Thank you all for the warm welcome! 

Mkgilstrap, you have a male prospective. 

Scenario # 1: Imagine that you are 15 and you had unprotected sex with your boyfriend...  Stuff like that happens all the time even to nice girls in the middle class neighborhoods in good schools and two-parent homes.  That is a simple fact of life.  That magic "morning after" pill only works up to a certain point in pregnancy...  Early detection can make a difference between taking a pill VS having to make a decision between abortion, adoption or ruining your life altogether... 

Scenario # 2:  Imagine that you are a married professional successful woman of 42 and you have been trying to get pregnant for 10 years unsuccessflly.  As a successful woman you have worked hard and made a lot of sacrifices to get to this level.  Why wait ti find out when you can afford a few extra bocks to know NOW?  After all, as a successful professional woman you are used to having things YOUR WAY!

    

 

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Ribochka:

I appreciate your point; however, that is not always the case.  Unlike computer technology, medical technology advances are NOT always cheaper and faster.  The advances in medical technology usually target greater accruacy in test results, greater speed in getting the results and ability to diagnost health problems earlier. 

I have to respectfully disagree.

Advances in any technology are not cheap, but mass produced - all technology is cheap. Medical included. Problem with medical technology and it's cost is artificial, if GE would make 1000000 imagers instead of 1000, they would cost $1000 each instead of $100000 each.
High margins due to specific business model drive this costs, not regular market forces or technological bariers.
 

Since you are obviousely not a clinical person, lets take an easy example... 

I'm married to one ;) and do understand how technology works

5 years ago a woman could only find out that she is pregnant once her period was at least one week late.  No tests were available to detect pregnancy prior to the 4th week.  Currently there are multiple tests in the market place, which can detect pregnancy before a woman skips her period.  The newer tests are focused on the early detection and greater accuracy.  They are at least 1.5 times more costly than pregnancy tests, which detect after the 4th week.  Just to check... you can do some research by visiting your local CVS/Walgreens  

They are more costly because their manufacturer is trying to get extra milk while he has monopoly on the market, because with limited supply cost is not regulated by market economy.

To the actual manufacturer, old test kit and new test kit cost exactly the same.

To your point about jobs...  Hospitals carry a HUGE amount of liability insurance because their normal business operations include dealing with people's health and lives.  Of course they want people who have experience in THEIR systems!!!  Would you want your parent/child/sibling to receive care in the hospital, which routinely hires people who are not familiar with heathcare protocols, systems and processes (not to mention state and federal regulations)?  Unfotunately, in their business there is very little room for the "learning curve" of someone who comes from some other industry.  There are lives at stake, and as a consumer, I WANT hospitals to hire ONLY expereiced people to work with complicated technologies and equipment...  Additionally, they are bound by various healthcare legislative mandates and regulations, which REQUIRE for them to hire people with certain levels of experence in order to maintain their accreditations and licenses to proctice medicine... 

I was not talking about actual madical professionals like nurses and doctors. For those - no argument . I'm talking about technicians who make all the test equipment , X-Ray machines and image scanners work, as well as people who make computers operate and keep electricity flowing.

All those peoples work is in no way diffrent or more complicated or requires any more skills than the same jobs in any other industry.

If someone can operate computer at a toy factory, he/she will be able to operate computer in a hospital, if someone can fix a TV, he can fix hearth beat monitor or an Imaging machine. Trust me, there is no difference.

So all this "must know Medical One system " is pure BS and an attempt to keep "our" numbers small and "our" salaries high. ;) 

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- Независимость - это когда в 20-й раз наступаешь на одни и те же грабли, а русские уже ни при чем....

There are many reasons for why healthcare costs are so high.  Certainly some business models will have to change in order to get them lower.  Otherwise it is like deciding between handig out money with a left hand or with a right hand.

 

Here is the take of healthcare costs from by a professional economist:

 

 http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/2760

The Top 10 Reasons for Soaring Health-Care Costs

by Charles Wheelan, Ph.D.

What's the most intractable public policy problem the U.S. faces? Health care. I don't think any other issue even comes close. Health care has all the ideological fireworks of social issues like abortion or gay marriage (e.g. is health care a right or a privilege?). Yet the system itself -- the process of providing care and allocating those costs -- is also stunningly complex.

