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Guest Post: How To Cut America's Healthcare Spending By 50%
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
How To Cut America's Healthcare Spending By 50%
The current sickcare system is financially unsustainable. Physician correspondent "Ishabaka" proposes practical ways we could cut costs by 50% while improving care.
Since sickcare is fiscally and demographically unsustainable, it will eventually be replaced by something that is sustainable. Our only choice is to either let the current system collapse and then start pondering sustainable alternatives, or begin an honest discussion of sustainable alternatives before sickcare implodes in insolvency.
In the spirit of openly discussing a variety of sustainable, systemic healthcare options, we present this essay by correspondent "Ishabaka" M.D. on how to cut our current (18% of GDP) healthcare spending by 50%. Ishabaka received training in Canada, so he has direct knowledge of the Canadian system from the inside. Having spent decades as a primary-care and emergency room physician in the U.S., he also has deep knowledge of the U.S. sickcare system from the point of view of a care provider to under-served (i.e. uninsured) Americans.
Here is Ishabaka's essay:
Some time ago I told you how I could cut health care costs in half and provide every American with the healthcare they need (not necessarily the healthcare they want!). Here goes. Some of my points might seem drastic, but we are facing a drastic problem.
1. Immediately introduce national healthcare for all Americans ( and ONLY American citizens and H1B visa holders ) which will be paid for by an immediate TAX INCREASE.
2. Like Canada, this will cover all doctor's office, E.R., clinic, hospital etc. visits. Unlike Canada (the biggest mistake Canada made), there WILL BE co-pays for routine office visits and visits to the E.R. that are NOT serious emergencies.
Here is why Canada's no co-pay system is wrong. A family physician friend of mine in London, Ontario had a family in her practice. The little girl got an ear ache, with a low-grade fever on a Saturday. The mother took her to an E.R. and got an antibiotic prescription. On Sunday the girl was feeling better with no fever, but the mother took her to a walk in clinic "Just to make sure everything was all right". The doctor said "Yes". On Monday the mother took her daughter, who was now feeling fine, to my friend's practice "Just to make sure the other doctors knew what they were doing". The ear infection was cured.
That was two totally unnecessarily visits the Canadian tax payers paid for, and the first visit should have been to the walk-in clinic, which is much cheaper than the E.R.
Co-pays have to be meaningful - not too much to dissuade patients from necessary care, but enough to make them think. That should apply to all aspects of healthcare.
Let me give you another example - right now, where I live, a basic ambulance ride (no drugs or treatments) is about $500. I have had a patient come in by ambulance for a TOOTHACHE. The paramedics should be able to say "No" and not worry about being sued.
3. Like Britain, every person will choose a primary care provider, who will provide their primary care. Referral to a specialist will require a request for consultation from the primary care doctor. In the U.S., there are no restrictions on seeing specialists who charge twice as much or more than a primary care doctor. I saw a guy who went to an ear nose and throat doctor to have his ear wax cleaned - a procedure any nurse can do!
4. Immediate tort reform. Not quite sure of the details, but I estimate that probably 50% of the tests done in the U.S. are to C.Y.A. against malpractice suits, and are medically unnecessary. What would probably be best would be a no-fault system. You are injured by the health care system, you are compensated a REASONABLE amount for your injuries, regardless of who was or wasn't at fault. You aren't really injured, you get nothing. This could be handled by arbitration panels which would take the lawyers out of the system.
Right now, it takes on average $50,000 to defend a doctor against a frivolous lawsuit - the doctor wins, but still $50,000 is down the drain. On the other hand I was involved in a suit where a patient died due to real negligence on the part of two doctors and the family lost the lawsuit and got nothing. This would cut malpractice premiums by at least 1/2 and drastically reduce the amount of testing.
5. We spend WAY TOO MUCH money on end of life care. We have to get together as a society and decide what we will and will not provide for end of life patients, and that doesn't just mean cancer patients, it also applies to end of life heart failure patients, emphysema patients, etc.
For example, a reputable study in The New England Journal of Medicine showed 0% survival from treatment of cardiac arrest on kidney failure patients on dialysis. Zero. I have had to do numerous "codes" on kidney failure patients on dialysis - they all died. A code costs thousands of dollars. The first code I ever ran was on a 38 year-old accountant having an acute heart attack. In the old days (1960's) I would have simply pronounced him dead. He lived, and was FINE, no brain damage from loss of oxygen, walked out of the hospital a week later and went back to work. That was money well spent. We don't have infinite money. We need to get the most bang for the buck.
The $90,000 chemo drug that extended terminal prostate cancer patients' lives by 6 months should NOT have been paid for by taxpayers' money. Patients who want it should have to pay for it themselves.
6. We have GOT to get the gold-bricks off disability and workmen's comp. If we did, we could put the truly disabled and injured-on-the-job folks in suites in the Ritz Carlton with 24 hour nursing and rehab care! It is mind boggling to see how many gold-bricks there are.
I really liked the system in Ontario, Canada. Any primary care doctor could certify a patient as disabled or off work for up to two months. After that, the patients had to be seen by a panel of specialists paid by the government. They had NO INCENTIVE to either certify the patients as disabled/unable to work or not. To make these specialists truly independent they should be salaried - and the government CANNOT fire them except for the reasons that would cause them to lose their license (sex with a patient, drug addiction, etc.).
7. All advertising immediately banned. We go back to the 70's. No doctor, hospital, clinic, drug company, can advertise to patients. Period.
8. All new drugs have to be compared to existing drugs (if there is a similar existing drug). ONLY if they prove superior to existing drugs should the FDA approve them. Every time a new drug is invented, all the other pharma companies copy it, change a molecule or two, and then study it compared to PLACEBO. We end up with 20 drugs that do the same thing. It's ridiculous.
9. Get rid of fraud and abuse - for real. This means doctors AND patients. You get caught committing health care fraud you pay in fines THREE TIMES what you stole, and spend a minimum of ONE YEAR IN JAIL OR PRISON. This is crucial - fraudsters MUST be made to do time.
Everybody's charges get audited by an independent panel. You charge for patients you didn't see, or wheelchairs you never provided to patients - you go to jail. It must be recognized that nobody is perfect, mistakes happen. A doctor accidentally charges for a patient they didn't see once in five years is not fraud - it's a mistake.
In the same way, patients caught "doctor shopping" for narcotics and selling them pay three times what they made and go to jail for a year. Same for patients selling blood pressure pills (this is a big racket for Medicaid patients) - doctors are usually suspicious of healthy looking patients seeking narcotics, but see a Medicaid patient who is on expensive blood pressure pills, says they ran out and can't contact their doctor - they will usually get a prescription. You can make a nice income on welfare doing this.
10. Eliminate health insurance companies, except for people who want to buy extraordinary coverage like for the $90,000 prostate cancer drugs. Do like we did in Ontario - fee for service with the fees paid by taxpayers via a Department of Health, the fees negotiated annually by either state or national medical associations.
11. Electronic medical records THAT WORK. Right now we are in the "pre-internet" era of EMR. There are a thousand different ones, they are very expensive, doctors pay the full amount, and NONE OF THEM CAN TALK TO EACH OTHER. I worked for a long time in an ER in Florida in an area where elderly people from the north came to winter. They would get sick all the time and come in not knowing their allergies, meds, or medical history. It was a nightmare. If I hear "I'm on a little white pill for blood pressure" one more time I may scream!
With a national standard EMR I could find everything I needed to know with a few mouse clicks. It will be a disaster if this info is stolen or hacked, so the punishment must be severe - TEN YEARS in prison WITHOUT PAROLE, and a hefty fine. No excuses. Set up something with Interpol and the UN so this applies to all countries. And, since EMRs would benefit patients, doctors, and the entire country, doctors and hospitals pay half, the government pays the other half.
12. Get rid of the bad docs/nurses/hospitals/ etc. I'll just speak for the docs here - there are two kinds of bad docs - ones who are bad usually due to lack of knowledge or drugs/alcohol but WANT to be good, and those who are bad and don't care. The second ones are immediately banned from healthcare for life. The first group gets extensive education/rehab, whatever they need. Then close monitoring. In my experience, most of them will turn out to be good docs. A few won't, and get banned from healthcare for life.
13. Finally, immediately outlaw high fructose corn syrup and foods made with trans fats. We know they are poisonous. Again, minimum one year prison for the CEO and board of directors of any company that violates this law, whether it's a mom and pop shop or Kellogs or McDonalds.
That's it, except for a few tweaks. Fifty percent cheaper, everyone gets what they need.
Thank you, Ishabaka. Here is a story Ishabaka sent recently that highlights the consequences of fast-food on human health:
This is an article from the July 2, 2012 issue of Circulation, the journal of The American Heart Association. It shows how frequency of eating fast food per week increases the risk of heart attack - up to 80% if eaten four or more times per week! This is a highly respected medical journal, not some crackpot website.
Western-Style Fast Food Intake and Cardio-Metabolic Risk in an Eastern (Asian) Country.
Conclusion: "Western-style fast food intake is associated with increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and of chronic heart disease (CHD) mortality in an eastern (Asian) population."
* * *
And this from Zero Hedge - want to live to 100? Here's how:
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I'm somewhat confused by #9. Isn't it customary to reward fraudsters?
Another post of "If I was the Soviet Commissar of Health the world would be so great comrade" Thanks but no thanks, love the pay a tax but they decide the level of care. How about people take care of themselves, or does that not fit into the great collective? This is about as valid as "We tax you, and buy bullets. You get sick and cannot produce to pay the slave master, we shoot you"
In other words, Nanny State + Death Panels.
Go back to Canada, you authoritarian a-hole.
my thoughts exactly! up arrow from me. I just read the first line about more taxes and knew the rest would be bullshit!
