[mike777]

I always wondered how a bridge pro like hamman makes so much money playing bridge. I checked and bridge cards cost only a buck or two. The mark up is huge.

btw the UK health care plan simply will not pay for drugs that are not cost effective.
If a cancer drug in general only increases a life span for a few years and costs too much, payment is refused. One solution may be to have the government take over the pharmaceutical industry and fix this problem.

[mike777]

blackshoe, on Jun 3 2009, 10:03 AM, said:

I smell a rat. For one thing, this "analyst" doesn't take into account the cost of R&D. How else are the drug companies to recoup those costs?

Well another cost is the fact that many of these companies are for profit companies and investors who put money into these companies demand not only their money back but more...lots more. As Winston pointed out this is a constant problem in trying to run health care.

"At which point we reach the Canadian model, which I understand works quite nicely.

Personally, I think it is both ludicrous and ridiculous to discuss heath-care within a structure based on capitalism - capitalism is antipathy to health-care. The idea of capitalism is to allocate resources to the most profitable areas - hence, when we find capitalism mixed with health-care we find what we should expect, and that is resources allocated to preventative medicine and the young and healthy.

If you are one who is most in need of help - the sick and the elderly - good luck, because the Invisible Hand of capitalism is going to shoot you the finger. "


If we go to a health care system where we stop trying to recoup all costs that may change things around. That is why a health care plan where we do not worry about how much it costs or where the money comes from is so powerful.

[y66]

Update: From Atul Gawande's May 11, 2015 New Yorker article titled Overkill. An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it?:

Quote

The medical system had done what it so often does: performed tests, unnecessarily, to reveal problems that aren’t quite problems to then be fixed, unnecessarily, at great expense and no little risk. Meanwhile, we avoid taking adequate care of the biggest problems that people face—problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, or any number of less technologically intensive conditions. An entire health-care system has been devoted to this game. Yet we’re finally seeing evidence that the system can change—even in the most expensive places for health care in the country.

[PassedOut]

 y66, on 2015-May-17, 11:52, said:

Update: From Atul Gawande's May 11, 2015 New Yorker article titled Overkill. An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it?:

Great article! Thanks.

[Winstonm]

 PassedOut, on 2015-May-17, 20:54, said:

Great article! Thanks.

I once met an American physician who lived and practiced in Canada. He said he preferred working in Canada because the physicians were in charge of the care that was received, including testing.

[kenberg]

I decided to delete my post.

[PassedOut]

 kenberg, on 2015-May-19, 18:07, said:

I decided to delete my post.

Unfortunately, if doctors (and others, too) are rewarded for what is, in effect, incompetence, you'll get quite a bit of incompetence. When that happens, it looks to me like a systemic problem.

[kenberg]

Fir those curious about the response to my deleted post, I mentioned, among other things, that if a surgeon intended to remove a lump and somehow removed something else, this seemed to me to be more a caase of incompetence than of a failed system. I removed it because I of course do not know the details of the case.

[PassedOut]

 kenberg, on 2015-May-19, 20:04, said:

Fir those curious about the response to my deleted post, I mentioned, among other things, that if a surgeon intended to remove a lump and somehow removed something else, this seemed to me to be more a caase of incompetence than of a failed system. I removed it because I of course do not know the details of the case.

That (and some of the other cases, too) look from this distance as incompetence to me as well. My opinion is that rewarding competence tends to reduce incompetence in general.

[kenberg]

 PassedOut, on 2015-May-19, 20:35, said:

That (and some of the other cases, too) look from this distance as incompetence to me as well. My opinion is that rewarding competence tends to reduce incompetence in general.

Rewarding competence? A rash idea.
Yes, I agree.

I have had mostly good health but I am aging so issues arise. Different people go at this differently. One guy I know approaches every appointment with his doctor as an opportunity for debate. At the other extreme I know people who really seem oblivious to the fact that some doctors are better at their profession than are others. Once we accept that ultimately we are all responsible for ourselves these decisions get at least a little easier.