Question by ShadowCat: With Diversity In Mind: Will The Obama Plan Include Witch Doctors and Shamans, When Other Physicians Bail Out?
Best answer:
Answer by Elwood Blues
There are tests for treatment effectiveness.
The fact is that in the USA we pay nearly *twice* what Europeans pay for health care, and we have both higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy than most European countries. See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html for mortality and life; see http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf for costs.
United States — im= 6.4, L= 78.0, cost 90, 16.0% of GDP
Canada ——— im= 4.6, L= 80.3, cost 95, 10.1% of GDP
Austria ——– im= 4.5, L= 79.2, cost 63, 10.1% of GDP
United Kingdom — im= 5.0, L= 78.7, cost 95, 8.4% of GDP
Denmark —— im= 4.5, L= 78.0, cost 62, 10.4% of GDP
Finland ——- im= 3.5, L= 78.7, cost 40, 8.2% of GDP
France ——– im= 4.2, L= 79.9, cost 63, 11.0% of GDP
Germany —— im= 4.1, L= 79.0, cost 27, 10.4% of GDP
Greece ——– im= 5.3, L= 79.4, cost 27, 9.6% of GDP
Italy ———– im= 5.7, L= 79.9, cost 86, 8.7% of GDP
Norway ——- im= 3.6, L= 79.7, cost 63, 8.9% of GDP
Spain ——— im= 4.3, L= 79.8, cost 71, 8.5% of GDP
Sweden ——- im= 2.8, L= 80.6, cost 23, 9.1% of GDP
Switzerland — im= 4.3, L= 80.6, cost 17, 10.8% of GDP
USA has 36 days longer life expectancy than these two countries!
Ireland ——- im= 5.2, L= 77.9, cost 24, 7.6% of GDP
Portugal —– im= 4.9, L= 77.9, cost 50, 9.9% of GDP
Some folks blame our high costs on malpractice insurance. But the numbers don’t support that. Including legal fees, insurance costs, and payouts, the cost of the suits comes to less than 1.5 percent of health-care spending. See http://www.insurance-reform.org/pr/AIRhealthcosts.pdf and http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm Along those lines, it’s interesting to note that a number of states already have “caps and tort reform” yet the insurance companies have not lowered the cost of malpractice insurance in those states.
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Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Come On Now . let’s lighten up. The government want to help those who would fall thru the cracks. Is that wall that bad?? Would you not help out someone who is in tourble ??
That is what is messed up about the government getting involved in medicine at all. Then the government gets to decide what medicine is.
The witch doctors will be for those of us with his little health plan… the real doctors will be for those like him and the congress… with good health plans.
The best health plan in the world is in France. The doctors in France make between 50-100K a year. That is your answer. Plain and simple, greed. We do not have enough GPs because specialists make well over 300K and the GPs can hardly scrape by after their expenses. The entire system needs to be overhauled. This is just the start of what may be compared to birthing pains for our lousy system of health care, or lack of it. I remember Obama saying that he wants the general public to have the same healthcare as the members of congress. Did you miss that part?