The -1's you got were from people who support theft.
I read it as "pay tax" instead of "pay insurance premiums".
Is it so hard to see how much money you would save personally (thousands of $ a year, personally)? You pay more taxes but you (or your employer) no longer needs to pay twice as much for private insurance... Don't confuse what the article proposes with the BS solution offered by Obamacare, which basically increases taxes to further enrich the corporations.
It's interesting how people seem to not understand that government initiatives currently fail so miserably because the politicians are incredibly corrupt and ill-willed. It isn't because the 'government solution' itself is inherently bad or worse than a private solution. Fixing corruption is not impossible either: cut the money out of politics and replace the MSM with independent media (the later at least being something that is happening by itself).
If you have any understanding whatsoever of markets, you should understand how bad things are for the consumer when the provider is either a monopoly or oligopoly. Privatizing water or electricity typically means 20% higher costs and worse service (proven time and time again), so why this unshakable faith that the private option is always better?
National HC system the answer?? Sorry. I think NOT! I have a MUCH better idea. It's called pay-as-you-go for all medical services, supplemented by a "catastrophic" insurance coverage to protect against the exhorbitant cost of emergency or lfe-threatening healthcare. Then have the government actually do something for us (citizens) and provide an "exchange" that provides a clear view as to what doctors and hospitals are charging for particular services, so people have something to "shop" against. Also, a system of rating and feedback so that people can know more about the medical practitioners that they are considering using would be helpful. In addition, employers set up 529 plans for their employees to contribute to and allow funds to be carried over into the future so everyone can save for their needs. Lastly, TORT REFORM!!! Nuf said.
You yell Tort Reform now, but when you need it then you will bitch about there not being any justice.
The ability to sue and recieve compensation for damages brought on to you by another is both right and necessary, however it has been carried to the extreme with punative damages.
Actually, I'm not sure how you can question a jury's verdict... I think that's largely a function of the wealth gap, not an inherent problem in the framework of damages.
There is a reason numerous states have constitutions that forbid laws limiting damage awards... I'll keep it short by saying that since the inception of liability, there have been attempts to limit it (hint: tort "reform" is an antiquated concept by decades if not a century+)
I'll also ask what tort reform on punitive damages is supposed to accomplish when the SCOTUS has already put a limit on punitives for due process purposes... (typically less than 10x compensatory).
Everyone talks about tort reform like it's something that needs to happen... IT'S ALREADY HAPPENED!!! and you insurance premiums didn't go down... find another scape goat.
Sorry, but you sound like an ambulance chaser or else your married to one.
Similarly, it seems to me that we need to change the way we view medical insurance. Can you imagine if we viewed our auto insurance in the same way? You don't go to your Auto insurer to cover fill-ups, tires, oil changes, etc...but that's how we view medical insurance. Insurance, by definition, is simply the transference of risk. [hopefully in the most cost efficient manner possible] But damn we have let the concept of medical insurance take on a whole new meaning.
1. outsource all the prision and correction facilities to third world countries.
2. Audit all the medical insurance company for medical doctors and hospitals
3. Audit all the medical and health service providers
4. Audit all pharmasudical companies.
"pharmasuicidal" companies?
I like it...
they are audited... clawbacks occur quite a bit, but generally it's simply a "going through the motions" sort of affair... and, like wallstreet, with the only penalty being recoupment of fees, no one is incentivized to quit stealing.
Hey Doc..GO FUCK YOURSELF!! Tyler time to tighten up the editorial review! Next we'll be getting essays by Nancey Pelosi on the benefits of forced sterilization for libertarians.
yea! How dare we allow different view points and perspectives on to this web site! Doesn't Tyler know what is right!!?!?!?
This post is so unbelievably ridiculous that I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start by trying to make up for the time I wasted reading this clap trap. Why does this guy insist on looking to the state for all the answers ? I've read my last Charles Hugh Smith post, he and Simon Black are a bad word.
CHS had a few good posts a couple of years ago...not so much lately.
help
Will never work. USA is not Europe.
Americans don't want to be taken care of by the government.
Americans want the freedom to eat till they explode.
Just cancel disability for all obesity-related illnesses and America will be healthy - and working! - in no time cause right now the fastest way to a life of entitlement is getting FAT.
Damn, I love it! Imagine that!
- free to decide everything for yourself.
- free to enjoy/bare/suffer the consequences.
How about a free market in medicine? Remove all federal regulation on medical treatment, and let the market decide? I, for one, would like to be able to get house calls from basic practicioners, as they had in the US before the AMA took over everything and gave us our current fascist medical system.
This is truly the solution. Rates, skills and reputation would all be set by the market. However, for there to be a truly free market in medicine there must be a free market in medical knowledge. No restrictions on medical students in schools (schools need to be free market and not "degree granting gatekeepers") etc... unfortunately, what you propose requires a paradigm shift in our entire society.
In the past 4 years I have 'won' every local magazine article that ranks docs in my speciality. It is all bullshit. Yes I have a great staff and do good work but measuring the skill of a physician is not possible. Much of the reason for liking a doctor is his manner. This can be faked by any sociopath. I would have to review 100 charts to see if a competitor was 'good'. Listing training, boards and other aspects of skill is a start but it is not going to be possible to achieve meaningful assessment of skill unless it is obvious to the bad side....sometimes that is fairly simple.
Worst post on ZH of all time..hands down..
Point 1 ok
Point 2 ok, except co-pay
Point 3 worth considering
Point 4 only ok if no-fault compensation required and set high enough to compensate for pain&suffering
Point 5 worth considering
Point 6 not ok to presume "gold bricking"
Point 7 ok
Point 8 worth considering
Point 9 not ok to presume "fraud"
Point 10 OK writ large
Point 11 ok
Point 12 not ok to presume "bad"
Point 13 OK writ larger
Not a bad plan; very much worth considering.
Point 1 "Pay more taxes" Kiss my ass and pay more taxes if you want to I don't!
All other points invalid due to point 1.
Here's a system for medical records: I control my medical records. When my doctor needs to see them I give him permission to look. No copies.
That's great and all but I think electronic medical records are a requirement of Obamacare.
Electronic is good. Have it all on a thumb drive, with suitable encryption, including one-use decryption keys. All records are are cryptographicly signed with the doctor's private key.
Why not have your own records sealed with your own key? What happens, in your version, if the doctor dies and no one knows his key? Or if he is on vacation?
Some people do have their medical records on a mini dvd, flash drive or some other storage device. That way they have baseline EKGs and other crucial tests for comparison along with their medical histories, prescription pill lists, etc.
It is generally intended for informational use in case they need care while they are out of town or if they ever need to seek care while their primary doctors aren't available.
Doctors can opt out of electronic records but will see a 1% decrease in reimbursement.
I am against them. The federal government will only put that info to bad use.
Exactly. The electronic records requirement is not meant to be of use to the physician (although it may be helpful) or to the patient (although it may be useful to some who want to have control over their records). It is meant for reporting and compliance to government standards of care. If a physician doesn't comply, he/she will first see lowered reimbursement rates. Supposedly after that there are other means to get them to comply to required standards of care.
Say hello to enforced standards of care.
National, standard electronic medical records would be a huge help. Here's an example:
A person wearing perscription glasses lives in California, goes to Florida, glasses break. You go to get a pair in Florida, you have to set up records there, have a new eye exam, etc.
If they had shared records and the laws were setup to use it properly, you could just get the new glasses without the new unnecessary examination.
This is actually a variation of what happened to me; I had my own prescription information on paper in my wallet, but Florida requires a Florida record with an exam within the last 3 years.
In your common sense assumption, the shared electronic records would benefit you. Yes, that would be a huge help.
That does not mean the state laws will change to accomodate you even though you have said electronic records any more than if you carry your handwritten opthalmologist's prescription with you when you travel. The state of Florida will still likely require an eye exam by a doctor licensed by that state within the stated time frame.
!!! BULLSEYE !!!
Except I suggest YOU keep copies somewhere.
That we may live to look back on this cultural paradox of suicidal aquiescense, of GMO fast food crimes against humanity, with morbid nostalgia and, ultimately ~ horror, becomes less and less amusing.
Lab rats and transfats and the free will of a droned nation ... Born in the USA!!!
the junk troll algo is in full force today
Wow! I actually approve of almost everything here. I'm surprised. I thought the ZH solution to healthcare would be "fuck the weak. let them die".
the only addition I would make would be to allow generic drugs manufacturing after 5 years.
Have you heard of “Pay to Delay”?
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/
-- According to an overview of industry data released by the staff of the Federal Trade Commission, in Fiscal Year 2011, pharmaceutical companies continued a recent anticompetitive trend of paying potential generic rivals to delay the introduction of lower-cost prescription drug alternatives for American consumers.
The FTC staff report found that drug companies entered into 28 potential pay-for-delay deals in FY 2011 (October 1, 2010, through September 30, 2011). The figure nearly matches last year's record of 31 deals and is higher than any other previous year since the FTC began collecting data in 2003. Overall, the agreements reached in the latest fiscal year involved 25 different brand-name pharmaceutical products with combined annual U.S. sales of more than $9 billion.
"While a lot of companies don't engage in pay-for-delay settlements, the ones that do increase prescription drug costs for consumers and the government each year," said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "Fortunately, Congress has the opportunity to fix this problem through the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- and save the government and American taxpayers billions of dollars."
Will Congress do the right thing?
"fuck the weak. let them die".
That sounds like the Soviet solution
http://mises.org/daily/3650
"After 70 years of socialism, 57 percent of all Russian hospitals did not have running hot water, and 36 percent of hospitals located in rural areas of Russia did not have water or sewage at all. Isn't it amazing that socialist government, while developing space exploration and sophisticated weapons, would completely ignore the basic human needs of its citizens?
