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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (380101)	4/24/2008 2:41:12 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578530

Then how does it function, and function very well, on 50% of our cost in other industrialized countries? No country's health care system functions as well as ours, so it probably SHOULD cost more. That's for openers. But as mentioned previously, an OB/GYN in the US can easily be paying $300,000/year in malpractice premiums. Other countries don't have this burden. Hospitals, just multiply it by a big number. The US is, as we've discussed, subsidizing high-end drugs. But more importantly, in the US a person can see an Oncologist with cancer (or another disease) with a minimal probability of cure, yet they'll receive treatment. In other countries, the system just walks away from them. The same is true, for example, for organ transplants -- where a liver transplant, generally paid for by insurance, can easily run $250,000. Now, in Canada, this might happen: cbc.ca Adolfo Flora, 57, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1999 after contracting hepatitis C from a blood transfusion, the Toronto Star reported. He was expected to die within six months without a new liver, but two specialists at Ontario transplant centres said he was not a suitable candidate. Instead, Flora turned to Britain, where he had a liver transplant in March 2000. The Ontario Health Insurance Plan turned down his request to be reimbursed for the surgery. "Of course we want to be in a position where we support every individual to the fullest," Smitherman said. "But I think that to sustain a public health care system, we have to be very honest in saying that it will never be possible to pay for every treatment or to pay for every hope or promise that is available everywhere in the world." Now, some insurances won't pay for a liver transplant in the US, as well. But all things considered, I'll take my chances with private enterprise, who has the public to account to, rather than some bureaucrat at HHS.