[Kosh]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4763312.stm

"For example, if someone has a cold, giving them a CT scan.

This almost happened to me once. I had a really bad headache because of a cold I had (it felt like someone was driving a nail through my eye socket), so I went to the hospital to get some medicine for it. The doctor tried to talk me into getting a CT scan for it (he said "it's not expensive, only 200 yuan), but my bull**** alarm was ringing loud and clear. I said no, just give me some medicine. The medicine worked and I have been fine ever since.


This is just an example of why the American model for healthcare just doesn't work. It can lead to poorer people getting locked out of treatment and massive abuses of the system by doctors.

[achtung]

Health Insurers and doctors are the only one's who get anything out of it. 

Actually, to go a little off topic, Pharmeceutical(sp?) companies seem to back off from cures, and more toward "Treatment", due to the fact that treatments usually come in steps and are given multiple times.  Thus they make more money.

This is the only area in which I think more government control is needed in the U.S.

[Kosh]

Health Insurers

I'm not so sure that health insurers in america get out of it considering the outragious prices of medication in that country.


Basically China's healthcare system tried to model the American's......and it backfired terribly. Personally I believe the socialistic approach of the other western countries is the best solution for healthcare.

[Polpolion]

bull**** alarm

 

I wish I had a bull**** alarm...

[an0n]

Basically China's healthcare system tried to model the American's......and it backfired terribly. Personally I believe the socialistic approach of the other western countries is the best solution for healthcare.

Yeah, the NHS kicked ass till a series of progressively ****tier governments got into power and started stripping it down and increasing the beaurocracy.

[MatthewPapa]

yea, its not perfect

but i am not paying taxes out the ass either to support such a system so there

[Rictor]

I really thought we were on to something with witch doctors and their assorted herbs and remedies, but The Man screwed that one up as well. NHS depends on trimming down the layers of beaurocracy every once in a while, because otherwise an increasing amount of resources goes just into overhead and doesn't translate into direct benefits for the patients. Canada's healthcare system may seem good, and for common problems it usually is, but for major medical treatments it can be a pain in the ass. And abuses will occur in any system.

I actually read in the newspaper how some nutjobs are demanding that the government pay for their sex change operation, claiming they suffer from "gender confusion (or something equally ridiculous) dieasese". And I seem to remember they won the case.

[Nix]

I once went in for a minor blood test, to get my cholesterol levels checked, and some of the tests returned that I had an elevated liver enzyme count.  It was suggested that I should see my doctor asap.  I saw him and he said that he needed to take a blood test, right there, right now.  I had told him that I had NOT fasted the night before and the test would be inaccurate, but he suckered me into it.  After two weeks, the results came in as I expected, numbers all over the charts, whacked out readings cause of breakfast.  He then said that I had to have another test but he'd let me fast before the test this time.  I went in the next day and gave another sample, and waited another couple of weeks.  When the tests came back, they were exactly like my first test, Cholesterol was a little high, and an elevated, but slightly lower liver enzyme count.  He said that I had to come in yet again for another test in two weeks, and I said that I had enough with the testing and the same results and such.  I ended up having to shell out over $300 for the tests cause my doctor had a "hunch" that something was wrong with me.  It's pretty silly how they'll insist and, well darn near demand that they have these tests done asap, yet have absolutely no consideration about how much it will cost. 
And then, you have total quacks that will perscribe anything cause they think it's right.  One friend of mine went in to get a perscription for an ulcer, and he was perscribed Vicodin, along with his other medication for the ulcer.  Vicodin?  I had no idea an ulcer would make someone feel THAT bad.  I guess he got pretty lucky with that situation.  if you can consider that lucky...

I'd still rather have my own choice of doctor though, and not having to pay exorbitant amounts of taxes in order to have a socalist form of health care instituted.

[bfobar]

eh there's good doctors and there's bad doctors. Find a good one.

I'm not too fond of the current state of HMO's and the healthcare providers in America though. They're lazy, inept, beaurocratic, unpersonable, bean counters. Yeah, I've had some bad experiences filing claims.

[Drew]

in the good old days of 1970, some chinese people could easily get certain shots because most of the sick, who actually suffered from somthign substatial, were already dead. they didnt live long enough before any treatment could be made avliable or they could be diagnosed. every person who needed a shot could get one; the number of them were so small because everyone else was dead. Also, even if a person did get a shot, it might not even treat their actually disease - here is your shot, go home. think about what an herbalist does- its not like he cures cancer or the flu. the old woman with cancer would have had no chance of treatment, despite a few being avalable elsewhere in the world, she probably would have not even had any money to buy treatment with. the fact is, in china, before private healthcare sick people in china would just die. anyway, comparing china's healthcare system against any other first world system, private or not, around the globe is totaly rediculous. its growing, give it a chance 

[Mefustae]

Seriously, healthcare around the world should get off their arses and let more people die.

