The (north) American healthcare system

My question was about comparative income tax/national insurance rates. This has not been answered.

Yes it has.

I’ll say it again. This isn’t a good comparison. Insurance cost in the US is not all that you pay for your treatment, because the variable costs are high. You can have health insurance and still be bankrupted by, say, cancer therapy.

Massively increase funding, train more doctors and support staff, invest in better facilities?

Maybe just stop humouring the troll and ignore him - he’s just going to keep pretending there’s an easy comparison to be made. Not really sure why we’ve tolerated him crawling his way back onto the boards in the first place anyway.

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And how do you propose those things are achieved at the scale at which you perceive them to be needed?

Socialism.

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Yes, but even then there’s a limit. For example, we can’t put a facility like Harefield’s Heart unit in every hospital in the country unless we’re willing to fund a lot of waste. Those who live nearby are just going to be lucky that they get the best care in the country if they have a less significant heart problem, while others from elsewhere in the country only get it if they need really specialist care AND they’re able to be referred.

Aren’t there also geographical variables within this? As in someone from Vermont who “has insurance” may not necessarily be covered for certain ailments if they present with them in Wisconsin?

Well I’d rather waste come in the form of unused operating theatres at specialised health units than unused Regent Park properties for oligarchs :wink:

Sort of (not an expert on that aspect)… States set their own healthcare regulations, which means that insurers operate within a state. e.g. a big ‘national’ insurer like Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) will operate state-level insurance plans which can only be sold to people living in that particular state.
Now each state-level BCBS plan will have its own tiering system for drugs. e.g. Humira might be tier 2 for Rheumatoid Arthritis in Florida and tier 3 in California which means that coverage of particular products or procedures varies by state. I guess that would impact how someone being treated across state boundaries has to sort co-pays, but I don’t know the ins and outs.

The US spends fuckloads of tax money on their healthcare system. More per capita than countries with free healthcare. So people are paying via taxes and getting rinsed on insurance too.

I think probably illnesses that I don’t deem to be ethically neutral like if you smoked a cigarette once or depression or if you happen to have been born in Germany can just be cut out of socialised healthcare models wholesale so we can spend more money on treating gout.

The main block to improving the outcomes of cancer treatment in the UK is actually getting people to go to their GP early enough when they notice symptoms. It’s significantly behind where other countries are. From the point of diagnosis, the UK actually does pretty well in comparison to other countries, once you take into account that this diagnosis happens at a later stage in the cancer’s development.

It wasn’t always this way though. The UK did used to have poor post-diagnosis statistics, but the trends improved throughout the 00s and by about 2010 were on course to be among the best in the EU by 2020. Progress has since stalled, however.

There are numerous things that can be done to improve early diagnosis, usually ‘soft’ strategies, like public education. It’s also noticeable that the areas with the worst early-diagnosis are those that either have low-income populations who visit their GP less often, or areas with high rates of private renting, where residents are much more transient and much less likely to be registered with local community services.

Oh, I know. I was saying cancer is always cited as an example of underperformance when, in reality, it holds up pretty well in the global picture. These things are all a balance of variables but looked at globally across metrics relating to value for money vs. outcomes the NHS performs strongly, even the best in the world depending on what figures you’re looking at. For all its problems, it does work.

And also to be fair there is a lot of prevention/education spending in the UK in order to circumvent the more individual/behavioural aspects of health provision. Tough nut to crack mind.

Hmmm, I know correlation doesn’t always equal causation but…

Oh, I’ve been done by Dr Wolfcastle here or something haven’t I?

I’ve done some serious in depth research into this and america is better value;

Everyone in Scrubs was happy apart from the manager bloke and everyone in casualty is depressed

You laugh but Scrubs is considered by doctors I’ve spoken to a more realistic portrayal of “being a doctor” than Casualty is.

Cardiac Arrest and Bodies are still regarded as the most realistic, apparently.