Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Yachtie Patients with an earache or strep throat can spend $300 at their local hospital emergency room, or promptly get an appointment at his office and pay $50, he said. Compared to $30 in Norway for a specialist or $23 for a general practicioner. Or $250 for an MRI at a private clinic here, including the radiologist. The cap is $500/year, above which universal healthcare kicks in. quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML Really? You would go into an OR without legal protection? Wow! That's the norm where I live. You can't sue the doctors here. Or, you can bring a civil suit, but it won't net you a dime, most likely, and you're not likely to get anywhere, unless the doctor was intentionally criminal (mere criminal negligence won't suffice, though it will get him banned from practice). You can report them to the medical review board, which actually happens to work fairly well already, and the threshold for banning a doctor from practicing medicine is lower here. If you've sustained lasting harm, from any source, including doctors, then you can apply for reparations from the welfare system, limited to some $35.000 plus associated costs. This is pretty rare to see done in connection with medical care, so most such reparations are awarded in connection with lasting harm from violence. Indeed, we have a lot less malpractice overall, from what my reading suggests. It also isn't a malpracticing doctor's money we want, it's his licence to practice. That may be part of keeping the rates of malpractice down. quote:
ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr My understanding (and now I should note that this is sarcasm, lest someone think it serious in the wrong way) is that the American courts are effectively the welfare lottery on that side of the pond, for commoners with the good fortune to be eligible for it through malpractice, car accidents or other lucky breaks, pun intended. The main problem with this being that the costs are borne, not through the cost of the tickets to the lottery (that's free), but by pairing winning tickets with losing tickets and savaging the loser to pay out to the winner, with a handsome fee to everyone involved that didn't have a ticket to begin with. Insurance is bought seperately, and doesn't appear to figure much in anything, except as a form of savings that has a negative interest rate. Where I live, above the zero tax point (ca. $15.000 per year per household), you have to pay taxes, and healthcare for all citizens is part of what that tax buys you, along with emergency healthcare for all non-citizen residents and welfare (this for citizens only). There's no lottery. No tickets to buy or prizes to win. The courts settle grievances, not misfortunes. It's kind of like having insurance, except it actually works, and the interest on the investment of the tax earnings feeds back into the system, and you get bulk discounts, and, and, and... well, you get the idea. It's understood that shit happens, and you don't sue or get paid when it does. It's understood that people- no matter their profession- that routinely cause shit to happen, or cause it three times through negligence or incompetence, or cause it once through criminal negligence or unsuitability, are not going to be allowed to continue to do so. It's understood that when shit happens to you, there will be five million people getting you back on your feet. Unfortunately, it's not always understood that there's a difference between shit happening to you and you sticking your head in it, but from a financial perspective it still works out anyway, as people tend to share their misery and misfortune in various ways, making it cost effective to help out regardless. As Ishtar pointed out in the thread on Denmark, their 11% covers 100% of the population, while the American 18% is for a substantially smaller fraction. One of those two shops smart. The other does not, and makes up for it by having courts. I note the ones that oppose universalized healthcare and welfare are often the same ones that complain about the abuses of the legal system in the US, which is kind of perverse: the crabs at the bottom of the bucket are always going to do what they can, including pulling all the other crabs down with them, in the hopes they will be the one to get out alive. Ignoring that reality ensures nobody does. IWYW, — Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
|