Is that what the surgeon said? Or did the surgeon explain the risks and McQueen gave his approval?
If you are going to offer opinions on the quality of medical care, especially surgical procedures, in Mexico, could you please post actual facts instead of prejudicial opinions based on who knows what? Do you have even the slightest idea of what one must do to become a board certified surgeon here?
That was the impression I received reading an article about McQueen some years ago.
My apologies for offending you.
This is important.
That 2.4% is not free. Its not simply getting rid of waste fraud and abuse. Its truncating the rights of medical malpractice victims to the benefit of medical insurance companies.
In Virginia, the medical malpractice cap not only caps pain and suffering, it also caps actual economic damage. The result has not be a huge decrease in defensive medicine because it turns out that doctors will practice defensive medicine even if their potential liability is capped because it costs them nothing to practice defensive medicine and there is still a penalty for screwing up even if that penalty is capped.
Ahhh, but the lower awards will result in lower premiums, amirite? THe evidence does not really support this conclusion. There may be an effect but it is eclipsed by the effect of the consolidation of medical practices into larger practices with more bargaining power and the entry of more med mal insurance companies into an otherwise non-competitive market.
You want to reduce the cost of med mal on health care, then you should probably reform the med mal insruance market. Capping damages might make sense AFTER you do that but right now your pouring more water into a bucket without a bottom.
Control of drug prices is the most important issue.
For example, I take Januvia, which is a Diabetes med. In Canada, this is $107 a month. In the USA, they charge me $450 a month, or over 4x the price in Canada. There is zero justification for this other than greed and corruption. Their costs aren’t higher and no, they’re not using it to pay for important research.
My mother just had to buy two more Epipens. The price increases and gouging on that are unconscionable, but our government (which developed it for the military) allows this to happen. The cost of those things is under $10 and there are no associated development costs to justify. It is just greed and lobbying expenses (read: Corruption).
Very well stated. I’d take it one step past that - get the government OUT of healthcare insurance completely. Remove the barriers to buying insurance across state lines. It’s mind-boggling how many problems that simple solution will fix.
What problems does this fix? It’s an evergreen on the right, but I think most (certainly a lot) insurance companies already sell in all states.
Having to meet 50 sets of requirements undoubtedly drives up costs a bit, but I’m going to guess it is a rounding error.
And besides, I thought conservatives were all in favor of “state’s rights” - why should New York set the standards for insurance in California? You guys are already upset with the ACA setting nationwide minimum coverage requirements - why are they better if set nationwide by a single state, instead?
Again, you’re a moron.
The pinkos at the American Academy of Actuaries say:
ETA: Not to mention This guy, who consults for insurance companies, said this:
Where did I say anything about capping damages? It’s clear from the stats that defensive medicine is the largest part of the problem. I’d suggest going after that more directly.
One possibility is to create a board whose sole purpose is to research best practices for the most common medical procedures. The board’s findings would be considered the gold standard for medicine in the US, and be used as the basis for doctor reimbursement.
This wouldn’t be an instant “get out of jail free card”, but it would be a strong defense. Doctor gets sued for malpractice, lawyers point out that the doctor followed known best practices, and so unless there’s some other incompetence going on there’s no case.
There could be further benefits, such as not using drugs which themselves may cause health problems. Pushing a too aggressive treatment is probably safer in terms of lawsuits but worse for the patient, and definitely higher cost. A public set of best practices can reduce this problem.
Done right, this could also reduce the problem of overprescription of antibiotics. You want something-cillin for your rhinovirus? Sorry, we’re not writing a prescription for that. And we certainly aren’t paying for it.
I’m sure that malpractice is the major problem to physicians, but is it a major problem of insurance costs?
I thought the deal was that when they heard, “Everyone must have insurance” the companies would make more money at the present rates. But they thought, “Everyone must have insurance”, they thought, “Wow! Now we can charge whatever we want!”
I believe that price controls on insurance and medical costs would be the best answer, but medical industry owns too many congresspeople for that.
It’s called competition. It’s what drives the free market. If I can go online to search for health insurance and find several policies in-state that pretty much cost the same and one policy out-of-state that is a much lower premium, guess which one I’m going to sign up for?
Fuck off.
Agreed – 100%.
Liberals should just stop sucking conservative balls and come up with a Canada styled system or Medicare for all that would provide basic services for everyone and yet allow, say, an AFLAC or someone else to come in and allow for better care for those who can afford it.
Obama wasn’t in a position to deliver the goods in 2009 because, ironically, the FDR New Deal era legislation prevented most Americans from feeling just how bad a real financial crisis can be. Trust me when I say that the next time it happens…there will be no doubt. America will go full on mother fucking hardcore leftist. Because 80% of the country will either be destitute or financially distressed. That’s what happened in 1932 and a generation and a half of Americans never forgot it, either.
The insurance actuaries I quoted have concluded that your assumption that less competition in this market isn’t actually a driver of costs.
It’s like if I shop for Rolexes online. Just because I can shop among hundreds of watch sellers online, doesn’t mean that competition is going to cut the cost of the watch in half.
And why is the out-of-state company currently not offering that cheaper policy in my state? Probably because it doesn’t meet whatever standards my state has set in place for selling insurance here.
Are the standards set up to benefit consumers or the state’s insurance companies?
And that would be a bad thing …
How?
After Bro pharma Shkreli pulled his stunt in grossly raising prices “just because”, maybe more control is justified. And I don’t want to hear the party line about the “cost of research” bullshit. It’s been over-used for too long.
Won’t happen. Repubs want to trash it all and give themselves and their buddies a big tax break instead. By any means necessary.
The Affordable Care Act was based on the Massachusetts Republican plan to encourage Republicans to vote for it. I wondered at the time if Obama hoped that Republican criticism of the ACA would induce them to improve or replace it with something better for citizens. I was overly optimistic.
There is no solution to the healthcare problem that won’t temporarily destroy healthcare as we know it today. Every aspect of medicine is too expensive.