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bbhack wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 1:51 am And suing doctors is not a sport in those places.

Yes sir! In that, we will agree completely.

I love the US, but I couldn’t pile on the, “everything here is always better than everywhere else all the time “ train.

For some time, we’ve had a legal problem here in the US that set the stage of high prices that led us to the horror of Obamacare.

Vol Texan wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:24 pmMedical care is the places I've visited in Thailand is just a good - I can personally attest to that.

If I ever go "walkabout", my wife knows to look for me in Chiang Mai or Phuket.

As much as I enjoy visiting SP, I'm not a big fan of cow-towing to the "benevolence" of government. I'm not sure I could behave myself to SP standards indefinitely.
The food on the Malaysian peninsula is amazing. My favorite culinary region on the planet.

The US healthcare system is best in the world because the people who work in it are "motivated" and relatively "unconstrained". Motivated by every human incentive, from greed to altruism. Unconstrained in an entrepreneurial sense. Their rewards, whatever that may be, are directly linked to their efforts. The things that don't work in US healthcare, are, IMO, linked to government efforts to "manage" the system.

YMMV

Gator Guy wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:41 am When socialists complain about the cost of pharmaceuticals in the United States, I often ask why they don't take the miracle drugs invented in countries with socialist medicine instead.

Bingo. Greed is a universal human constant and therefore a poor explanation for differences.

Drug development costs are enormous, partly because of the nature of the game and partly because of government regulations (This is not an argument against all regulations, but let's not kid ourselves that the regulations are cost free.) Many experimental drugs don't pan out. So when a winner comes along, the drug company has to set the price so as to recover: production set-up costs, the marginal cost of producing each pill (or whatever), the development costs of the drug being sold, and a share of the development costs of all the failed experimental drugs.

Because we still have vestige of a free market even in health care in this country, the drug companies mostly can recover the above costs. But other countries insist on lower prices. Because they're recovering all the above costs in the US, the drug companies can afford to sell to other countries at anything above the marginal cost of production. That's why drug prices are cheaper elsewhere.

So the other countries are free riding on our functioning system, just as they free ride on our defense expenditures. If we import US drugs from other countries, we'll be trying to free ride on ourselves. Only a Democrat would believe that's possible.

RoyGBiv wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:34 am

Vol Texan wrote: Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:24 pmMedical care is the places I've visited in Thailand is just a good - I can personally attest to that.

If I ever go "walkabout", my wife knows to look for me in Chiang Mai or Phuket.

As much as I enjoy visiting SP, I'm not a big fan of cow-towing to the "benevolence" of government. I'm not sure I could behave myself to SP standards indefinitely.
The food on the Malaysian peninsula is amazing. My favorite culinary region on the planet.

The US healthcare system is best in the world because the people who work in it are "motivated" and relatively "unconstrained". Motivated by every human incentive, from greed to altruism. Unconstrained in an entrepreneurial sense. Their rewards, whatever that may be, are directly linked to their efforts. The things that don't work in US healthcare, are, IMO, linked to government efforts to "manage" the system.

YMMV

Well said. Singapore is great to live as an expatriate or as a PR, but I'd never want to be a citizen there. And yes, Peranakan cuisine is my favorite in the world - and the people are wonderful as well.

But you wrapped this up succinctly with a return to the OP's idea. What makes everything great in America is based on capitalism, and that's why the trend toward socialism has been, and will continue to be, the catalyst to our decline and downfall as a world power. Capitalism has done more to deliver people from poverty than all the socialist and communist experiments combined, and has raised the quality of life the world over. How we've let the educators brainwash our next generation into believing capitalism=bad and socialism=good is beyond me. I fear that the scales have tipped too far, and our options for returning to situation 'normal' are more limited every day.

bbhack wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 1:51 am And suing doctors is not a sport in those places.

This.

I actually like the medical system in above third-world countries. And even in major cities in third-world (or near third world) countries can be pretty good. Part of the problem is actually American elitism, that we somehow think someone in Nicaragua or Bamako, Nali couldn't possibly have gotten a good education- but the fact is that books and the internet are in every medical school. Oftentimes the skill and knowledge of the Doctor is a result of his hard work (or sometime in the US his lack of it, and subsequent poor skill).

Being able to walk into a medical system overseas and get treatment within an hour for half for less of what it costs here is dang nice- but you pay cash on your way out. When you get government (mostly) out of the system and let economics take over, prices are par for the norm in the local economy.

