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[wierd]

The second doctor gives the second opinion. Very useful medically.

Also allows the first doctor to take holidays, or have a regular duty shift, instead of being on call 24/7.  The arrival of the second doctor should be met with joy, not disdain.

[ChairmanPoo]

seriously. Most places are actually looking for more medical personnel, if they let them, not less.

[wierd]

The availability of doctors in the US has been artificially kept low due to AMA shenanigans.  They only allowed so many graduates per year, and only authorized so many classes per year.  This means that there has been waiting lists to get into med school.

This started to change sometime around 2004, when the AMA themselves finally admitted that yes-- there actually is a real shortage of physicians, and not a forecast glut of them, like they said there would be if they did not artificially control supply.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm

The AMA is still meddling with acceptance into medschool, and graduation rates though, because apparently they arent in it for inexpensive healthcare, but are in it for the money.

[Neonivek]

Healthcare is a booming captive market.  What financial interest is there in allowing the government to screw with that?

I have to admit that reminds me a lot of the example someone gave with roads earlier. That gas tax is used to pay for roads so someone who drives more often actually is taxed.

It was used to explain why there should never be universal Healthcare.

But then you said "Captive market" and I kind of remembered. You don't get a choice whether or not to use healthcare do you? I mean there is elective surgery and cosmetics. Yet if you get an infection? If you hit your head?

If you don't want a car you take the bus, you walk, you carpool, you ride a bike, to work at home.

If you don't want to go to the hospital you learn medicine, do your own surgery, do your own X-rays, create your own Chemo.

The AMA is still meddling with acceptance into medschool, and graduation rates though, because apparently they arent in it for inexpensive healthcare, but are in it for the money.

There are a lot of good reasons to keep a physician shortage beyond keeping the prices high. It also means that doctors can be worked more.

[wierd]

Doctors being worked more is a bad, not a good.

It short, and totaly not all inclusive list of negative things it causes includes:

1) Increased rates of misdiagnosis, medical malpractice, and medical accidents stemming from doctors being overworked
2) Doctors demanding increased compensation due to the above
3) Increased waiting periods in which people needing care have to wait to see a physician, due to physician workload
4) increased medical and facility costs associated with the above
5) Increased number of persons who forgo medical treatment due to the above, contributing to reduced general public health

do I really need to continue this?

Yes, restricting the supply of doctors keeps medicine very profitable. It also makes healthcare both artificially expensive, AND substandard.

[ChairmanPoo]

Mind you, in my home country the contrary is true: the goverment keeps med schools churning out doctors at a high rate . This has its own sort of problems. As it happens, there  are issues beyond supply and demand here:

Basically, they keep the labor costs by making medical professional's (the same happens to nurses. In fact they have it even worse)) contracts really short and shitty  (eg: I had ten contracts over six months). They can do this because there's a big surplus of personnel, and thus you're treated like a fully replaceable cog.

The problem is slowly crawling upon them: many people are simply leaving the country for better contracts abroad (and remember, with week-long contracts, pretty much anything can seem better). And being permanently an eventual worker wreacs havoc upon trying to build a career:  you simply wont be around  long enough to move from the bottom of the heap and build up clinical experience. There's a feeling of despair in certain departments I know, because there's noone ready and willing to take the relay from older experts who are retiring.  But it's their fucking fault for playing at this game for decades.

[PTTG??]

We also need to keep in mind that automation is going to hurt every job market, including those that aren't (immediately) automated, if only because fewer jobs in one sector drives up demand for jobs everywhere.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The gas tax and vehicle registrations paying for infrastructure is an example of a fair and representative tax. You essentially purchase the services of the government and they cannot spend road tax revenue on anything besides the road. The government generally attempts to spend according to a relevant revenue  source. It would bad governance to say spend revenue collected from a tax on potash mining to fund prisoner rehabilitation or something.

The point being since the federal government would be responsible for every single persons health, they would be justified in adding new taxes and new laws that attempt to force people to be safe and healthy instead of treating citizens like adults that pay for their own healthcare.

That would apply fot a single payer system. Hence alternative schemes like Obamacare that mostly leaves individuals responsible for their own health.

[Neonivek]

The gas tax and vehicle registrations paying for infrastructure is an example of a fair and representative tax. You essentially purchase the services of the government and they cannot spend road tax revenue on anything besides the road. The government generally attempts to spend according to a relevant revenue  source. It would bad governance to say spend revenue collected from a tax on potash mining to fund prisoner rehabilitation or something.

The point being since the federal government would be responsible for every single persons health, they would be justified in adding new taxes and new laws that attempt to force people to be safe and healthy instead of treating citizens like adults that pay for their own healthcare.

That would apply fot a single payer system. Hence alternative schemes like Obamacare that mostly leaves individuals responsible for their own health.

Except doing research it seems that isn't true. Everyone pays for roads, not just drivers and in more ways then the increased prices due to transportation costs.

