SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
SAN FRANCISCO — When John Battelle's teenage son broke his leg at a suburban soccer game, naturally the first call his parents made was to 911. The second was to Dr. Jordan Shlain, the concierge doctor here who treats Mr. Battelle and his family. "They're taking him to a local hospital," Mr. Battelle's wife, Michelle, told Dr. Shlain as the boy rode in an ambulance to a nearby emergency room in Marin County. "No, they're not," Dr. Shlain instructed them. "You don't want that leg set by an E.R. doc at a local medical center. You want it set by the head of orthopedics at a hospital in the city." Within minutes, the ambulance was on the Golden Gate Bridge, bound for California Pacific Medical Center, one of San Francisco's top hospitals. Dr. Shlain was there to meet them when they arrived, and the boy was seen almost immediately by an orthopedist with decades of experience.
For Mr. Battelle, a veteran media entrepreneur, the experience convinced him that the annual fee he pays to have Dr. Shlain on call is worth it, despite his guilt over what he admits is very special treatment. "I feel badly that I have the means to jump the line," he said. "But when you have kids, you jump the line. You just do. If you have the money, would you not spend it for that?"
Increasingly, it is a question being asked in hospitals and doctor's offices, especially in wealthier enclaves in places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and New York. And just as a virtual velvet rope has risen between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else on airplanes, cruise ships and amusement parks, widening inequality is also transforming how health care is delivered. Money has always made a big difference in the medical world: fancier rooms at hospitals, better food and access to the latest treatments and technology. Concierge practices, where patients pay several thousand dollars a year so they can quickly reach their primary care doctor, with guaranteed same-day appointments, have been around for decades.
But these aren't the concierge doctors you've heard about — and that's intentional.
Dr. Shlain's Private Medical group does not advertise and has virtually no presence on the web, and new patients come strictly by word of mouth. But with annual fees that range from $40,000 to $80,000 (more than 10 times what conventional concierge practices charge), the suite of services goes far beyond 24-hour access or a Nespresso machine in the waiting room.
Indeed, as many Americans struggle to pay for health care — or even, with the future of the Affordable Care Act in question on Capitol Hill, face a loss of coverage — this corner of what some doctors call the medical-industrial complex is booming: boutique doctors and high-end hospital wards.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @11:48PM
You're a fucking dumbass then. We've come up with plenty of ways to do things better, without money even, and make sure that we prosper and thrive. Japanese researchers even modeled a resource distribution system that eliminated bias and corruption. That would be interesting to try out in a special economic zone.
Its a myth, that people addicted to money, tell the rest of us; You can't live without money!
Yes, you absolutely fucking can. Yet, you don't even have to do so in order to address the problems we have. Money is not exactly the problem, but what it engenders in our society, and that is avarice and the brutal exploitation of others to get more money. Money is intrinsically related to the evil actions man is capable of.
The human relationship to money is what has become toxic. You add a fuckton more humanity back to it, and create the checks and balances against the currently sociopathic elites, then maybe we could still do it with money. Like I said before, I don't care if somebody has 14 zeros in the bank account while the average is 5.
Just as long as that 5 is livable.
Ultimately, money is an economy based on fear. The fear of not having money, and then becoming without while everyone else watch's you die in the street. It's based on fear, not worthy of the human spirit, and I strongly believe that it would possible to live in an economy that doesn't fundamentally operate on fear.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.