$800 Heart Surgery

AFP: "In India, 'no frills' hospitals offer $800 heart surgery"

Using pre-fabricated buildings, stripping out air-conditioning and even training visitors to help with post-operative care, the group believes it can cut the cost of heart surgery to an astonishing 800 dollars.

Quick Links: India, CA, Aspirin

Ari Armstrong: "Indian Patients Wait Weeks for Treatment -- Can You Guess Why?"

Orange County Register: "Repeal or not, California's stuck with Obamacare".

New York Times: "Regular Aspirin Use May Aid Prostate Cancer Recovery" (via Dr. Jonathan Cargan.) 

BTW: aspirin would never be approved by today's FDA.

Learning From McDonald's

In the 8/12/2011 Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, Andrew Steele wrote an interesting piece entitled, "What the health care system can learn from McDonald's".

Steele makes the point that innovations from the free market (such as the fast food industry) can also be applied to save money and improve quality in health care.

He notes that:

...[T]he Aravind Eye Care System has become the largest provider of eye care in the world. They perform hundreds of thousands of cataract surgeries a year, restoring sight to millions of people.

For the poorest of the poor, their services are the difference between starvation and a job, misery and dignity, death and life.

The inspiration of their model is not the Harvard Medical School or Johns Hopkins. It's McDonald's.

Steele's article also links to this TED talk about the Aravind Eye Care System:



Unfortunately, the article doesn't go far in enough in advocating privatization of Canada's current government-run system. In particular, if a government-run system attempted to create a network of such clinics, they would likely become ossified bureaucratic dinosaurs in short order -- precisely because the clinics would no longer have the freedom to innovate and respond to market forces in the same fashion as if they were privately owned.

But if the article gets people thinking more broadly about the merits of private-vs.-government health care, it will be a good start.

(Read the full text of "What the health care system can learn from McDonald's".  Link via R.B.)

Dr. Rajiv Chaundry

As a change of pace, I'd like to point readers towards this short story, "Dr. Rajiv Chaundry".

Will massive medical tourism to India be in America's health care future?

Islam and Health Insurance

Health care debates sure are different in other countries! Here is an excerpt from the April 6, 2008 India Times:

Health Insurance illegal: Islamic body

NEW DELHI: Comparing the benefits of health insurance policy to gambling, key Islamic organisations have termed the policies as "illegal" and directed Muslims to keep away from them.

At a seminar to deliberate whether insuring health was permissible under Islamic law Shariat, the Islamic Fiqh Academy (India) decided that availing such policies was illegal.

Representatives from around 300 Madrasas, including Darul Uloom Deoband, Jamiat Islami participated in the three-day meet, where they reached a conclusion that seeking insurance cover was only another form of gambling.

Health insurance schemes have turned a noble service into a business activity, hence under Islam it is not permitted, they said...

(Via Howard Roerig.)