Health care - administrative incompetence

Rolfe said:
That, and hang all the bankers.

Rolfe.
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One of my favorite Matt Taibbi (one of the few actual investigative journalists left, it seems) quotes.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/22-6

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"

But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

Good luck with that, America.
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:D
 
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In the words of the immortal Frank Barone: "holy crap"

Don't have time to read all the latest replies, but FYI the point of this thread was my disgust with the incompetence of the administrators - ie the secreterial/paper pusher types behind the desks. Not the doctors, nurses, health care plans ad nauseum.

We now take you back to your regularly scheduled sidetrack. :boggled: :cool:
 
You show the tip of the iceberg, and someone will want to explore the rest....

Blame Schrödinger's Cat.

Rolfe.
 
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I think the problem is that it has not been demonstrated that the incompetence you complain of actually exists
 
Fiona said:
I would like to ask the Americans who are unhappy with the current situation if it was always like this in America.
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The health care / insurance situation has pretty much been the same since I became aware in the mid 70's.

It's a shame they didn't do something significant back then, before the country veered to the right. Today, Richard Nixon would be seen as the personification of Karl Marx.
 
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Fiona said:
I would like to ask the Americans who are unhappy with the current situation if it was always like this in America. I ask because upthread someone said they saw the origin of the problem in the Reagan years. As others have mentioned, we in the uk are currently seeing active threat to the health service, although the government making that threat lied about their intentions in order to get elected (IMO). To me this seems to be yet another step along a road which has been travelled since the Thatcher years and there is a tendency to see this as americanisation (a tendency I often fall into). Yet it seems to me that that is a misnomer and that what we are seeing is not nationally based at all. It is rather a change in the nature of government from democracy to plutocracy, though unacknowledged. I think that move is further advanced in America, perhaps because they started earlier; or because it fits better with the national narrative; or for some other reason. I understand from some other europeans that the move is also happening in some other countries though they are maybe less far down the road than we are. It is at least noticeable that some premises which are eminently challengeable are treated as fact and that the debate has become limited in terms of what is seen as reasonable to discuss. Perhaps the phenomenon is truly american, as it is often seen: but perhaps it is no more american than it is british or european: but is rather transnational because plutocrats have more interests in common with each other than they do with nations or populations. Sorry if that is derail but I am interested in how this woo developed and gained ascendancy
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I've wondered that myself. Has it always been this way, or have Americans become increasingly mean and stingy? Is it a reflection on the uncertainty of the future? Or hope that by repeating the prattle of the plutocrats, they'll be invited to join in?

My grandfather was the traditional American success story. An orphaned boy with one eye who worked his way up in the oil biz, put himself through college, was able to buy several drilling companies before he was 30. Retired from that at 40 and then developed chemical formulas for various industrial glues, many of which are still in use today.

He was wealthy, slightly to the right of the John Birch society, loathed unions, feared communism, and was a casual racist. He was also very, very vocal about his support for decent public schools, and was surprising sympathetic about the Watts Riots, and any situation in which there was an obvious underdog. He credited his success to the people who had helped him because taking all the credit would have been bragging and that's rude. As anachronistic as he was, he still manage to understand that there were people involved.

I can not imagine him looking around at our current system and saying that it is the best possible option.
 
Rolfe said:
I think you need to do some better and more valid comparisons of medical salaries between the two countries. As I mentioned, my friends who bought an ocean-going yacht almost on a whim are both NHS doctors.
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Let's see here:

Salaried GPs in the NHS are paid between £53781 and £81158 which (according to Google anyway) amounts to $83,484.25 and $125,981.56. No one's buying a yacht with that money. I can guarantee you that this salary range would not be acceptable to most American Family Practitioners. And Family Practitioners are just about the least paid doctors in America.

This is only one reason why an NHS type system will never work in America.

And once again, please explain how it might be possible for the free market to bring down the costs of complex and resource-heavy medical and surgical treatment to the price of a Happy Meal, and yet doctors continue to be paid better than the (very generous) salaries paid by the NHS?
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Price of a Happy Meal? No. Price of a small car? Maybe. And with savings + catastrophic insurance, such costs could be easily managed.
 
Shalamar said:
Ahh.. You think that the lives of other people are unimportant, next to doctors getting paid what you feel they should be paid.

Tell me, why do doctors in, pretty much the rest of the world, still manage to do well despite the entire population getting the care they need.

You sicken me.
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:rolleyes:

I never said doctors pay > human lives.

