6 ms·

> In universal care you dont get access to 'clinical trials and research and things like that... [citation needed]

• conanbatt 8y ago
  The US has substantial incoming medical tourism. If it really were strictly worse to european alternatives (more expensive or lower quality) europeans would not go to the US.
  • DanBC 8y ago
    That doesn't mean those tourists are getting effective or even safe treatment. It just means the US hospitals are good at marketing to desperate and wealthy people.
    • conanbatt 8y ago
      The funny paradox of argumenting people are stupid is that inevitably you will be put in the same category.
      • DanBC 8y ago
        I'm not saying those people are stupid. I'm saying there's an information asymetry that doesn't benefit the patient customer.
  • rosser 8y ago
    > if it were strictly worse... Ohai goalpost. When did you get there? The existence of .eu-to-.us medical tourism is utterly orthogonal to the availability of research in those countries. If you honestly took ten minutes to try, you'd be able to find dozens, if not hundreds of trials in every .eu member state, plenty of which are at least comparable to, if not more advanced than what's available in the US. I could go to .eu or .in or .mx or .th, or any of dozens of other countries, to get access to medical treatments and procedures that are by many, if not most, measures superior to their alternatives available here, but which aren't available here (just one, token example: RISUG), or are vastly more expensive here, but have comparable — or, again, better — outcomes there. Most of those places offer varying degrees of socialized, if not universal, medicine.
    • conanbatt 8y ago
      It means there are things the US healthcare provides that universals systems don't, and in a practical way that affects people, not purely in the world of ideas. The great folly of the world universal is that it implies everything would be available, and its a step in the opposite direction: a set of things will be made available, and the things that aren't will be delivered by the private market. Private care is still a thing in most universal care countries. And even with private and public, us still produces something for people that could get free treatment.
      • rosser 8y ago
        Do you know what else affects people in a practical way, and not purely in the world of ideas? Having to choose between medicine and the rest of life's necessities. "Can I afford both my kid's insulin and my rent this month?" That's a real-world consequence which, offhand, only the US healthcare system offers.
        • conanbatt 8y ago
          I disagree, I think this is the real-world consequence of the US regulatory environment.
          • rosser 8y ago
            How, exactly, has regulation driven the price of a drug we've had for decades up hundreds, even thousands, of percent, most of which increase happened after it was out of patent protection?
            • conanbatt 8y ago
              Who stops you from buying insulin outside the US and re-selling it in the domestic market?
              • arcticbull 8y ago
  • arcticbull 8y ago
    And I assume that the existence of US to Thailand and India medical tourism means that the medical systems there aren't strictly worse than the US?
  • jdietrich 8y ago
    The main driver for EU-US medical tourism is the much weaker regulation in the US. In the best case, people from the EU travel to the US for innovative new treatments that aren't yet available in the EU; more often, they're suckered into paying huge amounts of money for quackery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzynski_Clinic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzynski_Clinic The US has a similar relationship with Mexico; there are a string of clinics along the Mexican border offering unproven cancer treatments that would be difficult or impossible to market under US regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinica_0-19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinica_0-19