Request: A Generlal Explanation of the US Healthcare System

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:29 pm

Gelare wrote:
Neeeek wrote:I'd link you to the information, but I doubt you have access to legal databases, which is the only place you can really find this sort of information.
Oh come on, I have to call bullshit on this. "I want you to meet my girlfriend, but she lives in Canada! Err...or Atlantis! Yeah, you can't go there, sry!" I hear you that there are different kinds of legal professionals in different countries, that's fine, but seriously man. Numbers.

Feel free to look for volume 39 of the Journal of Legal Education, starting on page 27, if you can find a copy of it. It's an article that does little other than debunk this myth that other countries function fine with far fewer lawyers.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:39 pm

Neeeek wrote:Feel free to look for volume 39 of the Journal of Legal Education, starting on page 27, if you can find a copy of it. It's an article that does little other than debunk this myth that other countries function fine with far fewer lawyers.

It's cool, I know a guy who knows a guy. I'm satisfied then, thanks.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:44 pm

If you're still interested in finding out, this link well help you out:

http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/lrc/staff ... cfm?id=771

This is just the ToC, but you can request a specific page from the website by giving up your e-mail. I don't know how kosher this website is, I'm not a lawyer (ha! I am so funny!) but this is the best I can do.

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 1:37 pm

I have another question. Where can I find statistics on how much, on average, the French and US governments pay to finance medical students? I'm examining the reasons why France has more doctors per 1000 than the US.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 4:28 pm

Cielingcat wrote:I have another question. Where can I find statistics on how much, on average, the French and US governments pay to finance medical students? I'm examining the reasons why France has more doctors per 1000 than the US.

The number one reason that happened is that the United States has their state medical training programs on a per-state basis. Did you ever watch Northern Exposure? That shit is real. Alaska doesn't even teach medical students, all they do is offer financial incentives for medical students to indenture themselves to Alaska.

-Username17

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Apr 29, 2009 4:36 pm

Neeeek wrote: Feel free to look for volume 39 of the Journal of Legal Education, starting on page 27, if you can find a copy of it. It's an article that does little other than debunk this myth that other countries function fine with far fewer lawyers.

You know, I don't consider a legal journal to be a good source for reading about how we need more lawyers. That's like going to a christian journal to learn about evolution.

However, I have known international lawyers, and they dread having anything to do with American law because it's a clusterfuck. And none of them would even dream of living here without a lawyer on permanent retainer.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:48 pm

If the US and Mexico had a government-run universal health care plan, how much of the effects of swine flu would have been mitigated?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:50 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If the US and Mexico had a government-run universal health care plan, how much of the effects of swine flu would have been mitigated?

Well, it seems likely that more people would be vaccinated, which apparently works pretty well.

Then again, I haven't been vaccinated even though my student health plan would cover it...

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:00 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If the US and Mexico had a government-run universal health care plan, how much of the effects of swine flu would have been mitigated?

Mexico's got universal health care, sort of.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:12 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:If the US and Mexico had a government-run universal health care plan, how much of the effects of swine flu would have been mitigated?
Well, it seems likely that more people would be vaccinated, which apparently works pretty well.

Then again, I haven't been vaccinated even though my student health plan would cover it...

There's a vaccine for it?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:21 pm

Maj wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:If the US and Mexico had a government-run universal health care plan, how much of the effects of swine flu would have been mitigated?
Well, it seems likely that more people would be vaccinated, which apparently works pretty well.

Then again, I haven't been vaccinated even though my student health plan would cover it...
There's a vaccine for it?

There's no pig flu vaccine for humans. I was talking with my dad yesterday, and he said that the normal vaccine provides protection. However, I can't find anything to substantiate that, so I'll have to assume that he was wrong. Sorry for the misinformation, folks.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:06 pm

Whether we have universal health care or not would make approximately zero difference as to what's going on with the swine flu; there is no vaccine, and the US government has ready fifty million treatments of Tamiflu. Really, all this scaremongering is nonsense.