The appalling quality of service is not simply characteristic of "barbarous" Russia and other Eastern European nations: it is a direct result of the government monopoly on healthcare and it can happen in any country. In "civilized" England, for example, the waiting list for surgeries is nearly 800,000 out of a population of 55 million. State-of-the-art equipment is nonexistent in most British hospitals. In England, only 10 percent of the healthcare spending is derived from private sources."and yet Cuba has longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the US. 'splain please.
Their cane sugar is better than our corn syrup, which = not so many fatties.
no Cheetos?
Very few people driving cars, so they get lots of excercise walking / cycling everywhere. No heavy industry and probably very little plastics and other carcinogens messing them up. I assume much less preservatives in their foods.
The weather and lifestyle are likely major factors, rather than their medical services. Let's compare apples to apples, shall we?
USA Life Expectancy: 78.2 years
Cuba life expectancy: 79 years
Florida life expectancy: 79.7 years.
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/florida-life-expectancy
As for infant mortality, I'm going to guess it is the toxins that causes America to have ~1 per 1000 higher than Cuba, but it could be their healthcare, IDK.
Most countries--Cuba included--don't count as live births those that don't live 24 hours. The US counts all births, except stillbirths, as a live birth. The US also goes to extraordinary lengths to keep premature births alive. Creates apples and oranges when comparing life expectancy statistics.
As opposed to America, where are hospitals are nice and shiny, but the poor die outside unable to afford teatment.
since new drugs cost a billion dollars to bring to market your solution of a 5 year wait would result in higher drug prices or fewer new drugs brought to market.
to put it into perspective, all I am asking is a return to the situation before 1994.
Patents are utterly unethical. Period. There INHERENTLY CANNOT BE justification to prohibit any human being from applying his understanding of reality, no matter how he obtained that understanding (other than sneaking into a top secret lab and stealing it). Once a product is on the market, there cannot be an ethical way to stop others from applying knowledge they gained by studying reality, including their product. Just because someone mails a patent application 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months or 2 years before someone else CANNOT ethically reduce or eliminate the right of every human being to apply everything they know.
As an aside (if you're about to complain), everyone who creates a product has free access and free use of ALL knowledge and ALL inventions that came before. So don't cry big alligator tears for all those poor starving inventors. And as a disclaimer, for most of my life I've been a full-time self-employed inventor. So I say this even though it may well work against my personal interest (though in my view, honesty is more valuable than artificially enhanced profits).
As an aside, copyright is different. That is simply a voluntary agreement between the author/seller of a book and the buyer, in which the buyer agrees not to make copies --- but does not agree he won't lend the book to others.
The FACT is, doctors are prevented from giving a great many very effective natural herbs to their patients due to laws, regulations and knowledge the artificial drug companies will trash their careers unless they prescribe their [mostly but not always] vastly inferior poisons.
How would you promote investment in research and developement in a patent-free world? Would all research have to be publicly funded?
You want to make a better widget, so you spend $100 million on research, then you make 100 million widgets at a cost of $1 a piece, so your total per-unit cost is $2.
I take your design and I make 100 million widgets at $1 per piece cost, and I sell them for $1.50 per widget, less than your cost per unit. My widget is identical to yours, since I just copied it exactly. Now you go bankrupt and I make all the money.
How do I promote research and development? Are you serious? Did you not read that I've spent my entire life performing research and development on my own dime? And without resorting to fraudulant mechanisms to prevent competitors from competing with the products I developed?
You mention an absurdly limited portion of a complete situation, then pretend what you mention is the entirety of reality. The fact is, reality and human behavior (if unconstrained) are enormously rich and dynamic. In an "anything goes" environment, the quantity, quality and variety of innovation would absolutely blow your mind. Without the manipulations imposed by government and made possible FOR THE BENEFIT OF LARGE CORPORATIONS by government, most humans would be living elsewhere in this solar system by now, and possibly on our way beyond this solar system. And our lives would be fabulously better in unlimited ways.
That anyone today can even IMAGINE giving extra powers to large corprations (to limit and thwart competition) somehow furthers innovation... is stunning. It shows how narrow human minds can be.
I am sure you believe what you're saying, but please take a look at your comment and consider how many other elements come into play in innovation. Just to start, to take the simplest and most obvious fact, consider this. If you put something new on the market, it takes time for others to develop, manufacture and introduce their product on the market. By that time, since you have the most experience with your field/product (your "new invention"), you can often be ready to introduce your "next generation" offering, keeping you in the lead. Furthermore, you are already recognized as the leader in whatever new field or market you created, and will retain a significant following simply because of that fact (your loyal customers will not abandon you, if you treated them well).
Who do you think can tie up "little guys" in patent court if they wish, on TOTALLY bogus claims? That's right --- the big guys. It doesn't even matter if they know they have no case... they will slow you down, suck all your money from product development to lawyers, and eventually drain you dry. ANY legal structure, whether patents or otherwise, assures innovation is KILLED or SLOWED. And that's a fact.
If you want to live the good life in a clean, comfortable futuristic world... leave everyone ALONE. Stop giving the predators mechanisms to stop us, slow us down, thwart us, drain our resources.
However, all the above should be irrelevant. It is utterly and inherently unethical and immoral to prevent a human being from applying his knowledge to support his life. Think about what you are actually saying! Your mind is your core, crucial, fundamental tool. Your mind is what tells your hands, feet and limbs what to do, how to produce, how to survive, how to live. To claim that you or anyone else (including a pack of predators DBA "government" or some large "corporation") has any right to PREVENT any individual from living his life by THE central, fundamental means of survival (exercizing his mind, and acting upon it), is advocacy of absolute, complete, utter slavery and totalitarianism. To say a human cannot "see, understand, produce" and then enjoy/benefit-from the consequences of his thought and action is a most VILE EVIL. On the face of it.
Anyone who claims that "arriving at the patent office 5 minutes later", or "having your patent application randomly be lower on the stack of incoming mail" somehow creates anything remotely like a legitimate, justifiable excuse to DESTROY YOU, is absurd. And yes, it is quite possible you will be destroyed. A great many inventors invest "everything" to develop and introduce their gizmo. By preventing them from taking advantage of what they've invented and developed, you are destroying [some of] them, and definitely greatly harming them. And why? Because someone else was also working on a similar advancement or device? That is some reason to destroy one and give exclusivity to the other? Do you really believe such nonsense when you sit down and think carefully about the issue? Really? I certainly hope not.
The fact is, patents cannot be ethical for the reasons I mentioned. The fact that patents also greatly hold back human advancement is interesting and perhaps important, but the real issue is simple. People have a 100% right to observe reality, reflect on the nature of reality, invent new configurations of reality that have beneficial properties or aspects, and take actions to produce products based upon that most natural of all human activities --- productive activity.
PS: I won't even mention the cases I know about personally where large corporations have the government unilaterally "loose" or "close" or "abandon" patent applications made by small fry. What you do by supporting patents is to assure predators rule earth forever.
Is your solution to the problem of copycats, that if you keep your knowledge secret long enough, you can bring your product to market before a competitor, so you can recoup your R&D costs?
It seems to me that a large part of your complaint with patents have more to do with corruption within a central authority than with allowing the inventor a reasonable head-start on bringing his product to market.
Perhaps intellectual property should be registered in a more open and public manner. I don't believe any intellectual property rights, patent or copyright, should be allowed to be someone's exclusive right indefinitly; after a reasonable amount of time, most intellectual property should become commonly available for anyone to use.
By submitting online, all submissions can have a Universal Timecode Stamp, to prevent selective shuffling to favor one application over another.
No. I refuse to quibble about HOW we mistreat people or HOW we behave in unethical manners. I said what I meant to say, which is that every human being has an inherent right to operate his brain and move his limbs in productive ways... and is attached to the goods he produced by the nature of reality - in this case causality as applied to human actions.
It simply CANNOT be legitimate for ANY human being to stop ANY human being from having or applying knowledge, performing productive actions, and trading goods he produces with others.
THERE CAN NOT BE ANY LEGITIMATE BARRIERS TO HUMAN KNOWEDGE OR PRODUCTION.
The very nature of a modern productive human being is observation, thought, knowledge and taking productive actions. To STOP someone is to attempt to KILL them, even if they don't die every time (due to savings or charity or other factors). The way humans survive is to COMPREHEND REALITY and PRODUCE. It simply CANNOT be ethical or legitimate to insert ANY barriers in this process. I'd say "especially something as arbitrary as who happened to have an idea first", but that too is philosophically, ethically and factually irrelevant.
And it does not matter whether the scumbag trying to impede productive action by others supposedly works for some fictitious entity like a "central authority" or "corporation", or is simply a thug.
As a practical matter, if you make a product that has value, in almost every possible case the only thing competition can do is reduce the price you can charge to reach a certain level of business. Your products do not become "valueless" just because someone else introduces a product. And yes, of course you can keep your product development secret if you wish. Sometimes that is wise, and sometimes you get more bang for your buck by pre-announcing the getting some percentage of buyers to hold onto their pennies and wait until your product becomes available. That's your choice.
Every single supposed justification for patents is utterly bogus and disingenuous.
So higher taxes, more middlemen, more misguided drug regulation, one payor that can't seem to manage a post office, no advertising of what drugs do, ban foods that someone thinks are unhealthy overall with no regard for the individual, co-pays (which are going to turn into scheduling payments that doctors will require, and is itself a pricing mechanism which the left thinks is so evil), and get rid of "bad" doctors which will undoubtably be a terrible measurement based medicine that will be easily rigged.
Yeah, I can't understand why so many Americans say no to this.
How about you make it easier for Americans to save money to purchase the goods and services they want when they want them? Oh, but this may be a major expense that needs to be accounted for? Maybe, just maybe, people will take that into consideration as they live their own lives.
