Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich

Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by JoeAltmaier on Monday June 12, 2017 @09:00AM (#14536987)

I get sick; I go to my doctor today and get treated. A system that makes me wait for weeks for something 'not serious' meaning almost everything, is a broken system. Sure it costs less in Europe etc; its not doing anything useful. Id've gotten better (or died) on my own by the time I got seen with wait times like that.

It's not cognitive dissonance (unless on the part of public-health-is-better folks). Its a different metric. If cost is the only measure, then sure, 3 week wait for a free aspirin is 'good'. If its timeliness, then other systems win hands down.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by pjc50 on Monday June 12, 2017 @10:31AM (#14537641)

I should point out that the private option exists in the UK as well, if you have money and don't want to wait. And of course there's a normal range of OTC drugs including aspirin - unless you're in Scotland it's cheaper to buy it yourself than pay the £7 flat prescription charge.

NHS triage is pretty effective: stuff that might actually kill you gets seen to immediately. Chronic conditions get managed long-term. The vast majority of the long waits are for things like hip operations, which will improve quality of life but aren't particularly urgent.

The US system is not without waits: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/sunday-review/long-waits-...

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by TuringTest on Monday June 12, 2017 @09:05AM (#14537027)

What is more broken: a system where everyone has to wait some weeks and get attended, or one where some can be atended in a day, and others will never be attended?

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by killmeslowlyjnj on Monday June 12, 2017 @07:20PM (#14541915)

> What is more broken: a system where everyone has to wait some weeks and get attended, or one where some can be atended in a day, and others will never be attended?

The latter.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by JoeAltmaier on Monday June 12, 2017 @09:08AM (#14537041)

By what metric are we measuring? Total healthcare delivered in a timely fashion? Then the system that delivers at least some timely care wins again.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by TuringTest on Monday June 12, 2017 @09:40AM (#14537259)

Not if all urgent healthcare is delivered to all in a timely manner, and it's only non-urgent healthcare which gets delays.

In this case, the system which can get urgent attendance to all users wins over the one which does it only for a subset, even in terms of timeliness.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by JoeAltmaier on Monday June 12, 2017 @09:54AM (#14537367)

Urgent care is a fair metric.

A system than turns non-urgent care (a cold or the flu) into urgent care (pneumonia) is going to 'stuff the ballot box' in its favor however.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by TuringTest on Monday June 12, 2017 @10:26AM (#14537611)

If you were to live the rest of your life with a new healthcare system, which of the following would you prefer?

- a) one where you would be randomly assigned to one of two groups: one which gets timely attendance for urgent and non-urgent needs; and the other one which gets no attendance at all, of any kind.

- b) one where all users get attended with an equal 3 weeks delay for non-urgent needs, and 0 delay for urgent needs.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by eeZah7Ux on Monday June 12, 2017 @10:48AM (#14537771)

Nonsense - triaging and urgency prioritization is used in medicine everywhere in the world since centuries.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @11:18AM (#14545403)

But with 'private health' I can pay and go to a doctor today. For a cold or whatever. Its a curious fact the 'public health' equates to 'rationed medicine'.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by TuringTest on Wednesday June 14, 2017 @06:58AM (#14551852)

Lucky you. There are some who need to skip several meals to go to a doctor.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday June 14, 2017 @10:37AM (#14553024)

...and that's an interesting problem. I maintain the solution is not to try to give it away free to everybody. Because that fails in major ways, as we've discussed.

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Re:Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich by TuringTest on Thursday June 15, 2017 @06:53AM (#14559241)

It works quite well in most countries in Europe. I've heard that it's way better than the US system for a majority of people, except for some revolutionary treatments that reach only a really small amount of uber-rich users.

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