How about getting rid of the whole system of needing to be approved by something like the AMA. A few years of patients deciding for themselves who is a good doctor and who is not will result in better regularion of doctors by far. People will go on facebook or something else and rate the doctors like people rate local businesses on YELP

Good ideas, but what happens if you have a disease that has no current cure, but has terrible symptoms that a person doesnt want to endure. I suppose the person could just pay for the reduction of the symptoms on his own.

Example might be diabetes type 2. No cure, but the companies making the symptom reducers would now get a lot of more lucrative business from the patients than they do now from the insurance companies. Therefore, there would just be less research on cures than there is now.

Alexander The Great cut the Gordian Knot. Random Iron Maiden lyric popped into my head.

One idea, I've mentioned before, is that the American Medical Association needs to be disbanded. The AMA is a labor union for doctors. The AMA lobbies Congress to limit the supply of doctors. Medical schools cannot spontaneously admit more students. They must get permission from Congress. So the supply of new doctors is kept purposely low, to keep the doctor's lifestyles and salaries high. Let medical schools double the number of doctors and the salaries will come down, and healthcare costs will come down. I'm not sure about the quality of healthcare. The AMA does set standards for doctors. Will medical schools keep up standards? I don't know. Are medical schools picking new students based on race and sex instead of intelligence?

Absolutely. My family doctor had a medical practice with 2 other doctors. All he ever wanted was to be a "country housecall" doctor. He was great. Saved my Dad's life a few times. But insurance. Eventually the Unaffordable Careless Act was passed. The result was that he would have to hire more nurses, medical assistants (to weigh you and measure your vitals?) and even more billing secretaries to handle all the new forms and procedures, not to mention more computers. He Shrugged. He sent out a letter to his patients giving them 6 months to find a new doctor. He closed his practice. Thank you, Oblamea. Keep your doctor my ass. I lost mine. Thousands of people lost that great doctor, in the name of Liberal Compassion. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Patent law allows corporations to hold a monopoly over a product, service or idea. Without patent law, anyone could make anything, and competition would follow its natural course.

Do no harm, absolutely damn right. I had a doctor tell me in a joke that the Hippocratic Oath was hypocritical because what happens in reality is that doctors try to do the least amount of harm instead of No harm.

Now I'm pissed. I take vitamins B, C and D. Each one "cured" an ailment, although I need to keep taking them. Now they want to expand their market share into Vitamin C? I have to go to a doctor to get a prescription first. Oh gee. I guess I have to go suck a lemon. It is billed as merely a safety regulation. But it's a foot in the door. Dick Turban Durban and some Repube-ican sponsored the bill. Whenever I hear "bipartisan" I know we're all being screwed.

The solution is to get to a free market.

The ONLY way to do that is to REQUIRE that payments come from the patient/buyer. ALL Insurance $ to patient, ALL decisions from patient, ALL payments from patient. NO insurance network deals. Insurance pays same, regardless of patient choice...even is no service is selected. Want to set your own broken bone, or skip other service, fine. Pocket the money. NOTHING free. People seeing and paying the actual costs can make their own decisions, and will drive the market.

If the idiots in government do anything, they should just provide information to the patients to aid in decision making, statistics and market pricing.

For medications, my solution is simple: New law "You can sell you meds for whatever you want, but the price in the US MUST be less than 10% higher than the lowest price ANYWHERE else, period." We will no longer subsidize the world. You can give medication away, but you can not sell it less than 90% the price in the US. This is market intrusion, but it is nationalistic, and destroys an abuse. END of ISSUE.

These two, drive all the cost out of the medical industry. It is not even complicated.

A policy similar to the suggestion made in this topic.

Japan pays doctors based on how few times you need them rather than how often you need expensive surgeries.

I agree with your point of view. Getting government and insurance payments out of the way is part of the suggestion above to encourage cures over amelioration drugs.

Odd this question should come up as just had a procedure which I was advised would be different then when the day came..see my Pace Maker stopped working 4 months ago had to get a new generator....nope got there and they were going to replace it entirely....much more costly.....and was told that I would have a light method of putting me out....long story there but then the dude came in and told me he was going to knock me out completely.....more expensive and better for the doctor to do the surgery with me a dead piece of human then a light touch...I argued...said I had it that was before....long story short I got my way...its my old lady its my body my choice...THEN...for infection I use Good RX...don't take but one cheaper med and Medicare coverage is crazy so they went to place the order at the hospital ....pain meds (6) $6.00...antibiotic...(14) $98.95 but they called it into my local Safeway using Good RX...$18.25 or same...STAND UP for YOU they are used to making big bucks off the Government during the pandemic...its your treatment...your life....dern if I wanted a tube stuck down my throat and then to be sore for a week and more just so that they could handle me like a cadaver...I'm fighting back...all those notices about taking this shot or that gets deleted. I believe the "virus" vaccine messed with my body since I had a test to check my pacemaker in February and to find out the next test in May it had stopped working 2 months earlier when the test in February said I had 6 months left....sorry for the ramble..:/

If you want to cut costs and improve medical care put physicians back in charge. Let the MBA administrators deal with building maintenance - NOT medicine. Also, get rid of the layers of insurance and the requirement to submit the "correct" computer code for reimbursement. My friend has an ER company that supplies ER docs for hospitals. Its insane his overhead with rooms full of .data entry people attempting to bill insurance companies correctly. Not a fan of corporate america controlling health care.

The existing situation isn't free market. It is caused by government intervention via patent laws.
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

I would propose that a different idea be suggested: that drugs developed in the United States be FORBIDDEN to be sold outside the United States for less than the prices being born by US patients. One of the biggest travesties in the drug development world is that the United States is the ONLY nation doing drug research - primarily because of socialism! And on top of that, these nations demand that the drug companies sell these new products at cut rates to their citizens, forcing the funding of all this R&D onto the backs of US patients. To me, foreign nations should be forced to pony up for access to these drugs.

Government created the 'business model' with patent laws that encourage this activity.
As usual, government created a problem.
Removing (or greatly limiting) the patent protection in this area can make that business
model less profitable and make investing in cures the favorable choice - since it's obvious
that the industry won't change to be ethical without some encouragement.

And part of that is a result of the notorious third-party payer problem which exists with our current insurance industry. Patients rarely see the entire cost of their treatments. As a result, there is no feedback mechanism to enjoin self-control of a scarce resource: healthcare. There is also little incentive for people to do little things to keep themselves healthy such as a walk outside for 15 minutes every day, drinking enough water, etc. It's a sad fact that America is a population of the wealthiest yet unhealthiest people on the planet.

Why would big pharma want cures? Treating symptoms is where the money is and you have a never-ending money flow.