What socialized medicine may mean...

[Nightshade]

To be sure this is just one example- but as people in Britain and Canada may tell you, it is pretty common.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/british-he ... -disgrace/

British Health Service: A National Disgrace

A recent PJM article painted a rosy picture of socialized medicine in Britain. Here's the real story.

January 24, 2009 - by K.T. Dodge

I must say, as a British citizen familiar with the National Health Service, I found Carol Gould’s recent PJM article praising the NHS quite fascinating.

From an emotional point of view, I could see why she praised them because they saved her friend’s life. (However, surely this is the job of an intensive care unit.)

But when I read further and realized that a major part of her praise came because the health care was “free,” it enraged me. Gould is an American who has lived in Great Britain for many years; my family and I have used the NHS system on a regular basis for over 40 years.

First and foremost, NHS health care is not free: every working person in the UK pays National Insurance whether they use the system or not. In addition, recently the British government has imposed measures to penalize those who choose to opt for private medical care, despite the fact that in many areas, NHS waiting lists for operations are too long.

The NHS has garnered very poor reviews where cancer treatment is concerned. Many of my parents’ friends have died because the NHS has failed to diagnose cancer early enough to be successfully treated.

The NHS is a particularly expensive beast to run and “cost” determines the treatment it offers.

My experience with NHS care, or what one of my friends referred to as “torture,” is utterly different from the almost fairytale description of Carol’s friend’s treatment. I broke my ankle and was rushed to “accident and emergency” at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital in London (also a teaching hospital) at around 9:30 p.m. I was left waiting for about an hour and a half, in a cold corridor on a hard wood chair. Finally I was sent for an x-ray. Only when they saw the x-ray did they realize I had actually broken my ankle on both sides, whereby my foot was actually dislocated from my leg. Then they asked me if I wanted painkillers. They proceeded to set my foot into a temporary cast. At 3:00 a.m., I was finally admitted to the Nightingale Ward — before being taken for another x-ray to see if my ankle was correctly set in the temporary plaster. It was not and it was painfully re-set again. I can only describe the nursing care in this ward as the worst I have ever encountered. Indifferent, they left me lying helpless, without the cover of so much as a sheet, naked on the hospital bed, with the door wide open for all to see for almost half an hour. Someone did bring me a robe. This was thrown onto a chair, out of my reach. This was a common pattern: putting things out of my reach. This included bowls of water to wash myself with and food to eat. Their attitude was callous. I was thankful that I had family and friends to sit with me and help me.

Although I was on the “priority” list for my operation, I waited almost 24 hours with “nil by mouth” before finally being told I was being taken down to the operating room. Just before we left the ward I told the nurse I needed to go to the toilet; she told me to wait until I got down to the operating theater and ask again. When I asked in the pre-operating room, the anesthetist was annoyed at the question and proceeded to have an argument with the nurse, while I was lying on the trolley with my bladder bursting. Finally he left and she brought me a bedpan. As I said, my bladder was very full so the bedpan was brimming. She snatched it away from beneath me, balancing it precariously on the edge of the bed. As she turned, she knocked the bedpan, which sent it crashing to the floor. Urine splashed across the whole pre-operating theater including up the medicine fridge. She started blaspheming and blaming me at this point, as the anesthetist looked aghast through a window. She proceeded to soak the urine up with paper towels. No disinfectant was used. Her lack of hygiene was shocking. At this point I feared for my life and hoped the operating theater was cleaner. If I could have walked, I would have! This was just one incident amongst many that I encountered until I managed to escape the clutches of these appalling nurses.

There are numerous examples of the shocking care dished out by the NHS. The whole system is a lottery. A poor guy was starved to death because of a lack of communication between the doctors and nurses who were treating him. He went 26 days without food.

There are many complaints about the hospitals’ lack of cleanliness in the NHS. In fact, Richard Branson of the Virgin empire has also recently become the vice president of the Patients Association to get involved in trying to improve standards in the NHS.

This is the experience of Lord Mancroft, who was actually lucky that he could afford to escape this stressful NHS experience.

