Isn't the US health system more about milking everything and everyone around more than about actually helping people?

It is, but patients can't afford the milking anymore.

Donahue and his coauthors also note that the wait time increases disproportionally hit socioeconomically vulnerable patients. Those at higher risk for longer waits included patients who were uninsured or on Medicaid, Black (compared with white), lower-income, and had a longer travel distance to a treatment center.

This is the effect that the current administration wants, isn't it?

This is the effect that the current administration wants, isn't it?

Some of you (ssshhh it's actually many) will die, but (ssshhhh..that's actually our goal) that's a risk we are forcing you to take.

These increases in wait times occurred as healthcare systems in the US have consolidated and expanded, funneling more patients to centralized, high-volume treatment centers, particularly academic institutions.

This is also one of the reasons for the collapse of the rural hospitals. Once a patient gets referred to the big city for treatment, they don't come back. The city hospital takes over all post surgical care and the bucks associated with that.

These increases in wait times occurred as healthcare systems in the US have consolidated and expanded, funneling more patients to centralized, high-volume treatment centers, particularly academic institutions.

When I retired I was driving robotic design projects that could produce similar levels of care but with lower skilled users at a lower cost. Corporate didn't care much for that as they wanted to sell just really expensive robots.

Patients with complex cases or uncommon treatments are good candidates for referral to bigger centers. But “referral of uncomplicated cases, such as breast-conserving surgery or straightforward colectomy, to high-volume centers may introduce avoidable delays without commensurate clinical benefit,” they write.

This seems like a fair and insightful suggestion: that in relatively uncomplicated cases, speed may outweigh specialized care in terms of benefit to the patient.

But I can't help wondering how much the increasing delays are truly due to the ongoing pivot into for-profit, then profit-first (and sometimes flat-out asset stripping) acquisitions and consolidations.

It would also be interesting to see a similar study into wait times for less urgent surgeries (and those with less public emotional clout than cancer). I assume wait times for, say, joint replacements or bunions or whatever have increased even more significantly over the same time period... but maybe I'm wrong.

Isn't the US health system more about milking everything and everyone around more than about actually helping people?

The Washington Post just had an article (paywalled) about how hospital consolidation keeps promising lower costs while driving them up significantly.

Once again, we are the product and the system gets us to pay more for less.

I'm tired of the Neo-con line that privatization solves all problems. Simply not true.

This is the #1 complaint i hear when comparing the US system to Canada or the UK, "But in the US we don't have to wait" well now we get the wait with all the suck that is the American healthcare system

Isn't the US health system more about milking everything and everyone around more than about actually helping people?

The private, for-profit health care finance system is about milking everyone. The health care system is not.

Butwhatabout...the MAGA right keeps telling us our current health care system is the best because if we switch to a system like Canada and the UK have, we'll have to suffer longer wait times for critical surgeries!

When my family member started experiencing lower body paralysis, got a scan, and showed spinal cancer, they were shipped to the big hospital and the medical team convened on a Thanksgiving to do the surgery. (Canada. Nothing out of pocket. I know you weren't really bashing Canada.)

The private, for-profit health care finance system is about milking everyone. The health care system is not.

well, I didn't put "care" anywhere in my comment, did I?

All of this, of course, being invisible to those making policy given their access to broad medical coverage, personal levers of influence, and even concierge medicine.

The US has mountains of gold and pits of the uninsured. Many of the people who helped build hospitals and clinics lack needed care. Monstrous.

Not what I wanted to read the day after finding out MIL's chemo stopped working and they have to be more aggressive.

Thanks though Beth.

Once again, we are the product and the system gets us to pay more for less.

I'm tired of the Neo-con line that privatization solves all problems. Simply not true.

I'm sorry, the Neo-con line about privatization is not solve all problems, that is just political gaslighting, just like Right-to-Work states which sold the lie that unionization excludes people from working. The real Neo-con line is that privatization is designed to maximize shareholder value per Milton Friedman.

When my family member started experiencing lower body paralysis, got a scan, and showed spinal cancer, they were shipped to the big hospital and the medical team convened on a Thanksgiving to do the surgery. (Canada. Nothing out of pocket. I know you weren't really bashing Canada.)

No, I wouldn't bash Canada. In fact I have good friends there and always feel like apologizing to them for having to endure the abuse they take from this administration. (I wouldn't be surprised if they say "you can't say 'sorry!' that often if you're not Canadian")

You know what they say, you get what you pay for… Wait, that can’t be right.

At this point, Private Equity infested capitalism only cuts jobs and raises prices. There's no competition when you got a monopoly on the money to tell people to focus on making more money instead of a quality product.

The Washington Post just had an article (paywalled) about how hospital consolidation keeps promising lower costs while driving them up significantly.

The essential feature of unfettered capitalism..

Butwhatabout...the MAGA right keeps telling us our current health care system is the best because if we switch to a system like Canada and the UK have, we'll have to suffer longer wait times for critical surgeries!

It's not even that - even if Canada had 0 waiting, it's "communism" and we can't have that. At any cost.

No increase is good here of course, but I wonder how “wait time” is defined in the context of this study. Likewise, I wonder when a diagnosis is formally considered to come into being.

From the time my colorectal cancer was discovered in a failed colonoscopy to the time I had surgery was nearly sixty days which of course sounds pretty bad. In between those points, however, I had an appointment with the surgeon, two appointments with my oncologist, a CT scan, an MRI, and an appointment with a radiation oncologist. From my perspective, the timing all actually seemed reasonable.

Coming up on 15 months cancer free, BTW.

So much for private healthcare delivering faster results. Everyone says socialized medicine is slow, and yet our privatized medical system that’s already slow is getting even slower

This, exactly. I'm Canadian and when I required cancer surgery a few years back it was a total wait time of eight days, and that included all labs. I guess our properly-triaged socialized medicine isn't so bad after all.

The Washington Post just had an article (paywalled) about how hospital consolidation keeps promising lower costs while driving them up significantly.

I read somewhere, could’ve been in a PhD seminar too, that consolidation is driven by CEO’s wanting a bigger pay check. Bigger systems means pay comparison is with CEO’s running larger companies.

Donahue and his coauthors also note that the wait time increases disproportionally hit socioeconomically vulnerable patients.

It’s really MAGAwe, no that’s not the fun type of MAGA. Make America Great Again…and softly now…white evangelicals

How bad does it have to get before voters realize they have been sold down the river by their GOP idols?

Stuff has to get so much worse before that happens. For many conservatives, loving Trump and hating liberals is a core part of their persona. They have the red hat. They have the bumper stickers on their car. They've told all their family and co-workers that only Trump can save American. Very few of these people are going to admit that they got misled. Their very self-worth is at stake. Until we see mass unemployment or significant military casualties, these people are not going to change.