Health care is increasingly expensive because of powerful, perhaps inexorable economic forces that make medical care different than all other goods and services in a modern economy. Here are my top 10 reasons for why health care is so expensive -- and likely to get even more expensive in the future, regardless of what patches we put on the system.

1. Nobody shops for value.

When was the last time you heard someone say something like this: "You're having chest pains, Al? Sorry to hear that. You should see Dr. Smith. He's not as fancy as those cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic, but you can't beat his prices! In fact, I think he's having a Presidents' Day special on angioplasty right now." There's no medical equivalent of Wal-Mart. Everyone wants Neiman Marcus.

2. Medical innovations are usually more expensive, not less.

Economic progress tends to come in two forms: Learning to do old things better and cheaper, or learning to do new things. Medical progress tends to involve the latter. A bone-marrow transplant may provide new hope for many cancer patients, but it's not necessarily cheaper than the old alternative.

In the case of pharmaceuticals, we've explicitly designed the system so that new drugs will be expensive. We grant patent protection -- a legal monopoly -- to pharmaceutical companies for breakthrough medication. The more impressive the drug, the more the company can charge, regardless of the actual cost of producing the pill. Yes, those prices are high, and the profits can be huge -- which is exactly what creates the incentive to discover such drugs in the first place.

3. Health care is a "luxury good".

Wait. Before you start sending me angry e-mails, please let me clarify. I'm not saying that health care is a luxury. I'm saying that health care is a "luxury good," which is a technical term in economics. It refers to any good that wealthy people demand in disproportionately greater amounts than less wealthy people.

The opposite is an "inferior good", which is something that people actually consume less of as they get richer. Ramen noodles, for example, are likely to be an inferior good. I'm certain that my graduate students eat far more of them than Donald Trump does, his capacity to afford huge quantities notwithstanding.

Richer societies, and richer people within a society, have higher expectations for health care than less wealthy people. We increasingly demand medical fixes -- and have the technological capacity to provide them -- for problems that our grandparents would have just tolerated. Think hip replacement, stomach stapling, Lasik eye surgery, and so on. Our spending a rising share of our GDP on health care as we grow richer as a nation is not inherently a bad thing.

4. We don't pay for what we consume.

Health care is unique in that neither the service provider nor the patient gets the bill. For most people, the tab gets sent somewhere else. So nobody directly involved in the transaction has any incentive to control costs.

Imagine if you could buy a television that way. You would walk into a retailer and discuss your needs with the salesperson (working on commission), knowing that the bill for your eventual purchase would get sent to Aetna. Would anyone walk out of the store with less than a 60-inch flat screen with surround sound?

The insurance company will try to contain costs, albeit without the benefit of being in the office with the doctor and patient. So that may mean somewhat arbitrary limits on care or time-consuming hurdles for more expensive procedures -- which is why everyone hates their HMO and doctors complain, rightfully I'm sure, about the staggering paperwork and bureaucracy associated with nearly all insurance plans.

Even then, it's easy to game the system. Imagine the expert salesperson at the shop writing a letter to your insurance company explaining that you need a giant, high-definition screen because of your poor eyesight.

5. Baumol's disease.

This is not something you should fear testing positive for at your next check up. Rather, it's an important insight made by economist William Baumol: As societies become richer, labor-intensive endeavors, such as health care, become increasingly expensive relative to goods and services that can be produced using less labor.

Why? Because there are none of the cost savings that usually come from rising productivity. Compare farming to brain surgery, for example. A typical farmer today may grow 20 times as much corn as a farmer could 100 years ago. Thus, it's possible for a farmer to be 20 times as wealthy without any increase in the price of corn. A brain surgeon, on the other hand, cannot see 20 times as many patients. (I don't know if there were brain surgeons 100 years ago, but you get the point). Baumol's famous example was that a string quartet will always require four musicians.

So, for brain surgeons' income to rise at the same pace as the rest of society (a necessity if smart people are to be induced to enter the field), then the price of brain surgery must go up relative to less labor-intensive goods and services (like corn). In short, as long as the doctor-patient relationship remains relatively unchanged, health-care costs will rise faster than prices in general. (Baumol's observation was described as a "disease" because it afflicts certain sectors of the economy, such as health care and higher education.)

