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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (6424)	3/22/2009 12:21:16 PM
From: gg cox	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

<<Those who operate medical tourism facilities in other countries are practicing a lucrative business. It seems a win/win to me. Am I missing something? If a doctor set up his practice on the other side of the tracks where the rent is low and he could charge less, we would consider that a positive step. Why would that practice being set up on the other side of the border rather than just the tracks be any different?>> I'm glad you get the concept.A small minority of Canadians going south of the border and buying some medical care.

To: Lane3 who wrote (6424)	3/22/2009 12:48:03 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

>> How is that a free ride? It all comes down to supply and demand. The American medical community -- physicians, hospitals, drug companies, all of it -- requires a certain profit margin to function at its current high level. To the extent you take profits away from that community, by whatever means, you end up with lesser performance here. I'll be the first to admit that it sounds attractive to just be able to run down to Costa Rica when you need heart surgery and save a bunch of money in the process. But in the end, if so-called "medical tourism" became a truly significant portion of total health care, it would adversely impact the American medical community and result in fewer physicians, more expensive hospitals, more costly drugs here, etc. I'm not a protectionist and so I believe nature should take its course. However, if you want significantly lower health care costs in America the way you'll get it is by cutting the quality of care we receive here. That's not to say there can't be cost cuts on the margins. I believe it was you who pointed out, correctly, that if you really want to cut health care costs all you have to do is to allow people to die at a younger age. It is the prolonging of life at all costs -- often lives of people [like me] who haven't done their best to prolong their OWN lives -- that drives health care costs up. In the expensive field of cancer treatment, for example, the focus is not always on the saving of lives, rather, it is on the 1, 3, and 5 year survival rates. We could save a massive amount of money by just not treating it. In a 2007 study, the point was made that using today's chemo treatment for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer to add one year of survival can run $150-200K versus the standard treatment of 10 years prior.