@kagenin, I actually disagree. I don't think there's any problem with using markets in medicine -- in fact I think it's preferrable -- the problem is that you need to make sure the market dynamics lead to a cycle of providing better care to more people, and not a cycle of providing more expensive care to fewer people.

For example, the system Anthony Weiner wants is single-payer. All that really does is say that for certain basic types of medical service, there's a single state-based insurance company that covers everyone, and will use a nation-sized customer pool to negotiate set rates common to all providers.

The providers themselves are private, and they profits by attracting more patients with good service, and by driving cost efficiencies. In other words, they get rich by taking better care of people and by eliminating waste.

The problem in our system is that the incentives are all wrong.

The private insurance companies make a profit by only extending insurance to people who're as healthy as possible. Their goal is to collect premiums with the lowest amount of "medical loss" -- in other words, without having to actually cover the cost of any treatment. That leads them to cover fewer people, jack up the rates of people who are older or chronically ill, fight with patients over every expensive claim, and try to rescind coverage retroactively on their sickest customers.

The providers also have bad incentives. They make all their money by performing procedures, and getting reimbursed by the insurance companies. This leading them to have tremendous incentives to give everyone a CAT scan and MRI if they come in with stubbed toe. So, they're always working on new, expensive tests and treatments, and reasons to use them on as many patients as possible, without much regard to efficiency or patient benefit.

There are lots of ways to break us out of those bad incentives. On paper, HSA's might work to reduce costs if that was the only way anyone could pay for medical service. If you eliminate traditional insurance entirely, add in mandatory contributions to HSA's, and a little bit of subsidy to cover people who need to spend more than they can afford, and I might be willing to support it.

But just having HSA's as part of our existing mix has essentially no effect on the system at all. Participation is way too low for it to make any difference at all.

It's bizarre that he makes a point of not funding one field at the expense of another, but simultaneously claims that nowhere in medical diagnostic machines you see principles or designs which were discovered or invented by medical researchers.

This is an absurd claim, because even if a physicist discovers an elementary principle, it's completely unclear if this principle is applicable for a given medical purpose. And even if it is (which will probably be discovered by someone else, in another field), it is not at all clear if it is the best (most accurate, reliable, affordable and safe, according to some metric) principle for the application, over all techniques which are already available. This is something a medical researcher investigates.

I'm especially surprised that he mentioned the MRI machine. One of the biggest controversies in Nobel Prize history is the 2003 Nobel Prize for Medicine, which was awarded to a physicist and a chemist, but not to Raymond Damadian, the medical doctor who made leading contributions to the field.

So anyway, while Neil deGrasse is accurate in saying that one should not exclusively fund medical research at the expense of other fields, this video is completely misleading in the sense that it overemphasizes the contributions of physicists, and intentionally omits contributions made by researchers in other fields, as if a physicist's discovery of an elementary principle were the hard part in the process of developing medical equipment.

Disclaimer: I'm a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering.

I just wanted to let you know that your video with the Japanese MRI prank was a dupe of this one.

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by thegrimsleeper.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Taking-an-MRI-in-Japan-might-surprise-you

It's a dupe: http://www.videosift.com/video/Taking-an-MRI-in-Japan-might-surprise-you

We even have Winston above, showing us bold face lies.

As much as I side with you on this, WP didnt exactly lie in that post. He says healthcare costs money, and yes it does.

What healthcare shold not do, however, is to be exploited for profit. And if the US Government didnt have its nutsack firmly placed in the hands of the health and insurance industry, they could, like most comparable country, spend HALF of what they do NOW, and provide free, universal healthcare


One of the reasons healthcare is so expensive in the US, is precisely because it is privately run. Providing care isnt like selling cars. You dont have the same kind of "competition driving the prices down", and even if you did, a MRI-scan is still insanely expensive. And then you have insurance.. sure, insurers can compete to have the lowest premiums, but that of course means that they'll have to cut somewhere to make a profit, and that means to reduce the number of actual payouts, so they make sure to attach hundreds of conditions and rules that no one reads anyway, so that they can blame pre-existing conditions or whatever, and then refuse payout. Overall, its a system that encourages PROFIT, and not actual healthcare.

If you ever needed proof of this, simply look at the numbers: The US government spends more money, yes MORE TAXPAYER's MONEY (hear that, republicans?) today then every single country that provides free, universal healthcare
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_spe_per_per-health-spending-per-person
http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php
http://seekingalpha.com/article/146992-comparing-u-s-healthcare-spending-with-other-oecd-countries

>> ^alizarin:
Question for Canadian sifters:
In Canada if you don't want to wait you can go to another area where there's a shorter waiting list correct (next town over or whatever)? The only reason to go to the US is if what you want is just a waste of money that won't do you any good no?


