#fakenews The guy in the original article would be an illegal abusing the system…and he was taken care of.
Virtually no part of the systems in the US and Taiwan are similar and I have no idea why people would think the end product would come out costing the same.
The American health care system is designed to earn massive profit at every step of the way. Becoming a doctor in the US takes ~12-15 years and people end up in debt past $250,000 to do so. Deans of medical schools make $200k. Malpractice insurance costs physicians $50k. Pharmaceutical companies earn tens of billions of dollars in profits. Hospitals have a hospital administrator to patient ratio that is smaller than the doctor to patient ratio. That five figure bill you get for a routine hospital stay is is supporting the millionaire livelihood of many people.
Raising taxes to pay for this system is an idea that is as dumb as the idea of raising taxes to be sure that the end product of an overbloated higher education system is free.
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It’s also a system that has produced the finest doctors and medical breakthroughs with innovative surgeries to new medicine. Not to say many other countries like Germany and UK aren’t up there. But if you had to ask where someone would want to be hospitalized to save their life. US is up there.
I would however find some ways to allow doctors to be entrepreneurs. A lot of these medical industries aren’t even ran by doctors. It’s too hard after going to school for 10+ years racking up bills to go into business with some good ideas. We would have better medical instruments and things of that sort if more doctors had that option.
Yes, and this is will be one of several massive problems if/when the US moves to “socialized medicine” that purports to save costs through removing profit from the stacks of revenue.
People who earn high incomes aren’t likely to work for the saintly good of all mankind when their paychecks are cut dramatically. To achieve the same level of motivation to excel, it will require a new person altogether. Some new person who places duty to others over income, and can perform at the same or higher level will have to be located and employed.
Multiply by hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of such workers and the extent of the change involved becomes evident.
Hah. My cousin is the dean of a state-university medical school and he pulls down more than $400k/year. Not only that, his pension will be roughly 90% of that, and it will be paid by the state faithfully from the first day of his retirement through the last day of his life (whenever that occurs).
Wow that’s a cushy pension.
No doubt.
My best friend from high school is a mere school superintendent of a school district and he earns more than $250k a year - and has to beat headhunters away with a stick.
You are missing the point. If it was simply about having universal healthcare then there are tons of other examples. The reason Taiwan stands out is it costs less but gives better insurance, it’s just a more efficient way of doing healthcare.
No one is arguing about absolute costs, it costs less as a percentage of GDP.
It’s not about medical staff income either, administrative costs in the US are about 25-26 percent of total costs, while it’s about 2 percent in Taiwan. That has nothing to do with research and medical school costs. It doesn’t have to cost as much as Taiwan, just bring down the admin costs and you save about 20 percent, which is about 4 percent GDP. That means 4 percent of GDP is freed up to invest in whatever you want.
Yes. I’m entirely for some sort of socialized health care system and hate the argument that “yeah, but MY COUNTRY really is different” but I don’t see that such a system could work in the US in our lifetimes nor do I think that I’ve ever heard a politician really discuss reasons why it costs so damn much.
So are you. It’s fine and dandy to see on paper that lowering admin costs will reduce healthcare as a share of GDP, but the point is, will it work?
Americans have already been lied to by one US president about their healthcare, and look where we are today as a result. There will have to be guarantees of efficacy and efficiency the next time.
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Lol, so, what did this one out of 44/45 presidents say about health care that was not true ?
What’s that? Like a principal but of more than one school?
Boss or supervisor of all the principals in the district.
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In many states schools of a certain geography roll up into a school district, managed by a school superintendent.
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To be fair, it sounded nice and I gave it a chance and felt the Republicans were being a bit unfair and fighting it just for the heck of it. But the result wasn’t what most people hoped.
The very top end in the US has amazing medical care . Not much use for ya unless they take you on as a charity case or you have a shitload of money in the bank.
As for generics and biosimilars , it’s interesting as many are being produced in developing countries now. China, India, Korea, Taiwan…a lot of developments and hopefully lower prices.
FDA could do better but it’s actually big pharma which is constantly lobbying Congress which in turn puts a lot of pressure on the FDA to increase the patentable time and range of their blockbuster drugs. They also lobby doctors to make them feel like generics and biosimilars are inferior and risky choices.
I’ve been saying this for a few posts now.
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No, not a new kind of person. Patriotism was invented a long time ago. Its popularity waxes and wanes, though…
Yes, that’s why I didn’t write that we will need a new kind of person. I said we will need a new person. To be even more explicit, we will need a new person for the position (assuming it survives) because the current person is profit- and/or salary-driven.
And we’re not Canadians, man. We don’t salivate at the prospect of serving government (or is it government serving you ala the Twilight Zone ep 
) - not like you lot evidently do.
Government is not a feature, it is a bug. B.U.G. Always has been, is, always will be.