I have a lot of friends in the medical field and I’m trying to get into the medical field as well. One friend that I had a conversation with yesterday thinks that socialized medicine is a good thing because everyone receives treatment and in other countries, it shows to drive costs down. This got me thinking a bit. One of the contributing factors to the high cost of medicine in the capitalist American system is that he malpractice insurance premiums are so high. I know that Canada and Israel have socialized medicine. My question is how do the malpractice insurance premiums in those countries compare to the US rates?
Good question.When you a have full blown socialized health system is the fed. gov. the end all,back stop,buck stops here?.So if something “happens” you have to sue the government?Sue the government? they have a very good win record.
Ha! You cant sue the Govt!.
Shhhh…dont let the facts get in the way of the feel good bullshit lies you hear from the liberals.
I know, lets have doctors make less money too…that way the medical field will no longer attract the best and the brightest.
I know for a fact that malpractice insurance is definately considerably less in Canada and assume this also applies to other developed countries with government healthcare. I’m also told that docs are much more likely to be sued in the USA than other countries.
"Ha! You cant sue the Govt!. "
No, but you can still sue the doctors, even with government healthcare. Who is paying for the healthcare is irrelevant to being sued.
you can sue the doctors in Canada, the physicians here pay their own malpractice insurance (highest fees are for Ob/Gyn)
my friend’s mother is gp was sued by the family of a patient who committed suicide
.
You can sue the doctors in France, UK, Canada etc…people don’t do it (often) though…the problem is that there are way too many bogus lawsuits in the US. Litigation is your favourite pastime. In France, we have strikes as a pastime…to each his own 
Frontline has a good documentary on healthcare that I coincidentally just watched online last week, it covers the systems in four or five other westernized (or semi-westernized) democracies, you can watch the whole thing here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
It briefly touches on how malpractice insurance is much cheaper in nations with socialized medicine. Also, despite Record10’s usual claims about doctors not making any money in socialized systems, it covers the very decent salaries and bonuses available even to family doctors in the UK. It’s worth a watch if you have a free hour.
I never said they dont make allot - but they do have less incentive. But then again, what do I know…
oh, but I do know that a HUGE portion of every medical bill, drug cost, and medical test have litigation built right in as a cost of doing business - thus drugs are much cheaper in Canada - for the exact same pill. Pretty much same mentality of car insurance costing more in Newark NJ (Car theft champion city) than it does in Waterford Wi.
Actually, drug cost is largely a consequence of the fact that the US does a big chunk of the pharma research, and thus, absorbs a big chunk of the cost of drug discovery and development. Desert_dude had posted on the subject maybe 2-3 years ago, explaining the reasons in detail.
Point taken, I admittedly don’t know anything about prescription drug policy, but aren’t most drugs still more expensive here? When the Swiss implemented a socialized system their prescription medicine companies had no problem with reduced domestic profits since they were still selling most of their prescription medicine to the U.S. market at a much higher price. Why are we charged more with nothing else built in? Why are Americans helping foreign companies make up profit shortfalls from other markets?
If I remember correctly with some of the discussions here with Andrew the malpractice issues are covered by the same “Committee”, in the case fo the UK, NICE, I believe, that covers the what gets covered. Also if memory serves the limits are far lower but they are a bit more “Proactive” on removing truly bad docs.
IOW you might sue a doctor in the UK, but only get 500K rather 5 million and if a doctor gets sued a lot they get pulled or something like that.
Here a doctor get’s sued for millions and as long as he/she can afford to continue to pay the spiraling cost of the insurance they remain a doctor. Since pretty much every doctor gets sued for any number of things it’s pretty hard to weed the “good” doctors from the “bad” ones.
~Matt
Yes, and let’s talk about the octomon doc…
No lawsuit, and the costs will be absorbed by Californian residents…
Here a doctor get’s sued for millions and as long as he/she can afford to continue to pay the spiraling cost of the insurance they remain a doctor. Since pretty much every doctor gets sued for any number of things it’s pretty hard to weed the “good” doctors from the “bad” ones.
~Matt
Does not at all take a doc long to be un-insurable. As for the license - tell that to Dr. Girgenni (formerly, MD - now a Chiroquackter as he lost his medical license). Once a doc cant afford his insurance they just go work for a larger system (there are two groups in the past six months who joined OSF…one of the doc’s was told by the nuns to take a hike. To this day that doctor is still not able to see patients as he has no insurance and no group to get insurance from).
As you know, I know a few hundered MD’s of all specialites…I can count on one hand the number of just plain bad doctors who should not be able to see patients. The good ones who do get sued and end up with a jury trial…like 12 fucktards who could not get out of jury duty are his “peers” or can even begin to understand a complicated procedure???
The other thing we need to do is keep PRIMARY CARE doing just that - PRIMARY CARE. There are far too many FP folks sticking their fingers into shit it does not belong, thus folks get hurt and they get sued. These things include medical weight loss, vericose vein procedures, laser skin renewal, chemical dura peels and tattoo remove (as well as a few others). These things should be left to Endcrinology, Plastics, and Vascular folks…in the real world, if Rodney Roof wanted to start doing laser tattoo removal he could start with a couple simple CEU courses from the reps that would be happy to sell him a $300,000 ruby laser…now, as a good doctor he will I bet just stick to feet. I suppose part of the reason that FP are doing this is that their insurance is so high they need to supliment their income any way they can.
“Dr. Girgenni (formerly, MD - now a Chiroquackter as he lost his medical license).”
If this guy lost his MD license he would have had to go back to chiro college, graduate and then write and pass national/state board exams. He’d probably get two years credit for his MD degree but still have to attend chiro college for two more years. It’s not like you get booted out of med school or med practice and then automatically become a chiro. If that was the case, go into dentistry instead as it’s generally more lucrative than chiropractic.
The good ones who do get sued and end up with a jury trial…like 12 fucktards who could not get out of jury duty are his “peers” or can even begin to understand a complicated procedure???
Let me provide a counterpoint: I represent plaintiffs in med mal cases and I would like to assure you that my cases are legitimate, my clients have suffered grievous injuries, the doctors have clearly screwed up and 99% of my cases settle with confidentiality agreements. The defense attorneys fight like it’s trench warfare (which I respect) and they do their best to plant mines in my path. In my experience the people who fault the process do not understand how complicated and expensive it is to take a med mal case to trial. **I turn down 20 legitimate cases for every one I take simply because the cost of taking the case is prohibitive.
That is exactly what he did, lost his MD…kept ownership of a PT center, got his Chiro and then changed from PT to Chiro. I did notice he has also since been fined for some of his actions as a Chiro in a simple Google Search.
Drug costs are higher in the US than in socialized systems because it is a fragmented market. In Canada, we have threshold for how much the government will pay per quality adjusted life year gained by the medication. For many countries it can range $50 000 to $100 000 per QALY. Above this threshold our government will tell the drug companies to take their product elsewhere unless they reduce the price. This happened with the breast cancer drug Herceptin (which is now available in Canada after it was on the news that women who needed had to pay out of their own product).
In the US, drug companies can charge whatever they want for their drugs and the insurance companies will pay.
ah, tort reform, another of the items that GWB made a serious but ultimately weakened (capital spent on Iraq) effort for. Would have been nigh unto impossible then, but even less likely with a dem admin.
(capital spent on Iraq)
Huh? You blame Iraq? I dont get it.