Senior nurses can make life-or-death decisions without consulting a doctor. I have to say I would not trust any of the nurses I had when my ankle was broken to make that kind of decision. Most of them didn’t even know how to work the heart monitor.

I am pleased that Carol’s friend had a positive experience with the NHS. Let’s face it: the law of averages says that somebody has to.

As I said earlier, oftentimes it is a lottery whether you get good treatment or not. It’s not a guarantee.

[TechPro]

So let me get this straight ...

Now that Bush is no longer in office (and thus not influencing the Government to avoid socialized or \"national\" health care) ... you're no longer going to be ripping about how much we need a national of government supported health care and you'll be instead ripping on about the evils of such health care systems??

You're just not going to be happy either way, are you?

As for the information you posted ... We all knew about that (or at least a bunch of us knew). Since before Bush W became President we had heard about both the benefits and the drawbacks of that kind of health care system. Meanwhile we're quite aware of both the benefits and drawbacks of our own current health care system.

So ... Thanks for the reminder.

[Krom]

I have had serious conversations on the subject with a number of people who are citizens of countries with socialized health care. I have heard the complaints and the problems with each system.

Some of the things I have heard are often socialized hospitals are short on some types of supplies because of government regulation. Others play out with poor, sloppy and or slow service and getting proper treatment is an uphill battle. They generally agree the quality, capability and speed of service in a US hospital is superior...if you are rolling in cash and can pay for everything. But so far I haven't heard a single person say they would prefer our system of healthcare over theirs. 100% of the time they agree the benefits of socialized healthcare outweigh the problems.

I believe a big part of the reason for their opinion is even though there are problems, socialized healthcare also brings some government accountability. Our system in the US has absolutely zero accountability to anyone but themselves, it is the most self serving industry you can find here in the states.

There is one effective way to get socialized healthcare here in America though. All you have to do is commit a federal crime. In prison you will receive all the healthcare you require, all paid for by the taxpayers.

[Will Robinson]

Let the doctors and hospitals compete in the open market just like they do now but start a national health care lottery that funds the single payer health insurance pool so the government can subsidize the citizens health care expenses by paying our premiums using that pool.

Case closed, problem solved.

Next question please...

[SilverFJ]

I don't like the fact some backalley crank-smoking ditch living worthless lazy mother fucker gets his body fixed on my hard-worked dime. SS and most of welfare do this already.

I love how 20% of my WF taxes help out single moms and the other 80% goes to fund someone's crystal meth habit. :

[Will Robinson]

...I love how 20% of my WF taxes help out single moms and the other 80% goes to fund someone's crystal meth habit. :

I never heard of Congress keeping most of our tax money within their frat house-we-call-bureaucracy so they can effectively spend it on themselves referred to as funding a crack habit...but it works well metaphorically so I'm going to go with it

[Spidey]

What it will mean is…

1. A minimum of 500,000 dollar price tag stamped into the head of every man, woman and child born in the United States, to pay for their “free” health care.

2. Rationed health care.

What do you think will happen when everybody is in the system?


FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM:

Percieved Problem…Not everyone has Health Insurance.

Actual Problem…Health Care is Too Expensive.

Until and unless people stop falling for the propaganda provided by the government, insurance companies & the medical industry, we shall end up in a very expensive guilded cage, just like those suckers in Europe.

[Krom]

Let the doctors and hospitals compete in the open market just like they do now but start a national health care lottery that funds the single payer health insurance pool so the government can subsidize the citizens health care expenses by paying our premiums using that pool.

Case closed, problem solved.

Next question please...

Hospitals and Doctors are competing in the open market right now? I haven't been feeling too well the last couple days, and busting a gut from rolling around on the floor laughing really hurts afterward so I would appreciate it if you would stop posting such jokes.

[Dakatsu]

EDIT: wtf, screw you enter button!

[Dakatsu]

I don't like the fact some backalley crank-smoking ditch living worthless lazy mother **** gets his body fixed on my hard-worked dime. SS and most of welfare do this already.

