• Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I N N O V A T I O N Doctors in the US spend about 25% of their time dealing with insurance companies

    • sarge@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      In Germany the adminstrative effort including documentation is at 50%.

        • sarge@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Sure. But the graphic is very much cherry picked. There is plenty of space between the US and Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

          What surprises me is the high rank of Australia!

          • Infrastructure in Australia is unfavorable… like the US (thin emc network vs. helicopters in Germany that are super common, Germany is a dense country, everywhere hospitals… Australia a desert with some coast. Like US.)
          • Australians are basically US americans of the south (think food: originally british, cannot be healthy, no good car manufacturers, afraid of foreigners…)
          • Everything is trying to kill you in Australia!

          What the heck are they doing?

          But maybe the Germans can learn from the Australians something. Germany‘s System is such a inefficient mess… just the administrative effort to maintain dozens of public health care insurances… crazy!

          • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            I don’t understand the points of this post.

            Australia is very urbanised with the vast majority of the country clinging to the coastal rim. The interior of the country is vastly unpopulated.

            Australia has a much better health outcomes than the US. Our fast food culture, although not great, cannot be compared to Americans.

            The ‘everything can kill you’ thing is a meme. Yes, we have tons of venomous creatures but as we mostly live in the cities the rare deaths cause headlines and are not common place. Plus we don’t experience mass shootings every week, let alone single gun deaths.

            The single biggest benefit for Australian life expectancy is socialised medicine. It’s not perfect, and insurance is encouraged, but a poor person in need of major medical intervention has almost identical access to health care as a fully insured person, and mostly with no financial outlay. In fact, an insured person may lie side-by-side in a hospital bed next to an uninsured person getting the same treatment.

            Medical insurance is not tied to employment.

            All this is under threat. Conservatives are attacking our health system and underfunding it. It is only a matter of time before we start tracking downwards like the US. The secret to a longer life expectancy is government regulation and social responsibility, a healthy personal lifestyle and not feeding the corporate medical parasites that sit between the patient and the required healthcare.

          • SuperApples@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            To add to @slickgoat@lemmy.world 's points, Australia isn’t afraid of foreigners, it has very high migration. You might be confused because of the government’s reprehensible treatment of asylum seekers. Yes it was colonised by England, but internally, diversity is the most celebrated aspect of Australia.

            Australia has been dubbed ‘the lucky country’ because despite a lack of smarts (manufacturing and other value added economic activity), we’ve always been able to dig things out of the ground and sell it (coal, wood, gas, food, gold…). Though Australia never developed a serious manufacturing sector, it has pivoted to a service economy instead, with that sector’s highest export being higher education.

            The lessons to learn from Australia is be rich, be on the other side of the world away from the world wars, and have high welfare spending (plenty of room for improvement though).

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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              6 months ago

              I don’t know about much diversity is celebrated in Australia. I have cousins who grew up in NSW and eventually migrated to the UK, which they said had a marketed improvement in how they were treated. (N=2)

          • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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            6 months ago

            https://ourworldindata.org/us-life-expectancy-low

            The life expectancy in the US is also dragged down by other factors. The US is a huge outlier in several other aspects:

            • Higher death rates from smoking, obesity, homicides, opioid overdoses, suicides, road accidents, and infant deaths, compared to other countries.
            • Additionally, deeper poverty, economic inequality.

            It could just be that the US has way more vices per capita than other countries.

          • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Australians are basically US americans of the south (think food: originally british, cannot be healthy, no good car manufacturers, afraid of foreigners…)

            They’re really more like Canadians than Americans, although I’ve heard it said that New Zealand more accurately fills that role

      • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Is this a good comparison? Feels like we’re missing all of the US administration, insurance is just a part of it.

        • sarge@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Barely, but doctors here in Germany are always complaining about difficulties they have with insurances. Especially the dozens of different public insurances. System here is an unconsolidated mess. Apart from having optional private insurance.

          Like my doctor working on treatment and not being buried with administrative tasks.

      • njm1314@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Those seem like two radically different things. Documentation is extremely important for doctors. That’s not the same as dealing with insurance companies.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I think some areas bring down the curve (ER etc, maybe). It might be like 50% for GPs, idk

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      My doctor has added a few extra checks to visits so it can be billed to the insurance company as a general checkup, and not the specific thing I came in for that would bill at a much higher rate. I appreciate him doing that, but he shouldn’t have to.