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Pay Doctors Like Doctors Pay You

Put those actuarial tables to use
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When a doctor kills your or somehow limits your ability to work, compensation (before punitive damages) is typically calculated based on what your earning potential is.

Given this, it seems that healthcare, especially invasive life saving procedures, can be costed out in just the opposite way.

45, making a million a year and the bypass is going to give you an extra 10 years? Seems like at least a fraction of those profits are made possible by the doctor.

55, waitressing in a local restaurant, barely getting by on 15K a year? You're not going to make more than another 150K, so how can your bypass cost 100K?

theircompetitor, Mar 09 2005

Pimp slapping. http://seer.cancer....dhood/mortality.pdf
[bungston, Mar 09 2005]

[link]






       This would make pediatric oncology much more popular.
bungston, Mar 09 2005
  

       [bunsgton] sadly, only for full cures. Remember, we're talking about life expectancy here.
theircompetitor, Mar 09 2005
  

       Most kids are cured. Science has pimp-slapped kiddy cancers in the past 20 years.
bungston, Mar 09 2005
  

       And furthermore, the life expectancy of a newborn has astronomically increased with the advance of medicine. Anyone who delivers a baby in a clean environment should be rolling in it. Money, I mean.   

       [tc] - sounds like your waitress is just going to have to live without her bypass.
Detly, Mar 09 2005
  

       "Give according to your ability, receive according to your need". Systematically applied, that, my friend, is simply Lenin's flavor of communism. I won't comment on the morals, but it's probably not what you're intending.
sophocles, Mar 09 2005
  

       [Detly] -- this is not at all an argument for rationing. And I'm really addressing this to very expensive procedure, not routine medicine.   

       [sophocles] -- morals? are you suggesting charging different prices is immoral?   

       Not disputing that by the way -- just clarifying for now
theircompetitor, Mar 09 2005
  

       [tc] - But if the waitress' operation is costed very low then you've suddenly reduced the number of doctors who are willing to perform it, because they're not going to get paid as much.
Detly, Mar 10 2005
  

       [Detly] -- So how does a doctor risk operating on a rich patient today?
theircompetitor, Mar 10 2005
  

       The idea that "when a doctor kills you or limits your ability to work," the patient is always entitled to compensation is not quite correct. It's only if the doctor was negligent or failed to fully inform the patient of the risk that compensation is available.   

       Oversimplification: a doctor than therefore curb the risk by being good. However, if they can't charge you much for a bypass, they don't get paid much, and that's a certainty. Fewer doctors have incentive to operate.
Detly, Mar 10 2005
  

       kill doctors like they kill you?
zevkirsh, Oct 26 2006
  
      
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