What all of you still do not seem to get is that DRs are being paid to prescribe medications that they know do not work. No amount of money will help anyone as long as DRs continue to be corrupt. As for tort reform, I believe there are not enough lawsuits against DRs. They need to be sued into compliance.
Thanks, and I agree. If we are serious about reducing the cost of health care in this country we need to recognize that at best only 60% of health care dollars go toward treating patients in one form or another and that does not take in to account the wasted $ spent on defensive medicine and malpractice insurance and pay outs. I would estimate that defensive medicine or as the lawyers like to call it standard of care (funny that it is the lawyers setting national standards of care which in many cases are completely unfeasible in the real world both in terms of practice and economy) alone adds a at least 10% to the overall cost of care and that does not include the cost of actual malpractice premiums and payouts. A hypothetical example of this that is repeated in most urban EDs month in and month out is the homeless alcoholic who is brought in every few days passed out. Even though such a patient may return to the ED (brought in either by the police who want to dump him where they can and where the ED can not refuse to take him or by the ambulance crew who get a 911 call and then have no choice but to pick the guy up ) as many as 20 times a month each time defensive medicine requires that he be given an expensive tox screen that costs between $600-800. Who do you think pays for that? God forbid that he should have any facial abrasions or possibility that he may have fallen as that will mean a Cat scan to rule out a brain bleed, add $1000-1500 to the cost of the visit. Do you think they do this level of work up in the UK or Canada? Hell no because over there the standard of care is not set by lawyers who are adept at taking a 1 in a million event and convincing the jury that is it an outrage that such things occur. Here in MA we have a tribunal that is supposed to weed out frivolous lawsuits but the truth is that even if the tribunal sides with the physician the case still goes forward as long as the plaintiffs attorney puts up a $6K bond. I have seen cases where the expert witness testifying in favor of the defendant's standard of care is the nationally recognized authority in his field, the guy who literally wrote the book on the area on medicine in question, and the plaintiffs expert is some doc for hire that is not even a specialist in the area of medicine 9in question and still the jury will side with the plaintiff despite the fact that any objective look at the evidence clearly finds no case to answer and yet that decision by 12 potentially not too bright jurors none oh whom have been to medical school has an impact on the what will be the standard of care subsequent to their verdict! Spin, lawsuits are about the most ineffective way and the most expensive way to regulate a profession, especially when those lawsuits are often decided on emotion rather than objective criteria. Malpractice payouts alone are running between $25-30B each year and I would suggest that their only impact is increasing the cost of practicing medicine (other than keeping a few skilled jury manipulators in ferraris and caviar). Look at the profits these HMOs generate and that is after they pay all sorts of administrative people millions of $. They have lobbied for a system that is so difficult to navigate that most healthcare providers are forced to join a large HMO just to practice, few practices, especially primary care practices with their low reimbursement are able to manage all the paperwork and still make a living. Medical groups across the country are being put out of business by the HMOs at an ever increasing rate even though their cost structure is far lower than that of the HMO and they are still able to give their patients some semblance of decent treatment as they are their own boss rather than having to meet a crazy quota set by the HMO for its employees.
Good post MVIC but you did not touch on the fact that most of what DRs do is wrong. Every DR who prescribes medication that they know from experience does not work should be sued.....I do not care if the totals run up to $1 trillion. At that point, DRs may actually try to engage in preventative medicine or, God forbid, actually make an honest effort to cure someone. As for the drunk in your example....he is on his own, call it Darwinism. Are we really doing him a favor by medicating him to the edge of death until he can drink again. And I am sure the hospitals profit off of him, too.
How often does your dog get sick, maybe twice in his lifetime? If DRs did not have so many incentives to commit malpractice.......maybe they would stop?
Science is corrupt as can be. It's very politicized. Actual truth seeking individuals can go outside the bounds of conventional world view if they want but an established scientist, forget it... like I've said many times here, arguments that will get a philosophy 101 student an F are the underpinnings of other departments on the same campus.