3 ms·

Please define "wildly dysfunctional".

va_coder 17y ago
I recently had a physical therapist look at my 6 month old daughter at G'town hospital in DC for a routine checkup. Before I could see the therapist for a half-hour session I had to interact with 4 different people and sign so much paperwork that I felt like I was buying a house. The system is broken.
munctional 17y ago
The way we use health insurance nowadays is akin to using your car insurance for oil changes and checkups.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Bollocks. I use my health insurance (publicly funded - I'm Canadian) for oil changes and checkups, and Canada still manages to spend about half, per capita, on health coverage as the US.
  - halostatue 17y ago
    Not only that, but most employers offer supplementary insurance of one form or another to provide for the things not covered by public insurance. Because they don't have to worry about most of the Big Things (except dental and usually optometric), it's far easier and cheaper for them to offer some of the smaller things (massage, orthotics, etc.).
staticshock 17y ago
People call it "dysfunctional" because they conflate the "insurance industry" with the "healthcare indsutry". What exists in the American private sector is not, by any means, a healthcare industry. It is merely an insurance industry. By insurance industry standards, it functions well. By healthcare standards, it's terrifically broken.
cabalamat 17y ago
How abvout this graph: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/healthcare-spending-and-life-expectancy.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/healthcare-spending-a... Just about every other rich country spends less per person on healthcare than the USA (typically about half), and the people live longer. The Japanese, the longest-lived large country in the world, spend about a third per person of what the USA does. Clearly dysfunctional. "Wildly"? That's a matter for debate.
- zargon 17y ago
  Graphs like that might actually say something if they included a "lifestyle" axis and a "uses car insurance for oil changes" axis, as munctional puts it.

I recently had a physical therapist look at my 6 month old daughter at G'town hospital in DC for a routine checkup. Before I could see the therapist for a half-hour session I had to interact with 4 different people and sign so much paperwork that I felt like I was buying a house. The system is broken.

munctional 17y ago

The way we use health insurance nowadays is akin to using your car insurance for oil changes and checkups.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Bollocks. I use my health insurance (publicly funded - I'm Canadian) for oil changes and checkups, and Canada still manages to spend about half, per capita, on health coverage as the US.
- halostatue 17y ago
  Not only that, but most employers offer supplementary insurance of one form or another to provide for the things not covered by public insurance. Because they don't have to worry about most of the Big Things (except dental and usually optometric), it's far easier and cheaper for them to offer some of the smaller things (massage, orthotics, etc.).

staticshock 17y ago

People call it "dysfunctional" because they conflate the "insurance industry" with the "healthcare indsutry". What exists in the American private sector is not, by any means, a healthcare industry. It is merely an insurance industry. By insurance industry standards, it functions well. By healthcare standards, it's terrifically broken.

cabalamat 17y ago

How abvout this graph: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/healthcare-spending-and-life-expectancy.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/healthcare-spending-a... Just about every other rich country spends less per person on healthcare than the USA (typically about half), and the people live longer. The Japanese, the longest-lived large country in the world, spend about a third per person of what the USA does. Clearly dysfunctional. "Wildly"? That's a matter for debate.

zargon 17y ago
Graphs like that might actually say something if they included a "lifestyle" axis and a "uses car insurance for oil changes" axis, as munctional puts it.