"NOT WITH MY MONEY, GRRR!"

I assume we should capitalize fire and police? Pay for your own police and fire coverage, why should you pay if someone is getting robbed and needs to call the police? It's your money, f*ck that dude, he shouldn't of chosen to live in such a poor neighborhood.

Sure, the poor would not be able to afford police protection, but that's what they get for being lazy bastards. Those 1/8th of the population living in poverty choose to live in horrid, miserable conditions just so they can mooch off of our paychecks! They aren't getting jobs, so they don't deserve anything. So what if there is record job loss, maybe if they worked harder, maybe then they would of had their jobs kept in the United States!

Besides, we all know the poor are all drug dealers, like drug dealers make money selling drugs to people, haha!

This has been brought to you by the Skorpshjuze Republcs' Sarcasm and Humour Bureau (SHB)

[Will Robinson]

...
Hospitals and Doctors are competing in the open market right now?..

Well as far as I can tell they get to set their own prices, serve anyone they want to, recommend operations based on diagnosis instead of government accountants recommendations etc. etc. and there is no government rule telling them how long we have to wait for, or how sick we need to be, or old we need to not be, in order to receive the care they recommend.

that is remarkably different from the socialized examples given in the original post.

They do have to provide emergency care at hospitals for non payers but other than that I don't see any outside force dictating to them who, what, where and when. So in that sense it is an open market. Just because there is no Budget Heart Surgery Drive Through Window doesn't mean there is no competition.

There are lots of products that people pay premium prices for and it is the quality of product and service they shop around for not the price. You can go to India and get your kidney transplant much cheaper but if you want the protections and quality of American medical services you pay more for it.
Go to the United Kingdom to get it even cheaper than India but you first get on a list and wait......if you die while waiting on the list the system doesn't care, you're just an entry in the accounting column.

If you die waiting at Johns Hopkins their reputation starts to suck and people go elsewhere.

[SilverFJ]

Those 1/8th of the population living in poverty choose to live in horrid, miserable conditions just so they can mooch off of our paychecks! They aren't getting jobs, so they don't deserve anything. So what if there is record job loss, maybe if they worked harder, maybe then they would of had their jobs kept in the United States!

When you grow up in a tiny dead-end snowtrap Montana town in the middle of nowhere, where you have to fight tooth and nail just to ranch-hand for a season and suck burning hidesmoke all day in the fall and that's not quite enough to make ends meet, and you strap on a backpack, sleeping bag and a guitar and put your thumb out to the highway looking for work in the city, sleeping on the street till you can get to the frosty cold north where there's work, and then get there and work 18 hour days 7 days a week for 6 months straight in terrible, miserable freezing wet conditions, knowing you're you and your girl's only ticket out of your hole is sitting in your timeclock, thousands of miles away from family and do this year after year and make something out of yourself and become well off............then you and your ★■◆●ing buddies from the Skorpshjuze Republcs' Sarcasm and Humour Bureau can rib me about not wanting to give away hand-outs.

[Cuda68]

Medicine and drugs need to be reigned in. I just had a bout with bronchitis and asthma with a touch of pneumonia and needed 5 tablets of anti-biotics. The 5 pills where $138.00

With health insurance costing me over $700 a month for the family, which has a high deductable, I had to pick up the tab.

I make decent money so it just hurt a little to spend, but this is just a shame. We send our money over sea's to help out the money grubbers over there and refuse to help out our own poor. We call our poor lazy and a number of other names and cuss words I have read in this string.

What a bunch of self rightous hypocrites.

[VonVulcan]

True or not?

---------------------------------------

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries. In our indepen dent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America .

