Medical Shows: Price Is No Object
One popular show, “House,” typically involves a patient with a mysterious illness, which the medical staff diagnoses and treats over the course of an episode’s 43 minutes of non-commercial viewing time. The episode, “Ignorance is Bliss,” involved a sequence of tests and treatments, ranging from an MRI, a liver biopsy, multiple splenectomies, stroke treatment, drug abuse treatment and treatment for ataxia. One expert tabulated the various treatments and tests and put the cost at nearly $300,000.
Looks like TV is a good place for me to learn how to spend other people’s money. I haven’t been doing enough of that lately.
It’s a good thing Hollywood didn’t write the health reform bill. The end product would have cost twice as much.
Actually, it demonstrates one of the key problems with market based health care, there is no market. You get sick, your doctor starts ordering tests and treatments, you really have no way to know if it’s appropriate or not, and then you (our your insurance company) gets the bill.
Is one supposed to prefer doctors who don’t order tests and treatments when one gets sick?
And wasn’t the managed care revolution in the US supposed to follow the NHS lead by putting experts in charge of determining appropriate care?
Which, unfortunately, returns us to the question of whether one should prefer doctors who are cannot order tests and treatments because they are not allowed to do so.
artk, the current system is not market based care. It is a system where the market has been completely suppressed.