Where is the money in US healthcare going to?

You know, I was already in favor of socialized healthcare, but this topic has convinced me that we also need fully socialized legal services. Why does no one ever talk about that?

edited 28th Jun '13 6:40:29 PM by Clarste

Well, if by socialized you mean the government's required to provide a lawyer, I'm pretty sure that's already a thing. They just tend to be vastly underpaid.

Also, while it's valid to compare the two things, this talk specifically about legal services is getting off the topic of money in our healthcare. We could probably make a whole other thread for this topic. Or about the socialization on services in general.

That's why I said "fully". If medical bills are being increased by expensive malpractice insurance, isn't that simply a direct effect of lawyers being paid too much? The disparity between cheap and expensive lawyers also inherently makes a mockery of the idea of true justice. Good lawyers have a incentive to avoid government work, etc etc.

Seems to me it would be much better if we banned private lawfirms.

Lawyers would have their prices be high regardless of whether they're dealing with malpractice suits. They do other things like handle criminal cases, civil suits and various legal stuff for big businesses, divorce cases. Also, that's actually a fairly small percentage of people who are lawyers getting the big bucks.

So malpractice suits DO NOT, in fact, have any direct effect on how much law firms decide to or can afford to pay their partners and employees.

I'm talking about the opposite direction. IE: I'm still talking about healthcare reform. Malpractice insurance is expensive because malpractice suits are expensive. And they're expensive because lawyers and associated expenses are expensive. Making lawyers cheaper would directly lower the prices of healthcare.

And it doesn't really matter how many lawyers (or doctors) are profiting off of this system, the problem is that the system is designed to be profited off of, when it should be designed to help people.

edited 28th Jun '13 7:41:40 PM by Clarste

Most non-US countries lower tort resolutions via judge-only trials, who tend to have professional opinions on the amount of payout rather than an emotionally based one. Juries, once they agree with the tort lawsuit, tend to just go overboard with the punitive payment required (on average). And by more I mean roughly 10x more (between US and Canada).

But that's only part of the costs anyway.

As for people not caring about costs and thus abusing "free healthcare" (since single payer healthcare obscures the individual cost of using healthcare), it's been found that people going to the doctor too much makes up an insignificant fraction of costs. The reason is that a visit to a doctor in a single payer system runs you between $50 to $200. The cost of failing to identify a health problem and letting it fester costs $50 000 to $500 000. You have to visit the doctor A LOT to make up that difference and generally that doesn't happen. In fact, one of the problems in single payer healthcare systems? People don't visit their doctor enough. That is to say, people not visiting their doctor enough is a problem that is not related to private or public healthcare.

But my point about lawyers being paid for while doctors are not in the US is the claim that "rights don't cost money". Well clearly they do. Lawyers cost money. So that is not a valid argument against providing healthcare.

Furthermore, I don't understand the argument of "profiteering" occurring in public systems. Do you have evidence of this? Canada is the one that legalised purchase of generic drugs and conducts bulk purchasing to lower costs. Does USA do this? So why is it the public healthcare system in Canada is cutting costs but the US one is not despite being a private system?

Instead of arguing via making stuff up, could you provide actual examples of public healthcare systems outside the US that do the things you claim they do?

The issue in Canadian healthcare right now is doctor availability. There are a lot more female doctors now, and on average they tend to work less. So the number of doctors is the same, they're just working less hours. Spoiled for a somewhat controversial detail. Incidentally, that's actually why the wage gap exists, at least for doctors in Canada. They get paid the same per hour, the women just tend to work less.

I think I read once that one of the reason lawsuits are so expensive in the U.S. is that the social safety net here is pathetic. If someone harms you to an extent that reduces your ability to maintain your own quality of life, you're screwed unless you can take the difference out of their hide.

That, and we have no cultural ideal of looking out for each other, so the threat of an expensive lawsuit is needed to cut down on negligence.

I think that is more of an extension of a pre-existing problem. Given that people have no social safety net and tort lawsuits can be potentially lucrative, there tends to be higher payouts on average in America.

As for women working less in Canada, I believe the issue has been parental leave and workplace discrimination. It's just a thought for now since it's hard to confirm. The concept is that if fathers have a hard time putting family priorities above work (and getting hit in the career for doing so just like women normally do when taking parental leave), the society as it is right now would be slanted toward women taking that hit rather than men. The parental leave laws are pretty good as is, now we have to work toward getting people to use it more equally.