This is a huge problem in US health care financing: we have a fee-for-service model, no price transparency, and a consumer base (insulated from a lot of the costs of procedures by indirect payment through employer-provided insurance) conditioned to think procedures are inherently good. We waste billions annually on procedures that shouldn't be delivered at all.
I'm fond of pointing out the stat (true as of a year ago) that Massachusetts (I think it's MA?) has more MRI machines than the entire country of Canada.
> I'm fond of pointing out the stat (true as of a year ago) that Massachusetts (I think it's MA?) has more MRI machines than the entire country of Canada.
I'm also quite fond of pointing out that Canada and the state of California have roughly the same populations.
Canada's population is incredibly spread out, but also concentrated in about 5 major cities.
When I needed an MRI on my brain is was roughly a week, and that was in a smaller (under 100K people) city.
It's a triage system, although I wouldn't want to suffer through a "less important" issue.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
I'm fond of pointing out the stat (true as of a year ago) that Massachusetts (I think it's MA?) has more MRI machines than the entire country of Canada.
doubled112 · · focus · HN ↗
I'm also quite fond of pointing out that Canada and the state of California have roughly the same populations.
Canada's population is incredibly spread out, but also concentrated in about 5 major cities.
When I needed an MRI on my brain is was roughly a week, and that was in a smaller (under 100K people) city.
It's a triage system, although I wouldn't want to suffer through a "less important" issue.
excannuk · · focus · HN ↗
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