The U.S. medical system is too creaky. Beaurocrats run it, doc’s have little say in the day to day management of it. There is no relation between what you do, how you price it, and how you are re-embursed. None. I can spend two minutes on diagnosing a cyst, and two hours working up a difficult melanoma case, and still, I have to charge the same code. What the hospital gets paid for said charge depends on what the insurance company feels like paying. And I am in one of the most litiginous areas of pathology. Lots of money wasted on trying to get insurance to pay the bill – lots of waste and inefficiency.

I’ve said for some time now that we in the US need a better business model. The medicine’s good – the system is inefficient as heck.

Good for the Indian doctors who are setting up these hospitals – competition is always the best thing.