what happened to doctors?

[Fetzenfisch]

it really sucks to be a doctor in the states. you pay a god damn way to expensive education, then work some years like a slave in hospitals with 48 hour shifts being the normal, then your income is decreasing and decreasing every year and you lose much of what is left to insure yourself for the case that something goes wrong while you try to save some poor souls life, because in the unlikely event that you lose a patient who is terminally ill *cough* his family will blame only you and try to sue millions out of your ass like its peoples second most favourite sport in the US next to being offended by everything more specific than the weather forecast.
i wouldnt want to work there for a week.

it's not only the healthcare that is broken, its education, peoples ungrateful attitude and the general society.
you would have to start the country from scratch to save it.

 

[OldGus]

Y'all seem to forget a national healthcare system would infringe on a persons God given right to individualism. That's why the USA doesn't tax its citizens and has no welfare system.

Well, we do tax our citizens. We just happen to think that an army to keep our people alive is nationally more important than doctors to keep our people alive... or food... or a pension system for people not in the military... or scholarships for smart people... or foreign relations... or rescue workers... or police... or renewable energy... or disaster prevention... or education... or enforcement of corporate regulations... or a reasonable system for immigration in a country of immigrants... or a railway system. After all, just look at all those average American citizens that can afford 3 piece Italian suits, and Armani, and Gucci, and Chryslers and Cadillacs. Of course they can pay for all those non-important things themselves, and at levels they want!
Oh, science is still important! As long as it doesn't tell us something bible thumpers aren't ready to hear, tell us we're making our sunny beaches move farther north, and it totally gives us bigger, better guns. To keep our people alive.

 

[infohippie]

Any country that will allow someone to die simply because they do not have enough money does not deserve to call itself civilised.

 

[BrassButtons]

I believe he was pointing out that turning someone away who has insurance would lead to less money.

I can argue against it, the insurance company who has not authorized the treatment is never going to pay. This means the doctor either has to pay for it out of their own pocket or go through a lengthy and expensive lawsuit that likely won't lead to any payout anyway. The original insurance company just laughs and screws over both patience and doctor.

Isn't that basically what I said? If the insurance doesn't cover that doctor, and the patient can't pay out of pocket, then the doctor eats the cost.

And that wrongful death lawsuits are very easy to win, which leads to massive loss to doctors accused.

True, but this is only an issue when refusing treatment results in a wrongful death. In most cases this doesn't happen, so it's smarter, money-wise, for the doctor to take the risk and turn the patient away.

After all, non-ER doctors don't really deal with emergency life-and-death stuff. Refusing a patient rarely results in a wrongful death for them. For the ER, turning away patients in life-threatening situations is illegal (and did not happen in the OP's stories). They treat first, and work out a payment plan later.

 

[Gaiseric]

My doc is pretty cool. He's been helping me lose weight and bring my blood pressure down for a little over three years, most of which I didn't have insurance(I don't have any...again). When he charges me for a visit it is only around $20 and he gives me samples of my medication so I don't have to pay for the prescription.

Also, while I may be mistaken, if you go to the ER I believe that have to treat you. At least that's what my mom(she's a nurse) and my doc have told me.

 

[Shadowkire]

America. Land of the Free (as long as you have money).

It's ridiculous that a first world country exists without a national health system, but I suppose that's what happens when corporations have such a huge influence.

I think Obama is making an attempt. Admittedly a half assed attempt that he's kinda forgotten about and is being block by Congress like an incoming bastard sword, but making an attempt nonetheless.

Good fucking lord, I hate my government.

It wasn't a half-ass effort. People have been trying to get a national healthcare bill passed for decades, I think even Reagan tried to get a bill passed.

The fact that Obama pulled it off is astounding.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

America. Land of the Free (as long as you have money).

It's ridiculous that a first world country exists without a national health system, but I suppose that's what happens when corporations have such a huge influence.

You say that but us Brits may lose our National Health System too. Thanks Cameron. It's as V always said, "The people shouldn't fear the government, the government should fear the people" and taking the NHS away will only strike a match to kindling. Note: The riots. Keep taking from people that can't afford it and they will bite back. Hard.

The riots were started in London because someone with a gun was killed. the "rioters" were looters.
I hate the fact the riots are painted as a noble cause. they are not, I was scared for the well being of my loved ones because thugs wanted to have some fun. also, part of mine and their community was damaged by their actions.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

This is why you Americans should stop crying "Communism!" every time someone suggests a national healthcare system.

