Let’s get with the program and abolish HMOs for good
Not that there is any dearth of reasons these days, but the Sarkisyan story makes me ashamed in my country. And the sad thing is people being injured or dying because of HMOs isn’t even that uncommon — and yet we all put up with it because for so many that’s all we know. Even without getting into the whole Michael Moore Sicko thing, every person I know from a country with socialized universal health care (Canada, UK, Australia, etc.) has had largely only good things to say about it — and the bad things I sometimes hear (like depending on where you live there sometimes aren’t enough general practitioners, so there are long leads for routine stuff like checkups) are pretty minor. Compared to your child dying despite being “insured”.
We can put a man on the moon but we can’t take care of our nation’s ill? Absolutely sickening.
Sorry, but it happens here in New Zealand where we (unfortunately) have socialised heathcare.
Patients can’t get access to medicine because it costs too much for the district health boards to pay for, huge waiting lists for surgery (and the governments solution is to create waiting lists to get on the waiting list to make it look like they are shorter) and a lack of specialists and beds while private hospitals have plenty of spare room.
Just check out a selection of news stories from my local hospital, just from the last couple of weeks:
http://www.hbtoday.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=localnews&storyid=3757796
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4332971a20475.html
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1507894
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/1509200
Private is always more effective and efficient than public, simply because the government is useless at running stuff. What the US lacks - and what the government, both in NZ and the US, SHOULD be doing - is making sure that everyone has access to that more effective and efficient private healthcare.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side…
Comment by peteremcc — Friday, December 21, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
Hi Ryan,
I’m a physician and wanted to make a few comments on this case. I don’t know anything about it besides reading the article you linked.
1) You really think she would have gotten a liver transplant in a country with socialized medicine? I don’t think so. Socialized medicine still has to ration resources. There are only so many livers available at a given time
2) “vegetative state for weeks” - I know this is a lay-article… but that’s typically suggests brain damage/death, though if she was being seriously
considered, it seems unlikely that it was brain death.
3) 6 month survival of 65-percent sounds crazy high, that quote may have been in a person who was otherwise “healthy”. But in a bone marrow transplant patient in a persistant vegitative state? I’d guess the survival rate was much lower.
And that is the crux of the decision. X amount of people pay the HMO, or X amount of money is raised by the country for socialized medicine. A liver transplant would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. If her survival was 0%, should she get the liver? If it was 5%, should she get the liver? If it was 50% should she get the liver?
If it’s 50%, should she get the liver over someone who has a 90% chance. That “liver” that they would have transplanted in her would have been “taken” from someone else on the waiting list.
Comment by arn — Friday, December 21, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
I believe they still have socialized medicine in Russia and I’d bet you could still run Engadget from there. ;)
Seriously, do you really think the gov’t can do anything right? Why would you want to put your health in their hands?
Comment by Ben Drawbaugh — Friday, December 21, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
Gotta go with Ben D on this one.
There is only so much health care to go around and most honest people would agree that for the people who can afford it, America offers some of the best health care in the world. We have top notch facilities, and our doctors need to be paid more - not less. Socializing medicine is not the answer as it would result in more private practice doctors going out of business and the total population’s health care deteriorating.
The current system could definitely use work though.
Comment by Gremlin — Saturday, December 22, 2007 @ 12:20 am