Problems about affordability arise when the care required is more than what your average doctor can provide, or what goes beyond sound practice ie, effective care v supply-sensitive care. Effective care policy is decision making based upon what should be done to maximise patient outcome. Supply-sensitive care policy is decision making based upon what services are available to a patient regardless of whether they maximise patient outcome or not. If someone else is paying the bill there is a tendency to lean toward supply-sensitive care policy. http://lifeinthefastlane.com/the-most-expensive-medical-equipment-in-the-world/ You can't spend your way to an effective health care system, especially if it's a public system, because in the end no one is accountable and the budget requirements are ever-increasing. I think bordie's post is primarily about GP service delivery, rather than the more complicated health requirements which go beyond socialised health care.
How co-incident I was reading the Iching today..... Tao Te Ching for today is Verse for today # 53 The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao. When rich speculators prosper While farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn- all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao.
Yes, the post was about a contemporary emergence of a voluntary system for obtaining inexpensive health care. Worth noting that the "Concierge medicine" approach was previously one of the models that the Friendlies implemented. As stated near the start of the thread there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to something as complicated as medical care with long tails. It is best thought of as a system of overlapping options, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. The Concierge medicine is a component that can suit some people's circumstances very well and others not at all. Places like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma (which has been discussed in other threads) are another example of how cutting red tape (and especially cutting out the insurers) has made more complicated procedures much more affordable. They even go the extreme of openly publishing all of their prices for their procedures on the website so that people can easily price differentiate.
What I find fascinating about it is that that someone has re-branded a basic socialized model as "Concierge" so Americans don't have to admit to using a socialist system.
Or they could call it a "mutual" system like the old days. It's a bit like the term "sharing economy" being touted like it was something new when it's been around for millenia.
The suffix is irrelevant. Removing the word "social" from the description and replacing it with "concierge" so that people feel empowered (even though they're using a social model) is genius. It also says a lot about Americans' inability to grasp nuance. And reality, come to think of it.
That's my point: if the system is more efficient and delivers better results, it will be and do that regardless of whether people join it voluntarily or whether they join because they have to. So why even bother discussing it? Why have a hundred different health care plans and HMOs and PPOs and give people the illusion that they can make a meaningful choice when all they really need is the ability to go to the doctor when they're sick?
Putting aside the notion that forcing people to join a health plan such as Medicare for instance is immoral, the idea that a system that is financed entirely through coercion would not have any marked difference in service delivery, efficiency and response to customer needs than a voluntary system financed by satisfied customers free to opt in or out out to another provider is laughable and not borne out by evidence.
A couple of decades ago I won first prize at the regional art show with a work I titled "Vicissitudes of life" I like expressive words like this and I only tend to dumb them down if I expect renovator's going to read my post.
Yes, but on the other hand there is the problem with overchoice which leads to the consumer becoming stressed and overwhelmed by being presented with too many options. They know the sheer number of choices available means they have a high likelihood of picking a sub-optimal one and since they'll probably never find out how good or bad their ultimate choice was, they inevitably resent the whole process and assume they're being quietly ripped off.
There's got to be a simpler way to say what I'm about to say: By what authority do you or an agent such as a bureaucrat possess the right to restrict the choices available to individuals as they go about satisfying their needs? Life is stressful Big AD, authorising the decisions about medical choice or mandating who can supply/not supply consumer need to an individual by a* core group of unrelated, anonymous policy makers completely unaware of the individual's circumstances and desires is not really a great argument or strategy if you're trying to reduce patient stress, for example: http://medicalmarijuananews.xyz/australian-children-first-to-receive-medical-marijuana-treatment/ *Edited for grammar.
