After all, we don't let foreign doctors practice medicine on our people - that would just let our poor people get cheaper healthcare over Skype from a doctor in Phillipines or India for about $5 to $10. We need regulation and stricter standards that the union (AMA) and federal government decides - not to create an artificial scarcity of doctors and keep pays and costs sky high - but to protect us!
Yes, we need the same kind of regulation for engineers and scientists. We need some computer science union like IEEE to be able to regulate who writes the website for a Google Health or Microsoft Healthvault.
Only by having regulation, can we help our scientists and engineers in healthcare make respectable salaries ($300K and higher) rather than the globally competitive market rates. (Learn more about how AMA helps do the same for doctors here.)
This madness must stop, now!
(For those challenged in art of humor, this is a sarcastic post to comment on how we have created an inflated cost structure and restricted supply by letting a union decide who can diagnose my flu.)
6 comments:
You cannot compare healthcare regulations with other, at times, crazy regulations. You are being too simplistic with your arguments in this case. I really do not want a doctor sitting in India or Philippines (mis)diagnose my health problems. Healthcare is not IT. Period.
And that's your choice. I often don't want to buy Japanese cars or Korean blenders - but I can choose not to. Why should your preference be a regulation? Why can I not decide if I want to see a doctor in Philippines over the internet?
Let the consumer decide.
The same consumer will be licking his lips at the sight of potential millions to be made if a doctor from Phillipines misdiagnoses his flu.
Regulations protect the healthcare industry from the vultures we call lawyers. But lawyers are essential to maintain freedom. So the solution itself becomes a problem.
Healthcare industry is just a manifestation of a another problem which is much deeper, only because health is so sacred. Try to fix the other problem and this problem will disappear.
This would be no worse than today. And frankly, the amount of money spent on malpractice is not very high.
We definitely need a more well-managed system for this though.
"And frankly, the amount of money spent on malpractice is not very high. "
... depends on how you see it and who is telling you...
Every time a doctor asks you to do 10 different tests because you had a chest pain (and 80% of them are due to heartburns), or you get an MRI scan and neuroimaging because you had a pain in your ear.... are just the cases of the doctor protecting himself from potential lawsuit... just in case his diagnosis is wrong.
Then even after that, there are cases that still escape all those tests, and those who sue and those that doctor cannot defend against are called malpractice. Say malpractice costs 20% of healthcare, the attenpts to prevent the malpractice lawsuit (malpractice insurance, zillions of redundant tests on millions of people) cost 3 fold.
So you are looking at 60-70% of healthcare expenses either to direct malpractice or prevention of malpractice.
That is huge!! Suddenly doctor's salaries will look like a small portion.
Just for the record, I believe the AMA currently makes up less than 30% of all practicing US doctors..,.
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