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A comment on Healthy California Act: proposal to make findings about single-payer healthcare. Parent comment

Re:Healthy California Act: proposal to make findings about s... by marcell on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @07:44PM (#13825578)
Some of the numbers for [2] confuse me. How can an office visit cost $30 in Canada? When I go in for an office visit, it typically takes about 30 minutes of staff time, around 15 minutes with a medical assistant and 15 minutes with a doctor. If that's $30, the implied wage is $60/hr for the medical staff, if you assume that all the money goes to staff. That just doesn't seem feasible.

Some of the other numbers seem more reasonable, though I should point out the charts are a bit misleading as they list the US 95th percentile in addition to the averages, which makes the difference appear larger than it really is.

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Re:Healthy California Act: proposal to make findings about s... by seanieb on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @07:52PM (#13825666)
A doctors visit isn't a good example. Folks don't go bankrupt from doctors visits. The important stuff is drugs and hospitals.

For example an asthmatic in any other country in the world pays ~$10 for a Ventolin inhaler (including tax and a % of profit), Americans pay $55-$65 and that price is increasing.

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Re:Healthy California Act: proposal to make findings about s... by mahyarm on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @07:48PM (#13825624)
It's around $50 for 'off plan' visits (your not a canadian resident, or it's not covered by the healthcare plan).

The math should be $120/hr for the office. The assistant gets $20/hr and the doctor gets $100/hr. If you use the $50 rate, then it's $200/hr. If the doctors share an assistant, it becomes even more efficient. Because of the lower prices, there are less doctors, so they get higher utilization rates for the ones that are there.

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Re:Healthy California Act: proposal to make findings about s... by vkou on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @07:47PM (#13825609)
Some office visits are shorter then others. (Although less scrupulous doctors in Canada aggressively optimize for faster visits - more money for them, worse outcomes for their patients.)
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