Celebrex:100 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.60
Percent markup: 21,712%


Claritin:10 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
Percent markup: 30,306%


Keflex:250 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
Percent markup: 8,372%


Lipitor:20 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
Percent markup: 4,696%


Norvasc:10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
Percent markup: 134,493%


Paxil:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
Percent markup: 2,898%


Prevacid:30 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
Percent markup: 34,136%


Prilosec: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
Percent markup: 69,417%


Prozac:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
Cost of gene ral active ingredients: $0.11
Percent markup: 224,973%


Tenormin:50 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
Percent markup: 80,362%


Vasotec:10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
Percent markup: 51,185%


Xanax:1 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
Percent markup: 569,958%


Zestril:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
Percent markup: 2,809%


Zithromax:600 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
Percent markup: 7,892%


Zocor:40 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63
Percent markup: 4,059%

Zoloft:50 mg
Consumer price: $206.87
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75
Percent markup: 11,821%


Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone should know about this.
It pays to shop around! This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreen's on every corner. On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit , did a story on generic drug prices gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. So often we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills.
The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are saving $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs.


I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience I had to use the drug Compazine which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients.

I used the generic equivalent, which cost $ 54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.

I would like to mention, that although Costco is a 'membership' type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.

I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and passing it into your own e-mail, and send it to everyone you know with an e-mail address.

Sharon L. Davis
Budget Analyst
U.S. Department of Commerce
Room 6839
Office Ph: 202-482-4458
Office Fax: 202-482-5480
E-mail Address:sdavis@doc.gov







.

[Duper]

I'm sure the price is about accurate. Mfg costs? hard to tell.

It's a racket and everyone knows that the FDA perpetuates it. ..intentionally.

[TechPro]

True or not?

---------------------------------------

a whole bunch of data copy/pasted

Interesting info ... but cannot be considered accurate if you don't include at least a reference link or two.

Can you provide that?

[VonVulcan]

Supposed author of the letter is at end of post. Call her.

[Dakatsu]

Those 1/8th of the population living in poverty choose to live in horrid, miserable conditions just so they can mooch off of our paychecks! They aren't getting jobs, so they don't deserve anything. So what if there is record job loss, maybe if they worked harder, maybe then they would of had their jobs kept in the United States!

When you grow up in a tiny dead-end snowtrap Montana town in the middle of nowhere, where you have to fight tooth and nail just to ranch-hand for a season and suck burning hidesmoke all day in the fall and that's not quite enough to make ends meet, and you strap on a backpack, sleeping bag and a guitar and put your thumb out to the highway looking for work in the city, sleeping on the street till you can get to the frosty cold north where there's work, and then get there and work 18 hour days 7 days a week for 6 months straight in terrible, miserable freezing wet conditions, knowing you're you and your girl's only ticket out of your hole is sitting in your timeclock, thousands of miles away from family and do this year after year and make something out of yourself and become well off............then you and your **** buddies from the Skorpshjuze Republcs' Sarcasm and Humour Bureau can rib me about not wanting to give away hand-outs.

Giving out hand-outs is one thing, giving people money because they refuse to work, or giving them money for things they don't need. But I believe that health care is an essential necessity of life, that goes along with food and water, shelter, protection. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights agrees with me:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

I don't think we should give everyone free health care, but everyone deserves at the least, basic medical coverage. If you wish, you can refuse the government program and have a much better, private plan, but everyone is entitled to minimum medical coverage.

By the way, sorry if I came off as a total ass in my sarcastic post. I re-read it now and realized I could of came off as one. The Skorpshjuze Republics' Internet Bulletin Board Post Review is unsure of the ass-ness of the post.

[Spidey]

“I don't think we should give everyone free health care, but everyone deserves at the least, basic medical coverage. If you wish, you can refuse the government program and have a much better, private plan, but everyone is entitled to minimum medical coverage.”


Yes, but why do we have to have a system that is all about profit, instead of health care?

[Spidey]

Analogy…

You have a car that runs pretty good, it has a V8 with 400 HP, runs pretty smooth after a tune up. But you are not happy so you add a supercharger, well now the engine has more power, but something is wrong, and it seems to be ready to self destruct…

Reasonable solution…remove the supercharger

Government solution…add a bigger supercharger







Supercharger = Insurance

[Tunnelcat]

...
Hospitals and Doctors are competing in the open market right now?..