[Nuke]

what poisses me off is all the damn pill comercials. most of them are animateed, marketing to or through children (i actually find it amusing when an anti drug psa comes up after a pill comercial). the drugs themselves seem to treat problems that really arent life threatening or phantom illnesses that seemed to have been made up by drug companies. there are side effects up the wazoo. and the comercials proibily cost more to make than the drug company's annual cancer reserch budget.

its also crappy the way the healthcare system treats the insane or rather people they say are insane. my mother is a diagnosed schizophrenic, dispite not having any hallucinations or paranoia or any other symptoms of the disorder. she even lost custody of my sister because of it. shes antisocial at most, yet the doctors pegged her for being nuts. no doubt their making a ton of money off of her. also because of it shes been living on disability, at taxpayers expense, for the past 30 years because of a disorder she doesnt have. when i was a kid i was diagnosed with brain seisures (even though ive never had one), add (dont know how they figured that, ive always had a good attention span, none the less i was put on speed), chronic depression (probibly cause by the fact that i was on speed and sesure medication despite being perfectly fine). because of this list of disorders in my medical history i was denied entry into the us marines. the effects of misdiagnosing insanity seem to cause endless harm. whatever happened to the hippocratic oath?

[aldo_14]

yea, its not perfect

but i am not paying taxes out the ass either to support such a system so there

You'll probably end up regretting that if you or any friend/family gets a serious illness, IMO. 

The NHS may be underfunded and mismanaged, but the people there still do a pretty incredible job of treatment in my (families) experience; had it been in the US, it'd cost us about $20,000 for what the NHS did.

 Plus there's a nice advantage that there isn't an average 230-odd% markup on costs.  I think when you have a for-profit healthcare system, as well, you have serious problems with provision of healthcare - there are remote areas where it might not be profitable to have a well staffed and equipped operating theatre, and I'm not sure any privatised system would willingly address that.

[Wild Fragaria]

@ Kosh:  Never heard of a doctor offering a CT scan here (in the states) when you walked in to the clinic for a headache treatment because of a cold.  I don't even go see a doctor when I know I have a cold.

This happened to you in China?

@ Nix:  I am sorry to hear that you had to go through the silly tests so many times.  My sister had the similar problem with her blood sugar test.  She decided to get a second opinion from another doctor after she had a talk with me.  The result from the second doctor was better, but the blood sugar was a little higher than normal.  Anyhow, to cut the long story short, after having a proper diet and regular exercise (which something I had been telling her to do for years), eveything pretty much stays normal.

[Nix]

The Tamiflu radio commercial.  What a way to market a pill.  You go and get people whipped up in a craze to get a perscription of Tamiflu for the sniffles, start taking it when all they really have is the common cold, instead of the flu, and have people start building up resistances to the drug.  Then, when the questionable epidemic of bird flu hits, and is near impervious to Tamiflu, what do you do then?  That IS if bird flu ever becomes communicable to humans...  geh. 
It's all marketing, dirty, sleazy marketing to sell a pill.  I swear I need a shower after I get done with my marketing classes, I feel so dirty. 
Think Flu, think Tamiflu.   

[aldo_14]

Tamiflu might not and (IIRC) probably will not even work, anyways, because the virus has to mutate into a human-to-human disease to even be tested against.

[Kosh]

@ Kosh:  Never heard of a doctor offering a CT scan here (in the states) when you walked in to the clinic for a headache treatment because of a cold.  I don't even go see a doctor when I know I have a cold.

This happened to you in China?

Yes this happened in China.

I never went to see a doctor when I had a cold in america, but I have never had a cold cause me so much pain before. Even the common diseases do seem to be more nasty than they were in america. On the other hand the medicines, even the non-traditional ones, are much better than they are in America.

The doctor wanted to do that test because they can make money by doing that. Privitising the healthcare system in this country was a big mistake. Private healthcare systems suck.

[Nuke]

i very much doubt bird flu is a real concern. the pill companies want everyone to think its ebola so that they will shell out large sums of money to them for treatments that arent really nessicary. people have been known to die of common colds, so i dont like it when people freak out over a handfull of deaths to some new health risk.

[aldo_14]

i very much doubt bird flu is a real concern. the pill companies want everyone to think its ebola so that they will shell out large sums of money to them for treatments that arent really nessicary. people have been known to die of common colds, so i dont like it when people freak out over a handfull of deaths to some new health risk.

Um... you do know the history of flu pandemics, don't you?  If one does happen, then you're talking of the potential for tens of millions dead.  The 1918 flu epidemic killed more people than the first world war - over 20 million.  The 1957 Asian Flu epidemic (a variant of H2N2 avian flu, which has itself mutated into other avian flu types such as the current H5N1) killed between 1 to 4 million people.  So it's a very real concern that it could mutate and become pandemic, particularly as many of the advantages of modern medicine in reducing mortality would be counteracted by easier air travel and larger population densities easing transmission.

And don't confuse the issue of human-contracted H5N1 deaths with the issue of H5N1 mutating into a strain that is communicable between humans.

[Descenterace]

the effects of misdiagnosing insanity seem to cause endless harm. whatever happened to the hippocratic oath?

It met conformist bull**** society.

"Anyone who's not within 10% of the mean, socially, must have something wrong with them."

So we end up with unusual personality types being labelled as disorders, and every pharmaceutical  company in the world trying to make money off those diagnoses.
Also, some people think that, because they're blindly happy with life, everyone else should be too, but anyone who's actually looked at the world shorn of happy fantasies like absolute truth and justice knows they're a bunch of dickheads.
For some reason, this outlook can get diagnosed as depression. OK, so it might be a slightly depressing view of the world, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.