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Treating medicine as a generic, traditional business has done nothing positive for society. There has been a lack of innovation for fear of breaking things, b
by tcbawo 8y ago
Treating medicine as a generic, traditional business has done nothing positive for society.
There has been a lack of innovation for fear of breaking things, but things are seeming more broken all the time. Maybe we'll start to see some traction.
- Engineering-MD 8y agoI would agree with you, but you don’t really give an argument to say how the proposed alternative is better or the optimal solution.
- tcbawo 8y agoI'm not advocating for patient ownership of medical records. I'm not in the field, so I don't know whether that makes sense. I do know that profit motives tend to backfire in this industry as everyone tries to get theirs before the house of cards comes falling down.
- Engineering-MD 8y agoFair response. I am in the UK, so it’s not profit orientated in any case. It is moving that way to a certain degree, but clinical decisions are based more on what’s good for the patient and in a defensive manner. The opposite effect is in place: reduce costs wherever possible (don’t do tests unless it will change management, don’t treat unless it will improve the patient’s life).
- tcbawo 8y agoI'd much rather have some base safety net. As it stands in the US, no amount of capital is sufficient to protect yourself against a lifetime of medical expenses. This is a perverse incentive that injects greed, selfishness, and sometimes desperation into our everyday lives.