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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick TYler
Also, if the description of Chinese medicine was accurate, there is an easy way for doctors to "win" the game. Whenever someone is too sick, just abandon the patient and focus on those who are fundamentally well. You would make more money by dealing with patients who get sniffles and sprained fingers than by dealing with chronic problems such as diabetes, hypertension, Parkinson's, etc.
If you think this through, it would the dream of managed health care -- provide services for trivial health problems and cut off those with expensive conditions. Why provide a $50,000 (and I'm making up that number) pacemaker for a retired 68-year-old school teacher when the person receiving it is unlikely to generate enough revenue to ever pay for it? This calculation is carried out no matter who is doing the paying -- a Chinese doctor, an insurance company, or public health care. Unless they are forced to provide service by a contract (insurance company) or the law, why would a health care provider continue to work at a loss?
I prefer Western medicine. If I'm really sick, I would prefer a doctor who thinks that if they could just make me well they could then take that ski trip their family wants.
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There's a flawed assumption here that China's health care and the U.S's health care are grossly different.
Western Medicine is based on the idea that everyone will need the expensive procedures at some point, so we all pay into insurance and thus pay for whoever needs it now. Car, Home, and Life Insurance all work the exact same way. Fundamentally, this is a good idea since it is impossible to tell who will need what procedures that cost how much. Also fundamentally this is socialism, yet it's the only way to guarantee everyone will be covered when they hit points in their lives that they'll require a doctor (etc). Doctors are willing to provide any necessary service because of this system. An alternative is to have everyone save up for their own health care costs much like they would save for retirement...yet doing so pushes all the work and risk of doing so onto consumers and doctors would have to run credit checks before doing
anything. That's a good thing until you consider all of the scams, mis-advertisements, misconceptions that happen in the free market, etc .... plus in an emergency who has the time to research the best or cheapest options?
Since an insurance company assumes the risk that it may have to pay out more than it takes in, it adds line items to policies that enables it to deny procedures. Greed ensues when it realizes that denying X% of all claims or dropping the top N most expensive patients will turn a grossly high profit that's good for shareholders. That's exactly how Aetna's (I think...) then-CEO turned the company around in 2000-2002. I can't say this is sheerly wrong, because making profits isn't a crime nor is it unethical. It's just disconcerting to know that we're all line items whose sole purpose is to please shareholders in the end. So rather than the doctor saying "No" to the patient, the doctors push that responsibility onto the insurance providers so they can focus on giving medical care.
In China, the shareholders are the 'Greater Republic of China' rather than a stock market. Thus in principle, the U.S. and China have fundamentally similar systems. The key difference is that in the U.S., those who have more money are more able to convince the insurance companies to say 'yes' to expensive or risky procedures by purchasing better insurance coverage. So saying you prefer "Western Medicine" simply means you're willing to pay more even though you may never need it ... which is great for shareholders.