I think Trump said at the debate last night that we are selling a lot of our "breathers" to other countries, so there may not be a shortage of "breathers" in Europe. Do you know the current stats on that?
I'm think I remember reading that the government payment to the hospitals to treat a COVID patient was something like $19,000, and if the patient needed a ventilator the amount was $27,000. Something like that anyway. Do you know how much it costs to treat a COVID patient in the various countries in Europe so we can make a comparison of health care costs? Just based on my experience of staying in the hospital, and being charged an extraordinary amount for every Q-tip and band-aid, not to mention that box of Kleenex they sent home with me, I think it is probably more expensive in the US. Honest to God, the nurse came in about eleven times a day with one of those bar code readers and was shooting it at everything in sight. Not sure the use of a ventilator is the culprit.
Well, I was trying to make a point. AFter reading an article on how some European hospitals are short beds, ICU's, and equipment, it seemed that generally, there doesn;t seem as much infrastructure in medicine as in America. I know when it comes to MRI's for example, we have many times the number as Europe and Canada.
This not only adds to the cost of equipment, it encourages more tests and higher medical costs as fees for tests are very expensive. Maybe America's higher expenditures in equipment, hospitals, etc, will pay off with Covid if it decreases deaths through better medical services. Death rates in NY and Long Island hospitals have gone down from around 27% to 3% partly due to better procedures. I don't know if that relates to more and better equipment. We'll have to wait until the future to see all the elements that helped.
