Also since the OP is posting in GD could we get cites for any of his claims?
I’d like to know what proportion of people (who are Americans) having these surgeries done are electing to have them done overseas, and if possible let’s see that number compared to numbers in previous years.
To put some actual numbers into this debate, insurance makes up only three percents of doctors’ costs. That’s not a serious factor in medical costs in the United States. Administration and related costs makes up a third of medical costs. Those could be nearly eliminated if we had universal health care.
Not just free: most Europeans I’ve talked to tell me that med-students actually get a stipend, like grad-school. I think it’s a good system, I think we should adopt it.
Stop playing silly games. Everybody (including you) know what I meant. And what I meant is perfectly relevant to the post I was responding to and to other comments made in this thread.
Taxes. Damn socialists!:rolleyes:
The point is not the numbers today. The point is if it saves money insurance companies and corporations will push it. It is growing . The trend is up .
If you had numbers ,you would turn the debate into whether the numbers are significant.
I provided the cost differences, Those are relevant numbers and the point of the discussion.
The article said that 150,000 people went to India alone for operations last year.
I think that american legal services are very over priced. Can you have legal work done in India, for much less? My lawyer charges me $360/hour-how much would an Indian lawyer charge?
No, actually I’m not being silly. And I’m not at all sure everyone knows what you meant.
Publicly funded is NOT free, and I think it is incredibly disingenuous to talk about publicly funded benefits as though they are free. Society IMO can’t make proper decisions about publicly funded things if they are lead to believe they are “free” programs.
If you put a ballot initiative up in the U.S. that said, “Free College for All” or “Free Medical School” I imagine a lot of people would support it and not fully understand it isn’t free at all–it’s being supported by taxpayers.
Interestingly education in general is one area where I strongly support public funding. I think there should be free college and above level educations out there for Americans, publicly funded. I think if we justify spending on K-12, considering todays job market, college and technical schools and beyond seem logical.
I heard that it’s not unusual for people in San Diego to have a dentist in Tijuana.
Good idea. Of course you would have to move there. Hasta lla vista
To be fair, it was pretty clear the comment context was of a potential physician weighing the personal cost of physician study versus another career choice. In this context there is a zero cost of studying to be a physician when compared to other choices, as the person will pay taxes that indirectly contribute towards the physician’s study subsidization whether he takes the subsidy or not.
I think in that context free is a pretty valid description. If we are talking about the cost to government and therefore the population as a whole, physician or not, obviously you are correct. But it seems pretty clear here that we weren’t, and I have a hard time seeing how any rational person would have thought otherwise.
There are no out of pocket expenses. When you go to the doctor and come home ,you have the same amount of money in your wallet.
Shit, the future of everything is not in America. For example, when I taught overseas, chemistry was one of the hottest majors. Now that I teach at a US college, there are 2-3 chemistry majors in an undergraduate body of around 2000. US kids are afraid to do anything that is too hard. Students in Asia are just as smart as US students, and they want it a hell of a lot more than US students do. And there are a lot more of them. They are going to eat us alive in the next century.
They may also know that nobody is building new R&D labs in the US. I’m appalled at the number of industrial R&D labs that closed in the US in the 1990s. Some closed because the company wentr out of business (Polaroid), but others closed down or drastically cut back in that decade – American Optical, GTE Labs, Textron. Bell Labs closed its Holmdel facility and opened up labs in India and China. Kodak and IBM cut back. Heck, even Oak Ridge, a government facility, drastically cut back. So why should students major in a field requiring tough study, yet they may not get a job? Certainly not a high-paying one.
That’s depressing, and frightening. Our school seems to specialize in turning out business majors. Too bad they won’t have anything to sell.
The global economy is doing exactly what we doom sayers said when it started. The wages of all Americans will be dropping to the levels of the rest of the world. Some of the rest of the world will slowly come up a little. But the trend is for all wage earners to drop. The profits of all international corporations will sky rocket for the first few years. Since corps do not think way ahead ,they will be satisfied until the real bill becomes due. America is on it’s way to becoming a second rate country.