What’s wrong with American healthcare in a nutshell: “How does it reflect upon American culture today when obviously affluent families try to persuade doctors to defraud Medicare? How are we going to cut costs in an era of so-called consumer-driven healthcare which implies that patients and their families are the ones directing care? It is cases such as this one that really make me angry when the public blame doctors for inflating healthcare costs. For every doctor out there who orders too many tests, there must be a dozen patients who show up in exam rooms demanding chest CTs, lumbar spine MRIs, Lyme titers–or expensive unnecessary transfers from one medical center to another. If people really want to overhaul the healthcare system, they’d better begin with their own expectations.”
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unmanaged expectations. Oh Yes. I know all to much about that. It has infiltrated American health care in extra ordinary fashion. It is the giant sucking sound of bankrupting Medicare dollars
Good heavens. You had one crooked patient so now it’s all the patients’ faults that health care is screwed up? It’s not the MD’s faults. It’s also not the fault of the great majority of patients, but … patients might want to change the facility they’re in for all sorts of quite legitimate reasons. I think you had a lot of sweeping generalizations there.
The problem with medicine has little to do with the patients – they’re simply responding to what the government incentivizes in the form of third party payer. If physicians want changes, they have to push the model back to the same model architects, engineers, lawyers, and other professions have – direct pay.
Apparently though, they aren’t that inclined to do that. I assume it’s because many of them don’t dare risk the financial security of the current system. But that’s a guess.
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