UK has the best health service, US worst

[John Galt]

the reason for the difference in cost us healthcare is specialized in care

as the people unlucky enough to not be born FREE might note, their probably never see specialists. something like 2% of new doctors are general practitioners in the us. why? well, it's not exactly the most glamorous or most rewarding (monetarily) profession -- median salary is twice for specialists than of general practitioners. the reason it's cheaper in the uk is the way they practice medicine, not the government. it's cheaper because they practice medicine in general practitioner teams as opposed to individual specialists that are referred to after the primary care physician can't figure out the issue

i have a heart condition (that effects quality, not quantity, of life) and i was sent to a specialist heart facility. i ended up seeing a variety of specialists until finally the most specialized of specialists helped me out, the electrocardiologist. now. he gave me exactly the drug that fixes the issue and offered me a permanent surgical fix. so i guess the question is, would it be better to have 20 people looking at a problem if one can't figure out, and all 20 are generalized medicine doctors, or if one can't figure it out to just refer it up the chain to a specialist? i think the answer is, if you're looking to save money, practice with teams

now lets talk about top down government handling all of it. the reason why it's independent in the us (discrete specialists) and top down (groups of general practitioners) in the uk is obvious then. while it's how they practice medicine, the government model better allows for them to do it that way. so how do we fix this, but do this in an AMERICAN not communist way? well the only way is to let the markets figure it out. the weirdness of our system (government money injected in but no real governmental control over the system as a whole) allows for the costs to spiral out of control. backing out the money from the government will improve the costs, and hospitals, in order to save money (since they now actually have to care) would turn to the same models as the UK. but this is all a pipe dream, like we'd turn back now and get rid of medicare and medicaid... le sigh.

[Homer]

[Professor]

[Saz]

[Dobby]

[John Galt]

[Dobby]

[John Galt]

[Dobby]

I still think the way in which we see a specialist is largely the same. The team is simply the doctors surgery, which are everywhere. Most people have one doctor at this surgery who will judge by himself whether or not you need to see a specialist or he can do it himself, it won't be a team decision or anything. Anything even slightly major won't be looked at by the team in the link as the link was referring to a local doctors practice.

That being said I can imagine a degree in medicine costs buckets to do in the US whereas here all medicine degrees are NHS funded so the financial rewards of specialising won't be as great. So I can imagine GPs in the states are put under a lot of pressure and if it makes things easier they will send you to a specialist a lot more regularly, especially if there's an abundance of specialists.

[John Galt]

okay fair, but the point is that americans see too many specialists which increases costs

at this point this is a systemic problem, the root of which is because of government funding. and to fix it it's either you go with the european type model or you go back to a private model. the in between system is what causes the costs to go up. we all know which one i would prefer, however, i fear we past the point of no return a long time ago (which was always the statist's insidious plan)

of course there are upsides in this in between system we have. we have more 5x more MRIs per capita than the UK for example. you can get the best health care in the world in the us, as the health care professionals make gobs of money and excel in their fields. we jsut have to pay for it (in terms of personally as well as higher costs in general)