There are some issues with our system. No one denies that. One of the biggest is that our society is very litigious, ready to sue at the drop of a hat, and many lawyers are out there looking for clients. In malpractice cases, the doctor may have done everything correctly, but if the outcome was not optimal, the patient can sue and walk away with millions. This reality adds both directly and indirect to everyone’s healthcare costs—indirectly, because doctors must order tests that they wouldn’t ordinarily order, just so they can show they did everything possible should they get sued. Although doctors can and do win most malpractice cases, there is no disincentive to people filing lawsuits against them. Therefore, much of the cost of malpractice insurance isn’t even to pay off bloated settlements; it’s to pay court costs for frivolous lawsuits.
Malpractice is only one issue, but it helps to illustrate that what we want and need are real solutions, not a government takeover of the whole healthcare industry.
We know that we don’t want the government taking over. The simplest reason is that it’s unconstitutional. The more complex reason is that we’ve all read about some of the horrors of socialized medicine—especially in Britain, where it’s been around for a long time—and some of us have personal knowledge of socialized medicine.
The father of one of my friends traveled from England to visit her and suffered a stroke. He was given the appropriate care in a hospital in Seattle, and was deemed well enough to travel after about a month. Back in England, he wasn’t put into any kind of special care ward at all—he was just shoved into a general ward. And he died within two weeks of his return home. Had he remained here, there is no doubt he would have continued recovering, because he wouldn’t have been shoved into a lower level ward just to save money; he would have been kept at the appropriate care level.
thanks for this very interesting post!
It looks like both “sides” of the pond tend to pick
out the worst things of the current systems to generaly portray the
other “side” as worst thing that could ever happen to mankind. Yes it looks like frivolous law suits are a big problem for the US system. On the other side people sue
doctors here too (but you will never get as much money even if you win like in the US). But there for the interesst to “make money” because of this isn´t this high.(But i guess
this is more a “legal problem” and cannot be “blamed” direct on the healthcare system even as you say it affects it )
On the other side of course “our” system has its fair share of flaws too. It would just be a incredible lie to say
that everything is perfect about the medical system in good old “Europe” because it´s not. We have people who are uninsured too (but not in this high % the US has). But i guess the main “problem” is the US and the “european” system differ in an “mostly ignored” generall point. The European system
is aimed to give as much persons as possible access to basic health care. It looks like the US system is aimed to give the people who can pay for it the best possible health care available. So both systems do have its winners and losers. Hard to tell which one is better. It looks like they just differ too much to compare.
greetings
The father of one of my friends traveled from England to visit her and suffered a stroke. He was given the appropriate care in a hospital in Seattle, and was deemed well enough to travel after about a month. Back in England, he wasn’t put into any kind of special care ward at all—he was just shoved into a general ward. And he died within two weeks of his return home. Had he remained here, there is no doubt he would have continued recovering, because he wouldn’t have been shoved into a lower level ward just to save money; he would have been kept at the appropriate care level.