I think outsourcing medical care is wrong. (60 Minutes Story)

[Cleita]

So to cut to the quick of the story, countries like India and Thailand are soliciting American and European patients to get surgery and other procedures in brand new hospitals with competently trained doctors, many who have trained and practiced in the USA.

The reason they are doing this is because they need to fill beds. It appears they don’t have enough people dying on the streets of their countries to give them the basic health care they need. :sarcasm:

So while we have terrible access to health care in this country that many can’t afford, the good news is that you can afford this even with the air fare and they wan’t your money. Those dirty old street people can’t pay up you know.

I don’t know. We really need a global solution to this as well as other global problems. :mad:

So I guess while this may solve some of our health problems, it seems many in their countries will still be able to step over the dead and dying, turning a blind eye to the needs of their own people.

[Mika]

1. How many times have you heard..

.. that socialism/communism destroys incentive to move a nation forward?


Even a poor country like Cuba does way better than the US at developing health care & education infrastructure for all of their countrymen/women.






www.stopbolton.org

[Ilsa]

2. Oh no! Not a global solution!

That would be some sort of cooperation as a world govt, and that means the end is near and Jesus is coming back!

And the John Birch Society people who are always screaming to get US out of the UN probably wouldn't care much for it either. Which means...it's probably an excellent idea.

[Cleita]

3. I am thinking of a global, liberal solution, not a corporate one.

Corporations should only be part of the economic/social scene not all of it and definitely not in unobstructed power. It seems we need to come up with a solution where the spoiled rich can get the extras they want in health care, like massages, jacuzzis, extra days in hospital beds, which they are able to pay for and should pay for, but for god's sake, please get basic health care to the sick and needy.

We need this in our own country.

[DollyM]

5. Try using the VA Health Care (NOT) system!

Try getting health care if you are a Veteran! You would think they would be a priority but apparently not. My husband uses the VA health care system (and I use the term health care loosely)because he doesn't not have health insurance. The company he works for has him working different contracts so although he works 40 hours, it is different contracts so they do not give him any benefits. Since he is diabetic, we have to have some kind of health care for him but VA is bottom of the barrel. An example, my father, a WWII Vet went to the VA hospital with pneumonia and was discharged 3 days later with no apparent discharge plan or medications. He received his antibiotics and heart medications 10 days later in the mail! He died 2 weeks later. My husband went to the VA health clinic, which is 25 miles away, to be seen for blood in his urine. That would seem to be something that may be serious. Because he came after the lab pickup for that week he would have to come back in a week to have the lab work done. Then it would be another week before he could see a Doctor and so on. I said "Forget It--We are going to a real Doctor!" He had his lab work done at our local hospital the next day and sees a Urologist on Tuesday. I don't care how much it costs, (and VA isn't free as some seem to think it is)I am tired of him being given inadequate health care BECAUSE he is a Veteran. While we were at the VA clinic, I noticed there was not a soul in the waiting room. Yet, there were several staff members running about, lights and heat were on and so on. Plenty of money to apparently pay staff good salaries with benefits, rent a building, pay utilities, etc. but not enough money to provide adequate health care to Veterans. My suggestion is to shut down the VA Health
Care clinics and hospitals and let Veterans go to their own Doctors and hospitals and get good care without having to wait until a problem becomes serious. Think of all the overhead the Government would save and that money could be invested in providing good care, close to home. (Our nearest VA hospital is 70 miles away!) I have written my Representative to suggest just this. I am asking that others do the same. It almost seems like Bush is punishing the Veterans for being Veterans yet he seems to be working hard at making them such. This is just plain wrong!

[Cleita]

8. I've had to negotiate the VA system in the past

trying to help a neighbor of mine who needed health care and had no insurance. He was in his fifties. It was a nightmare. It seems that the government just keeps cutting funding bringing it to this state of disaster. We really need a single payer system operated like the government operates Medicare. The health care facilities are not government, but the billing all goes to one place. Medicare needs to be extended and fully funded for all and all those other programs like the VA brought under the same payer umbrella as well. Ooops, I may be talking about the Canadian system now aren't I?

Why is it when we have a model for a system that actually works very well in our culture and that is so close to study and improve on that we can't adopt it?

[lavenderdiva]

Welcome to DU DollyM!

:hi:

[noamnety]

4. My ex has done this

He had no health insurance and needed oral surgery. He couldn't afford it in the states, so he flew to Russia and had it done there, because it was cheaper, even with the airfare.

