Nope.

Anything serious in a situation in which the patient is stable enough to survive the trip gets transported to a larger hospital (and as you pointed out, at great expense).

If it took you 4 hours to get to the nearest hospital in the first place, you might be dead before you got there, or your situation might have deteriorated to the point that life-flighting you somewhere else would be impossible. And there are some patients who—even with a hospital right nearby—are still not candidates for a life-flight until they are stabilized at the local hospital first.

quote:

Portage WI is around 10K people last I looked. And 30 miles from Madison which has several "big" hospitals including UW Hospital. Portage's is the hospital I was thinking of when posting that.

O.k., then I would say the same thing to you that I would say to the populist mouth breathers on the board when they start talking about "Muh aid to Israel, muh aid to Ukraine," let's say that fountain cost $40,000. You take it out. Congratulations, you just saved enough money to pay 200 nurses (which is probably a tad more than that hospital you mentioned has, but it was easy math, so...) in the hospital for half of one shift. Oh, and that's not counting payroll taxes, that's just the going hourly rate.

I get that the money involved seems outrageous (both coming in and going out), but that's the point. That fountain is a non-factor. It's nothing but an emotional touch point.

quote:
However it has simply gotten insane and there are a multitude of reasons why.

There are lots of reasons why and it is complicated. But I'm telling you this as someone who has worked in health care for roughly 22 years...I am convinced of two things:

1. That the reason we do so many things that seem egregious and outrageous are designed to protect rural hospitals and continue to facilitate medical R&D. We can have a larger discussion about why I think that if anyone wants, but I am convinced of those two things. The fact that it has become more and more outrageous and egregious as time has progressed is, IMO, largely a function of the ACA and other government attempts to get involved in the system, and the fact that 3rd party pay (whether private payor or government payor) will always push the trend in that direction.

2. We could change health care in America, and we could do it drastically, but not without it costing us something. And I don't mean costing money when I say that. We could change it so that it costs the average American less money, I'm convinced of that. But nothing is free. The level of expertise of providers, medical R&D, progress moving forward, having facilities with the best and most up to date equipment, having care available when you need it, etc. You are going to have to give up SOMETHING. You can't make major changes without that happening.

And some of those changes don't just impact Americans, they impact the entire world. You do something like regulate drug companies' ability to protect drug patents for a period of time, yeah, the drugs would be a lot cheaper. But they would stop developing new ones. And nobody else would pick up the slack, because almost all other countries don't allow the patent protections in the first place (which is why the drugs are cheaper there). We are responsible for over 90% of the medical R&D in the world, and it's 100% because we allow medicine to be a for-profit industry.

Those other countries where you can get comparable care cheaper? They are drafting on our medical R&D. Literally what's happening is that American citizens are paying for them to be able to enjoy that level of care.

That's why Damone's parroted, "We're the richest country on Earth and blah, blah, blah," is nonsense. We are the richest country on Earth because we believe in for-profit systems, and Japan and Canada and Germany and every other country with "free" health care for it's citizens needs to get down on their knees and thank us for our for-profit system providing the incentive for medical progress to take place.

We are literally the reason they are able to do what they do with any kind of comparable outcomes.

This post was edited on 5/9/24 at 10:08 am