[DrArete]

(05-27-2010 04:27 PM)Pepini Wrote:  

(05-27-2010 01:46 AM)DrArete Wrote:  

(05-26-2010 10:49 PM)lavinci Wrote:  

(05-26-2010 05:12 PM)Pepini Wrote:  

(05-26-2010 04:06 PM)lavinci Wrote:  

(05-25-2010 12:38 AM)Jim Kirk Wrote:  

I had read on expatica.com that the street value of an Irish passport was one million Euro - it does not surprise me.

What?! US permanant residency can be "bought" for give or take 15-20k. How did you come up with a million euro for a EU passport? I'm gone have to ask for a source on that.

My EU passport is for sale!

Yeah I know right? Not to take anything away from Jim Kirk's post, which creates a very interesting perspective on law career from the inside out, but just like Pepini I happen to have a EU passport and I know that it's in high value but wow, someone estimated it for a million bucks? Maybe what was considered was the fact that you have free health care and college education in most of the countries and other social benefits, which is really cool when you really think about how much all that costs in US. I still can't get over the fact how many people here in US do not have basic medical care. How unfair is that? My buddy, an American, got recently laid off, lost his health care, and when he landed in the hospital due to a minor issue, guess what, he received a bill for 4000$ for some standard treatment, no big issues. 4000$ for nothing? How crazy is that? When I lived in Europe and moved to another country and landed in hospital in that country you know how much I payed? Nothing. They say that Europe has bigger taxes, but when you look at all these hidden federal and states taxes here you'd be surprised how much you pay here too.

That 4000 bill is not for nothing. Some of it is for supplies. Some for the cost of running the hospital. Some for the 13 years of higher education doctors go through (when the doctor sees you for 5 minutes, you are getting the benefit of the thousands and thousands of hours he spent in med school and in residency), and some for the money the hospital loses on ER patients with no insurance.

The training of US doctors is FAR more rigorous and expensive than anywhere else in the world.

In European countries, they are going broke over their health systems. They have massive taxes, pay their doctors next to nothing, have significant wait times for non emergency care, and one of the reasons it is possible is because they don't pay for their own defense and have cleverly outsourced that to US taxpayers.

One of the main differences between Europe and US health systems is the liability of doctors. In the US you seem to pursue the doctors with countless law suits. And the value of the payments are ridiculously high. I´m not defending that doctors shouldn´t be liable. But you have to understand that they are in a different category than other jobs.
This was told to me by a criminal law teacher who said something that if Europe would do the same than US regarding the liability of doctors prices would rise.

The difference probably goes further beyond health system, but I believe European health system is better than the US. It´s unthinkable a person should not receive health treatment cause of money. That´s a basic need. From what I heard the privatization of UK health system made them drop abysmally in health care statistics.
You can´t make money out of health systems! You can try to make it work the most eficiently posible, but profit. The principle in the mind of the doctor when deciding the treatment for the patient should be the best for the patient and not what which treatment will give more profit.

A good friend of mine is a doctor. From what I understand the majority of doctors don´t study medicine cause of money. They do it cause they believe in doing good. All the doctors I know have very solid principles. They major flaw is protecting each other when something goes wrong and the subsidizing that some receive from Pharmaceutical companies in return of prescribing a certain medicine.

I don´t think the creation of a european military force would change health system. But I don´t have any data on this. I remenber once reading that Europe is the treasure and US the safety bolt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/opinion/12sun1.html

A small percentage of doctors do it because they think they are changing the world.
Most wake up somewhere after MS2 when plowing through 2000 pages of Robbins Pathology.

Of course, any pre med will spout the Gandhi's second coming BS, but when they get out into the real world, they want to get paid for busting their ass through abusive residencies, and working 24 hr shifts at the hospital, and dealing with bad cases and worse patients.

The same thing happens with law school - every first year tool thinks they are going to be doing human rights law, and defend homeless people from evil property developers while locking up African dictators on the weekend, but by third year, they are all willing to knife each other in the back for a Big Law corporate job.

Yes, you can and should try and make money out of health systems. The government does a terrible job of managing just about any large scale enterprise except for war.

Healthcare is not a right, and the sooner the people realize that, the better. It is a finite resource. Too bad that's the way it works, but its true.

I don't know where you get your facts or imagination. Healthcare here in Spain is in crisis. The number of medical errors, and the incompetency of many doctors is appaling. Guess what happens when you pay doctors a crap salary? The best and brightest dont pursue medicine.

Oh, and doctors generally advocate for their patients, it is the insurance companies who don't want to pay for many procedures in the USA.

It is simply not possible to give everyone top quality medical care. There aren't enough supplies, doctors, beds, and machines.

Doctors are not above self interest. Do you have any idea of the amount of training there is? MCAT, Step1, Step2, Step3, Residency, Fellowship, etc etc etc