6. The old.

I've written before about the "baby boomers", the huge demographic "pig in a python" born just after World War II (see "Tackling the Social Security Mess" http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/economist/2415). This huge cohort of Americans is getting older, and older people have greater health-care needs. So even if nothing else on this list were true, an aging population would drive up the nation's health-care spending.

7. The uninsured.

Quick quiz: Your child has a high fever and a scary cough. Do you (1) call your pediatrician or (2) take your child to the nearest emergency room? If you've got a pediatrician, you do (1). If you don't, you do (2) -- which is a very expensive use of a trauma center's highly trained staff. Or maybe you never do anything at all, in which case five years later society is paying to deal with diabetes or asthma or some other chronic condition that could have been managed far more cheaply with better primary care.

8. The fat and lazy.

Most of us, in other words. We smoke too much, eat too much, and exercise too little. Why? I have no idea. A woman from Canada once asked me if fining Americans for unhealthy lifestyles might help. My off-the-cuff answer still rings true: "If someone is behaving in a way that's going to prematurely end their life, do you think a $200 fine is going to make much difference?"

9. Because death is sometimes the low-cost option.

What happens to people who are miraculously treated for heart disease or cancer? They die of something else. Or of the same thing later. Any medical success merely begets some later medical expense, particularly if we continue to spend so much on end-of-life care.

10. Malpractice.

I almost didn't add this to the list, as it's more of a legal problem than an economic one. But then I began to anticipate all the angry e-mails from folks who are convinced (wrongly) that malpractice suits are the only reason that our health-care costs are skyrocketing. So I stuck it in.

And, in a sense, my behavior proves that it belongs on the list: By attempting to preempt angry e-mails, I'm acting like doctors who practice "defensive medicine." Doctors seeking to avoid lawsuits have an incentive to overtreat all kinds of maladies -- a rational, albeit expensive response to a highly litigious climate.

That's my top 10. A group of brainstorming economists could probably come up with 16 or 18 structural causes for rising health-care costs, but I think I've hit the big ones, including some that are not intuitive or widely discussed.

What's my solution? Thankfully I've only got space here for the diagnosis. But that should make clear that there's no single cure -- because there's no single problem. Any serious and pragmatic fix for the system will require six or eight pills, not one. And even that will be treatment, not a cure.

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Sasha

-------------------
Work is a matter of taste. If you don't work you don't taste.

Sahsa, thank you for the article!  This just further solidifes my earlier points.  Unfortunately there is not a single fix for this problem and, eventually, the system will reach its critical point.  The government will have to intervene and do something drastic like raise everyone's taxes by 15 % and make healthcare a socialized entity like in most European countries.  That will surely lead to government-mandated pricing systems for healthcare goods and services and lower salaries for healthcare professionals to include drs and nurses.  The other side of that coin will be the reduction of financial incentivs to become a doctor/nurse or do medical research, which will lead to stagnation of our healthcare system.  I have talked to many Europeans from countries with socialized medicine, who travel to the US to get better healthcare.  In England, for example, getting an elective surgery is almost impossible there are waiting lists, and people wait months and sometimes years.  I have read a lot of comments on Russian forums that Canadian healthcare is of poor quality and has many cases of malpractice, which are almost impossible to prosecute because of the socialized medicine. I spent 2 years working for private proctice, 5 years working in the hospital and then another 10 years working for health insurance companies.  After all this time I still don't know what the correct answer is...

 

 

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Остановите Землю!!! Я сойду!!!

 

 

I have to respectfully disagree.

Advances in any technology are not cheap, but mass produced - all technology is cheap. Medical included. Problem with medical technology and it's cost is artificial, if GE would make 1000000 imagers instead of 1000, they would cost $1000 each instead of $100000 each.
High margins due to specific business model drive this costs, not regular market forces or technological bariers.
 

 

yes, except by the time siad manufacturer figured out the way to mass produce the imaging machine cheaper and faster, some other manufacturer figured out how to make another imaging device that is more accurate.  It is more expensive, but consumers of healthcare services would prefere the more expensive machine for greater accuracy of diagnosis... 

 

 

I was not talking about actual madical professionals like nurses and doctors. For those - no argument . I'm talking about technicians who make all the test equipment , X-Ray machines and image scanners work, as well as people who make computers operate and keep electricity flowing.

