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I think that some of these comparisons may be a bit unfair. All of the dollar amounts are expressed in USD, but cost of living is different in different parts o
by pyre 14y ago
I think that some of these comparisons may be a bit unfair. All of the dollar amounts are expressed in USD, but cost of living is different in different parts of the world. It would be like comparing housing prices in the Bay Area to housing prices in Argentina just on dollar amounts in USD, without taking other factors into account.
For instance, Argentina has $10 for an office visit. I'm not sure that a doctor would be able to make any kind of decent salary if they were only making $10/patient in the US. It would definitely incentivize the impersonal, "get done as fast as possible, don't spend a microsecond more," style of visit to the doctor.
- ricardobeat 14y agoI'd say cost of living in Argentina is 3-5x lower than the US. Even if you multiply all the AR values by 5x it's still ridiculous.
- pyre 14y agoI'm not saying the numbers are reasonable. I guess I'm saying that the graphs would be more useful if they were somehow normalized for something like cost-of-living.
- teamonkey 14y agoThe cost of living in France, the UK and Australia are comparable to the US. San Francisco and New York are very expensive to live in, but so are Sydney, Paris and London.
- anigbrowl 14y agoIt would definitely incentivize the impersonal, "get done as fast as possible, don't spend a microsecond more," style of visit to the doctor. This never happens now, of course.
- pyre 14y agoNo need for the fatalist sarcasm. Do we really want to provide even more incentive for this to happen?
- anigbrowl 14y agoI think you're being fatalist by assuming it will. Having grown up in Europe and lived in several countries over there, I've generally found doctor's visits on that side of the pond no more rushed than over here, and indeed somewhat less stressful as there's less paperwork/financial overhead to deal with. People who are skeptical of socialized medicine often paint a picture of it as a grim conveyor belt of impersonal if not callous treatment, exacerbated by the suggestion that waiting rooms are clogged with people who run to the doctor for treatment of the most minor symptoms. The reality is wholly different; while 'bedside manner' can vary, I've always found medical professionals at least as attentive as here. If anything there's slightly less emphasis on the division of labor than in the US, so you don't have that experience of being bounced around like a pinball between many different people and having to repeat yourself frequently.
- pyre 14y agoMaybe you misunderstand. I'm not against socialized medicine (though that's just a blanket term, and the implementation can obviously be broken). My point was dropping the cost of a doctor's visit to something as low as $10, would probably be ridiculous in the US, because it would be difficult for a doctor to even make a living (let alone pay off med school loans). Note, that this is not a statement in support of the current costs.