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

To: dybdahl who wrote (19268)	9/11/2010 2:23:19 AM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 42652

A good example of this, that the doctors represent both treaters and payers, is that case of ICU patients that get discharged because of lack of capacity. If an ICU is at full capacity, and something bad happens and new patients come in, you need to figure out what to do. Usually, they will take the patients with least problems, and send them to other ICUs, or maybe even to other non-ICU wards where the local staff will then handle the patients with support from the closest ICU. We have very good statistics on that, and the outcome of it, because the doctors are motivated for registering this correct. If they have too many discharges because of lack of capacity, their work will be reorganized so that this does not happen any more - for instance, by increasing ICU capacity. The interesting part is, that this information is also available to the patient - in other words, the patient and his/her relatives can see, that the patient was moved because of lack of capacity, which has a negative documented effect on health. This does not trigger any lawsuits - maybe some complaints, but the doctors neeed to do what is best for all patients, not just for one of them, using what they have. The cool thing here is the transparency that becomes available. I am quite sure, that discharges because of lack of capacity happens everywhere, more or less, but it would be politically dangerous to document it in many places, as part of each patient's data.

To: dybdahl who wrote (19268)	9/11/2010 10:35:19 AM
From: skinowski	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

This article seems to present a sensible description of the Danish healthcare system: europe-cities.com Denmark seems to have a far more homogenous population than the US. We have huge underclass groups. Only the illegal resident count goes into 10s of millions. Also our politicians and bureaucrats are sort of... a$$holes. Anything they touch they cause to double and triple in price. Our medicolegal costs, both direct and indirect, are nothing short of absurd - and no one, including our fearless President, dares even to talk about changing that. I think the solution for the US at this time, in very general terms, is to abandon the idea of egalitarianism, create a government supported safety net for the poor (which is largely already in existence) -- and for the rest of us - simplify, deregulate, and move further towards free market concepts... which means making the role of the government very, very small. Getting rid of the seven layer cake of useless regulators would lower costs and improve quality.