Just decide how much we as a society can afford for our healthcare then spend it sensibly.
How about I decide how to spend my own money and the socialist masterminds can go jump off a cliff
It is society's interests to offer BASIC healthcare to everyone who needs it. As much as it can reasonably afford. And pay for it through general taxation.
If you want additional health care of your personal choosing of course you can buy it yourself.
If it is in your interest to provide basic healthcare to others, you may do so.
If it is in others interest to provide basic healthcare to others, they may do so.
It is NEVER in my interest to FORCE OTHERS to do anything.
It is NEVER in my interest to be FORCED to do anything.
Get all predatory ideas OUT OF YOUR FREAKING HEAD.
Here's francis_sawyer plan to cut healthcare spending:
~~~
1. END ALL FOREIGN WARS ~ let gasoline prices rise, thereby incentivizing human ingenuity to morph towards more physical means to accomplish work
2. END BIG PHARMA ~ thereby getting people OFF the drug treadmill that is the foundation of poor health (or, at minimum, exacerbates it)
3. Fucking dismantle MONSANTO
4. END THE FED ~ who are the facilitators of all of the above
5. BUY LOCAL ~ support your local farmers
~~~
That's just a rough sketch... Add-ons are welcome...
Good list. I wish more people would put your #3 on their list, and understood how horrific the consequences of that company will become in the coming years and decades. And I do mean horrific.
I would add: end all fictions, including:
predators DBA government
predators DBA corporations
predators DBA central banks
Once stripped of the cover of those fictions, we can treat predators as predators treat others.
Central planning extraordinaire with the only thing even close to free market restraint would be the co-pays.
we defintely need to cut medical expenses, but if you chopped the healthcare budgets by even one percent the system would crash. Look around the large hospital admins are up to their eyes in property and debt.
We need a slow transition with things like price disclosure when ever possible and claw backs on iatrogenic heathcare costs, to keep drug companies and doc's honest.
Many hospitals have ventured into alternative care and it works, but it is never instigated because the hospitals can't charge enough. We need effect care to have increases in price, sound silly, but if you get paid less for fixing people you won't do it long
health care for H1B but not green cards? most H1B workers immediately begin applying for green cards... this is the modern form of indentured servitude. I think we should end the H1B visa program with our persistent double digit real unemployment. why do we need to import new workers? but anyway, I'm actually in favor of medical care for everyone sharing my water, air and space. I hardly want outbreaks of disease coming from the kitchen help and tomato pickers just because I have some righteous indignation about their presence on American soil. If you're human and you're here, we treat your communicable disease. It's a matter of public health, not "fairness" or "border control".
I'll congratulate the author presenting a solution that is more thoughtful than Obamacare, which is a joke.
I do have a lot of criticisms, however and I'll give two.
1. We need deregulation and free market reform applied to this sector. Single payer does nothing in this regard.
2. Medical misadventure (as the British say) is one of the leading causes of death in the US. A no fault system does nothing to change this situation. A good health care system must have risk management as a cornerstone. Bad doctors need to be removed. Profits must not be placed above safety.
>I'll congratulate the author presenting a solution that is more thoughtful
No, it is thoroughly immoral and misguided.
It's immoral because he's advocating theft (tax increase) and assaults against liberty (like banning advertising - an integral part of the market).
It's misguided because his solution isn't subject to market disciplines. He suggests nice-sounding ideas like "With a national standard EMR I could find everything I needed to know with a few mouse clicks", but he isn't willing to sustain the financial losses if such an investment proves to be wasteful.
We mostly agree on the real solution, I suspect. He did a better job than Obamacare. A low hurdle to be sure.
This article is an illustration of why doctors aren't the best people to implement a health care system. Concepts like "regulatory capture" escape them entirely - even though they damn well should be aware of it and how it's basically impossible to escape it as long as that power is in the hands of a government.
>This article is an illustration of why doctors aren't the best people to implement a health care system.
The best person to implement a socialist health care system is a mobster.
Because it boils down to pointing guns at people to get them to transfer property and perform services in ways that they wouldn't choose.
Healthcare is not expensive, it is the domestic purchasing power of the dollar that has suffered . Healthcare costs only reflect the actual rate of domestic dollar devaluation the dollar suffered over the last 30 years. The economic distortion attributable to the "strong dollar policy" and its affects in foreign produced goods manufactured at slave wages in third world economies. Healthcare is one thing that could not be outsourced to foreign producers making it the one accurate gauge of devaluation of the dollar.. A caesarian section hospital billing was $1500 in 1980, it is presently on the insurance pay schedule at about 17,000$. What changed the procedure, the staffing required, the facilities, the expertise? Gasolene has increased by a factor of 3 since 1980 while the Caesarian section went up over 10 fold. NO, the value of the dollar changed along with the reduced value of basically frozen domestic wages.
Socialized health care is not the solution to health care costs, it is the bill of goods presently being sold as a solution to a prior bill of goods that was thoroughly sold, "King Dollar" as Kudlow would say.
There is absolutely no price transpanrency in health care and that's part of the problem.
Most people don't even know what their care costs because they don't have to pay it. Either the government or an insurance company pays. There is a "list" price and then there's the price the hospital and doctor will accept. The latter is often a small fraction of the former.
I watched this happen, so I know it is true. I was with a wife and husband when they picked up the EXACT same prescription (same medication, same quantity, same dose) at the pharmacy. The wife had insurance, and her copay was $35. The husband had no insurance, and the full price was $15.
Anyone who buys conventional health insurance in the USSA is completely off their rocker stupid.
I do, however, consider high-deductable "catastrophic care" insurance to be "plausible" on the surface. But I don't have it, so it too might be bogus in some not inherently obvious ways.
utter bullshit
in the USA Medicare system and by extension MOST insurances pay specialists and primary care doc close to the exact amount!!!!!!
If a primary care doc does a level 4 service and a specialist does the same service level they are both paid for that service level.
I stopped reding after that 100% error.
I'll go back and mine for more smelly nuggets now that I have alerted you to the the fact that this guy is guessing at best. I have practiced in the USA for 40 plus years, what this guy says was NEVER true (maybe before Medicare (1965)). OH yeah a huge tax in the first paragraph too....this guy is just another lib who has all the answers for what to do with your money. get real....there are solutions that involve more patient control of the health care dollar but I doubt this guy could ever find them.
I love it when the health nuts come out of the woodwork, from your mouths to god's ear, assholes. Show me a double-blind peer-reviewed study of your magical cure-all diet with a sample size of at least 2,000 people tracked over 5 years, no self-report bullshit, control for all ingested substances including supplements, chewing gum, tap water, and air, and then we'll talk about how your soya is the miracle food that will let you reach 100 (because longevity is all that matters, right? Especially in a country with already top-heavy demographics which will only become more so in the next 30 years, nope living longer is the prime directive, even if at's the expense of your kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, fucking scum).
Yes, give us different laws to replace the new laws which replaced the old laws which replaced the older laws. That should work nicely.
Luck of the genetic lottery is the only certainty of good health.
Some people can eat anything and everything in sight and not gain a pound. Others can't even look at a picture of a steak without putting on 5 pounds. It is what it is.
Grains of truth, but not true.
Sentence #1: Great genes is very helpful, but does not eliminate accidents and "outliers". Therefore, please at least remove the word "certainty".
Sentence #2: True, but omits the fact that people CAN, and some DO, control their diet to match their genetics and proclivities.
Some problems as people have noted but by and large he is correct. Would add that anyone with a net liquid wealth of $1M or more is not allowed in Medicare. Same with Senators. Governments can be helpful to set standards and in the case of EMR, it would be good for someone to step in pick a winner and be done with it...all these competing systems add up to nothing but a country full of databases inaccessible to everyone else. End of life care has to be addressed. If you have the money to pour into staying alive in the last few years of your life, those in your immediate family are the only ones that will benefit. Give a $50K inflation adjusted threshold after 80 year old limit and the rest is up to you,your heirs and your reverse mortgage company.
OK, I'll just make my assets illiquid. Like put them into real estate.
You come up with a system, I'll figure out how to game it.
Funny how all the fat ass states are the ones who oppose socialized healthcare and probably the ones sucking the system dry.
You know what would be awesome, if we could create insurance where we didn't have to cover unhealthy fat people. Oh wait, we did. But those are now "preexisting conditions" that have to be covered.
"1. Immediately introduce national healthcare for all Americans ( and ONLY American citizens and H1B visa holders ) which will be paid for by an immediate TAX INCREASE."
FRAT. That's where I stopped reading.
"Give me (him, her, it, ect.) more power and we can do better." Heard it before. I'll pass, thanks.
Perhaps there was a day when any nurse could remove impacted earwax, but there is no way on Earth that I would let some teenager just off the plane from the Phillipines near my ears. The removal of impacted earwax is a delicate procedure that can cause permanent deafness if done improperly. Moreover, hearing loss may not be due to earwax accumulation alone, so follow-up testing may be required. Charles Hugh Smith is a drug-addled old hippie who proffers dangerous advice. If your hearing is impaired for any reason and safe home procedures do not work, the prudent thing to do is see a specialist, they exist for a reason.
Wouldn't cutting health care spending by 50% also cut health care profits by at least that much?
I'm not saying that's a bad thing...I'm just saying...it's a thing.
All sounds great but.. What about number 10?
10. Eliminate health insurance companies.....
I Just read that Aetna, the third-biggest U.S. health plan, agreed to buy Coventry Health Care for about $5.6 billion to increase its share of government business in Medicaid/Medicare.
Talk about TBTF.
These posts are great ideas perhaps but it seems, so sadly, just an illusion of truth.
Eat well my friends.
"9. Get rid of fraud and abuse - for real."
That's so sweet.