 

[Vault101]

its an american thing aparently

 

[the.gill123]

Though I dont understand too much about the American healthcare system, all I know is what they say in Scrubs, it seems to me that the hospitals are run by Ferengi, Rule of Acquisition No. 23 'Nothing is more important than your health ... except for your money.'

 

[Kekkles]

America. Land of the Free (as long as you have money).

It's ridiculous that a first world country exists without a national health system, but I suppose that's what happens when corporations have such a huge influence.

You say that but us Brits may lose our National Health System too. Thanks Cameron. It's as V always said, "The people shouldn't fear the government, the government should fear the people" and taking the NHS away will only strike a match to kindling. Note: The riots. Keep taking from people that can't afford it and they will bite back. Hard.

I doubt the Tories would take away the NHS. They'll fuck us over in other ways, but the NHS is, like you said, a trigger for more riots.

There has already been cuts around the NHS, being staff/resources and Cameron is getting massive pay-offs from Private Doctoring companies so it may be another case of "Well, I have private doctoring and I'm fine." By good ol' spoon-fed Cameron. Though if Cleggy had any backbone maybe we'd have had some kind of balance in our party.

Off Topic: What I really want to know is the opinion on Americans getting NHS (as there has been rumours), whether they want it or not as well as their direct opinion on the way the NHS works? It's interesting, very interesting.

Listen, I'm never going to stand up for David Cameron, but the reason there are cuts in the NHS is NOT because of the government wanting to privatise it or anything ludicrous like that. It's because every year it haemorrhages money like you wouldn't believe. I'm not talking about the money that actually goes towards making sick people better, I'm talking about money that gets drained on overlooking problems that go on to cause even more sickness in people, or using over-the-top treatments when something far more simple would have been equally viable, or people being kept in hospitals when it would be much easier to send them home and have a nurse check on them, and other wasteful things like that.

Oh and about the riots. Bull, Fucking, Shit was it about people who have nothing fighting back. It was about idiots who didn't have that damn sense to MAKE anything of themselves blindly smashing, destroying, and taking what their own stupidity denied them. It was about a culture of take-take-take, mine-mine-mine reaching overload, where selfishness and opportunism take control of masses, and to hell with all those who want to protect whatever they try to defend. Surely you saw the pictures of people who'd stolen £1 bags of rice, or completely emptied a pound-shop? You honestly can't tell me that some people couldn't afford what they stole.

Let's start from the top shall we, with spending. We're at war with Iraq and Libya at the moment, Libya alone of having an estimated cost of £260m over the course of 6months. Wouldn't that be helpful if spent elsewhere? Oh and just so you know UK spent 4.5billion in Iraq. Oh yes, we're glad to go to war when our own country is still left in it's own pile of filth. They're hacking away at these "unnecessary costs" when we're still sending our troops out to Iraq. The NHS could be getting it's money but (I know the expenditure of the NHS is around 100billion before you say anything) there are other things in it's place. Before anyone goes patriotic commando, I'd like to say we should spend our money on OUR country before we bring "democracy" to others.

On the riots now: Do you know any of these people? Any of these people that have NOTHING, not because of what they haven't done but because what has been taken away? My friend, a single-mother of 3, had her job taken from her and now has to live off the government. She barely has enough money at the end of the week to feed herself, let alone her 3 kids. Her life is in shambles. Now compare that to how many other people have had their jobs taken from them and their kids that see and live the suffering and to how many kids that have nothing to do but live in gangs, not because they think they're hard, but because otherwise they'll be killed. Also there are kids that every day get pinned up against a wall by police and interrogated for something they haven't done, they're pretty sick of it.
You got yourself a group of minors that are pissed off, so they start something. A spark, then rises to a flame. Yeah sure there were people blindly jumping on the band-wagon for 'free stuff' but don't ignorantly say "Oh, they're all just chavs kicking it up because they're brainless thugs" or to which you were implying. Half the battle is getting people on your side. No matter the reason.

We need a cost effective nation, Labour were doing well until Blair fell a bit too deep into Bush's fuck-hole and thought it'd be a good idea to go to war. We need an independent country helping itself and not helping others, not spending it's money elsewhere.

 

[Macgyvercas]

America. Land of the Free (as long as you have money).

