In article .com,
"Pete C." wrote:



Well, this applies to the portion of that 14% who do not have health
insurance available, difficult to quantify, but perhaps it's 8% or so of
the total population. This is where the system needs refinement, not
reform, to better target preventative care at those 8% who do not have
access to health insurance.
Even then there is insurance available. I worked at a County General
hospital that is about 80% Medicare/Medicaid billing. A few years ago
they started getting aggressive in referring people and found that
around 20% of their uninsured charity care qualified for a federal
program. I realize that is n=1 study, but still though that was
interesting.


They have been trying to streamline medical records in the US, but keep
running into the privacy issue (we have more privacy rights in the US
generally). I think they will eventually settle on some form of
standardized medical ID card to keep in your wallet with a chip
containing your records.

Or just an electronic medical records. Around 50 different hospitals,
health systems, freestanding surgery centers and all attached physicians
in Indiana are all able to talk to each other. So, if I am a patient in
Indy and I have a problem in Ft. Wayne, the hospital there can most
likely access all of my medical records in real time. That is all that
is needed.
In fact, last month they rolled out a version that will send a
subset of my records to an ambulance as it speeds to my aid. Okay, as
soon as they get there and find out who hte patient is (g).


The second issue is that doctors in the US are currently incentivised to
order extra tests for a number of reasons. They get additional payment
for ordering those tests, and with insurance companies paying rather
low, they try to get as much as they can by ordering more tests.
Before you get all obnoxious about low insurance company payments,
both MCare and MCaid pay much less than the Evil Insurance Companies for
similar procedures. The rest is correct, though.

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