dollars per year to protect them against these risks.
Would you think this is a fair system? Could you see that system having a negative effect on the software industry? Do you think this would push people out of the industry who might otherwise be great developers? Would this system, that is ostensibly designed to protect customers, actually result in a better level of service?
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I don't think it's broken at all. Tort law, in general, is what we use as an alternative to more aggressive regulation. You remove tort options, the side-effect will just be more regulatory measures.
Imagine a world in which a software developer was held personally liable for any work they did. First off, this would kill of a huge part of the open source community (the free as in beer software would all disappear). Employee contracts might be structured in such a way that the employee is responsible for any potential liability. Any customer who felt wronged could sue the individual developer who wrote that code.…