[–] ougNaHadNepVed ago
even if the pace slowed that's not necessarily bad
Except if you are a person who dies because the drug to save you wasn't developed.
getting malpractice liability under control
Yes, this is huge, but unlikely to happen. There are lots of lawyers in Congress.
As far as poaching we probably already do
That's not a sustainable model for a health care system. If that's our plan, I think it would be cheaper to just send patients as medical tourists to developing countries, something that happens already. That way we don't have to pay American wages to those doctors.
[–] DickHertz 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I am as concerned about that as much as I am getting into a plane crash.
They are already here. It's possible to do the medical tourism thing but only if you aren't too sick to get there in the first place. Also if you don't want to pay American wages and will go somewhere else what difference does it make if single payer lowers the income of doctors in the general case?
[–] ougNaHadNepVed 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Thumbs up, the courage of your convictions.
This. We could offload a lot of routine stuff to cheaper locales, but emergencies are here.
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you about single payer, just pointing out that there are no easy and painless solutions to health care. If we all had the attitude that you expressed above (if my number comes up, my number comes up), then probably any reasonable system would work. But our life is really important to us, and so we have people who will go to any lengths to sustain it, and are completely unreasonable about it. And we have politicians who will listen to them, because they crave power like the worst junkie, and those unreasonable people vote.
Many countries in the world seem to have a workable system, that people there are generally happy with. Maybe they are more reasonable than Americans. :-) And the rich from those countries come to the US for the best care in the world, when they can't tolerate the shortcomings of their system; they usually ration health care through waiting lists and resource scarcity. I can't have the latest expensive treatment, if the machine that provides it isn't there. I can't take the latest expensive drug regimen if the drug isn't there.