It's ridiculous that a first world country exists without a national health system, but I suppose that's what happens when corporations have such a huge influence.

I think Obama is making an attempt. Admittedly a half assed attempt that he's kinda forgotten about and is being block by Congress like an incoming bastard sword, but making an attempt nonetheless.

Good fucking lord, I hate my government.

It wasn't a half-ass effort. People have been trying to get a national healthcare bill passed for decades, I think even Reagan tried to get a bill passed.

The fact that Obama pulled it off is astounding.

Oh, it passed? I'm sorry, I kinda stopped following it when Congress was faffing about with their bipartisan motherfuckery and haven't bothered to keep up with it since.

So, yay? I guess?

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Actually , that doesn't sound anecdotal, it sounds more like gross generalizations and veiled political attacks (especially that bit about the "Death Panels". How quaint.)

I didn't give my anecdotes. Probably because they are, in true policy creation, completely fucking meaningless next to raw statistical data. I'm sorry if that's blunt or insensitive, but that's how governments overseeing hundreds of millions of people need to function.

I really don't care about your arguement. As I said I've seen it first hand and as such I will oppose the entire "Universal Health Care" deal until I see a more viable option. We have a model right now where the poor cannot afford non-critical medical care, or we can switch to the socialized health care that tries to treat everyone and winds up treating no one. Or we can look for a third option that actually works. For now, I'll stick with what has worked.

My sister became very ill while traveling in Thailand. She was able to see a doctor almost immediately. He prescribed antibiotics, and she picked them up roughly 10 minutes later. The entire experience cost her almost nothing.

My mother was traveling with an ultimate frisbee team in Prague. One of the players badly broke his ankle during a game. They were able to see a doctor within the hour. He set the leg, attached the cast, and sent the player on his way. His bill? Under $20, and that was mostly for the pair of crutches he got to keep.

I have more.

Point is: if I had this evidence to support my own personal views, but a grip of statistical analysis showed that my experiences were aberrations, and that the far more effective and economically viable system was privatization, I'd be able to grasp that truth and move past my own limited point of view. Given the complete opposite is true, why can't you do the same?

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

it really sucks to be a doctor in the states. you pay a god damn way to expensive education, then work some years like a slave in hospitals with 48 hour shifts being the normal, then your income is decreasing and decreasing every year and you lose much of what is left to insure yourself for the case that something goes wrong while you try to save some poor souls life, because in the unlikely event that you lose a patient who is terminally ill *cough* his family will blame only you and try to sue millions out of your ass like its peoples second most favourite sport in the US next to being offended by everything more specific than the weather forecast.
i wouldnt want to work there for a week.

it's not only the healthcare that is broken, its education, peoples ungrateful attitude and the general society.
you would have to start the country from scratch to save it.

This is true, but that's what happens in a society where capitalism runs completely amok. They gave corporations all the rights of the individual with none of the social responsibility or conscience. It's essentially a license to enact sociopathic behavior on a grand scale with few or no consequences. People are getting run over left and right, so they fight back the only way they know how - by becoming their own "corporations" - greedy, selfish, entitled, litigious, beyond reproach, etc.

So I don't fault people for suing the pants off doctors whenever they can. That's just how this country was built, and the little guys weren't the ones who built it. They're just trying to fit in with all the greedy fucks who run the place.

 

[murphy7801]

YOU'RE ALL GOD DAMN COMMUNISTS.

COMMUNISM FAILS BECAUSE IT FAILS.

Well and fascist because Germans have a national health system.

Actually Germans have a hybrid system. We don't have one national System like the NHS. In Germany it is mandatory to be insured and the fees for your insurance are automatically taken from your paycheck. At the moment the fee is 15,5% of the income, 7,3% being payed by the employer, 8,2% being payed by the employee. That gets handled by a shitton of public insurance companies working on a non-profit basis. For people not getting a paycheck (civil servants, freelancers, artists etc.) or people with a high income demanding a premium service there are private insurances with varying services. That part of the system is much like the one in the USA but makes only about 15% of the German system.

It was joke responce to joke post hope you are aware. But that's very informative, personally I like the french health system since broke my arm on holiday and got good treatment.

 

[Macgyvercas]

That's why the USA doesn't tax its citizens

Tell that to the 20% that comes out of my paycheck and goes to the feds, city and state.

 

[Shraggler]

I'm all in support of a national health care system. There are two problems with this though.

