4 ms·

Sorry but i didn't get claims about lack of public investing in healthcare. Why when i am already paying like 500$/mo for insurance and making one physical in

by ex3ndr 6y ago

Sorry but i didn't get claims about lack of public investing in healthcare. Why when i am already paying like 500$/mo for insurance and making one physical in a year at most. Also during this physical i asked about help with my panic attacks and was told "well we don't have capacity at all for this, you will wait for ~month for your visit and it won't be useful since they are not going to have enough time to look at you". And this visit would be paid. May be AHA shouldn't limit number of doctors educated to make it available to public? Money is clearly not an issue.

leereeves 6y ago
I'd also like to remove the artificial limits on the number of doctors, but I don't see how it would help in this case. This delay is in the labs, not the doctors' offices.
acdha 6y ago
Spending is not synonymous with investment. Around half of your money is going to middlemen - think about how many people have full time jobs deciding what to charge, coding it, shipping invoices around, etc. not to mention trying to figure out how to profit as much as possible? How much goes to emergency care because preventative care is not covered and healthy lifestyles are actively discouraged by public policy? None of that is going to medical professionals, infrastructure, or research. We pay considerably more than anyone else per-capita but that’s waste: as far as outcomes go we rank much lower than our peers. This is also interesting when you compare tax rates: Americans pay taxes + insurance at a combined rate around “expensive” countries like Denmark but we don’t get anywhere near as much for our money.
- roughly 6y ago
  Is it just half?
- learc83 6y ago
  You’re right! Only about 20% of healthcare spending goes to physicians and half of that does to practice expenses like malpractice insurance. So even forcing physicians to work for free wouldn’t do very much to lower healthcare prices.
schaefer 6y ago
"May be AHA shouldn't limit number of doctors educated..." Do you realize that to become a doctor requires years of medical residency working with a team of experienced doctors. the limit isn't simply bureaucratic... it's a limit on the number of available mentors.
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  They’re getting their misinformed rants wrong too - the usual theory is that the AMA (not AHA) is restricting the supply of doctors which isn’t true and hasn’t been for ~25 years. There’s a literal budget line in the Medicare omnibus that could double the number of residents trained every year.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  I think it’s reasonable to discuss lowering of standards - not all doctors do the same kind of work so we shouldn’t hold them all to the same high-standards that coincidentally place, what I feel, are unreasonably high barriers to entry to working as a doctor in the US. For example, I understand that (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that all foreign-trained and foreign-qualified doctors regardless of age, experience, and position (and country of origin, country of education, etc) have to go through the same rigorous process as a fresh-faced med-school grad in the US - even though most US doctors would fail the same process if they were also 5+ years out of med-school. Personal anecdote: my sister is a GP in London. I asked her if she’d ever consider working here in the US and she said she considered it but she didn’t want to spend a full year or more having to re-qualify from scratch, despite her professional qualifications and experience (she has her medical masters from LSHTM and is a published researcher with her papers in the US’ PubMed). We have international portability of licensing for drivers licenses - and many places allow for portability of professional engineering licenses too - it seems arbitrary (if not outright protectionist) to not have some degree of medical license portability in the US.
Marsymars 6y ago
Do you mean a physical visit (as opposed to virtual), or a regular physical exam? There's good evidence to suggest that there's no reason for healthy adults to receive a regular physical check-up.

by ex3ndr 6y ago

leereeves 6y ago

I'd also like to remove the artificial limits on the number of doctors, but I don't see how it would help in this case. This delay is in the labs, not the doctors' offices.

acdha 6y ago

Spending is not synonymous with investment. Around half of your money is going to middlemen - think about how many people have full time jobs deciding what to charge, coding it, shipping invoices around, etc. not to mention trying to figure out how to profit as much as possible? How much goes to emergency care because preventative care is not covered and healthy lifestyles are actively discouraged by public policy? None of that is going to medical professionals, infrastructure, or research. We pay considerably more than anyone else per-capita but that’s waste: as far as outcomes go we rank much lower than our peers. This is also interesting when you compare tax rates: Americans pay taxes + insurance at a combined rate around “expensive” countries like Denmark but we don’t get anywhere near as much for our money.

roughly 6y ago
Is it just half?
learc83 6y ago
You’re right! Only about 20% of healthcare spending goes to physicians and half of that does to practice expenses like malpractice insurance. So even forcing physicians to work for free wouldn’t do very much to lower healthcare prices.

schaefer 6y ago

"May be AHA shouldn't limit number of doctors educated..." Do you realize that to become a doctor requires years of medical residency working with a team of experienced doctors. the limit isn't simply bureaucratic... it's a limit on the number of available mentors.

mikeyouse 6y ago
They’re getting their misinformed rants wrong too - the usual theory is that the AMA (not AHA) is restricting the supply of doctors which isn’t true and hasn’t been for ~25 years. There’s a literal budget line in the Medicare omnibus that could double the number of residents trained every year.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
I think it’s reasonable to discuss lowering of standards - not all doctors do the same kind of work so we shouldn’t hold them all to the same high-standards that coincidentally place, what I feel, are unreasonably high barriers to entry to working as a doctor in the US. For example, I understand that (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that all foreign-trained and foreign-qualified doctors regardless of age, experience, and position (and country of origin, country of education, etc) have to go through the same rigorous process as a fresh-faced med-school grad in the US - even though most US doctors would fail the same process if they were also 5+ years out of med-school. Personal anecdote: my sister is a GP in London. I asked her if she’d ever consider working here in the US and she said she considered it but she didn’t want to spend a full year or more having to re-qualify from scratch, despite her professional qualifications and experience (she has her medical masters from LSHTM and is a published researcher with her papers in the US’ PubMed). We have international portability of licensing for drivers licenses - and many places allow for portability of professional engineering licenses too - it seems arbitrary (if not outright protectionist) to not have some degree of medical license portability in the US.

Marsymars 6y ago

Do you mean a physical visit (as opposed to virtual), or a regular physical exam? There's good evidence to suggest that there's no reason for healthy adults to receive a regular physical check-up.