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I support pretty much any solution that provides guaranteed access to effective acute care (the fact that the ER can’t legally turn you away doesn’t mean it’s e
by mercutio2 7y ago
I support pretty much any solution that provides guaranteed access to effective acute care (the fact that the ER can’t legally turn you away doesn’t mean it’s effective care).
But people who advocate for this position (which, again, I believe in) all too often live in a fantasy world where we can magically switch systems and pay less. If we keep paying US medical personnel their prevailing wages, there is no way we’re going to lower costs.
Nurses and doctors are too popular in the US to ever even suggest that we reduce their wages to European levels.
- tptacek 7y agoAcute care, including the ER, is a small fraction of the total cost of health care. If the health care problem was simply ensuring everyone access to a GP's office and an ER for emergencies, we'd have solved it by now.
- mercutio2 7y agoOh, absolutely. Providing effective and low cost chronic care is an unsolved problem everywhere. I can’t say that I support any and all entitlement schemes I’ve ever heard for chronic care, is why I was singling our acute care, where I do, but you’re right that I was mixing up arguments. But of course when you provide low cost acute care, and don’t cover chronic conditions, there’s strong pressure for chronic problems to wait until they’re acute and harder to solve, and for chronic patients to use the acute system very inefficiently. It is indeed a hard problem.
- Ericson2314 7y agoMore preventative care—which, like all proactive things the US cannot seem to do—would also lower costs.