HealthCare Pop Quiz

[Quantum Windbag]

This is a false equivalency often offered by those I have seen advocating cash-based health care systems.

I do not dispute the general premise. However, equivocating shopping for heart surgery or cancer treatment is a lot different than shopping for an elective luxury procedure with relatively low risk.

That is like saying buying a car is a lot different than buying a toaster. In other words, it only makes sense if you assume people are stupid.

Not really. Lasik surgery is a luxury. The risks are very small. It's not essential to sustain life and barring a very slight chance of accident during surgery the worst thing that happens is that the patient continues to wear glasses.

If a person discovers that they have cancer on the other hand, their life is threatened. If the wrong treatment option is chosen or too much time goes by before deciding on a treatment option, the worst case scenario is death.

If you don't think those decision processes are vastly different, I don't know what to tell you. Nor do I understand what any of those things have to do with people being stupid. If you consider deciding to have Lasik surgery vs. brain surgery to remove a tumor when the surgery itself might kill you and chemotherapy might be a viable option and wouldn't kill you, but the only way to know is to roll the dice because if you try the chemo and it doesn't work it will be too late to operate, if you consider those to be the same decision making process, well, I kind of have to wonder about your own intelligence level.

Lasik is not a luxury if you have 20/400 vision. You have to compare prices, safety records, and assess the risk, which is exactly the same thing you have to do when you decide on other types of surgery, even if it is classified as emergency surgery. The fact that insurance covers kidney stones does not mean the decision on treatment between the various surgical options is impossible to make. On top of that, you have to do it while drugged.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Bullshit.

And this thoughtful and detailed reply didn't help my perception either.

It was all your idiotic post deserved.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

When open heart surgery becomes an elective procedure, we'll see the cost of that come down also.

The price has gone down considerably over the years.

As with the MRI example I posted earlier, both have gone down despite both being covered by insurance, and despite both being subject to whatever government regulations are being vaguely referred to throughout this thread. And all three (Lasik, open heart surgery, and MRI) are technology dependent.

Seems like the most likely explanation here is that the price drops had a whole lot more to do with the price of technology coming down (including surgical technique technology) than cash vs. insurance or anything having to do with government intervention, wouldn't you say? Government regulations certainly didn't decrease while MRIs and OHSs were getting cheaper.

They weren't covered by insurance until after the price went down. Then you have the fact that it is considerably less expensive to get an MRI if you do a little shopping around first. By the way, if you find an MRI for less than your insurance pays they still pay the same amount they would at a more expensive place.

 

[thewanderer]

Bullshit.

And this thoughtful and detailed reply didn't help my perception either.

It was all your idiotic post deserved.

I think your ideas on this subject are particularly moronic myself. That's the nature of opinion boards, though, isn't it?

IMO, however, a person articulating why they hold their opinion adds to their credibility, while delivering one word curses, then attempting to make it seem as though you don't have to explain yourself makes you look like a dumb ass. And by dumb ass, I mean an ass (that would be the cursing part) who can't even articulate their position (that would be the dumb part).

 

[thewanderer]

They weren't covered by insurance until after the price went down.

Since you seem to know this for a fact, I'm curious: when did MRIs begin to be covered by insurance? I can't imagine that it could have been very long after they began to be used frequently in the early 80s.

 

[thewanderer]

Lasik is not a luxury if you have 20/400 vision.

The prevalence of people with 20/400 vision (that couldn't be corrected by non-surgical means) is also not why Lasik surgery prices have gone down, is it? In the medical field it would be hard to find an example of some procedure that, when extrapolated out to it's most extreme and rare example, couldn't be made relatively indispensable.

You have to compare prices, safety records, and assess the risk, which is exactly the same thing you have to do when you decide on other types of surgery, even if it is classified as emergency surgery. The fact that insurance covers kidney stones does not mean the decision on treatment between the various surgical options is impossible to make. On top of that, you have to do it while drugged.

No one said making any medical decision was impossible. If you read that in my post I think it's time for some remedial reading comprehension courses. I said it was different. And it is.

People do not make decisions the same way when life is threatened. Cost becomes a lot less important to the decision making process, if not irrelevant altogether. If you insist on denying that, I can't help you.

 

[thewanderer]

They weren't covered by insurance until after the price went down.

While I was waiting on your reply to let me know exactly when MRIs began to be covered by insurance I tried to see what I could find out myself. I couldn't find that information, but I did find out that the MRI was patented in 1977 and as of 1980 there were only 12 machines in operation worldwide, while 30 years later in 2010 there were over 25,000.

Sounds like a pretty standard story for new technology to me.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

They weren't covered by insurance until after the price went down.

While I was waiting on your reply to let me know exactly when MRIs began to be covered by insurance I tried to see what I could find out myself. I couldn't find that information, but I did find out that the MRI was patented in 1977 and as of 1980 there were only 12 machines in operation worldwide, while 30 years later in 2010 there were over 25,000.

Sounds like a pretty standard story for new technology to me.

Focus, McFly.

Canada has single payer health care system and has fewer MRI machines in the entire country than does the State of Ohio

 

[thewanderer]

Canada has single payer health care system and has fewer MRI machines in the entire country than does the State of Ohio

And an MRI is cheaper there than it is here despite the fact that they have much more government involvement in health care than we do. Both of which facts are true of most countries in the world.

So what's your point?

McFly.

 

[Oddball]

Canada has single payer health care system and has fewer MRI machines in the entire country than does the State of Ohio

And an MRI is cheaper there than it is here despite the fact that they have much more government involvement in health care than we do. Both of which facts are true of most countries in the world.

So what's your point?

McFly.

When the prices are set by a central agency, you can make them come in at any number you want.

 

[thewanderer]

When the prices are set by a central agency, you can make them come in at any number you want.

Yes, and that's why the scarcity of MRIs in Canada hasn't driven the price up as well, but I still don't understand what point was being made by his post.