[Peace-discuss] a critique of american medicine and theflexner report

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Sometimes doctors recommend expensive procedures such as MRIs or CT Scans to rule out e g CA, stroke, heart attack. If the results are positive, I guess the procedures were necessary, but if they're negative, then I guess they weren't, huh? --Jenifer

--- On Sun, 4/18/10, E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:

From: E.Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] a critique of american medicine and theflexner report
To: "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Cc: "peace discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Sunday, April 18, 2010, 4:21 PM

actually some people do just what Baker says, going to India for some surgeries
and to other countries like China for dental care.  I know of people who come back to China to have their teeth fixed and they can save enough money to pay for their air ticket and get a visit with the family to boot.

I dont agree with every thing the guy says but he makes some interesting points.

Insurance has indeed led to many abuses.  On a couple of occasions members of my family were requested to have unnecessary and costly examinations and we were given as a defense, "your insurance will pay for it".


----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: "E.Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag>
Cc: "peace discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 4:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] a critique of american medicine and theflexner report


> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 03:51:38AM +0800, E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
>> My contention has long been that one of the primary problems with medical
>> care in the USA is that there are too few providers and that the number of
>> health care providers is held low artificially by the deceit of the AMA. I
>> have suggested a drastic loosening of the standards to promote more
>> providers.  There havent been many takers for my notions, but here someone
>> examines the history of medicine and the Flexner report and the fake reform
>> of Obama and Co.
>> 
>> http://mises.org/daily/4276
> 
> Actually, economist Dean Baker agrees with you on this -- at least that
> US medical providers are deliberately being kept scarce, and that
> this raises the cost of medical care.  He's said a number of times
> that any consistent supporter of free trade should oppose this highly
> protectionist policy.
> 
> Baker also promotes medical tourism as a way to provide competition
> to the overpriced US system, though I'm uneasy with this.
> It seems as though it would entice medical tourist destinations'
> providers to flock to (likely better-paying) private tourist clinics,
> at the expense of their own domestic medical systems.
> 
> 
> There are some pretty half-baked things in this Mises article though.
> For-profit hospitals have better incentives than nonprofit ones
> to control costs?  Not in our system, where costs and effectiveness
> are not transparent.  Insurance of routine procedures leads to
> overuse of services?  Has the author never heard of the effectiveness
> of preventive care, or the value of public health measures?
> 


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