Here’s another idea for medical reform: consulate care. Let countries like Sweden, France, etc. with approved national health care systems have bigger consulates, and open them up to paying customers for medical services. For example, you could sign up for Swedish Care, and when needed you’d go to their consulate to get medical care as if you were living in Sweden.
Now we might not approve consulate care for say North Korea or Uganda, but surely most developed nations are good enough. We don’t issue travel warnings suggesting people not travel to Sweden, for fear of getting sick there. So why not let folks travel to a Sweden nearby for their medical care?
Since most other nations spend far less than the US on medicine, consulate care should be a lot cheaper. And since those other nations seem to suffer no net health loss from their cheaper care, consulate care should be no less healthy.
Wow! The people here have some really good ideas. However they are not in the pits like me. Two things you have not discussed." Rule out" and" cover for" The hospital is a bee hive of people slinging about orders that are then applied to people. Then someone has to pay for it. Here is what happens at one hospital when you walk in and claim you are sick.
I have discovered that the hospital is what is known as an "idiocracy" because the operate just like the movie of the same name.
I was talking to this guy and describing what happens in the Emergency Room. A nurse asks you where you hurt. The nurse then pushes a button on a computer screen that describes you symptom. This automatically orders the "appropriate" x -ray and Lab tests for that condition. Then when the doctor sees you the tests are already done. The doctors have already decided what tests are needed. They need every test that will cover or rule out this condition. In other words if you get sent home after you are seen,the doctor and die anyway the doctor and the hospital are covered because you have had all the tests to "rule out" the condition.
Damn.my friend said.that sounds just like the movie.
As you might imagine this is expensive and they keep coming up with more tests to do. Also you might imagine that some people can't pay. Well someone pays.--you. Robin has suggested a great solution. Close all the emergency rooms and send everyone to the Swedish Embassy.Another solution is to send all these patients to the trial attorneys offices.
One thing to keep in mind is that the US government already spends about $2700 per person on health care (not just on poor people). So we could probably swing getting all the poor people signed up for e.g. French health care.