# A proposal for lower health care costs **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 31, 2015, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436 "2015-01-31T16:27:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436/41 "2015-02-09T16:39:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Drug-seekers certainly don’t. No, but the main concern with inhalers is overuse, not recreational use. The over-users don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436/42 "2015-02-09T20:17:13Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Is the idea here to have a code ready for any conceivable cause of injury in case it ever comes up, or are these things that have actually happened? > > Because I’d kind of like to know the stories of the people who were crushed by an alligator, injured while operating an exploding hang-glider, gradually lost an unknown hand, struck by a duck, or [injured in a spaceship collision.](http://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/V00-Y99/V95-V97/V95-/V95.43XA) My particular interest is macaw bites – specifically, how may there are annually and what the geographic dispersion is. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436/43 "2015-02-10T01:13:23Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Why? Why do we need a code for unlikely events? > > Especially since we’ve had an infinitely flexible code for a thousand years, called “English”. The code in that system for spaceship injury would be “spaceship injury”. It also covers simple ailments like “the flu” and “a broken arm” or health problems we haven’t even thought of yet like “tentacle-ization” and “gustatory plague”. And it costs $0 to implement and no one needs special training. Yeah, that’s a good point. While I understand the “hey, research!” perspective, there is also the principle that _too much_ data makes research hard. For example, if you are doing ancestry research, knowing whether someone is Scottish is probably as much as you can handle. If you declare different categories for Scottish Highlanders, Scottish Hebridians, Glaswegians (ach, they’re special in tha Glaswegian way tha we jus’ hae ta track, laddie), Scottish Lowlanders Other Than Glaswegians, Orkney Islanders, Shetland Islanders, Scots-Irish, Scots-Irish Appalachians, Scottish-Canadians, and People Who Know They Are Scottish But Don’t Know Exactly Where From, that’s going to be a nightmare to track. What’s the real point of identifying whether an injury occurred in a chicken coop? Is there any reasonable possibility that there will be research specifically into chicken coop related injuries, as opposed to, say, studying trends in farm-related injuries? So Bill got his leg busted up in a chicken coop, and John got his busted up in a pig-pen. What sort of findings could we make with that data? ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436/44 "2015-02-10T01:34:56Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > If we want to cut costs, we need to stop throwing away perfectly good supplies. It must be billions of dollars just thrown in the trash, of supplies that might not have even been used. When my father worked in the sterilization room in a large hospital, he would come home with pockets full of batteries, and if he hadn’t taken them, they would have just gone to the dumpster. If the hospital isn’t going to use all the supplies they buy they should at least sell them, or give them to charity for a tax write-off. [R46.2](http://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/R00-R99/R40-R46/R46-/R46.2), “Strange and inexplicable behavior”. ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436/45 "2015-02-10T02:04:05Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Yeah, that’s a good point. While I understand the “hey, research!” perspective, there is also the principle that _too much_ data makes research hard. For example, if you are doing ancestry research, knowing whether someone is Scottish is probably as much as you can handle. If you declare different categories for Scottish Highlanders, Scottish Hebridians, Glaswegians (ach, they’re special in tha Glaswegian way tha we jus’ hae ta track, laddie), Scottish Lowlanders Other Than Glaswegians, Orkney Islanders, Shetland Islanders, Scots-Irish, Scots-Irish Appalachians, Scottish-Canadians, and People Who Know They Are Scottish But Don’t Know Exactly Where From, that’s going to be a nightmare to track. > > What’s the real point of identifying whether an injury occurred in a chicken coop? Is there any reasonable possibility that there will be research specifically into chicken coop related injuries, as opposed to, say, studying trends in farm-related injuries? So Bill got his leg busted up in a chicken coop, and John got his busted up in a pig-pen. What sort of findings could we make with that data? Your first paragraph is pretty specifically what a formalized coding system is supposed to avoid. Maybe your examples fall under Scot-Hi (Higlander), Scot-He (Hebridians), Scot-Gl, Scot-Lo, etc. They’re all prefixed Scot, so you don’t have to get into the individual differences unless that’s really what you’re after… but that information is still there in case it **is** what you’re after. Resolution is a one-way street, though - if there are separate codes for chicken coop injuries (found in W61) and pig pen (W55) injuries, they can be easily composited under agricultural injuries for high level analyses, but they’re still available as separate incidents to insurance underwriters, OSHA researchers, etc. But if there are significant differences in the rates of injury in poultry, pig, and cattle work, then the lumped data aren’t that useful. They might apply to the agriculture industry as a whole, but there aren’t as many “agriculture farms” out there as there are poultry producers or cattle ranches. If you’re looking at underwriting workers’ comp insurance policies, or if you’re trying to improve the most statistically dangerous parts of large scale farming operations, you need that finer resolution to better understand the risks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-proposal-for-lower-health-care-costs/711436.md?page=2)