“I like treating patients more than I like the endless hours of dealing with paperwork and insurance claims.”

The guy who used to be on the Fool board talked about how the French system wrung out the administrative overhead. I remember him saying that, when he went to the doc, the receptionist swiped his national health card, typed in a few codes for what the doc did, and the payment was in the doc's bank account, before he was out the door.

He also talked about how the French system made sure facilities were not laying idle. They would monitor wait times for a particular piece of equipment, for instance, an MRI, and wait until the wait time hit a certain level, before spending the money on another MRI for the district.

I wonder how much money is lost in the US system, to administrative overhead, and facilities sitting idle because hospitals are competing for patients so want to have all the facilities in house, even though another hospital a few miles down the road has the same sort of facilities.

iirc, Tim's gall bladder was yanked at something like 2 or 3am.

Steve