All those peoples work is in no way diffrent or more complicated or requires any more skills than the same jobs in any other industry.

If someone can operate computer at a toy factory, he/she will be able to operate computer in a hospital, if someone can fix a TV, he can fix hearth beat monitor or an Imaging machine. Trust me, there is no difference.

So all this "must know Medical One system " is pure BS and an attempt to keep "our" numbers small and "our" salaries high. ;) 

 

It depends on what types of operations are performed by said systems. 

In the Hospital environment there are some systems, which deal with billing and other administrative stuff..  On those systems I agree with you.  they are strictly financial in nature.  There are other systems, which are used to transmit lab results, diagnosis, blood types... For those systems there is no room for errors and glitches.  Transfusing someone with incorrect blood type because of the system errors can kill a person within a matter of minutes.  Prescribing incorrect medication because the system transmitted incorrect lab results cam kill or cause permanent damage within days.

The same goes for levels of stress.  When I worked ina clinical environment, my error could have easily resulted in someone's death; however, when I went to work fo a health insurance company, I quickly realized that any error I made was fixable.  At worst, someone would be overcharged by a few hundred bucks, wich can be fixed on their next month's billing statement.  KGB, please believe me when I say that there is a HUGE difference.  The thought of your error killing someone is haunting!!!!!  There are literally thousands of people who leave clinical and near-clinical jobs for other industries because they are simply unable to live with this kind of stress.   

It is just like the difference between a TV used for entertainment VS an imaging screen used for diagnosting cancer.

In the insurance company environment there is a lot less risk.  Most systems are administrative or financial and there are a lot less requirements for industry-specific experience...  Of course...  there are exceptions.  Kaiser, for example, is famous for hiring ONLY people with healthcare background. 

 

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Остановите Землю!!! Я сойду!!!

gtSasha:

There are many reasons for why healthcare costs are so high.  Certainly some business models will have to change in order to get them lower.  Otherwise it is like deciding between handig out money with a left hand or with a right hand.

Here is the take of healthcare costs from by a professional economist:

It's not hard to find reasons, this list could be 100 times longer.  I think the problem is everyone looks at their field, the parts they handle and/or understand best, and neglects to think about outside forces.  It does no good to name reasons that will never go away.  Or things that SHOULDN'T go away because they drive research/innovation/new cures/etc.    I'll comment on some of the things listed here..

1. Nobody shops for value.

When was the last time you heard someone say something like this: "You're having chest pains, Al? Sorry to hear that. You should see Dr. Smith. He's not as fancy as those cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic, but you can't beat his prices! In fact, I think he's having a Presidents' Day special on angioplasty right now." There's no medical equivalent of Wal-Mart. Everyone wants Neiman Marcus.

The need to shop for value has been made obsolete due to medical insurance.  Everyone (properly insured) can afford anything.   This is a much deeper problem.

2. Medical innovations are usually more expensive, not less.

Economic progress tends to come in two forms: Learning to do old things better and cheaper, or learning to do new things. Medical progress tends to involve the latter. A bone-marrow transplant may provide new hope for many cancer patients, but it's not necessarily cheaper than the old alternative.

In the case of pharmaceuticals, we've explicitly designed the system so that new drugs will be expensive. We grant patent protection -- a legal monopoly -- to pharmaceutical companies for breakthrough medication. The more impressive the drug, the more the company can charge, regardless of the actual cost of producing the pill. Yes, those prices are high, and the profits can be huge -- which is exactly what creates the incentive to discover such drugs in the first place.

Wow, careful there, Mr. PhD..  Patent protection for pharmaceuticals/medical technology industries is the best incentive for innovation that the world has so far come up with.  And every medical innovation (most of which come out of the US or other capitalist countries with strong patent protection laws) can be attributed to billions of dollars that can be made.  We CANNOT touch this part of it.  What we can do is stop having lobbyists make laws through political bribery, there existing system of statutes of limitations - patents expire.   They cannot turn into monopolies. You made your billions, thank you for you contribution, now go invent something else.  This way you get the best of both worlds - people can shop around among competing drug companies which brings doen costs, and financial incentive for innovation is even higher than previously.  Its like magic

On the technology, I mostly agree w KGBman.  If i am producing medical technology, I am not going to charge for it based on my overhead or production costs.  I will charge for it based on what I can get away with, and in this industry, i am selling to people with astronomical funds, so I am not concerned that I am asking too much, they are not concerned about paying.   My employees, by the way, will take the same approach in their salary demands. 

