Re:U.S. health is lousy compared with peer nations, report says
by FireBeyond on Thursday January 10, 2013 @01:53PM
(#5038928)
That's not a valid comparison. "State of the art" facilities are not being argued against, but "health of the populace".
People also used to (maybe still do) fly to Australia for cardiac surgery.
The US may be able to pull in doctors from around the world with salaries that are high (correlating to high healthcare costs), but the regular individuals access to such doctors is limited: if I, talking to my insurance provider in Washington, said I wanted to go to the East Coast and have Dr Oz do my cardiac surgery (leaving aside any, and indeed valid, controversy over him - I was just looking for a notable/famous surgeon), I'm fairly certain they'd balk (and I'm fairly certain because I've worked on software systems that determine such things for insurance providers).
People also used to (maybe still do) fly to Australia for cardiac surgery.
The US may be able to pull in doctors from around the world with salaries that are high (correlating to high healthcare costs), but the regular individuals access to such doctors is limited: if I, talking to my insurance provider in Washington, said I wanted to go to the East Coast and have Dr Oz do my cardiac surgery (leaving aside any, and indeed valid, controversy over him - I was just looking for a notable/famous surgeon), I'm fairly certain they'd balk (and I'm fairly certain because I've worked on software systems that determine such things for insurance providers).