For example, Managua (I've been to this one, though not as a patient): https://www.sermesa.com.ni/
The insides of the rooms look just like any other hospital. The only thing that surprised me was the windows into operating rooms (with disposable curtains). I'll have to find the photos I took. Edit: The socialist state hospital there sucks, though.

Vol Texan wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:31 amPeranakan cuisine

Word of the day!

Now I'm hungry.

This is a timely topic...I’m headed to Houston in a little over 24 hours for a flight to Canada. I’ve already purchased my travel insurance, and hope to not need it.

Health care in foreign countries is not always a bed of roses. I have a Canadian friend who came to the USA for a Cancer surgery because the wait for the same procedure had an 18 month waiting list in Canada. I have clients from Germany and Switzerland who both had medical procedures done in the USA because the treatments for the same ailments were not state of the art. One was embarrassingly primitive .

I broke my leg in Edmonton Alberta back in 2009. The Canadian hospital said they could fix my leg but there was a two week wait for surgery.

I had them fix it so I could fly to Houston to the Texas Medical Center.

Then they tried to sue me for recovery of the workmen's comp costs.

The US healthcare industry, in my opinion, needs more free market forces. What other service can be priced beyond the reach of 95% of prospective buyers? Most luxury goods don't come close to that level of exclusivity. I'm paid well and believe that I deserve it, but part of my job is the provision of services that are worth more to the buyer than the money they trade for those services. If your car breaks, you want it fixed 1)right and 2) cheap. If YOU break, costs be darned because somebody else is on the hook. The near universal presence of intermediaries who don't occupy a traditional buyer or seller role greatly blunts the usual market dynamic that forces the best service at the lowest price.

Health care is necessarily expensive. Healthcare as practiced in the US is too expensive because the usual market force that selects the 90% as good at 10% the cost option has been steamrolled by preference for the 101% as good at 1000% the cost option.

Casein point: People demand the 10x as expensive name brand drug and it boggles my mind, particularly when someone who spent 11 years learning why they're the same thing spends 15 minutes explaining that fact. Meanwhile, third party payors put a huge focus on documentation vs patient care. This is a huge cause for physician burnout, but only in the US. My Indian colleagues never really get over the difference in note wtiting here vs. India. There, a medical record is a document that reminds you or informs another doc of what has been done to and is going on with a patient. Here, it's a billing document, and the difference in time spent reflects that with our notes requiring far more time.

anygunanywhere wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:15 am I broke my leg in Edmonton Alberta back in 2009. The Canadian hospital said they could fix my leg but there was a two week wait for surgery.

I had them fix it so I could fly to Houston to the Texas Medical Center.

Then they tried to sue me for recovery of the workmen's comp costs.

Canada

My parents lived in Edmonton for about 3 years. My mom was going through menopause at the time. She was taking some pills to help with the symptoms. She ran out and went a doctor in Edmonton. He gave her a prescription for group therapy instead. She called her American doctor whose response was "savages" and sent her a prescription for the pills she had been taking.

MaduroBU wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:50 am The US healthcare industry, in my opinion, needs more free market forces.

This is the root of the problem that caused Obamacare in the first place. The free market has not been able to work in healthcare for quite some time.

Vol Texan wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 3:07 pm

MaduroBU wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:50 am The US healthcare industry, in my opinion, needs more free market forces.

This is the root of the problem that caused Obamacare in the first place. The free market has not been able to work in healthcare for quite some time.

There is not a free market in the US healthcare industry and hasn't been for a long time. You can't have the level of government involvement and regulation as we currently have and call it a free market.

What we have is a bastardized system that isn't very dissimilar to half adultery.

http://mises.org/wire/lower-health-care ... ry-freedom

http://mises.org/wire/do-we-have-free-m ... cal-system

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones has had to cancel their tour. He requires heart valve replacement surgery.

Mick will be having his free UK National Health Service surgery at the Charing Cross Hospital in London. It has 4 out of 5 stars.

philip964 wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:40 am Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones has had to cancel their tour. He requires heart valve replacement surgery.

Mick will be having his free UK National Health Service surgery at the Charing Cross Hospital in London. It has 4 out of 5 stars.

If I had Jagger’s money, I would be paying for a 5 out of 5 star hospital what ever the cost or location.