491–500 of 549 posts
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"Don't get so hung up on precise numbers", uh, 90% isn't just imprecise, it's so catastrophically wrong that it undermines your entire argument
This is a topic that’s always going to have wildly different numbers. Who cares? It doesn’t change what we all know to be true. Nothing has been undermined whatsoever
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Which part of this equation is contributing to hospitals charging 50 dollars for a bag of IV fluid? I'd cut that part out. Whatever it is.
That price pays for the parking deck, security, janitors, nurses to administer the bag, needle disposal, IT, admin salaries, the hospital building itself, etc etc. An urgent care can probably administer an IV. If that’s all you need, go there. They are far cheaper and not as lavish (or equipped) as hospitals.
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My experience in talking to people with chronic conditions that aren’t easily treatable is that Kaiser’s model works great until anything that’s slightly out of the ordinary happens, and then it falls apart. If you’re a zebra (as in “when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras”), their model is pretty horrible.
Isn't it pretty bad to be a zebra in general though? Certainly there isn't any place where zebras have it better than horses.
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No, "diet and exercise" is not the only recommendation. I don't even know what point you're trying to make there - if that were the only recommendation, health care costs would be fairly low. And it's not just mental health issues (~25% of all chronic health issues), it's also respiratory issues (~10%). Then add to that the fact that many metabolic diseases have long lists of causes that amount to "not really sure".…
> No, "diet and exercise" is not the only recommendation. What else is there though? I consulted many physicians for my hyperlipidemia and all of them suggested 'diet and exercise' as the only solution. It is the only thing that worked for me. yes 'not all' high cholesterol can be managed by lifestyle modifications( eg: your genetics might predispose you to high cholesterol. Do you know how much of healthcare spend g…
If "diet and exercise" were the only thing physicians did to treat these diseases, have you tried to think about the internal consistency of your "and at the same time, this is 90% of healthcare costs" argument?
Have you, even for a moment, considered your own statement that your doctor prescribed you statins? Did this not lead you, for a brief nanosecond, to ponder that "maybe other people get treatment beyond diet and exercise too"?
Also, did it occur to you your nows on argument 3? "It's obesity". "It's metabolic diseases". "Actually, I'd like to argue there's no treatment outside of diet and exercise".
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> No, "diet and exercise" is not the only recommendation. What else is there though? I consulted many physicians for my hyperlipidemia and all of them suggested 'diet and exercise' as the only solution. It is the only thing that worked for me. yes 'not all' high cholesterol can be managed by lifestyle modifications( eg: your genetics might predispose you to high cholesterol. Do you know how much of healthcare spend g…
Dude. If "diet and exercise" were the only thing physicians did to treat these diseases, have you tried to think about the internal consistency of your "and at the same time, this is 90% of healthcare costs" argument? Have you, even for a moment, considered your own statement that your doctor prescribed you statins? Did this not lead you, for a brief nanosecond, to ponder that "maybe other people get treatment beyond…
Maybe you need to ponder about the difference between treatment and management, or ask your doctor about it next time. All this was clearly explained to me by doctor when I was started on statins and that only way to treat the disease itself is through lifestyle modifications. Unfortunately, There is a whole swath of idiots on internet who think they know better than doctors and experts.
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Not the OP, but Americans as a whole are very unhealthy (with 42% of the population being obese and over two-thirds being overweight) and culturally have very high expectations of what medicine can do for them, as opposed to making difficult changes to their lifestyle. A part of the latter is based on the actual superiority of the quality of medical care in this country -- due to the high levels of wealth produced by…
A part of the latter is based on the actual superiority of the quality of medical care in this country... How is it superior? Sure, some countries fare worse. But folks aren't getting the healthcare they need because of cost, and the results aren't exactly the best in the world. I'm not convinced that "culturally" folks have high expectations either, and sure, you might want to change your lifestyle to lose weight -…
It sounds like your point is that wider delivery of healthcare would be superior overall. That's fine, but I contend that the best way to achieve that is by increasing the supply of healthcare providers, instead of applying a price ceiling, which leads to shortages (as seen elsewhere on this thread[0]) and quality deterioration.