It seems like it is just a propagated myth (Though evidence suggests that at ONE point this was true, notably the 60s and 70s)

Not to mention it excludes Electric cars and Bikes AND that Hybrids also avoid a lot of the price.

Meaning that gas tax exists as more of a way to push people towards greener and more fuel efficient methods than it is to pay for roads.

Or rather... Gas Tax is the same as a pollution tax

It is kind of interesting because that means the whole Insurance thing is exactly like gas tax. Everyone has to pay, but people who use the service more... pay more. (except you know... you are forced to use the hospital. No one forces you to buy and maintain a car)

[Rusty Shackleford]

I would support a gas tax just to encourage fuel efficient vehicles and abolish that abomination called CAFE. That said gas taxes are very low and its mostly just used and intended to maintain infrastructure.

Anyways, right so mandated health insurance for everyone as a form of universal healthcare makes sense in a road tax kinda way that I like but they kinda fucked up the implimentation. Its probably just going to be an improved version of Obamacare that sucks a bit less is what we will ultimately wind up with 10-20 years from now.

[Starver]

The gas tax and vehicle registrations paying for infrastructure is an example of a fair and representative tax. You essentially purchase the services of the government and they cannot spend road tax revenue on anything besides the road.

Apparently, 60% is so ring-fenced. The other 40% can be spread wider, and yet also external revenues 'top up' the road-spending pool, so it's, maybe not like the UK (goes into the genetal pot, and out of it, with merely "raising £Xmillion more by this tax adjustment, we will be able to spend £Xmillion more on that (maybe related, maybe not) expenditure" as a public justification for opening and closing the valves on the money pipelines), but it's messier than you claim.

The government generally attempts to spend according to a relevant revenue  source. It would bad governance to say spend revenue collected from a tax on potash mining to fund prisoner rehabilitation or something.

If your country could readily produce, for export, oh...  I don't know... butterfly wings, and had no need to fund the butterfly-wing producers because they could just so easily (and willingly) dominate the butterfly-wing market even with taxation of a massive market, but at the same time found itself with the problem of insufficient private manufacture of the few vital and much needed pogo-sticks (that your country seems to need) unless there was a flow of public money into the pogo-stick market, then what would be the problem in collecting revenue from one sector sufficient to publicly support the other sector? Even if you had to use a fiscal-hosepipe to directly tie the two together via a dedicated fund (rather than the shared-pot system, exact incomes and outgoings only nominally associated, perhaps a little extra butterfly cash one year that gets spent on painting the fire stations, in another year the pogo-stick demands require a boost but cream-cake sales have boosted (this may not even be correlated!) and the cream-tax provides, the actual details year on year get absorbed by all the other fiscal instruments but can be fully justified so long as there is no permanent drift nor unforeseen dramatic changes in any of the incoming or outgoing streams...

Yes, ask for an idealised "balancing of books", but the modern world just has too many little tricks and traps with money, much 'working wealth' is virtual and continues to be promisary in nature and you can be your bottom zloty that pork-barrel skimming is part of every bit of legislation, to various degrees and in various directions, which may or may not come out to spending-neutral in some areas if you're lucky, but I think we can be sure that fuel/vehicle taxes don't just go to roads on a 1:1 basis. Even if that was desirable. (With your low fuel taxes, either there's not enough or your're nog spending enough. From what I've heard, it's both!)

[smjjames]

We also need to keep in mind that automation is going to hurt every job market, including those that aren't (immediately) automated, if only because fewer jobs in one sector drives up demand for jobs everywhere.

True, though automation seems like something that would actually help the healthcare sector more than hurt it. Mainly in the augmentation sense, because you can't replace the human interaction factor.

[Neonivek]

We also need to keep in mind that automation is going to hurt every job market, including those that aren't (immediately) automated, if only because fewer jobs in one sector drives up demand for jobs everywhere.

True, though automation seems like something that would actually help the healthcare sector more than hurt it. Mainly in the augmentation sense, because you can't replace the human interaction factor.

Well you say that but for some things they would REALLY like some form of mechanical help. I mean, say what you will... But having someone lift you out of bed and into a wheelchair and then watch you poop...

[smjjames]

We also need to keep in mind that automation is going to hurt every job market, including those that aren't (immediately) automated, if only because fewer jobs in one sector drives up demand for jobs everywhere.

True, though automation seems like something that would actually help the healthcare sector more than hurt it. Mainly in the augmentation sense, because you can't replace the human interaction factor.

Well you say that but for some things they would REALLY like some form of mechanical help. I mean, say what you will... But having someone lift you out of bed and into a wheelchair and then watch you poop...

That's not what I meant by 'human interaction factor', I meant the emotional part.

[martinuzz]

The last two posts left me with a mental image of a nurse shouting "push, c'mon, you can do it!", while watching the wheelchair dude poop.