US health care question

[Admiral Yi]

Treating the dying costs less than hospice care, rather counter-intuitively.  At the minute it's $1.9 billion of Medicare's costs

But my president told me it's 80% of health spending.

[Sheilbh]

Treating the dying costs less than hospice care, rather counter-intuitively.  At the minute it's $1.9 billion of Medicare's costs

But my president told me it's 80% of health spending.

Hospice care?

[Admiral Yi]

Hospice care?

All inclusive.

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

[Razgovory]

It is expensive, but it is also generally very, very good compared to the stories I have heard from other places.

We are like 37th in the world.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

[MadImmortalMan]

It is expensive, but it is also generally very, very good compared to the stories I have heard from other places.

We are like 37th in the world.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

lol

Look at the criteria.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_systems.html

http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html

[Valmy]

It is expensive, but it is also generally very, very good compared to the stories I have heard from other places.

We are like 37th in the world.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

That's it.  I am moving to Costa Rica.

[Tonitrus]

It is expensive, but it is also generally very, very good compared to the stories I have heard from other places.

We are like 37th in the world.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

The World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems was last produced in 2000, and the WHO no longer produces such a ranking table, because of the complexity of the task.

Almost 10 years old, and the makers of the study themselves realize that it's probably too complex an issue to measure accurately.

World Wars have been fought and won in 10 years.

[Razgovory]

It's the best I got.  Better then the anecdotes being tossed around.

[jimmy olsen]

My favorite part is how doctors are rewarded with money if they ask you to take tests or proscribe pills...so naturally I am always getting pushed to take pills and tests.  I mean a chest x-ray?  For a cough?  Are you shitting me?

Anyway those are my anecdotes. 

I have been consistently given excellent health care. 

Unrelated to my care, I believe that RI has two of the three best hospitals for cardio care in the nation.

[Iormlund]

Valmy, there are bad doctors everywhere, that has nothing to do with how you pay for your health care. It'll just make it cheaper. And you'll have long waiting lists. The less severe the problem, the longer they are. Over here, it can take a week to get a scanner* done while in the hospital. Three or so if you're out and marked as "preferential". Months if not. Or it can take a few minutes if things look bad enough, as it happened to me once when my fever shot up in the ER (I guess they had to rule out intestinal wall perforation).

For example on the bad doctor front, a month or so ago I had some tooth pain due to a hidden cavity. So I go to the on call GP at 3 AM. There's nobody else but me and the diagnosis is fairly obvious. But I have to tell him what to prescribe. He gave me the usual stuff, which I have to avoid (NSAIDs and some antibiotics) and I had to tell him he was wrong and what he should have given me instead.
Most doctors know less about my illness than I do. That's perfectly natural. And so I volunteer all the info when needed. But the guy could have at least asked or looked it up on hearing about my illnesses (especially since I had just told him I allergic to Aspirin as well). The dentist did ask me.

For the most part, however, I cannot complain. The best doctors invariably end up in the hospital I go to (it's the largest in Aragón). My specialist is one of two doctors working full-time on IBD cases in the region, so she does have a lot of experience.




*This varies a lot by procedure and place. Here colonoscopies take forever IIRC. Barium swallows, OTOH, have no waiting list at all - I've had them done less than 24h after asking for one.