Right. I suppose we'll get predators DBA government to take care of that, right? Oh, wait! They are the ones who sponsor most fraud and abuse --- for real.
You're right. That's so sweet... as in "mercury-laced high-fructose corn syrup" sweet.
IVE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY:
ITS BETTER TO BURN OUT THAN TO FADE AWAY!
(happy halloween ladies)
dont eat poison? but 2+2=5... i dont even...
immediately introduce not eating and living in poison (food, ideas, or otherwise)
Isn't it predictable when someone trying to help another person is burned for their compassion and intelligence. Beat up the guy trying to save your life. That will work out well.
>someone trying to help
The offered "help" includes "increasing taxes", a euphemism for threatening to shoot people or put them in cages for not coughing up protection money. And there are like 99 more "helpful" ideas.
No thanks.
Maybe he can let the free market test some of his ideas (at least the non-violent ones). If they are "helpful", then he'll reap financial profits. But without facing market disciplines, we'll never know.
So why does a hip replacement cost $40 K in the USA and $10 K in a state of the art Singapore hospital, work performed by a US trained doctor? Why, you free-market freaks? Why? One more question....why?
Sorry, I don't know the answer. I don't know enough about that business.
Maybe you can answer, why does a bottle of water cost $1 in grocery store and $5 in a restaurant and $100 in the desert?
And why do these even questions matter? If you don't want something, don't pay for it. If you can't sell something, lower your price or give up.
Is it a world-renowned clinic that only does hip replacements? You can make more profit with lower margins, higher volumes if you specialize in specific treatments and actively advertise worldwide for your services. Just my guess.
They may also have greater protection against malpractise suits there (cheaper insurance, lower limits on the maximum you can be awarded, etc).
They may also have US trained doctors, and lots of locally trained nurses and technicians that make much lower wages.
...But we can't outlaw the poisonous food making everyone sick because this is America and it's a free country and the people are all free and allowed to put whatever they want into their bodies...Oh wait. Nevermind.
It is unethical and disingenuous to use the issue of Medicare as a government dependency program or soaring healthcare costs and implications of America as the welfare state without the accompanying truth of illegal immigration, the Obama giveaways and the incredible burden that immigration places on the system.
Art Cashin (On the New Normal's New Populism: 165 Million as State Dependents?) and Smith both leave out the incredible impact of illegal immigration and the legal immigration of a welfare class on the American system, regardless the criminality of the current healthcare industry; these people are legal welfare; they are brought in as welfare and immediately given supplemental government support of all kinds, creating a tremendous burden on Medicare/Medicaid and healthcare costs, HUD and housing, SNAP and IRS child credits, transportation and roads, education and schools, crime and prisons, wages and standard of living…
People need to understand that the non-producer sector of society is growing unbelievably due to immigration, not only to the yearly entry of millions into the country, but also due to higher immigrant births than the US average, flooding the healthcare/welfare system and the school population, school lunch programs and the need for language classes…
It’s time to stop making these points, that “the majority uses its voting power to demand government services from taxpayers” while attempting to tweak healthcare costs, without recognizing this elephant in the room. Why are Cashin and Smith avoiding this major catalyst to America’s dependency status, never even mentioning that one of the biggest burdens that producers in America have is the increased immigration of a welfare-dependent lower class brought in through open borders – of Mexican women with their children entering the United States to go directly onto welfare?
And, now, Obama has a program whereby illegal entrants don’t even need pretend to be legal – pay a few bucks and you’re in.
They have one attractive feature to the welfare-state promoters, of course: they vote Democrat.
>People need to understand that the non-producer sector of society is growing unbelievably due to immigration, not only to the yearly entry of millions into the country, but also due to higher immigrant births than the US average, flooding the healthcare/welfare system and the school population, school lunch programs and the need for language classes…
Most of the immigrants I know work their asses off, flooding the economy with cheap produce and cheap services like landscaping.
And if they are helping to collapse the socialist programs, then I hope even more immigrants come.
Most of the immigrants I know work their asses off, flooding the economy with cheap produce and cheap services like landscaping – Dr. Acula
Anecdotal comments are always important, but they hardly overcome such frightening statistics. I could add my observations to your comments to say they reflect totally the opposite. We see the hard work but we see the lowering of wage scales for workers who will accept lower and lower benefit levels in order to get the jobs, erasing decades of advancement via labor negotiations by hardworking Americans.
Your comment, by the way, reminds me of an Asian executive of a US company speaking at a roundtable seminar in San Jose a few years back. He said that American workers needed to emulate Chinese laborers and work longer hours at less pay.
I also am reminded of a Lebanese union buster in a small Midwestern town where roofs had suffered hail damage. Speaking to young white workers he’d hired to make heavy-lifting deliveries, he let them know who was boss in America: White men won’t work. We hire Mexican laborers to repair the roofs; they’re willing to work until 2 a.m.
And to supplement the displacement of American workers by government-induced foreign labor, according to Investors Business Daily, “As if being 'food stamp president' weren’t enough, Barack Obama’s administration is partnering with the Mexican government to make sure Mexican nationals living in the U.S. don’t miss out.”
According to DemoMemo in January, “Non-Hispanic whites, not blacks, account for the largest share of people receiving food stamps--42 percent in 2010. Blacks account for 28 percent of food stamp recipients.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reports that from 2007-2011 spending on the food stamp program increased 135 percent to reach a cost of $78 billion last year (2011) alone.
Ay caramba!
Interesting article, perhaps misguided and much too influenced by the socialist mindset of the Canadians.
And the cacophany in the comments certainly adds to the confusion.
Reality check: modern healthcare, everywhere, as part of the industrial system, is completely bankrupt.
If you think that ventilators and dializers are being "paid for" in Canada, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Healthcare is bankrupting everybody, it's just happening faster in America because we are generally incompetent and a whining, "I want it all" type of people.
It is a FACT that the lives of most people can be extended additional hours, days or weeks given the application of a sufficient number of wires, tubes and chemicals --- and a few million dollars.
That most human beings actually ADVOCATE spending several million dollars PER HUMAN in the country proves they are terminally insane. Not only does this necessarily cause the complete destruction of mankind, but usually extends periods of terrible pain and suffering.
If someone WANTS to save several million dollars, and WANTS to consume it all during their last few hours or days, then they may do so. They earned it. Me? I'd rather enjoy the fruits of my labors when I can actually enjoy them, then expire at the appropriate time (which is definitely before life becomes a living hell).
That human beings "buy into" the blatantly absurd arguments thrown around today to justify so-called "healthcare" proves that human beings are dumber than rocks, and as a species, FINISHED.
Totalitarianism: its good for ya. You can't have your pudding if you don't eat your meat! And meat is only for party members in good standing... have you greased up today?
Clearly totalitarianism is what most people endorse.
Very true, and very, very scary.
OK, sorry, but #4 is fucking hilarious. You're trying to tell me that running patients through batteries of unnecessary tests is a function of merely CYA? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I think this ties back in with your #9... When you do things that do not have pecuniary value to ensure that your ass is saved, then you're "covering your ass"... however, when you do additional billing, just as you would if you were not trying to cover your ass, then you're just milking it... period.
In short, I would tend to believe your story a bit more if doctors were performing the additional services for de minimis fees... as though this was some added/burden cost to their practice... since when is merely covering your ass so lucrative? We should all be so lucky.
PS, you want to know the #1 reason for malpractice suits? Bad bedside manner...
A huge first step is the simple action of ending ALL benefits to those in the country ILLEGALLY. How could that even be contraversial? Only the Obama reelection team could make any sense of paying OUR money to illegals. THEY get votes out of it... we, the people, just get screwed in the ass. Put in an a national ballot and watch it pass 80 to 20.
Yes, all benefits to illegals should end.
Also, all benefits to legals should end.
Also, all tax payments should end.
Ahhhhhh. Now we can live our lives.
What a concept!
Ok, WTF with #13??? Throw my wife in jail because she buys my (very athletic) kid a fucking Happy Meal one in awhile??? Yes, we know high fructose corn syrup and trans fats are bad for us, but what next, 50 lashes for making a prime rib, 2 years for making refried beans with lard. From a social cost, alchohol is probably more costly by some measures than unhealthy foods, so just a matter of time before prohibition is upon us again . . .
Feeding kids a happy meal once in a while is not the problem. When I was a kid in the 60s and early 70 s I begged for McDs and was lucky to get it once every few months. "Don't ask me for that crap" was the standard reply and that was before GMO corn and transfat. Hell, I bet that meal was far healthier than today. Kids today are so much fatter and are fed a steady diet of this garbage. In fact they have a strange build, skinny arms and legs with big protruding bellys, almost as if they have kwashiorkor. I'm not for the food police but where are the mothers protecting their kids and their health? This has always been under the watch guard of women and it appears they just don't care any more.
Miffed:-)
Number 10 is on the right track.
We need to increase the deductibles to at least $25,000.
Doing so cuts the premium by 60%.
Increasing to a $50,000 dedictible, reduces the premium by 80%.
3 people and I are working with Milliman, an actuarial firm, on a plan design to show inerested life insurers, which funds the deductible, over 3 years.
It is set up as a break-even product, so that consumers will have more discretionary income to buy the life insurer's products.
Bu contributing $300 per month, one builds a paid-up policy each month.
After 36 months, the plan is designed to acumulate $25,000 of paid-up insurance, of which another premium is not due, as long as claims are not made.
Don Levit
I read somewhere that ill health is the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the US.
Your suggestion would surely greatly increase the number of bankrupts. I suppose you would call that "shit happens".
People are free to eat what they want, that's fine. But most of what's available is straight up poison. If you're too goddamned stupid to see that you're toxifying yourself through depleted fake food and sinister pharma drugs, you'll pay the ultimate price and whither, crumple, then die a busted heap of dusty bones....after the medical system has performed a tota Cashectomy.
