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The military pays the education bills while the doctor works as a doctor for four years--under much better working conditions than the artificial hell hospitals create for residents. The only downside would be in cases that a resident has an opportunity to go to a major big-name hospital and work with big-name practioners.
OTOH, he may have even more challenging learning opportunities in certain other fields, if he wants them. Want a crash course in trauma--war zone. Want to do some "heroic" plastic surgery? The plastic surgery war at Tripler where they reconstruct war injuries.
No, you get to do the hell that is residency and THEN you get to be a military doctor for four years wherever the military sends you, with a high likelihood for a deployment at some point. I know a feel people in this boat. It served their purposes, but it is a heck of a lot to give up
Well, I'm not really intending to argue that cutting the Defense Department would result in greater unemployment, rather that it wouldn't...and whatever major effect it might have would be on more segments than just the uniformed population.
Agreed. And those segments outside of those serving are bright and would have no trouble converting to other segments of the economy. Our bloated military budget is just as much about being a jobs program that each member of Congress can tap into as it is anything else. Move that money to UHC or building schools or rebuilding our roads and those folks will follow it. And we all win.
No, you get to do the hell that is residency and THEN you get to be a military doctor for four years wherever the military sends you, with a high likelihood for a deployment at some point. I know a feel people in this boat. It served their purposes, but it is a heck of a lot to give up
The military doctors I knew didn't think they'd given anything up.
Doctors hovering over dying patients wondering how they can squeeze more money out of their family. In other words, how can I profit off of a dying person
Health insurance companies and medical facilities putting money before people...
The doctor that needs to perform unnecessary heart bypass surgery to fund his vacation...this actually happened where I lived.
Well..call me a bleeding heart or whatever, but that sounds like sociopathic behaviors to me.
Health care in the U.S. has become a money game where only the well off come out ahead.
My background is that I am the spouse of someone currently in medical residency.
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4. Private health care still exists in many of these countries--you just have to pay for it. And that is probably what many would do here. But we are such an egalitarian society--you don't think people are going to cry foul when those who can pay for it enjoy much nicer facilities and have access to treatments (potentially life saving) that someone on a national plan does not? In the US we want the best, but everyone has to have it. That's not how it works abroad. You have to lower the standard of care for everyone to have access--and that may be a great thing overall. But people here are going to flip their lids if and when that system come to be.
4. Private health care still exists in many of these countries--you just have to pay for it. And that is probably what many would do here. But we are such an egalitarian society--you don't think people are going to cry foul when those who can pay for it enjoy much nicer facilities and have access to treatments (potentially life saving) that someone on a national plan does not? In the US we want the best, but everyone has to have it. That's not how it works abroad. You have to lower the standard of care for everyone to have access--and that may be a great thing overall. But people here are going to flip their lids if and when that system come to be.
That is how it already is here......
I agree, latetotheparty.
And btw it is not necessary like that in other countries.
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But we are such an egalitarian society--you don't think people are going to cry foul when those who can pay for it enjoy much nicer facilities and have access to treatments (potentially life saving) that someone on a national plan does not?
Everybody in Australia has access to treatment and in most cases reasonably good facilities regardless of whether they have private insurance or not. Isolated rural areas are less likely to have good facilities and access to treatment than urban areas but that is probably going to be the case anywhere. Most large rural towns have a public hospital.
Also health insurance companies want as many people as possible to be privately covered and in order to do so they need to provide reasonably priced insurance so that people can afford it. As a single person, basic private insurance would cost me about $20-50pw, if I were married with 2 children anywhere from about $40-70 pw (which presumably covers the whole family). However, I don't feel the need to have insurance although it would be nice to have it for dental which unfortunately is one of the things that isn't covered by medicare.
Btw I've never met anyone who is *jealous* of those who pay for private insurance, if anything, I think that many people think it's a waste of time (which it probably isn't but that is just the impression people have). My mum actually did have private insurance and in the end she decided not to bother with it because her quality of care was still pretty good without it (and we are talking about someone who has been in hospital a lot). When mum got her latest hip operation, she spent about 3 weeks in the public hospital and about 3-4 months in rehab, she wasn't allowed to be released until she could cope on her own - this cost her nothing. She might have got more luxurious accommodation (and probably better food lol) in a private hospital but I suspect also that she wouldn't have been able to stay in there for such a long time.
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In the US we want the best, but everyone has to have it. That's not how it works abroad. You have to lower the standard of care for everyone to have access--and that may be a great thing overall. But people here are going to flip their lids if and when that system come to be
But not everybody does have it in the US do they? The working poor in particular seem to be the ones that suffer most. I am assuming that everyone is entitled to good emergency service but it seems that once one gets beyond that the standard of care varies.
In general, I think the standard of care here for *everyone* is fairly decent - it could of course be improved but isn't that true anywhere?
And as others have pointed out, no-one here is going to go bankrupt paying for their healthcare, although I will temper that by saying that there are some extremely expensive drugs that might not have been improved by our PBS system that may cost people dearly.
But not everybody does have it in the US do they? The working poor in particular seem to be the ones that suffer most. I am assuming that everyone is entitled to good emergency service but it seems that once one gets beyond that the standard of care varies.
No, everyone is not entitled to good emergency service. Many ER's discharge you once they determine you to be stable, and then you get the $3500 bill for the privilege a few weeks later.
The working poor aren't the ones suffering the most, they can get affordable or free care. It's the lower-middle and middle-middle classes that have it stuck to them. They are right at the point where they make too much money for it to be free or affordable, but don't make quite enough money for it to *really* be affordable comfortably.
I went without health insurance for the first 14 years of my adulthood. Thankfully, I wasn't sick very much in that time, and when I was, I paid out of pocket to PA's or urgent care doctors. My wife has been sued to hell by collectors over tens of thousands in medical debt (she had insurance at times, none at others; her/my income has fluctuated a lot over the years).
To cover me, my wife, and one of my three sons (one kid gets state health insurance due to a condition, the other is covered by his biological dad), is $656/mo in premium, with no subsidy because we now make over $100K. We can afford it, but we get very little value out of that money (deductibles are $4K/$8K).
Like everything else in the United States, everything is a business. We make everything about money. Even people getting sick.
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