3. Health care is a "luxury good".

Wait. Before you start sending me angry e-mails, please let me clarify. I'm not saying that health care is a luxury. I'm saying that health care is a "luxury good," which is a technical term in economics. It refers to any good that wealthy people demand in disproportionately greater amounts than less wealthy people.

The opposite is an "inferior good", which is something that people actually consume less of as they get richer. Ramen noodles, for example, are likely to be an inferior good. I'm certain that my graduate students eat far more of them than Donald Trump does, his capacity to afford huge quantities notwithstanding.

Richer societies, and richer people within a society, have higher expectations for health care than less wealthy people. We increasingly demand medical fixes -- and have the technological capacity to provide them -- for problems that our grandparents would have just tolerated. Think hip replacement, stomach stapling, Lasik eye surgery, and so on. Our spending a rising share of our GDP on health care as we grow richer as a nation is not inherently a bad thing.

To what end?  Economists should not make vague statements.  It may not be inherently a bad thing.. but to what percentage of GDP? 

4. We don't pay for what we consume.

Health care is unique in that neither the service provider nor the patient gets the bill. For most people, the tab gets sent somewhere else. So nobody directly involved in the transaction has any incentive to control costs.

Imagine if you could buy a television that way. You would walk into a retailer and discuss your needs with the salesperson (working on commission), knowing that the bill for your eventual purchase would get sent to Aetna. Would anyone walk out of the store with less than a 60-inch flat screen with surround sound?

The insurance company will try to contain costs, albeit without the benefit of being in the office with the doctor and patient. So that may mean somewhat arbitrary limits on care or time-consuming hurdles for more expensive procedures -- which is why everyone hates their HMO and doctors complain, rightfully I'm sure, about the staggering paperwork and bureaucracy associated with nearly all insurance plans.

Even then, it's easy to game the system. Imagine the expert salesperson at the shop writing a letter to your insurance company explaining that you need a giant, high-definition screen because of your poor eyesight.

Amen.  This is the root cause of it all.

 

5. Baumol's disease.

This is not something you should fear testing positive for at your next check up. Rather, it's an important insight made by economist William Baumol: As societies become richer, labor-intensive endeavors, such as health care, become increasingly expensive relative to goods and services that can be produced using less labor.

Why? Because there are none of the cost savings that usually come from rising productivity. Compare farming to brain surgery, for example. A typical farmer today may grow 20 times as much corn as a farmer could 100 years ago. Thus, it's possible for a farmer to be 20 times as wealthy without any increase in the price of corn. A brain surgeon, on the other hand, cannot see 20 times as many patients. (I don't know if there were brain surgeons 100 years ago, but you get the point). Baumol's famous example was that a string quartet will always require four musicians.

So, for brain surgeons' income to rise at the same pace as the rest of society (a necessity if smart people are to be induced to enter the field), then the price of brain surgery must go up relative to less labor-intensive goods and services (like corn). In short, as long as the doctor-patient relationship remains relatively unchanged, health-care costs will rise faster than prices in general. (Baumol's observation was described as a "disease" because it afflicts certain sectors of the economy, such as health care and higher education.)

So what?  That's perfectly fine 

This guy has a problem of vaugeness.  He would make a better politician than an economist.  Economics is not humanities, it is a science.  Yes, it will grow somewhat faster.  At what point does it become an excuse rather than the cause?

6. The old.

I've written before about the "baby boomers", the huge demographic "pig in a python" born just after World War II (see "Tackling the Social Security Mess" http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/economist/2415). This huge cohort of Americans is getting older, and older people have greater health-care needs. So even if nothing else on this list were true, an aging population would drive up the nation's health-care spending.

Only because provisions have not been made.  Suggestions have included medical savings accounts similar to 401k.  Obviously its too late for that generation,  Medicare/Medicaid will cover them for countless complex procedures because no one is making actual decisions.   We have to live with this, and consider it unavoidable.  I don't understand why instead, economists/politicians don't focus on the avoidable and the fixable.