I have zero health insurace, I don't trust the whitecoat priesthood. I'm 50. I look 35. I eat and drink clean, exercise, supplement with high octane vitamins and minerals. I go out in the sun. I drink clean, pure water, operate largely in cash, refuse to own a TV, and don't believe a goddamn word dinosaur media says. I'm far from perfect, I love whiskey and cigars, but I'll probably outlive the people that and feed from the drive thru and believe MD's and buy medical insurance, whis is, in my opinion, a bet that you'll be so ill, so decrepit, that you'll need assistance in taking care of your broken, toxic ass.
You can't cure stupid, you can ocasionally wake up a somnambulist. As I see it, the best way to not cooperate with the matrix is to take responsibility for your own well-being and not participate in their "slow suicide for the serfs" agenda.
Great post. Wonderful to hear from someone with more than one functional neuron.
It may be true that "you can't cure stupid", but obviously the elitist predators sure know how to "create stupid". I mean, how else could the overwhelming majority of human beings on earth become as stupid as is common today?
I absolutely refuse to have health insurance, though I can't argue against "catastrophic care" plans to pay expenses over $10,000 or $100,000 deductible --- for those who want them. Frankly, I now understand that going to a doctor or hospital is almost always vastly more dangerous and vastly more unhealthy than NOT going.
Eating good, organic, healthy foods is not only the best health tip, but it tastes much better --- assuming you haven't already burned out your taste functions, which is possible. Though sometimes it takes a couple or a few tries, natural herbs (or even foods, sometimes) have been vastly superior at dealing with minor discomforts or potential health issues for me. Of course there is no substitute for taking charge, taking control, learning what you can, making your own decisions, running your own tests and experiments (with herbs and such), and finding your own answers. Yes, the cost is high --- but in time spent investigating and experimenting, but not so much in monetary cost (good news for all those "poor folks" who are always the justifications for making everyone on earth a permanent slave to those oh-so-benevolent predators who always design, run, and get filthy rich on every health-care system).
And that "slow suicide" that people have been engaged in? Well, it appears the pace is about to pick up substantially now that the predators have absolute, complete, total control of everything, including so-called "health care".
Question: Are the vast majority of people today really so stupid that all predators need to do is slap labels like "free" and "health-care" on something, and people actually believe it is "free" and is in fact "health care"?
Answer: Obviously so.
I don't have time to sort through the comments to see if this has been mentioned yet - but, sorry, bullshit.
There ain't no free lunch. Canada is a nation with a population roughly 1/8 that of the US and their socialized medicine is bankrupting them - as some Canadian colleagues once told me of their system, "It works great... until you get sick". Some decent stuff about tort reform, disability reform and end-of-life care but anything that starts with the premise that the way to go is to expand "Medicare for All" is simply non-serious.
How about this - you pay for whatever sort of medical care you want and think you need out of your pocket, or with HC insurance that YOU pay for out of YOUR after-tax dollars (simply done by ending the deductability of HC insurance costs for everyone). If you can't (or are not willing to) pay, you rely on family, friends and charity hospitals who receive their funding from VOLUNTARY donations. We've not had a "free market" in health care in the US for generations (at least not since 1965) - maybe we should try that before assuming that government, who's record of containing the cost of anything anywhere pretty much sucks, will be our savior here.
#5 is completely fascist. He gives a completely academic response to something that is not academic. You don't know what person responds or doesn't respond based on pseudo-science. An extra six months life is significant. It condemns everyone who can't afford treatment to an earlier death. 9X percent of people couldn't afford that treatment, mostly because the fraudulent system we work under pays them crap.
He's calling for death panels, plain and simple. Lives unworthy to be lived or saved. If you're old, you're screwed. If it costs alot you're screwed. If the pseudo science says only a few percent recover, you're screwed. If the same says you get X amount of months in return, you're screwed. So basically, everyone is screwed. But of course, cloak the whole thing in mystery, throw in some fucked up rationales, and put everyone in the same boat, and we're saved. Of course, then we'll let the banksters screw us all over more, and steal from the system enough to put whatever we do at the brink for their gain. Doesn't matter how far we move the goalline, the banksters will build a brick wall right in front of it. The costs of medicine are out of control are only a symptom, a reaction to the policies of Wall Street banksters and who they serve.
Glass-Steagall
So you've solved the problem?
Charles Hugh Smith is sounding more and more like Simon Brusca.
Eat your fucking peas!
As much as I generally agree on Ishabaka's general direction:
on 3.
This boils down to another "lowest common denominator" approach. Who should someone who knows what specialist he needs, for example after he badly sprained his ankle, first need to go to his primary care doctor to wait in line, get taken a quick look and be referred?
on 4.
Tort reform yes, but taking things completely out of the hands of lawyers and therefore out of the regular justice system, and put into the hands of unaccountable arbitration panels will only exacerbate the problems over time.
on 8.
Another thing that some instution/regulator miraculously becomes the "solution" - in this case the FDA of which we assume they always decide wise and honest.
Reading the post and then the subsequent comments has made me realise something.
I'm proud and grateful of Britain's National Health Service.
Us Brits often give the NHS a hard time, but to me it seems unthinkable that millions live in a society where they can't go to the Doctor immediately on feeling unwell and obtain immdeiate treatment, at no immediate cost.
Obviously, the NHS does have it's problems, and we do pay for it through our taxes and National Insurance payments, but it's comforting to know that if I want treatment for an ailment, or if I have a heart attack right now, I can be in an ambulance on the way to a hospital within 10 minutes with no concern about how it will be paid for.
Most Brits don't visit the Doctors very often, we don't feel we have to get our "money's worth" because we were born into a system that pre-existed and is a normal part of life....
....And this is reflected by a common scene, you visit the Doctor's surgery waiting room and quickly notice you are the only British born person there, whilst the vast majority are those who originate from other Countries and take full advantage of every possible aspect of the service available, more often than not to obtain free prescriptions for medication that is available over the counter (Prescriptions are free if you are unemployed, under 16, or pregnant, $12 otherwise). It really grates me to see the same faces over and over again, visiting for the most trivial reasons, whilst most sick Brit's have to be forced to go by friends and colleagues because most of us are brought up to avoid visiting the Doctors unless there's absolutely no alternative.
Only the Brits know how utterly worthless the so-called "care" is. That's why they don't jam the waiting rooms. Also, many Brits know they'll be injected with horrific poisons on orders from the predators who control the so-called healthcare system, and want to stay as far away from those poisons as they possibly can. That's why the waiting rooms in private clinics in Singapore, Thailand and other places around the world are positively jam packed with Brits. No coincidence.
Imagine having one hospital that you have to go to; meaning it's the only one within reasonable driving distance if your really serious about surviving a true medical emergency like a heart attack, which most people are I think anyway. Imagine that hospital owning all the clinics in the small towns ( six all with less than 4,500 people each) within a 50 mile radius of where it sits. Imagine that hospital recently completing a brand new 25 million dollar Emergency Room addition. Imagine having a really bad case of the hives starting at 10:00 A. M. on a weekday morning (it's Wednesday actually) that you could probably have treated in one of the six clinics because they're usually not serious, but could be, so you'd want to see a doctor within say 4 hours or so just to be safe about it. Imagine calling all six clinics and having everyone of them tell you that they're all booked solid for the day at 10:00 A. M. and can't get you in until the next day. Imagine having no choice but to go to the emergency room now, because a bad case of the hives can be serious condition like I pointed out before. Imagine getting to the brand new 25 million dollar Emergency Room at the Hospital and finding it completely full of patients at 10:45 A.M. also. Imagine this actually happening to you like it did to my Wife (she was the one with the hives by the way) and I. How convienent, for the brand new 25 million dollar Emergency Room I mean, because it sure the heck wasn't very convient for us that's for sure. Now I'm not saying that it wasn't impossible for every one of those six clinics to be booked solid on that Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock, but after seeing the brand new 25 million dollar Emergency Room stuffed to the gills with patients at the same time of the day also, makes me wonder if they really were. 25 million dollars is an awfull lot of money to make up after all, meaning I'm pretty sure someone didn't build it for them for free.
That only happens in a massively government-perverted system. When people must PAY for their own care, they don't jam waiting rooms for minor aches or unimportant nonsense. Furthermore, even in the totally screwed up system of today, few hospitals or clinics make serious cases wait forever behind others with minor problems. Hell, in the real world, if your plight is visible or obvious, you might even find someone to give up their place in line.
Bottom line: So-called "health insurance" of the type people have (and are now being forced to have) is a TOTAL SCAM and VERY DESTRUCTIVE. It gives strong incentives for people to show up for minor if not irrelevant complaints. What does make sense for many people is inexpensive "high deductable" or "catastrophic care" plans.
Not that I'd advocate ANY government-forced rule, I'll make my point this way. If everyone who enters the doctor office must pay the first $100 ~ $250 of each visit, on the spot, then all those huge lines would VANISH. If the AMA stopped artificially restraining the number of medical schools and medical students, the lines would shrink too.
The problem is, as always, predators DBA government and predators DBA organizations.
I agree. In fact I agree so much that I think health insurance shouldn't be involved with healthcare at all, especially the kind you don't like. However, not allowing someone to sell or buy the kind of health insurance you don't like in a free market health care system; if they wished to so, would probably be just as big of a violation of the free market system as the government making everyone buy it is. Don't ya think? In other words you can't have it both ways, which seems to be what alot of people on here want when it comes to this issue.
Yes. I would never PROHIBIT anyone from doing or buying anything - except directly, physically harming someone else.
So his solution is to turn every health worrker into a government employee, and then get rid of the bad ones?
