Effin Healthcare

[the lurkist]

Just curious. What do you teach?

[pigsteak]

I find that the easiest way to not loose $70,000 to a collection agency is to not own anything. Indigence is the way of the future.

if people didn't borrow so much to start, this could be alleviated.

[the lurkist]

It is a sign of the times and a measure of how dysfunctional out health care system is when a guy like Mike with his financial status (here I am assuming I have a sense of what he makes and his approximate socio economic station- suffice to say he is gainfully employed and a responsible consumer) could be on the cusp of personal bankruptcy due to medical bills. In other Western Democracies with modern health care delivery systems it is unheard of for personal bankruptcy to occur due to medical dept. Here, it can happen to you, me, Mike, anyone with any amount of coverage. That is so fucked up it makes my head hurt.

[dustonian]

"Western democracies"? They have better, more equitable healthcare systems in Thailand and Cuba than here, to say nothing of "developed Western" countries!! It's a truly pathetic state of affairs here...one thing's for sure, some smart MF'ers are making a lotta money and laughing someplace having successfully bought and manipulated our political system...it's been bad for so long here that even American citizens don't believe they "deserve" healthcare...meanwhile the rest of the world thinks were nuts...and they're right about that.

I for one am going to find it very difficult to practice medicine in this country with a clear conscience. Fortunately, I hear other countries like South Africa & New Zealand are psyched for American physicians to come over and work with them.

[pigsteak]

whatever dude...we know you are looking for the best climbing areas, and then throw it off as some moral high ground of saving the world.

[dustonian]

Hmm... maybe Thailand needs docs now that ya mention it....

If I were really tryin to save the world I would go work in Sudan or Haiti or something like that, but there's no climbing there and I'm totally a selfish American pig... no denyin that.

[the lurkist]

work out the vaccine for malaria or develop a dirt cheap water purification system or help women advocate for family planning and economic autonomy.

talk about trying to work with a clear conscience- I just quit working in Emergency Departments (worked my last grueling 24 hour shift this past weekend) because care through the ED is so piss poor, the patients who come through there are so down trodden and at the end of the line in terms of health care- no preventitive care, pathologies at the extreme end of presentation, no hope of follow up for most of them, innocent children whom you are powerless to help in the guise of an ER doc, etc... I quit for several reasons, but not the least was I was helping facilitate, enable, and profit from a hopelessly broken and dysfunctional system. Emergency Medicine is the architypal manifestation of all that is wrong with our health care system. I couldn't do it any longer. I did it before for five years and had forgotten why I quit the first time. It is so grim.

[Rotarypwr345704]

Hey. When the going gets tough, QUIT!

[dustonian]

What have you done to help, besides advocate failed and backwards policies, Rotary? Lurk is a full-time IM doc who moonlights in the ER and is free to come and go as he pleases.

[climb2core]

Hey. When the going gets tough, QUIT!

Really, that has to be one of the more arrogant statements I have seen posted on this board.