7. The uninsured.

Quick quiz: Your child has a high fever and a scary cough. Do you (1) call your pediatrician or (2) take your child to the nearest emergency room? If you've got a pediatrician, you do (1). If you don't, you do (2) -- which is a very expensive use of a trauma center's highly trained staff. Or maybe you never do anything at all, in which case five years later society is paying to deal with diabetes or asthma or some other chronic condition that could have been managed far more cheaply with better primary care.

The first half of that is a very tiny problem.  Leave it alone.  The second one (poor primary care), is actually how insurance companies make their money.  Healthy people who don;t go to the doctor (or go rarely) are the source of this capital, and their fear of getting sick will keep them paying untold percentages of their income for some sort of coverage.  Prevention is unprofitable.  Primary care is unprofitable.  etc.  you get the picture.

8. The fat and lazy.

Most of us, in other words. We smoke too much, eat too much, and exercise too little. Why? I have no idea. A woman from Canada once asked me if fining Americans for unhealthy lifestyles might help. My off-the-cuff answer still rings true: "If someone is behaving in a way that's going to prematurely end their life, do you think a $200 fine is going to make much difference?"

maybe some of us do it because we are insured   Death feels too distant for most people to think about.  And insurance company will cover everything else

 

9. Because death is sometimes the low-cost option.

What happens to people who are miraculously treated for heart disease or cancer? They die of something else. Or of the same thing later. Any medical success merely begets some later medical expense, particularly if we continue to spend so much on end-of-life care.

The same is true of every other industry.  Food for example.  I am just going to have to eat again tomorrow

10. Malpractice.

I almost didn't add this to the list, as it's more of a legal problem than an economic one. But then I began to anticipate all the angry e-mails from folks who are convinced (wrongly) that malpractice suits are the only reason that our health-care costs are skyrocketing. So I stuck it in.

And, in a sense, my behavior proves that it belongs on the list: By attempting to preempt angry e-mails, I'm acting like doctors who practice "defensive medicine." Doctors seeking to avoid lawsuits have an incentive to overtreat all kinds of maladies -- a rational, albeit expensive response to a highly litigious climate.

He should have gone with his gut feeling and not included this.  But he says he is afraid of angry emails, i guess we have to respect that important concern! 

What's my solution? Thankfully I've only got space here for the diagnosis.

I wish he said this in the beginning  

Freakin PhD.

 

 But that should make clear that there's no single cure -- because there's no single problem. Any serious and pragmatic fix for the system will require six or eight pills, not one. And even that will be treatment, not a cure.

Even if this was somewhat true (it's not to an extent that matters this early),  causes can easily be ranked.  Some of these causes (the worst ones) are easily measured in their impact.  I'll give a simple example..  Calculate total dollars spent by the public on health care.  Insurance premiums, deductibles, taxes that are applied to health care, private spending, out of pocket, etc, etc.  Add it all up.  And do a pie chart of where it ends up.  You will see scary looking pie scilces ending up in beurocracies and institutions that contribute nothing to innovation, research, and care.  Start there.  When you get to the hard parts, let us know

 

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________________________________________
"Я это понимаю на рациональном уровне, но не могу принять на эмоциональном" --Бизнесмен Борис Березовский

Ribochka:

 

 

I have to respectfully disagree.

Advances in any technology are not cheap, but mass produced - all technology is cheap. Medical included. Problem with medical technology and it's cost is artificial, if GE would make 1000000 imagers instead of 1000, they would cost $1000 each instead of $100000 each.
High margins due to specific business model drive this costs, not regular market forces or technological bariers.
 

 

yes, except by the time siad manufacturer figured out the way to mass produce the imaging machine cheaper and faster, some other manufacturer figured out how to make another imaging device that is more accurate.  It is more expensive, but consumers of healthcare services would prefere the more expensive machine for greater accuracy of diagnosis... 

That's exactly how it works in real world too, nothing new or special here. 

 

I was not talking about actual madical professionals like nurses and doctors. For those - no argument . I'm talking about technicians who make all the test equipment , X-Ray machines and image scanners work, as well as people who make computers operate and keep electricity flowing.

All those peoples work is in no way diffrent or more complicated or requires any more skills than the same jobs in any other industry.

If someone can operate computer at a toy factory, he/she will be able to operate computer in a hospital, if someone can fix a TV, he can fix hearth beat monitor or an Imaging machine. Trust me, there is no difference.