When has any federal, state or local government in the USA ever shown competence in getting rid of bad employees, or in reducing featherbedding.
You might as well wait for the Healthy Care Fairy to fix things
The fix is: Everybody pays their own way, or begs for charity. care. If you didn't play your life such that you can afford a new heart, then you planned not to have one.
And just about everybody can plan to afford a new heart - pay for your own catastrophic insurance. Pay attention to your own health.
If you need charity, this was a pretty charitable country before the government took over the function. This countryt always did frown on folks who ran their life in such a way as to depend on charity. If that's not true now, then we are simply screwed and there is no fix.
If you are a gang member & get shot, either the gang pays for a good doctor or the ER doctor takes big stitches (a M.A.S.H. reference, in case you are under 45). If the gang doesn't have money, what was the purpose of joining? You should have joined the Elks or Moose - they have good insurance policies for the members.
Right. Social darwinism. I get it. Do you also think girls only get pregnant when they liked getting raped?
Bad things happen, therefore every human being on earth must be a slave to predators DBA government, predators DBA central banks, predators DBA financial institutions, predators DBA medical institutions, and predators DBA choose-your-fiction.
!!!!! HOLY CRAP !!!!!
Making every individual on earth a permanent slave is apparently the solution to everything, because that's just about all we ever hear. Go jam it!
Yes. Bad things happen. And yes, sometimes to good people and innocent people. When bad things happen, and some other individual caused the damage, we can and should try to [help the victim] locate them and make them fully compensate for their deeds. And if you or others want to donate to victims, we will praise you, and we might help now and then, when we can, as much as we believe is reasonable and prudent. PERIOD.
Turning individuals into slaves NEVER made quality of life higher in the past, and will NEVER make quality of life better in the future. It does precisely the opposite, in spades.
Nope. I think I'd rather live in a country that has a social safety net, thank you very much. It might be someone I love that DIES because keeping taxes low for the elites was more important than providing basic needs for the many. If your version of freedom is throwing an increasingly large number of citizens under the bus, it doesn't sound very appealing.
!!!!! LISTEN !!!!!
!!!!! WAKE UP !!!!!
YOU ARE WELCOME TO HAVE YOUR SAFETY NET.
Whew. There. Feel better now? To GET your safety net, simply go select and purchase your own "health insurance" (which will not assure or insure your health, of course).
You are entirely free to have your safety net. Go for it. Really!
You are UTTERLY misguided. It is precisely the "elites" who get rich on the backs of every honest, ethical productive individual when these so-called "safety-net" programs are implemented. These "elites" get FILTHY RICH... on your dime, my dime, everyone's dime.
And then these "elites" get the best medical treatment in the world --- AND YOU DO NOT.
When I was a kid (and I'm not even "old" yet), and we got sick, the doctor would COME TO OUR HOME with his little black bag. He'd figure out the problem, leave some pills when appropriate, and charge $10 to $20. For THAT kind of personal service. That was just before the federal government got really serious about screwing up the "healthcare" system.
This is NOT a coincidence! If someone cannot afford $20, then they cannot afford to eat, and that is a VASTLY more serious risk. This has to be obvious to anyone who is not terminally stupid or delusional.
I do not want good things for the elites! They are predators, and deserve the worst any human could deserve. But YOU and people like you make them strong. YOU make them powerful. YOU make them rich. And because THEY (the elite predators) have brainwashed you so thoroughly, you PRAISE, SANCTION, DEFEND and SUPPORT them and their predatory scams.
I can guarantee you, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that you and those people you worry about would have VASTLY cheaper and VASTLY better healthcare if there were ZERO laws and ZERO regulations regarding healthcare (except total disclosure like on any business, to avoid fraud). But because you and so many people SUPPORT and DEFEND the predators, the human race is finished. You will live a miserable life, and die a miserable death, because you support predators. I mean really. What do you expect in a world totally controlled and dominated by predators? That the predators would take care of you? Are you serious? Because that's exactly what you're saying. Sigh. Humans are hopeless. Seriously.
Your answer doesn't work. Insurance companies will not insure you if you require thyroid medication or any other chronic medication.
Hey moron! If you really believe in healthcare, you would have healthcare for years or decades before you ever needed ANY medication or care. So cut your overt, blatant, obvious, contradictory BS and get real.
Most important, STOP TRYING TO DESTROY MY LIFE and the lives of billions of other folks too.
What kind of vile, revolting cretins would presume to have any right to tell ME... and everyone on earth... how I ****must**** live my life? Huh? Do you expect me to return the favor? Do you now expect me to force you to live your life in any way I deem appropriate? Huh? Well, you freak? Do you? Answer the question, scumbag, because I have a really spiffy list of requirements for you that I'm sure would make you sit up and take notice.
How can real, physical human beings BE this stupid? How can human beings actually, with a straight face, tell me and everyone else on earth how WE must live our lives? What products WE must buy? What plans WE must have for our own lives, for our own illnesses, for our own final days?
How on earth can so many monkeys-in-clothes be brainwashed into advocating their own enslavement? This is revolting beyond words! What fate could possibly be appropriate for beings who actually, in fact, advocate the enslavement and destruction of billions of sentient beings? This is not some small matter. This is advocating the absolute, complete destruction of an entire species... your own species, morons!
That so many monkeys-in-clothes advocate the kind of insanity you advocate proves one thing without any doubt whatsoever. Humans beings are finished. Humans are clearly destined to spiral down the toilet of history as they should, and be spewed out the rear end of reality. Bunch of completely freaking insane apes with scrambled brains. Good riddens.
PS: Do you even understand what you advocate? Even vaguely? You really should understand how absurd and blatantly insane any sane sentient being finds ideas like yours. You claim that neither you nor I nor any other individual should be allowed to decide how to live his own life... AND... you also claim that "other individuals" should decide how that individual lives his life.
So, to simply a bit, I am the ONLY individual who has no right how to decide how to live my life, even though it is blatantly obvious that it is I who shall suffer the consequences of how I live my life. And other individuals, who do not suffer the consequences of how I live my life, should have a right to tell me how I must live. Boy, if that isn't blatant slavery speaking!
Do you have any vague notion how insane your ideas are? I mean, blatantly obvious insanity? Because you really should sit down someday and understand what you advocate. And don't give us any BS about "it is only healthcare", and somehow "healthcare is different". No, healthcare is not different, and is certainly much less crucial than water, food, air and other aspects of reality. Anyone who believes ideas like yours is... well... bouncing-off-the-walls-clinically-insane. In fact. Of course, the predators do have control of fictitious "institutions" these days, so they will indeed certify exactly the opposite --- that yes indeed, THEY have a right to totally define what is sane and what is not, no matter how insane their proclamations may be. And you support them, moron! You support predators and overt insanity. Congrats.
Oh yes, that's what I want. A trip to the doctor so they can cut, kill and poison me.
There are some good suggestions in the above, but there are some that will not fly, like telling people what they can and can't eat, drink, or smoke.
Cuba has universal comprehensive healthcare for far less than we do, like less than one tenth of 1% our healthcare expenses and nobody telling you how to eat drink or smoke. Yet they have lower infant mortality, they live longer and healthier than we do, by almost any metric you can use to judge care outcomes their socialist system beats ours.
That does not mean I am advocating communism to cure our medical disaster, but it does mean that greed and money are the foundation of the problem and until that is wrung out of our system you will have no chance of fixing anything. Ending private insurance is the biggest first thing to do, they add nothing to quality or quantity of care but damage both while adding huge expense. Ending the AMA's control over medical school admissions is next, they keep physicians in short supply and thus that much more expensive. Every state should have at least one state run medical school with blind admissions. And if you can't become a doctor because you can't afford the cost of school then you should be offered paid education in return for working for the government for a set amount of time. All doctors, specialists included, should have to spend one working moth per year seeing patients outside of urban areas, that is one of the most critically short areas of care in the US.
I say give them all a salary, a good salary for sure, starting at 90k say, and up to a couple hundred thousand for good doctors that work hard with good results, and if they don't want to do the job for that let them quit and find another line of work where they can make more, I want my doctors to be in the profession because they love being a doctor and take pride in being a good one, not because they love money and have kickback schemes set up with drug companies and labs and diagnostic centers. I estimate about half would quit.
And why can't we be farming out a lot of our non emergency surgical cases to India and other medical tourist destinations? They do the same operations for a sixth the money.
Cuba has universal comprehensive healthcare for far less than we do, like less than one tenth of 1% our healthcare expenses and nobody telling you how to eat drink or smoke. Yet they have lower infant mortality, they live longer and healthier than we do, by almost any metric you can use to judge care outcomes their socialist system beats ours.
Nothing that you just said is true.
Great, post some kind, ANY kind of proof. And the reason you would make such a simple and flat one line statement claiming mine to be untrue is?
"...the impoverished nation has developed a world-class health care system. Average life expectancy is 77.5 years, compared to 78.1 years in the United States, and infant and child mortality rates match or beat our own. There’s one doctor for every 170 people, more than twice the per-capita U.S. average."
“In Cuba, a little over $300 per person is spent on health care each year. In the U.S., we’re spending over $7,000 per person,” said Drain, co-author of Caring for the World and an essay published April 29 in Science. “They’re able to achieve great health outcomes on a modest budget.”
Wired.com: How does Cuba keep health care costs so low?
Paul Drain: Partly by keeping physicians’ salaries low. Obviously, given the government they have, they can do that. But they also emphasize primary care and preventive care, addressing diseases and problems before they become major. It’s a very different approach to health care.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/cuban-health-lessons/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate
Cuba infant mortality = #40 with 4.83 infant deaths per 1,000 births
US infant mortality = #49 with 5.98 per 1,000
That is from the CIA Factbook
List of countries by life expectancy...
