Doctors are being paid less and less while patients expect more and more (and they expect it to be free).
B/c of HIPAA, most of the obvious IT innovations will be stymied by bureaucracy and stagnation. The recent backlash against personalized DNA testing shows that regulators are looking forward to squashing that as well.
Waits are long now and will be longer in the future. Doctors are harried now and will be more harried in the future.
Most speciality medical care (other than plastic surgery and other borderline areas that people willingly pay out of pocket for) is a financial racket akin to the banking fiasco. The AMA keeps supply of specialists low to keep salaries high, and battles are fought over regulations that lead to more billable procedures, gaming of the medicare system, etc.
Many commonly used procedures and drugs have very little effect and drain money from society. If you think critically and read the studies you will realize this. Then consider the Billions being paid the respected specialists who do these mostly useless procedures. Consider the influence they have in hospital policy and government policy.
Medicine in the US is a phenomenon of the American psyche. We have too much faith in the latest buzzword or technology to solve our problems, and we want to cheat death. Meanwhile, medical diagnoses are the only validation provided to so many desperate souls whose miserable lives are spent in constant complaint and agony, defined by their illness.
So many doctors traffic in the misery of these people, and the institution of medicine legitimizes it (for profit).
There are some niche areas where science is actually making amazing progress (some kinds of cancer research, mostly) but overall the medical class (those enriched by the status quo) are exploiters of human vulnerability, hope, and malaise.
Yes there are some amazing doctors and most I've met are incredibly hard working, caring people. But there are so many lies so deeply ingrained into our system that it will be hard ever to change it.
If you're a 60 year old man with significant arterial blockage, it's considered normal. You'll be sent home on an expensive pharmaceutical and told to switch from steak to chicken. The population of aging adults (55+) are the human batteries that power the medical matrix.
I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis at a surface level, but it's a first-order analysis. The forces you cite do not exist in a vacuum; people will be reacting to them. The situation you describe can not go on forever, and therefore must cease at some point. If nothing else, then if the government leans on people too heavily a black market will form through sheer, rather bog-standard economic forces. I am not saying it absolutely will come to that, I'm simply saying that places a bound on how far the forces you describe can progress.
I am not sure exactly what will happen in response to the forces you outline, nor am I sure when it will happen. I can only say with confidence that something will. It is absolutely impossible that we will in 2050 be in a world that is simply a straight-line projection from the one we live in today.
Very true... It will be fascinating to see what happens. A few additional thoughts:
- Life expectancy is an s-curve, and recently we've seen the middle get nudged to the right, creating the impression of tremendous progress. The low hanging fruit have been picked, so the trend will likely not continue.
I think that perhaps you are right on aggregate but most doctors' salaries are decreasing relative to inflation. Certain key specialities (surgeons, cardiologists, GI) have had windfalls, but the rest have gone down. Endocrinologists typically make no more than a typical internist in spite of a multi-year fellowship.
Doctors are being paid less and less while patients expect more and more (and they expect it to be free).
B/c of HIPAA, most of the obvious IT innovations will be stymied by bureaucracy and stagnation. The recent backlash against personalized DNA testing shows that regulators are looking forward to squashing that as well.
Waits are long now and will be longer in the future. Doctors are harried now and will be more harried in the future.
Most speciality medical care (other than plastic surgery and other borderline areas that people willingly pay out of pocket for) is a financial racket akin to the banking fiasco. The AMA keeps supply of specialists low to keep salaries high, and battles are fought over regulations that lead to more billable procedures, gaming of the medicare system, etc.
Many commonly used procedures and drugs have very little effect and drain money from society. If you think critically and read the studies you will realize this. Then consider the Billions being paid the respected specialists who do these mostly useless procedures. Consider the influence they have in hospital policy and government policy.
Medicine in the US is a phenomenon of the American psyche. We have too much faith in the latest buzzword or technology to solve our problems, and we want to cheat death. Meanwhile, medical diagnoses are the only validation provided to so many desperate souls whose miserable lives are spent in constant complaint and agony, defined by their illness.
So many doctors traffic in the misery of these people, and the institution of medicine legitimizes it (for profit).
There are some niche areas where science is actually making amazing progress (some kinds of cancer research, mostly) but overall the medical class (those enriched by the status quo) are exploiters of human vulnerability, hope, and malaise.
Yes there are some amazing doctors and most I've met are incredibly hard working, caring people. But there are so many lies so deeply ingrained into our system that it will be hard ever to change it.
If you're a 60 year old man with significant arterial blockage, it's considered normal. You'll be sent home on an expensive pharmaceutical and told to switch from steak to chicken. The population of aging adults (55+) are the human batteries that power the medical matrix.