So all this "must know Medical One system " is pure BS and an attempt to keep "our" numbers small and "our" salaries high. ;) 

 

It depends on what types of operations are performed by said systems. 

No it doesn't

In the Hospital environment there are some systems, which deal with billing and other administrative stuff..  On those systems I agree with you.  they are strictly financial in nature.  There are other systems, which are used to transmit lab results, diagnosis, blood types... For those systems there is no room for errors and glitches.

Let me tell you a secret - those system work exactly the same as the billing and other admin stuff. Exactly the same.

  Transfusing someone with incorrect blood type because of the system errors can kill a person within a matter of minutes.  Prescribing incorrect medication because the system transmitted incorrect lab results cam kill or cause permanent damage within days.

Yet just because a system is labeled differently doesn't mean inside it has anything special. It's the same computers , based on the same principals. Any engineer can work them or learn them.

 

The same goes for levels of stress.  When I worked ina clinical environment, my error could have easily resulted in someone's death; however, when I went to work fo a health insurance company, I quickly realized that any error I made was fixable.  At worst, someone would be overcharged by a few hundred bucks, wich can be fixed on their next month's billing statement.  KGB, please believe me when I say that there is a HUGE difference.  The thought of your error killing someone is haunting!!!!!  There are literally thousands of people who leave clinical and near-clinical jobs for other industries because they are simply unable to live with this kind of stress.

Yes, I heard. Americans are very mentaly unstable nation. Being from medical family and being married to medical professional, I never saw anyone with this "haunting" dreams....

It's just work. 

It is just like the difference between a TV used for entertainment VS an imaging screen used for diagnosting cancer.

Another secret I need to tell you, if you open both, you see exacly same components, from same manufacturers, they will be even made in the same factory , same production line (90% of the time.)

In the insurance company environment there is a lot less risk.  Most systems are administrative or financial and there are a lot less requirements for industry-specific experience...  Of course...  there are exceptions.  Kaiser, for example, is famous for hiring ONLY people with healthcare background. 

Yes, "clan" system explains all this "problem" with health care cost.

Doctors want to drive porches, not toyotas - that's all it is to it ;) 

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- Независимость - это когда в 20-й раз наступаешь на одни и те же грабли, а русские уже ни при чем....

KGB!  You ROCK!  It has been years since I had a worthy political argument with anyone in my family. Frankly, with this election, people are getting too tired of the constant bombardment with the stupidity.   Even the most liberal democrats are beginning to get off the "obama" train...  Anyways, it does not look like we are going to agree on onything except that Kaiser sucks and healthcare system stinks  

 

By the way, when you are referring to "mentally unstable" americans, please feel free to exclude me.  When it comes to speaking, my Russian is still a little better than my English (although I do think that my writing is much better in English) Over the years some of my accent diminished to the point where I can probably "pass" as an american, but after about 30 minutes any American-born person will pobably catch on that I am a foreighner...  As a person who grew up with socialized medicine, I am probably the WORST person in the world to work in my insudtry.  I disagree with almost everything....  I would look for another job, but those pesky "clan" compensation packages are just too tough to beat    

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Остановите Землю!!! Я сойду!!!

Ribochka:

KGB!  You ROCK!  It has been years since I had a worthy political argument with anyone in my family. Frankly, with this election, people are getting too tired of the constant bombardment with the stupidity.   Even the most liberal democrats are beginning to get off the "obama" train...  Anyways, it does not look like we are going to agree on onything except that Kaiser sucks and healthcare system stinks  

 

By the way, when you are referring to "mentally unstable" americans, please feel free to exclude me.  When it comes to speaking, my Russian is still a little better than my English (although I do think that my writing is much better in English) Over the years some of my accent diminished to the point where I can probably "pass" as an american, but after about 30 minutes any American-born person will pobably catch on that I am a foreighner...  As a person who grew up with socialized medicine, I am probably the WORST person in the world to work in my insudtry.  I disagree with almost everything....  I would look for another job, but those pesky "clan" compensation packages are just too tough to beat    

Thank you and please do not take my over generalizations too seriously. :)   

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- Независимость - это когда в 20-й раз наступаешь на одни и те же грабли, а русские уже ни при чем....