pbnoob healthcare special

Originally posted by Peter Parker What are some good measures of how a system is doing?

The availability of care to the people is a good factor to judge by. Are hospitals and doctors readily accessible to the public, even in rural areas. What are the wait times and conditions for admittance to the hospital?

The success rate of procedures. What percentage of patients return to care for the same issues after their first visit? Furthermore, how many times must they return until the problem is resolved?

The availability of procedures and tests. Do patients have access to the most advanced and successful medical procedures and tests out there?

I had a whole lot more, but work interrupted my posting by about 7 hours.

I guess Im just the type of person that breaks it down to the basics. To me, its a balance of risking failure against success. Color me naive or liberal or pinko or hippie if you want, but Im a fan of people not dying. Im a fan of people getting the help they need.

I would be perfectly fine with paying money so someone else can live longer or better. Of course everyone can "say" that, but the idiots opposing even TRYING healthcare reform are perfectly willing to let big corporations let poor people die. I suppose when you have that pass-the-buck insulation layer some folks can just write it off and forget it.

As far as Im concerned, there is no excuse for not even trying to better ourselves.

i havent really chimed in on to many of the health care debates but i will now...

the united states government is extremely inefficient. the amount of waste material is sickening and the attitude of government workers in regards to efficacy and being cost effective is a joke...

(i saw a dumpster full of brand new bar stock 1.25" + still in the cardboard because the cardboard had gotten wet so there was surface rust... this could have been taken off with a sander or in the machining process but instead it was scrapped... another time i saw half a dumpster full of nuts, bolts and even a set of dies for a pipe bender because "it was in the way" {easily $125,000 worth of materials and tools)

now, this example is not health care but its the attitude of the US government workers...

at work we have a medical facility and we can go to the navy hospital down the street...

a friend of mine lost half his finger in an accident on one of the ships... after he got to the dispensary it took them OVER AN HOUR AND A HALF TO DECIDE WHICH HOSPITAL TO SEND HIM TO...

at the hospital [portsmouth naval hospital] (i went to for a while when we 1st moved down here)

-it often takes 6 months to a year to get an appointment for an MRI or cat scan...

- 3 to 6 months for an appointment for intestinal problems...

- common surgerys are often botched and leave the patient permanently damaged...

- medical staff are rude and talk down to patients...

- staff with no training or experience are permitted to perform procedures they really shouldn't be doing...(this goes back to doing permanent damage to patients)

-in addition the facilities are often times run down, equipment is not taken care of properly, and patients are exposed to unnecessary hazards....
http://www.wgnsradio.com/alvin-c-york-va-hospital-colonoscopy-concern18-test-positive-for-hepatitis/7674/

that being said, i work in an extremely dangerous environment, i have already had a few injuries and had friends have injuries...

we all agree it is better to leave work and go to a privet doctor than it is a government doctor...

if i am able i would rather get outside the gate and call 911 than use the "FREE" government facility...

in addition to that, when i lived up north and having family along the border i have heard many first hand stories about Canadians coming to the USA for health care because they dident like the social system in place...

i have heard from germans about how awful their health care system is and how much better it is in the USA...

now, some states such as MA and NY (i know theres more but i dont know which) have state run health insurance programs... they have found that even when people are directed to the programs people dont sign up, and when they have their hands held and are signed up they dont go or take their kids tot he doctor...

i am for a state run health care system to help people who cant afford insurance but a wide spread federal program will cripple America (literally and figuratively...)



Edited by merc - 07 November 2009 at 6:28pm

Wow, I'm behind the times. Just noticed in ROFL's thread it passed...

Speaking of elbows, Chuck Norris can lick both of his elbows. At the same time.

Originally posted by Rofl_Mao Speaking of elbows, Chuck Norris can lick both of his elbows. At the same time.

I can actually lick my elbow.

To add to choop. Were the pains debilitating? What was the extent of the nerve/tendon damage?
Could your doc determine those factors without a proper test? Of course not. Each person has
a different pain threshold and thus, without an MRI or ct scan, you wouldn't be able to determine
the quantitative extent of damage.

Originally posted by Ben Grimm The rest of the story goes like this:    After seeing a couple of doctors that took route one I hemmed and hawed about the surgery for a while, not wanting to face the recovery downtime.  The pain was not debilitating in my daily routine (I do work at a desk, after all), but quite inconvenient.  It was more of an issue for my athletic endeavours, where it limited my available techniques.  I never got around to having the surgery.   After a couple of years of delay on my part I ran into a doctor who took route two, with instructions to monitor the pain and motion range closely, and to not do anything particularly painful.   I was to report back on status every couple of weeks, and report immediately of any increase in pain.    Improvement was noticable and fast.  That was a couple of years ago.  I am not 100%, and do not expect to be, but the pain is rare enough that it never occurs in my daily routine, and only occasionally in athletics - even then it is no longer debilitating.   The surgery was supposed to bring me back to 100%, but I do not expect to do the surgery.  I don't even do soup can exercises regularly any more.   The point of my cool story is that route two was quick, easy, harmless, and cheap.  If it didn't work that doctor probably would have recommended the surgery as well.  But the first doctors didn't even think of route two, because under our healthcare system they wouldn't get paid for route two.  Route one was filled with payment-causing procedures.  Expensive MRI machines that don't pay for themselves, surgeries that keep a family eating for a year, etc.    We have trained our healthcare providers to skip the easy options and go straight for the nuclear solution to everything.  As long as we compensate our providers by procedures, our costs will always be high.  Critics suggest that cost-cutting could reduce the number of physicians.  First off, that won't happen, but even if it did - that's ok, but frankly we have more than enough MDs in this country.  Our problem is that we deploy them inefficiently.  The time I spent on route 1 probably sucked up 10-20 hours of physician time - and it would have been several times that had I gone surgery.  Route 2 took a total of 15 minutes of physician time (maybe 30 minutes with the followups).   Physicians are a scarce resource and we need to treat them accordingly.  Physicians need to be leveraged, not strewn about like confetti the way we do now.    Same with machines.  Another scarce resouce that we hand out like candy.  Did I need three MRIs?  Probably not.  Did I need even one MRI?  Probably not.  But by setting such a low threshold for getting scans we have ensured that we need a very large number of machines.  Again, poor leverage.

You are my favorite forum noob, ever.

A large part of it is that we need to teach people to look at treatment like they look at their diet (although perhaps that's a less than apt analogy in this country).  When it comes down to it, most problems are treatable in multiple ways, and you should be picking the way that works best for you, not the your doctor. For that matter, if you're not seeing a specialist, or multiple practitioners, you're probably not getting all the options.  Shop around, find out the information that you should know, and make a good decision.  Doctors are not all knowing, perfect beings.  They're there to help, and like all of us, they sometimes fail.

Originally posted by jmac3 Pariel you are clearly the forum noob if you don't know who that is.

You would think the avatar was a dead giveaway.