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:55 pm

I've been following this fairly closely since I'm living in Guatemala right now. Standard flu vaccinations don't do anything, but they'll have a vaccine for this strain in a couple months apparently. The newspaper here reported that two internists in a Mexico City hospital died despite having been vaccinated, though I can't find this anywhere else and the local press is kind of a joke. The Mex Files has good coverage from Mexico. And yeah, the scaremongering is just that.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:22 am

Our current vaccinations aren't particularly effective, but the strain is susceptible to our current flu anti-virals, which is what we'd actually care about in the event of an epidemic/pandemic/whatever the right term is. Obnoxious scaremongering is obnoxious.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:26 am

eeuuugh wrote:The newspaper here reported that two internists in a Mexico City hospital died despite having been vaccinated, though I can't find this anywhere else and the local press is kind of a joke.

This kind of surprised me. I mean, I was under the impression that swine flu behaves pretty much like the normal flu, which I had just a couple months ago and I'm perfectly fine now. Maybe the health care in Mexico is just really godawful, but geez, if you can't get medical treatment and you work in a hospital, something is fucked up.

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 1:23 am

Yeah, again, I read that about the internists in the Guatemala City paper, so don't assume it's true. 159 suspected deaths, with only seven confirmed, in a city of 20 million is not a big deal.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:03 am

"It has claimed 149 lives so far, ranking it last on the list of things that can kill you in Mexico."

Jon Stewart reports.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 7:06 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Cielingcat wrote:I have another question. Where can I find statistics on how much, on average, the French and US governments pay to finance medical students? I'm examining the reasons why France has more doctors per 1000 than the US.
The number one reason that happened is that the United States has their state medical training programs on a per-state basis. Did you ever watch Northern Exposure? That shit is real. Alaska doesn't even teach medical students, all they do is offer financial incentives for medical students to indenture themselves to Alaska.

-Username17

My understanding (from my dad who used to work at Dalhousie Medical School, though as an editor rather than a medical practitioner) is that the largest restriction of having more doctors is the medical associations who intentionally puts practices in place expressly designed to assure that only so many doctors will graduate during any given year so that they can maintain the asking price that doctors can ask for.

As Cuba has managed to have more than double the amount of doctors per capita than the US and Canada which has created a health system that provides its health statistics as good if not better than the US for only $250 US per person annually, it doesn't seem to be a problem that you can have effective health care coverage at reasonable rates with enough doctors to provide it.

Remember the AMA is like OPEC the only way you're gonna get a doctor in the US is if that doctor has jumped through their hoops.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 3:34 pm

ckafrica wrote:My understanding (from my dad who used to work at Dalhousie Medical School, though as an editor rather than a medical practitioner) is that the largest restriction of having more doctors is the medical associations who intentionally puts practices in place expressly designed to assure that only so many doctors will graduate during any given year so that they can maintain the asking price that doctors can ask for.

Absolutely correct. I can't say for certain whether it's the largest restriction, but it's certainly a big one.

me wrote:Of course, another reason why costs may be high is that whoever it is that regulates how many people per year can enter med school (the AMA, maybe? Someone else? I forget.) has an actual monopoly on licensing doctors, and they restrict the supply of entrants to med school to keep doctors' wages high.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 11:57 pm

Using cuba's costs probably isn't to informative.

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Fri May 01, 2009 12:38 am

yeah, Cuban everything is so much less than the US that you can't compare anything.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Fri May 01, 2009 12:44 am

Also amusingly, the most powerful union in australia is probably the pharmacy guild.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri May 01, 2009 3:56 am

zeruslord wrote:yeah, Cuban everything is so much less than the US that you can't compare anything.

Sure Cuban prices are low because the government keeps wages proportional to national earning through the controlled economy. Now the Cuban nominal GDP per capita is about a tenth of the US. If they we in the same ballpark GDP wise and could keep the same cost ratio than at $2500 per capital they'd only be spending a third of what the US is spending.

I'm not sure it's a reasonable assumption that they could keep the costs relative especially because the only way the Cuban economy could ever grow to that level without full integration into the world economies which will only happen if they eliminate travel and emigration restrictions which would likely see an outflux of their well trained doctors to countries who are not producing enough doctors but need them and so attract them with the promise of ludicrously high wages

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Fri May 01, 2009 3:07 pm

which is more than the UK spends by about a third incidently, so don't understimate them!

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat May 02, 2009 6:55 am

It's killed 149?

There's only 331 worldwide confirmed cases. Apparently many of the flu cases in Mexico - aside from the deaths - have shown to have been a different strain.

And yes, they're worried about it because there is no vaccine. That means at-risk people can't take the vaccine and have the normal risk.

-Crissa