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[OM] Re: [OT] Health Care

Subject: [OM] Re: [OT] Health Care
From: "Johann Thorsson" <johann@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 11:15:32 -0700
I don't think you can generalize here, universal healt care and universal 
health care is not the same thing.  Just as I don't think the health care is 
the same in all corners of the US.  But to answer your question based on my 
own experience, I had MRI some years ago.  I had chronic headaches and my 
vision was blurred from time to time and went to my doctor.  He ordered MRI, 
blod tests etc, and it was all done the following day.  I paid a total of 
$10 for the whole thing.  It turned out to be stress, at least I am not dead 
yet.

Then few months ago I had to visit a doctor here in the US.  I am insured, 
and have probably paid around $5000+ in insurance since I came.  They ran a 
few tests, including MRI (had that two days later, the doctor insisted 
despite I thought that was not uneccesary).  The bill I got for all this was 
close to $900.   The insurance company paid about twice that if I remember 
correctly.

Now, I don't know which system is better and I don't want to do any 
comparisons.  But in my mind there is something seriously wrong with the 
ever increasing cost of health care, and then I am not only talking about 
the US.  I simply can not understand the staggering sums involved.  Of 
course r&d costs money and pharmaceutical companies do invest heavily in 
developing new and better drugs for all kinds of illnesses and diseases. 
That is good, but still the cost is so staggering and it goes directly into 
the health care.  You actually have to ask yourself it this is really worth 
it, or if all this r&d does perhaps benefit the shareholders more than the 
general public.  I started thinking about this some time ago when there was 
a newsreport on new drugs which replaced some generic labels.  The new drugs 
were expensive, patented of course, and doctors were under tremendous 
pressure to prescribe them rather than the generic ones (not to mention the 
TV commercials, something that should be banned in my mind), even thought 
the new ones had no benefits over the older ones.  I don't know if this is 
common, but in this case the pharmaceutical companies are putting lot of 
money into r&d just to develop new drugs which do just the same thing as the 
older ones do, but put considerably more money into their pocket - at the 
cost of the health care system.

I am sorry for this rant, I realize that there are more sides to this story, 
but it is also clear that there is a lot of unneccessary cost involved, and 
it seems in some cases that you are simply forced to pay what they demand.


> In the USA you can schedule an MRI in three days.
> How long does it take in a country with universal health care?
>
> Dick 


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