1) Most people in this country don't trust the government to do anything correctly - especially with money. Think about it, we have the largest military budget in the world and we've still been fighting in Afghanistan for nearly a decade and stopped over in Iraq eight years ago. That's at the Federal/national level. States have their own budgetary "problems" - in my state alone, a freeway on-ramp proposed at $45 million and projected to take 6 months to complete ended up costing $95 million and 18 months to complete. That's another 50 million fucking dollars and a year for a fucking on-ramp. And we expect the government's going to get their act together with something as costly as healthcare?

2) We don't have a collectivist mentality in our society. A good example is the earthquake + tsunami in Japan. The news media in the States were flipping their shit because there were no reports of looting. "We could really use that kind of thinking here." You bet - a few months later Joplin got hit by a gigantic tornado and we had fake donation agencies popping up all over the place.

Similarly, there are enough people that take advantage of government systems in this country that, coupled with the above-mentioned excellent government budgetary book-keeping, may as well amount to the entire middle-class dumping the 50% of their paycheck they get to keep right off the nearest bridge.

It's sad and stupid, but people are lazy assholes, and it's ruined for the rest of us.

 

[DannyJBeckett]

Let's start from the top shall we, with spending. We're at war with Iraq and Libya at the moment, Libya alone of having an estimated cost of £260m over the course of 6months. Wouldn't that be helpful if spent elsewhere? Oh and just so you know UK spent 4.5billion in Iraq. Oh yes, we're glad to go to war when our own country is still left in it's own pile of filth. They're hacking away at these "unnecessary costs" when we're still sending our troops out to Iraq. The NHS could be getting it's money but (I know the expenditure of the NHS is around 100billion before you say anything) there are other things in it's place. Before anyone goes patriotic commando, I'd like to say we should spend our money on OUR country before we bring "democracy" to others.

On the riots now: Do you know any of these people? Any of these people that have NOTHING, not because of what they haven't done but because what has been taken away? My friend, a single-mother of 3, had her job taken from her and now has to live off the government. She barely has enough money at the end of the week to feed herself, let alone her 3 kids. Her life is in shambles. Now compare that to how many other people have had their jobs taken from them and their kids that see and live the suffering and to how many kids that have nothing to do but live in gangs, not because they think they're hard, but because otherwise they'll be killed. Also there are kids that every day get pinned up against a wall by police and interrogated for something they haven't done, they're pretty sick of it.
You got yourself a group of minors that are pissed off, so they start something. A spark, then rises to a flame. Yeah sure there were people blindly jumping on the band-wagon for 'free stuff' but don't ignorantly say "Oh, they're all just chavs kicking it up because they're brainless thugs" or to which you were implying. Half the battle is getting people on your side. No matter the reason.

We need a cost effective nation, Labour were doing well until Blair fell a bit too deep into Bush's fuck-hole and thought it'd be a good idea to go to war. We need an independent country helping itself and not helping others, not spending it's money elsewhere.

Frankly, I agree with your argument about our involvement in the Middle-East being a money-drain, so that kind of kills the debate right there.

But there was no 'group of minors pissed off' in the riots at all. The riots started out as a peaceful protest against the police shooting a man dead (who was an armed drug-dealer, by the way), in the midst of the protests, things turned violent and culminated in the burning-down of dozens of businesses, community centres and homes, which then spread to other areas when people thought they could get away with it. There was no 'uprising' about it, it was sheer, mindless animalism.

 

[RoonMian]

YOU'RE ALL GOD DAMN COMMUNISTS.

COMMUNISM FAILS BECAUSE IT FAILS.

Well and fascist because Germans have a national health system.

-snip-

It was joke responce to joke post hope you are aware. But that's very informative, personally I like the french health system since broke my arm on holiday and got good treatment.

Yeah, I know it was a joke. I just wanted to say that there is a middle ground between total communism (like in the United Soviet States of Great Britain) and total capitalism (like the one the Americans have President Nixon to thank for, as far as I know). The "fascist" way, if you will.

That's why the USA doesn't tax its citizens

Tell that to the 20% that comes out of my paycheck and goes to the feds, city and state.

20%? TWENTY?!?

From the tone of your posting I guess that you think that that is still way too much. Let me guess: You don't know who it is your paying taxes for in the first place, right?

And let me take another guess: You don't own any mirrors, huh?

 

[RoonMian]

I am very sorry for the double post. No idea how that happened.