Well as far as I can tell they get to set their own prices, serve anyone they want to, recommend operations based on diagnosis instead of government accountants recommendations etc. etc. and there is no government rule telling them how long we have to wait for, or how sick we need to be, or old we need to not be, in order to receive the care they recommend.

that is remarkably different from the socialized examples given in the original post.

They do have to provide emergency care at hospitals for non payers but other than that I don't see any outside force dictating to them who, what, where and when. So in that sense it is an open market. Just because there is no Budget Heart Surgery Drive Through Window doesn't mean there is no competition.

There are lots of products that people pay premium prices for and it is the quality of product and service they shop around for not the price. You can go to India and get your kidney transplant much cheaper but if you want the protections and quality of American medical services you pay more for it.
Go to the United Kingdom to get it even cheaper than India but you first get on a list and wait......if you die while waiting on the list the system doesn't care, you're just an entry in the accounting column.

If you die waiting at Johns Hopkins their reputation starts to suck and people go elsewhere.

Oh oh, this one's going to open a can of worms. Since when is our medical system actually 'free market'? I challenge you to go to ANY hospital in the U.S. and find out ANY price on ANY procedure in order to go 'shopping around'. FAT CHANCE! And who's going to go shopping around when they have an accident or suddenly get sick and are UNABLE to actually have the wherewithal to make a decision in such a short period of time, if their conscious that is. If you're unconscious, an EMT will make that decision for you. So people usually end up in their local or nearest hospital! And for my little slip, I've probably tallied up around $6000 in medical bills, for ONE little broken bone! I'm not sure of the total yet, the bills are STILL coming in.

I broke my wrist and DIDN'T have the option of just going to any hospital to 'price shop' for the cheapest bone doctor to fix me up. In fact, I almost couldn't get ANYBODY to even look at it, let alone repair it, because the four doctors in the local clinic and hospital were very overbooked. It was only the perseverance of the kind hearted urgent care doctor that I even got into the doc that finally treated me. I wasn't about to or able to drive up to the next major city with a painful and broken bone and functionally useless hand to find someone else!

Our supposedly 'free market system' of health care is a crock of horse pucky! It's really just a monopolistic entity that depends on inelastic demand to feed a bunch of giant middle men, insurance companies, drug companies, etc. to care for the sick in this country. For those who don't like socialized health care, we already HAVE a form of socialized health care. It's called 'those who can afford it, receive it'. It's being rationed right now with the present system. That's what we as American's are going to have to decide on. Is health care something that ALL people should have access to or only those who can 'afford it' can have access to. Either way, someone is going to gripe that it's not a fair system.

Here's am example of 'free market'. You own a home and something breaks. You shop around for the cheapest price for the repairs and hire that business, You DON'T have insurance to pay for painting the walls or fixing a leaking pipe. It's accepted practice to pay for these types of things out of pocket, the price of owning a home. You DO have insurance to pay for natural disasters, fire, etc., catastrophic and hopefully rare events. Now here's our supposedly 'free market' health care system. You pay for expensive insurance to cover EVERYTHING that can happen to you, can't get prices in advance to make an informed decision, in other words, estimates for said treatment and are locked into a rigged price-fixed system that prays on your desire to survive and maintain good health. Since when do we NEED insurance for everyday ills and accidents? How did this come about?

It's my opinion that the major proportion of our health care dollar is going to end of life care, cancer treatment, specialized expensive technology and the bottomless sucking pit of drug and insurance company profits. My mother, bless her heart, racked up over $900,000 in the last 2 years of her life to try to stop lung cancer from killing her. That $900,000 only gave her ONE extra year of life. Was that worth it to society? It certainly didn't help her, it made her miserable and gave her a false hope for cure. That's the question we have to be asking, what is it worth to society to maintain health and life for all, not the rich few? What is 'fair' to all? Christians are always preaching how all life is precious and should be preserved at all costs. Well, do they mean that for everyone or only those who are rich enough to afford it?