Ironically, he was able to arrange it because he was trained as a Russian linguist when he was serving in the US Army. Never thought he'd have to go to Russia cause he couldn't get his basic needs taken care of in the US.

[Cleita]

6. So as I said this might temporarily solve our problems

like getting Canadian drugs in the USA has but I don't consider it a solution. I suppose in Russia everyone has access to basic health care, but for how long if they start taking in foreign patients who are better able to pay. Then you have a nation like India, who has health care but not for all Indians, especially those who probably need it the most.

[Warpy]

7. Sucking profit out of our system has done this

along with not having single payer insurance, thanks to a military budget that sucks up more and more dollars every year to pay for Empire.

I can't tell you how angry I am at this stuff. Not only are we outsourcing patients and administrative jobs, we're outsourcing EXCELLENCE as docs leave our broken system to go overseas to practice.

In those hospitals overseas they don't have to fight insurance company bean counters for everything. They just do the tests, do the care, and submit the bill.

I spent the last 18 years as an uninsured RN who couldn't get hired on staff because a complicated condition MIGHT cost a hospital money in health care. I am just another working person in this country who has no way of affording the services I produce.

And yes, I am furious.

[Cleita]

9. Yes, and the sucking isn't just skimming a little cream off the top.

It's a wholesale gluttony of a jet set corporate culture that rivals the excesses of Versaille before the French Revolution. They are doing this at the expense of the patients, who are paying for this and not getting the health care they need, unless they pony up large deductibles and then co-pays in addition to the premiums. They are doing this at the expense of the caregivers like yourselves who are not getting the compensation they deserve for their life saving services.

The whole system sucks!

[Horse with no Name]

13. A few years ago at a hospital I worked at

had a lawsuit.
The family only asked for something like $6 million in damages and the malpractice was so egregious that the jury awarded that as well as an additional $40 million in punitive damages to the family that they didn't even ask for.
The next week, the hospital had a consulting company in to figure out where to cut costs.
There was never any proof, but MANY employees who utilized FEMLA were let go on a layoff.
When I went to work at that hospital, the MEAN experience was 20 years on any given shift. When I left, the MEAN experience was 2 years. Hospitals do not value patient care as they did 10-20 years ago. They do not value experience. They value the bottom line.
Plain and simple.
I had an administrator make the comment the once that nurses were a dime a dozen and plentiful if you threw them a few bucks.
And that is what they do--if you are hurt or injured or sick, they throw you away regardless of your experience.
Then they offer new grads a pittance sign on bonus that indebts them for a year until the next class graduates, then that group of nurses moves to the next hospital offering a sign on bonus. I have never understood why they didn't give retention bonuses. Hospitals want and desire new, young nurses because they generally do NOT use the healthcare benefits except maybe for a Pap smear or other routine procedures.
Problem is that the old warhorses who know how to do the procedures without the technology will never go out of style because when the day comes, and it will, that the healthcare system is completely broken, a majority of the new nurses will leave it droves and we will have to step forward to our calling again because simply, that is what we do and we truly care for the patients.

[Cleita]

14. Such a good point.

And you guys are being mistreated because of our bottom line system. On the PNHP website, their model for hospitals under a single payer system, is to fully fund each hospital each year for a full capacity operation.

The idea would be to fill all those beds with patients who need hospital care and procedures regardless of their ability to pay. Full staffs of employees with benefits and retirement would be kept permanently employed.

Every year the needed funding for a year's operation would be renegotiated for changes in the economic scene. I think it's a good idea and past its time.

[Cleita]

10. ...

[Bridget Burke]

11. If we had no people dying for lack of health care here,

We would be in a better situation to look down on other countries' health care systems.

Thailand instituted universal health care in 2001. There are problems but the US--a much richer country--still has no universal health care.

www.studentbmj.com/back_issues/0603/life/208a.html

The much larger country of India is still working to improve health care. For example, rural health care is now getting attention.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4436603.stm

Both these countries are trying to do something for their own people. If treating foreigners can make some money & allow their health care professionals to stay at home--good for them.

[Cleita]

12. I agree this is good for them, but in the long run

relying on a steady flow of foreign money to fund their health care and yet us not taking care of our people at home, doesn't make for a good and sustainable future in health care for the world. We need another global solution.

Also, only those Americans with some money in the bank can afford these solutions. Many of us here in the USA cannot even afford to do this. Many elderly could not make the flight and live to get treated. Again it's cherrypicking those who don't need it all or as much as those who do.

Poor people are still selling organs on the market for transplants to feed their children. So this, to me is not a solution.