Healthcare among the worlds

[PsiTraveller]

Page 6 of the core book has earth at TL 7 or 8 "At the time of writing, humanity is currently somewhere between TL 7 and TL 8."

Has anyone had any players come up with the idea of offering advanced healthcare as a means of running a business? My players have an autodoc on their ship, and a TL 14 trained person with medical care. They are visiting lower tech planets and are able to offer a range of healing that the natives simply do not have access to, generally speaking.

I looked at the Starport book from 1st edition and Class A ports have autodocs and advanced medical facilities. It got me thinking that on a planet such as ours a rich athlete or actor who got a spinal injury might want to go to the Starport and get a new spine, clone grown, or nerve repair or whatever advanced treatment is available. Even something like a broken bone can be rapidly healed with Medicinal Slow, 500 Credits, and a cryoberth.

Firefly pointed out the differences between medical care and the cost of drugs on the outer planets. Simon was able to keep the crew inoculated and healthy despite their dangerous profession. It could be a good source of income for a ship, and the doctor to offer the best care on the planet.

On another note: Just how healthy will a TL 12 person be? How pretty will they all be if they can have injuries, maladies and diseases taken care of with panacea injections and viral gene splicing? In my fanfic I have a story of a new crew member recruited from a TL 8 world saving his money for the entire trip. The ship gets to a TL 14 planet and he is encouraged to spend his money on a full medical check. The end result is excellent skin, teeth, hair and nutritional supplements aimed at keeping him healthy.

What TL would Gattaca be?

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

 

[Solomani666]

What TL would Gattaca be?

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

I would rate Gattaca at a solid TL-8 with a few TL-9 technologies.

I like your "Doctors Without Starports" idea.
Good idea for an adventure considering the inevitable kidnapping that is bound to occur.

 

[wbnc]

I have had a character buy off an entire pirate gang by providing medical treatment to the crews of "questionable" ships without questions being asked...like how you ended up with that bullet in your leg. Once the group finally figured out that medical care was at a premium in some places tey started buying a few pallets of extra medical supplies and the odd used auto-doc to set u a makeshift clinic when they were on down time planetside.

somewhere like say....Plaven where there is almost nothing a ships med bay is better than a first aid kit and some homebrew alcohol.

and a doctor that will be gone in a few days so he won't be making gossip at the bar, or filling out reports to the local law enforcement is a strong selling point.

 

[Infojunky]

I like your "Doctors Without Starports" idea.

In one iteration of our Traveller game recently we played the crew of a Ambulance ship, Both transporting patiants and providing local "High Tech" medical assistance... It was an amusing set of adventures...

 

[-Daniel-]

I loved reading the "Sector General" series of books for this very reason, a different way to approach adventures in space. They had one specific books called "Ambulance Ship" that was quite interesting. For someone wishing to center a campaign on a medical rather than military background, these books might offer some great ideas and inspiration.

 

[phavoc]

Having autodoc tech available makes for an interesting point. Would pirates and such actually need a doctor anymore, or could they simply use the autodoc to patch up the crews? anything else would most likely have the crew ending up being stuffed in a cryo pod for possible eventual work at a real hospital. Or a spacing.. depending on the crew...

 

[AndrewW]

anything else would most likely have the crew ending up being stuffed in a cryo pod for possible eventual work at a real hospital. Or a spacing.. depending on the crew...

No sense wasting a perfectly good body like that. Fill it with some gas, set it loose in an escape pod wait for a ship to 'rescue' it and pull it aboard, then pounce once the crew is taken out with the gas.

 

[dragoner]

I'm surprised no one here has read the Medship series, there is even a medship by FASA to do an adventure with.

 

[-Daniel-]

I'm surprised no one here has read the Medship series, there is even a medship by FASA to do an adventure with.

There is a compilation that has all four books in it, if anyone is interested in it.

https://www.amazon.com/Med-Ship-Saga/dp/0743435559

 

[Condottiere]

Bodies have a resale value, dead or otherwise.

 

[-Daniel-]

Bodies have a resale value, dead or otherwise.

Reminds me of an old TV show where they find this walk-in freezer filled with parts in what looked like Tupperware. The guy was harvesting parts from cadavers being sent for cremation and selling the parts on the Black Market.

 

[alex_greene]

You might find that ships carrying mostly food supplies and usable high grade med tech tends to fetch higher premiums on backwards colony worlds, which is why any pirates in my campaigns go for merchants which carry those sorts of supplies.

Heavy metals are nice to trade in, but when your customers are people who want to not die of simple childhood diseases, you'll be surprised how much they value breathing over their creds. They can get more money afterwards. They can't get their lives back.

I did something along those lines in either Cosmopolite or in my old (and now obsolete) Signs & Portents two-part article. Basically, it was a riff on the Russian Flying Eye Doctors, where a group of medics pooled together their considerable resources to refit an old Type R subbie as a flying hospital.

I also threw in a variation where, inadvertently, the Travellers found that their "hospital" was actually more like a flying massage parlour.

It's not only doable - I encourage the Travellers to think outside the box like this. Imagine them signing up to a Type M Liner or a Type Y Yacht refitted as a hospice ship giving handfuls of dying kids a Wish Upon A Star experience. Your crew might not stay with the ship very long, but the experience would change their outlooks on life and death.

 

[Condottiere]

Add sexual surrogates, and you can offer full spectrum services.

 

[Golan2072]

Higher technology would probably make medicine much more efficient - a TL13 Autodoc could probably offer better services than a fully-equipped TL7 hospital campus. At a high enough TL you have miniaturized, automated tools with enormous versatility and the ability to synthesize many pharmaceuticals locally.

However, I can easily see the Imperial Guild of Physicians receiving Imperial protection, that is, legal limitations on what an Autodoc can do so that you will need a "proper" doctor to perform a wide range of medical measures which otherwise would be automated*. Illegally-modified Autodocs capable of performing a wider range of activities would sell very well on the black market, of course.

* Alternatively, they will have an Imperial-mandated monopoly on the manufacturing of Autodocs with dividends paid to all Members in Good Standing.

 

[-Daniel-]

Higher technology would probably make medicine much more efficient - a TL13 Autodoc could probably offer better services than a fully-equipped TL7 hospital campus. At a high enough TL you have miniaturized, automated tools with enormous versatility and the ability to synthesize many pharmaceuticals locally.

However, I can easily see the Imperial Guild of Physicians receiving Imperial protection, that is, legal limitations on what an Autodoc can do so that you will need a "proper" doctor to perform a wide range of medical measures which otherwise would be automated*. Illegally-modified Autodocs capable of performing a wider range of activities would sell very well on the black market, of course.

* Alternatively, they will have an Imperial-mandated monopoly on the manufacturing of Autodocs with dividends paid to all Members in Good Standing.

Or I could see units being available or not based on where you are and how much money you are willing to pay. A major corp would not just "not sell" because some doctors on core don't want them to. Just like some meds require the right documents here in the Us but can be bought on the streets of Mexico with almost nothing document wise.

If the money to be made outweighs the money the doctors pay the corp to not sell, they will find a way. Tie up the doctors in court for decades while they sell their little hearts out. Short term the doctors might hold back some advances, but long term the desire to make money will win out. It does every time.