[Dakatsu]

Yes, but why do we have to have a system that is all about profit, instead of health care?

That is sadly the single fault of capitalism. It's fault is that there is no obligation to go for anything other than profit. In most industries, competition forces businesses to either create better quality goods (meds and coverage), or lower their prices.

I haven't entirely looked into what I've said, so I don't know why nothing is changing Logically, with such inflated prices, if a corporation were to lower their prices even by half, they'd still rake in profits while increasing their consumer base...

(I'm pretty sure I identified the problem, I just have no idea to the resolution of your question Spidey, I really don't)

[Tunnelcat]

My husband and I came up with a interesting idea to make health care more 'free market' and transparent. Why not pass legislation that makes it a requirement that all health care providers have to post all their prices, in advance, for any services to be rendered? They also have to show any price 'differences' for said services rendered that are charged to individuals verses insurance companies and corporations. People could then truly shop around in advance for affordable health care providers that would be used in case of sickness or accident. This would also promote competition in the marketplace. If we could do that, we could get rid of the insurance middleman money pit we now have and pay for most services out of pocket, just like house or car repairs are paid for now and use expensive insurance coverage as only for catastrophic illness or major accident protection.

This same idea needs to be applied to the drug companies as well and the government should have the ability to negotiate drug prices for Medicare use, unlike the locked in Pharma Welfare we have now. By the way, despite what the Pharma Companies claim as the excuse for high drug prices, they spend far more on media advertising than research.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140107.htm

[Lothar]

One of the biggest problems with our health care system right now is that it's a hybrid free market / socialized system. \"Health insurance\" basically just pumps huge amounts of $ into the system, and removes any feedback because consumers don't feel the direct cost of the actual procedure they have done. Many of those who don't have insurance just go to the emergency room, get taken care of, and never pay. And nobody has any clue how much it costs for procedures or if it could be done more cheaply elsewhere.

And there are a ton of money drains on the system. A big percentage of your bill goes to pay for liability insurance, malpractice insurance, and lawyers. A bunch of it goes to pay for pensions. A bunch of it goes into all sorts of stuff other than your medical care and reasonable overhead (building, maintenance, etc.)

TC's suggestion is a good starting point -- prices MUST be posted, preferably both at the hospital and on their website. We also need to have a clear breakdown of where those costs are coming from, and we need to have a choice to go to a doctor who refuses to pay big $$$ for malpractice insurance and instead just has you sign a waiver or something. Get rid of the parasites on the medical system, make it transparent, and let hospitals actually, directly compete for our money.

[SilverFJ]

By the way, sorry if I came off as a total ass in my sarcastic post. I re-read it now and realized I could of came off as one. The Skorpshjuze Republics' Internet Bulletin Board Post Review is unsure of the ass-ness of the post.

No prob bob. I get pretty fuckin touchy with the slacker subject.

[Will Robinson]

....
TC's suggestion is a good starting point -- prices MUST be posted, preferably both at the hospital and on their website. We also need to have a clear breakdown of where those costs are coming from, and we need to have a choice to go to a doctor who refuses to pay big $$$ for malpractice insurance and instead just has you sign a waiver or something. Get rid of the parasites on the medical system, make it transparent, and let hospitals actually, directly compete for our money.

Sounds good but until someone sees the potential profit in building an alternative hospital, an alternative medical center etc. etc. People will still shop at the old hospital and doctor. Really what you're saying is we need the much hated WalMart business model brought into the system....lol!

Here's a simple one for the pharmaceutical aspect of the problem, trade drugs like a commodity. Open a world wide clearing house where your local drug store could buy their supply from a broker.
The only reason drugs x, y and z are so much cheaper in Canada compared to the U.S.A. is the politicians aren't as despicable up there in the great white north.
You'll have to murder about a thousand drug company lobbyists to keep them from using the FDA to stop the importation...but if you do that you'll see drug prices find an equilibrium pretty quickly.

[Dakatsu]

As with, like, everyone else in this thread, I agree on the whole posting the prices things, cause like, ummm, that should be a NFBS answer