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

To: Lane3 who wrote (6437)	3/22/2009 10:29:13 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

No it's not, not as long as the reduction in facilities is in proportion to the reduction in clients. I think it is a simplistic view of things. But before even going there, you have to first conclude that a person can receive health care in Costa Rica (or wherever) that is as good as that received in America. That is a pretty huge step. That said, the reduction in facilities will NOT be in proportion to the reduction in patients, even over large areas of the country. As an extreme, but entirely possible example, there is a town about 70 miles from where I live, of about 50-60k people, which is served by a single hospital. Already, that hospital has a very difficult time in attracting qualified physicians because frankly, it is a place where few people want to live for a variety of reasons. So, suppose enough people choose to go to Costa Rica for their heart surgeries from this area such that they can no longer perform ANY heart surgery there. The town currently has several cardiac surgeons. What now? The same would be true for any number of specialists. The quality of health care overall has been reduced. The bottom line is that when you pull money out of the American health care system -- which is the essence of the game plan offered by some of these guys -- you will generally degrade the quality of the service for everyone. Because wherever that money is pulled from STILL has some element of fixed costs and fixed costs do not decline when you reduce the number of units. Now, some costs are determined by "step-cost functions" where once having withdrawn 10,000 patients, for example, those costs can be decreased. And there are costs like that -- an entire wing might be shut down in a hospital. But at some point you begin to affect the total infrastructure -- scanning facilities, radiation facilities, or even the number of allergy specialists serving an area.