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My state has a "stupid motorist" law that requires people who negligently put their vehicles in danger and then use state resources to get bailed out, to pay for the rescue themselves. Perhaps we could create a "stupid eater law" for medicare/medicaid, forcing obese people etc to pay for their own private health insurance or healthcare which would free up money for others to buy more healthcare privately (via lower t…
> Perhaps we could create a "stupid eater law" for medicare/medicaid, forcing obese people etc to pay for their own private health insurance That might be a good idea after we make sure that every single person has equal access to healthy foods and equal ability to afford healthier options. Maybe we could also ban companies from adding HFCS to everything, ban advertising of any unhealthy foods, fine people for not we…
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>>Oh come on, they could start by accepting everyone with a 3.5+ and decent MCAT instead of requiring that you have a 3.95, volunteering experience, clinical experience, and near perfect MCATs. The path is unattractive because it's filled with bullshit requirements that don't matter. I for one am glad that it s hard for doctors to get into med school - allowing less qualified people to practice medicine sure doesn't…
I would take a smart doctor motivated by money over a dumber one motivated by caring for people. The reality is all of the top surgeons, cardiologists, etc. didn't become those professions just because they were "well rounded", they were smart and they wanted prestige/money. It would be good for medicine to have more smart and ambitious people. Well rounded is just a euphemism to discriminate against Asians through a…
Luckily we don't have to make that choice, we can have the best of the best - the smartest people who want to go into medicine for the right reason - thats why its hard to get into medical school, as it should be.
>>"The reality is all of the top surgeons, cardiologists, etc...."
I assume since you are making such a sweeping statement that presume to know what motivates 100% of MD's, that you have a link or reference to back up that unequivocal statement? I thought so.
>>Well rounded is just a euphemism to discriminate against Asians through affirmative action.
Are you one of those people that assumes if you simply mentioned race in your argument, you win by default? Pathetic.
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> You could give me the source code and let me run this function If I understand correctly, in this case, that function's source is highly distributed in wetware. It's about as closed-source as it gets; nobody has anywhere near the full source. Each hospital is its own fiefdom!
Yeah this is part of the problem. But even if you had like 10M rows of pricing and then gave a 2% discount to entity A, 3% discount to entity B, 4% discount to C, etc. You could publish these discount rules. Or you could just multiply the 10M rows by the number of different entities giving 10*n M rows. And then let the consumer of the data try to figure out the rules from the output...?
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I would take a smart doctor motivated by money over a dumber one motivated by caring for people. The reality is all of the top surgeons, cardiologists, etc. didn't become those professions just because they were "well rounded", they were smart and they wanted prestige/money. It would be good for medicine to have more smart and ambitious people. Well rounded is just a euphemism to discriminate against Asians through a…
>>I would take a smart doctor motivated by money over a dumber one motivated by caring for people. Luckily we don't have to make that choice, we can have the best of the best - the smartest people who want to go into medicine for the right reason - thats why its hard to get into medical school, as it should be. >>"The reality is all of the top surgeons, cardiologists, etc...." I assume since you are making such a swe…
We literally have a shortage of doctors and this is your attitude? Someone who wants to make money is an equally good or better doctor than the person who wants to help people. Medicine is scientific: you either do the operation successfully or you don't. You diagnose the patient successfully or you don't. A person's motivations for becoming a doctor doesn't play a factor in their skill.
We don't ask McDonald's workers why they want to work at McDonald's, why do we need to do it for doctors?
> Are you one of those people that assumes if you simply mentioned race in your argument, you win by default? Pathetic.
Do you deny that terms like "well rounded" and "holistic" are used to discriminate against Asians? Or should I point you to SFFA vs. Harvard, which showed that your coveted "well-rounded" personality traits can be and are used as tools of discrimination? I'll remind you that Harvard intentionally reduced the personality scores of Asians to make them seem less "well-rounded".
Med school admissions would be fairer without requiring such things as "well rounded" candidates. Personality scores are subjective and subject to bias and foul play, MCAT scores are not.