Yeah, most "waiting lists" are in larger metropolitan areas, or in the case of MRIs, the lack of skilled specialists as well as budget constraints. People who go down to the States for medical reasons are mostly wimps those having lower tolerances.

Well, it can be a bit convoluted but:

1). Yes, if the waiting list is too long, we can go to another hospital. My son needed his tonsils and adenoids removed and the wait list was a year (in Prince George). So we just called up a specialist in Kelowna, and boom he was in, within a week.

2). There are some private clinics that operate outside the government system and work on a pay per use system. The average person doesn't use them, but they are there for who can afford it.

3). At my last job, we had a special broker who handled all of our medical claims. If it meant that we could end up missing work and costing the company money, it was their job to expedite the paperwork and bump us to the front of the list. We got medical attention right away. Not everyone has this but in that case, it was to the benefit of my employer to bare the costs of this agency instead of paying sick pay for us to wait on a waiting list.

4). Also, hospitals, generally, try to be fair, when I had my ACL replaced, the surgeon, himself expedited my surgery date, because I was in danger of re-injuring and causing more damage if I waited too long. The hospital emergency rooms that I know of are working on a two tear level to speed up wait times. (those that need a bed and those that don't. Also, within those groups, they work with a triage mentality where, those that can be patched up quickly, or the very serious will get attention first. The less people waiting the better.

I think a lot of people imagine us standing in hospital line-ups for months, dying out in the cold. That's just not true. Yes, there can be wait lists when the jobs out-man the doctors, but for the most part, if there were more doctors and more equipment, we wouldn't be waiting so long. In Quesnel, where I lived a year ago, the town started their own fundraiser and bought their own MRI Machine, because the government wasn't. Now they have one and the wait times went from traveling out of town to making the appt.


>> ^alizarin:
Question for Canadian sifters:
In Canada if you don't want to wait you can go to another area where there's a shorter waiting list correct (next town over or whatever)? The only reason to go to the US is if what you want is just a waste of money that won't do you any good no?

>> ^schlub:
Yeah, Canada has waiting times and other issues, but, you know what? If I need to see my doctor because of some issue, I walk in to the office do what needs to be done, then walk out. I don't get a bill. I need an MRI? Yeah, I have to wait, but it doesn't cost me anything. Need an X-ray, blood tests, flu shot, hospital stay, my wife has a baby and gets a c-section, is in hospital for 3 or 4 days,.. yeah, we still don't have to pay a bill.
The system's not perfect (and needs work), but not having to fork over cash for every visit is pretty sweet and usually makes up for many of the short-comings.


Amen. It has it's problems but is way ahead of a pay-for system like that in the States.

I love how these Fox reports are often devoid of tangible facts. So a lady was told she is too heavy for a hip replacement? Doesn't surprise me. For all we know she is a 600 lb fatty and the real story is that she was told she needs to lose weight before such surgery is practical.

I wouldn't trade the system we have in Canada for what is had in the US. Not a chance.

Yeah, Canada has waiting times and other issues, but, you know what? If I need to see my doctor because of some issue, I walk in to the office do what needs to be done, then walk out. I don't get a bill. I need an MRI? Yeah, I have to wait, but it doesn't cost me anything. Need an X-ray, blood tests, flu shot, hospital stay, my wife has a baby and gets a c-section, is in hospital for 3 or 4 days,.. yeah, we still don't have to pay a bill.

The system's not perfect (and needs work), but not having to fork over cash for every visit is pretty sweet and usually makes up for many of the short-comings.

>> ^sixshot
:
Now why couldn't they use those kind of materials on "I Survived A Japanese Game Show"??


Because in America everyone wants to sue for something. In Japan people have a sense of humor.

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by ant.

>> ^Hex:
dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/Taking-an-MRI-in-Japan-might-surprise-y
ou I think


Yeah, *dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Taking-an-MRI-in-Japan-might-surprise-you ... I knew I had seen it before.

>> ^rottenseed:
>> ^Nebosuke:
How do they decide if they were out or not?

I'm guessing whether they laugh or they squirm


Yeah, its a new years special on TV. Each of the guys that did the MRI are the 'contestants'. They're really famous entertainers. They go to different places for 24 hours and they can't laugh the entire time. If they do they get one slam on the ass with a foam bat. Of course, the entire time they are there, other people are doing things to try to make them laugh. This year it was a newspaper company, last year it was the hospital. The whole 2 or 3 hour is just like that clip. Its such an awesome show.