Total costs associated with lawsuits are somewhere around 2% of costs. They are not the cause of our problems. Furthermore, states that have instituted "tort reform" have not experienced noticeably lower rates of health care inflation.
This is a right wing totem.
That stat may be correct, but consider what the stat actually means. The cost of medical care is extremely inflated because doctors and hospitals don't want to be sued. Today, 1/3 of all child births involve surgery.
link. The reason for this is very simple. Natural birth is risky for the baby. C-sections are risky for the mother. If the mother gets a post-surgery infection, nobody really cares. If a baby suffers an injury during birth that leads to a long term disability, an army of lawyers swarm the hospital like locusts. You'd be amazed how many things can go wrong during natural child birth. All it takes is one complication and you get a child that is mentally or physically handicapped for life. Although rare, those types of lawsuits cost tens of millions of dollars when they happen, so doctors and hospitals end up doing surgery when it really isn't needed. Come on, do surgeries really need to be done in 1/3 of all births?
Think of it like this. How much
should child birth cost? Midwives are not doctors, so their labor is maybe comparable to that of a mechanic or a plumber. $1000-$2000 seems like a reasonable price. Actual cost:
$18k for normal childbirth, $28k for surgery. wtf? That's the cost of covering your ass.
This is already being done.
This is like saying America is moving toward electric cars. Having 1 nurse practitioner in a country with 1/3 of a billion people is a start, but I don't expect it to take off. It'll be banned as soon as it starts showing signs of success.
Drugs should definitely require prescriptions. Perhaps some drugs that are currently prescription only should not be, but overall prescriptions are an absolutely vital part of any well-functioning health system. Removing them would be a catastrophe.
If people want to kill themselves by mixing random drugs, I say go for it. I'm strongly pro-suicide.
It's not like having doctors involved in the process helps. Look at some of the cocktails doctors give to children. A kid will be given amphetamine to treat his attention problems (boredom), the amphetamine causes amphetamine psychosis, so the doctor gives him quetiapine to reduce the psychosis, but the quetiapine makes the kid tired, so the kid is also given modafinil, but that causes...etc... and the kid ends up being on 10 drugs at the same time. The
only reason parents go along with it is because they trust that doctors are not being bribed by drug companies. They never stop and think "hey, maybe taking 10 drugs in large amounts is the reason my son's mental health is rapidly deteriorating." I know you're thinking there's no way people are that sheep-like, but they are. If something given by a doctor causes extremely negative side effects, many people will continue taking it. They only keep taking it because they blindly listen to doctors.
We already have legal marijuana in some places and it's only expanding. Hopefully that expands to all drugs someday. Where have you been?
America. 47% of the country voted for Romney He was asked about medical marijuana by a person in a wheelchair, and his response was cold blooded. That guy simply doesn't care about humans because humans are too "worldly", and 47% of the country agreed with him. All it takes is 51% and we put the car in reverse. Marijuana becomes illegal, gay marriage becomes or remains illegal. I remember an episode of Dr Phil (yeah I know..) where he said he wished cough medicine required a prescription so kids couldn't abuse it. That's not just some crazy asshole on TV. Millions of people agree with him. Those people will eventually control the congress and senate.... sort of like right now... and they'll make life suck for everyone.
So you think that people should be able to take antibiotics whenever they want?
They do that anyway. It might even be worse when doctors are the ones giving out antibiotics. I want you to do a test for me. Ask someone about the dangers of taking antibiotics. It could be a coworker, a family member, a friend. I'll bet my lunch money that none of the people you talk to are aware of how dangerous antibiotics are. They go in the same category as chemotherapy when it comes to scorched earth medicine. You're basically attacking all bacteria and hoping your bacteria survive longer than the invading bacteria. People are not aware of this because doctors never mention it. The pharmacist never says anything because they assume the doctor already said something. There's no warning on the box saying that you're setting off a nuclear bomb in your immune system.
Many drugs can have harmful or even fatal interactions with other drugs and those interactions are not at all obvious to patients. Say hello to lots of additional deaths from unintended drug interactions.
Put a warning on the box and include the contraindication list. "Consult with pharmacist if you are taking other medications."
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