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> Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half becaus
by littlestymaar 1y ago
> Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half because the U.S. has expensive medical equipment just lying around.
Because it has the X-ray equipment, they have make a return on investment on it, and that's why they end up doing useless tests. Those are even harmful by the way, as X-rays are ionizing reaction, and useless CT scans are actually responsible for a non-negligible fraction of cancer in the US.
The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your son.
> In another example, my wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87. They medevacced her out of her house in rural Oregon to Portland. Then the doctors wanted to do a bunch of expensive procedures until she passed away a few days later. She was a lovely lady, but no European country would’ve greenlit these procedures on an 87 year old woman who had a quarter of her long missing due to lung cancer in her 60s.
This is wrong. If we're sharing anecdotes let me tell you about my 97yo grand dad who's been admitted thrice in ER this year in France, and received what would have amounted to almost $100k of medical bills in the US. (He's OK now, but at this age you never fully recover to your previous state, so every trip to the hospital is a step down).
> The more you drill down into health indicators to distinguish the effect of medical care from other factors, the less it seems like US outcomes are worse. US overall indicators, like life expectancy, are worse. But those factor in many things that have nothing to do with the health system, such as homicide, car accidents, demographic, obesity, etc.
This is true, it explains a good fraction of the life expectancy difference, but it's irrelevant to the fact that the US pays twice are much for similar healthcare.
- rayiner 1y ago> The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your But because the risk/benefit isn’t as good, they don’t have as much of this expensive equipment. The U.S. has about 40 MRI machines per million people, versus 10 for Canada or Denmark or 20 for Spain.
- littlestymaar 1y agoWhy are you discussing such a topic if you can't tell the difference between CT scan and MRI though?
- rayiner 1y agoDo you think those differences are relevant to the point being made?
- littlestymaar 1y agoYes it is, because if you know they're different then you're literally moving the goalpost: We were talking about CT scans but the difference in CT scans both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with the availability of CT scan machines so you switch to another equipment in the middle of the discussion. Also, your numbers are cherry-picked: Japan has more MRI machines per capita for instance, and Germany or even Greece aren't far behind the US.
- rayiner 1y ago> Yes it is, because if you know they're different then you're literally moving the goalpost: We were talking about CT scans but the difference in CT scans both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with the availability of CT scan machines so you switch to another equipment in the middle of the discussion. We’re talking the overuse of diagnostic testing using expensive equipment in the U.S. My anecdote happened to involve a CT scan, but the data I had seen on it focused on MRIs: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/per-capita-u-s-three-times-many-mri-machines-comparable-countries-average/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart/per-capita-u-s-thr... I used Canada as a data point because it’s common to compare the U.S.’s healthcare system to Canada, because the countries are otherwise pretty similar. Japan and Greece have very different populations.