Are you implying that doctor's shouldn't be allowed to make money?
 
xjx388 said:
Let's see here:

Salaried GPs in the NHS are paid between £53781 and £81158 which (according to Google anyway) amounts to $83,484.25 and $125,981.56. No one's buying a yacht with that money. I can guarantee you that this salary range would not be acceptable to most American Family Practitioners. And Family Practitioners are just about the least paid doctors in America.
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Your numbers can't be right. The USA has a much more free market than the UK, which means the USA salaries should be lower, right? So I dug a little deeper...

You are looking at salaried NHS GPs. As you have been told repeatedly, not everyone is on NHS salary. According to this source, the average GP salary was £105,300, which is about $164,000. That's higher than the USA.

Fancy that! I guess you were right after all. It makes you wonder how the USA spends more on health care.
 
xjx388 said:
:rolleyes:

I never said doctors pay > human lives.

Are you implying that doctor's shouldn't be allowed to make money?
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And where did I say that? You are implying that universal health care = poor doctors.

You favour people dying, with the assumption that doctors will be paid less.
 
UncaYimmy said:
Your numbers can't be right. The USA has a much more free market than the UK, which means the USA salaries should be lower, right? So I dug a little deeper...

You are looking at salaried NHS GPs. As you have been told repeatedly, not everyone is on NHS salary. According to this source, the average GP salary was £105,300, which is about $164,000. That's higher than the USA.

Fancy that! I guess you were right after all. It makes you wonder how the USA spends more on health care.
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$164,00 is not higher than the USA. Where would you get such a number?

$209,000 is closer, as this shows. And I'm sure that's for docs in a group. A solo practitioner can make a little more than that.

And look at some of the other specialties. Waaaaaayyyy higher than the UK. How are you going to sell a huge pay cut to doctors. Won't happen.

Now come on people . . . don't let me down! I know someone wants to say it . . .
 
xjx388 said:
Let's see here:

Salaried GPs in the NHS are paid between £53781 and £81158 which (according to Google anyway) amounts to $83,484.25 and $125,981.56. No one's buying a yacht with that money. I can guarantee you that this salary range would not be acceptable to most American Family Practitioners. And Family Practitioners are just about the least paid doctors in America.

This is only one reason why an NHS type system will never work in America.
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In the US:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/people_with_jobs_as_physicians_/_doctors/salary

Family Physician / Doctor $139,906

Physician / Doctor, General Practice $119,491

Very small actual difference between the US and the UK. I think FPs need to be paid a lot more, too.
 
xjx388 said:
Price of a Happy Meal? No. Price of a small car? Maybe. And with savings + catastrophic insurance, such costs could be easily managed.
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How? How is "a more free market" going to significantly bring down the cost of Ducky's surgery/treatment without turning that sort of high-tech treatment into a niche market product?

PLEASE explain this to me.
 
xjx388 said:
$164,00 is not higher than the USA. Where would you get such a number?
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Right here:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/people_with_jobs_as_physicians_/_doctors/salary
$139,906

And here:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#29-0000
$168,550

Of course, they won't have to pay anything for health insurance, so figure that's several thousand per year. Malpractice insurance in the UK is much, much lower. A GP in the UK pays about $5,000 whereas in the USA it's $15,000 or more.

This is assuming, of course, that we even need to adjust pay scales at all. That's not a given. It's just more crap you're throwing at the wall.

And look at some of the other specialties. Waaaaaayyyy higher than the UK. How are you going to sell a huge pay cut to doctors. Won't happen.
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Fortunately, there are only about 6 doctors per 1,000 people in the USA. They don't have to like it. If you think negotiating with Cigna is tough, try negotiating with the USA. Good luck!

Besides, let's see them go get jobs that pay as much doing anything else.
 
Ha! I was just trying to look up how much malpractice insurance is in the UK.
 
kellyb said:
How? How is "a more free market" going to significantly bring down the cost of Ducky's surgery/treatment without turning that sort of high-tech treatment into a niche market product?

PLEASE explain this to me.
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A freer market will reduce costs overall.

The sad fact is that MM is a niche market, if you want to use those terms. It's pretty rare and it's going to cost a lot to treat it no matter what. What would have helped Ducky (and might help him now) is the new law which says insurers can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions. I wonder if he's applied for disability? Once you have that going, you can get Medicare. The current system is far from perfect, but there are ways to get help -very few people are totally screwed.
 
UncaYimmy said:
Fortunately, there are only about 6 doctors per 1,000 people in the USA. They don't have to like it. If you think negotiating with Cigna is tough, try negotiating with the USA. Good luck!

Besides, let's see them go get jobs that pay as much doing anything else.
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:D

But seriously, I think we need to pay FP's better. Those super-sub-specialists making over a half mil a year? Take it out of their salaries and pay our FPs better.
 
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