US health care: "Go for the name-brand"

October 23, 2006

This pundit isn’t going on any medical tourism trips anytime soon:

However, Newsweek does not break out statistics on the types of Americans (all 150,000 of them – 0.2%) who go to get treatment in SE Asia. How many of these people are there for plastic surgery or gender reassignment?

They try to say it’s the “cost.”

That’s nice. But if the doctor screws up royally, who are you going to sue? From whom will you collect damages if the surgeon shows up hammered and takes off the wrong arm?

I am not a person who is very supportive of outrages lawsuits, but there is a need to sue some medical practitioners for malpractice. There is a reason you choose name-brand sometimes…I would rather go to Sears to have my car serviced than Jim’s World of Parts because I can recoup cost or future service without having to visit Judge Judy first.

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{ 8 comments }

1 Criminallopath October 23, 2006 at 9:58 pm

With all of the malpractice that goes on in this country and all of the whining that providers do about actually being sued while at the same time attempting to restrict the rights of patients… trying to pull this trick is like the pot calling the kettle black.

2 Anonymous October 23, 2006 at 10:06 pm

This is the most ridiculous assertion of the day. That someone would choose a provider so that they would be able to more easily sue them! My suggestion is to only obtain your care in Florida, and PLEASE only from an academic practitioner at a name-brand type place like Mayo.

3 Anonymous October 23, 2006 at 10:27 pm

“My suggestion is to only obtain your care in Florida, and PLEASE only from an academic practitioner at a name-brand type place like Mayo.”

Huh? As far as I know, Florida has a pretty screwed up healthcare system. I don’t think Grandma drives down from New York every Winter to see Dr. Rajnish Prasadhi with a shingle out on AIA in Deerfield Beach.

4 Anonymous October 23, 2006 at 10:32 pm

Are you saying Dr. Prasadhi isn’t name brand? Are you a bigot or something?

5 DrPak October 24, 2006 at 5:28 am

A lot of these “outsourced” hospitals are staffed by the best doctors in the country. It’s practically racist to just assume that hospitals in India or Bangkok provide worse healthcare than hospitals in the US just because they are in developing countries.

6 Criminallopath October 24, 2006 at 8:53 am

The audacity of this whole “don’t go overseas for treatment because you can’t sue for malpractice” is something that one could only expect from the allopathic medical community. The same people that devalue the lives of children, stay at home mothers and the poor and who constantly bitch and moan about malpractice domestically now attempting to ask “who are you going to sue?” Priceless. Only in the minds of the allopaths could such a position be expected to fly without scrutiny. What are the allopaths truely concerned about (being able to sue clinicians is not high on the list)? Competition. It would only take a few Fortune 500 companies or a single large public institution to utilize overseas providers for non-emergency surgical care in order to start the greebag domestic surgeons to sweat.

7 Anonymous October 24, 2006 at 4:08 pm

What about the osteopaths? Does the fact that i’m a DO make me magically immune from any of your outrageous blathering?

Where is your evil twin brother “criminosteopath”?

8 Criminallopath October 24, 2006 at 5:10 pm

Criminosteopath?

He was recently convicted in Ventura County Superior Court of beating his wife and smoking meth. The amazing this is, the judge, gave him a slap on the wrist sentence and this scumbag is going to try to get a license to practice. The other criminosteopath is busy at Ventura Orthopaedic Sport & Hand Surgery testifying on junk science PI litigation matters. I am sure you can find these bretheren of yours if you look hard enough. ;)

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