Cuba #36 (tied with Denmark) females =80.6 years males = 76.2 years all people = 78.3 years
USA #38 Females = 80.8 years males = 75.6 years all people = 78.2 years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
36 Denmark 78.3 76.0 80.6 36 Cuba 78.3 76.2 80.4 38 United States 78.2 75.6 80.8 39 Portugal 78.1 75.0 81.2 40 Slovenia 77.9 74.1 81.5Cuba health care spending = 3.3 billion US healthcare spending = $1.8 trillion 540 times as much per capita.
By the way, Cuba (#1) has a 99.9% literacy rate as well, the USA (#46) has a rate of 90%.
Amtrak and the Postal Service are such models of efficiency, I can see why a Canadian doctor practicing in the US would recommend nationalzed healthcare. What I don't understand is why the doctor isn't practicing in Canada. I guess the working conditions and pay in the US must be better...
Buffalo, NY, next to Detroit, is pretty much the armpit of the Great Lakes, but its Roswell Park Cancer Institute does bang-up business with Canadians. I wonder why that is, if Canadian healthcare is so superior...
The solution? Simple. An absolute, complete, utter, 100% separation of healthcare and state. Anything else will simply change which predators enrich themselves for destroying the health of everyone.
Oh, and how about you (and so many others) simply STOP trying to decide for me... and everyone else. Where do people get this idea that there just MUST be SOMEONE who decides everything for me, you and everyone else? Totalitarianism as a fundamental premise of reality? Get your brain replaced.
Some compelling points but it's kindof hard to take advice from someone who's moniker is "Stupid Doctor."
Sounds very much like he's proposing a modified version of the Japanese national healthcare system...the only problem is that system only treats Japanese - not 350 million monstrously obese, self-important jack-holes.
I live near the Candian border and near a US regional health care center. Sorry, but no Canadians are coming over the border to get that US health care. I know plenty of Candians, none of them want to US system.
I love reading the US folks slam Canadian health care, half the cost, much better outcomes. Ha, that is a fact folks. But US fools never let a fact get in the way of a life time of brain washing by corporate America.
I am also familiar with the UK and Swedish health care. Same thing, half the cost and far better patient outcomes with nobody going BK due to health care costs. More facts.
But Americans just love paying huge profits to their rip off health insurance companies. I bet the most anti Candian posts made here today were from people connected to the giant American rip off crooks who are otherwise known as the US private Health Insurance Industry.
We pay double for worse outcomes. WHat could be wrong with that, eh?
A much easier two-part plan that would reduce costs at least as much:
1. End the AMA cartel that reduces the number of medical schools and doctors and drives up prices,
2. End the prescription drug system that forces people who just want a specific medicine to pay a doctor to prescribe it (must be done in conjunction with ending recreational drug prohibition).
Those two alone would do as much as all of this and would reduce the influence of government rather than increasing it.
The only thing in this article that makes sense is tort reform, we should go to a loser pays system so that if you are sued and didn't do anything wrong you don't lose any money. Trial lawyers would have to risk their own money if they wanted to bring a possibly frivolous suit.
Tort reform is bullshit, it is a tiny slice of costs and the only people to benefit will be that this would protect incompetent doctors and hospitals.
My mother was 69, a week from her 70th birthday, she called me and said she was low on food and missed her doctor appointment because my little sister had taken off in the car several days before and not come back. I got in my truck and drove the 135 miles down to the coast and when I saw my mom I was scared out of my mind, she looked terrible, swollen in the middle and gaunt, skeletal in the face, she could hardly walk. It had only been three months since I moved up to Oregon, such rapid decline. I got her to agree to go to the hospital with me to be seen.
When we got there the waiting room was filled with Spanish speaking people and their kids who use the ER as a primary care source on the government ticket, but then that was what we were also there doing because an appointment with a Medicaid/Medicare accepting doctor takes six months to get, IF you were lucky enough to even have such a doctor, for several years no doctor in the county has accepted new M/M patients.
Clearly the wait was going to be hours, so I told my mom I was going to leave for a while to find a place to stay for the night. That was the last time I saw her alive and speaking.
Everywhere I went the motels were full because it was the Thursday before Memorial Day. I ended up getting a campsite at a Forest Service campground 40 miles up the Smith River. By then it was dark and I needed to set up my tent, I had grabbed my gear as I was leaving for the coast because I know how hard it can be to get affordable rooms there after the beginning of May. I phoned the front desk at the hospital to see if mom was ready to be picked up and they put her on because she was still sitting in the waiting room right there. She said when she was done she would call a cab. I said I would see her in the morning then.
Around midnight I had a call from a guy who said he was a nurse in the ER, he called to say there was nothing medically wrong with my mom so they were releasing her, would I come get her, but I was way up the river so they said they would call a cab for her. At one A.M. the phone rang again but this time it was a woman, the ER doctor, she said there was a lot wrong with my mom so they were keeping her overnight. I wanted to know what happened in that hour to make them want to keep her, but the doctor would not discuss her condition over the phone. I said OK I would be there first thing in the morning.
The next morning I had a call from a cousin that is an RN at the hospital, she said my mom was on her ward and that she was gone for tests so don't hurry, I said I would pop back up to Medford to get cash and shut off the A/C at the apartment and be down later, I was practically half way home anyway. Later my mom called me, she said she had fallen in the lobby of the hospital, had to have stitches and had a bad bump on the head, but she was clearly out of it, dropped the phone, slurred words so I assumed pain killers. Thought her doctor was from Chico, turns out his name was Sheiko or something like that.
So I said I would come down the next day and pick her up when they released her.
The next morning I phoned to see when she was going to be let go and they said she had already been discharged from Med/Surg, and they did not want to discuss the matter. Turns out she had been discharged from med/surg and taken to ICU. She was in a coma on a ventilator. The hospital said she was simply "used up," that they could not make a single diagnosis, there was evidence of "an old stroke" they said. They said they had her in an induced coma but that we needed to gather the family and plan for the end. Two days later they asked for permission to unplug her from life support, ON HER BIRTHDAY for christ's sakes.
She had not just fallen and hit her head, she tripped on a rug and had stitches on her chin, cheek, and eyebrow. They HAD let her go from the ER because "nothing was wrong with her" the night I took her in to be seen and a NURSE decided to kick her out. That was when she fell and a doctor decided to keep her, of course now that she hit her head so hard she needed stitches in three places on her face. A week later she was dead. And all of that was on hospital lobby cameras which mysteriously the data was erased within 24 hours of her death.
Now, if ever there was a case of gross medical negligence this is it. According to the fuctards that want tort reform this is EXACTLY the kind of case lawyers drool over getting their hands on, the out of court settlements alone would be enormous. Not just a slip and fall, but a slip and fall resulting in death in a hospital where the staff had decided minutes before that she was fine to go home, they did not even wheel her out in a wheelchair as we all expect them to do. I was angry enough to want the asshole arrogant ER nurse that originally called me to regret the tone he used on the phone too. Nothing wrong with her, like she was a dog I found on the street.
No lawyer would even talk to me about the case. And her body was taken to the mortuary and cremated on the same day she died so no autopsy. Because she was considered indigent the county swiftly got rid of the evidence, and said we could not even hold a memorial service for her or we would be charged thousands of dollars for the disposition of her remains.
Now, the tort reform assholes want to even make it harder to sue for real wrongdoing, and then to cap any settlements or jury awards. That county is pretty right wing and the lawyers said they will not take cases because even when juries award money verdicts the awards are so little it is not worth their time to take the case. They said if it happened in Sonoma or SF they would settle OUT OF COURT for nothing less than a million. The cited a case where that same doctor had put a chest tube into a patients stomach and the patient suffocated before anyone figured out that the tube went down the wrong way, but because it was a kid the parents successfully sued, they got thousands of dollars for the preventable death of their child.
My mom should have lived another decade. That hospital should be shut down and a different company brought in. That hospital chain has a track record of killing people at a substantially higher rate than any other place in California, and of gross overcharges to Medicare/Medicaid patients, and for ER visits. They have been fined again and again. But, that does not get my lovely mom back does it? I let it go. But, the greed based system we have in this nation is obscene and I for one think we would be better off as a nation if we abolish it with or without a replacement system, the one we have now is BEYOND repair!
Sorry about your mother, Boil. That is an awful way to go and a lousy way to lose her.
You're right, that was gross medical negligence and there were many who had a hand in what happened to her.
That is one sorry story, one that makes all good folk cringe and feel sick. Unfortunately, you [hopefully] learned a very important lesson too late --- that hospitals are one of the most harmful and dangerous places on earth. I've seen a couple friends killed by hospitals in vaguely similar ways, sometimes while I was there. In one other case I refused to leave my friend in their care without me being present, and she survived. Later the doctors admitted to me that my friend absolutely, positively would have died if I had not spent my full attention at every moment while she was in their care.
I don't know whether I can even convey how uncomfortable was my situation. I know nearly SQUAT about conventional medicine, even though I am a scientist (but physical sciences, not organic). So I was in a situation where I had to make command decisions, and forcibly and insistently overrule what the doctors advised. And my friend was visiting from another country, and I could not reach her relatives. In retrospect, that was good, because they would have said "let the doctors do whatever they think is best". They would have killed her. I knew that. What I didn't know, was whether what I pushed/forced them to do was much more sensible. And I certainly didn't know my decisions would save her life. So it was incredibly, indescribably difficult to order them around so forcibly and insistently.
Previously I had done some dangerous mountain climbing, rock climbing and other activities where risky decisions clearly had to be made and executed... otherwise people would have died. Perhaps those experiences give us the "power" to do what we believe is best, regardless of the many and obvious ways things could go wrong, and we ourselves could be killed in the process. I can't be sure, but I took control. They resisted, but I barged on, asking questions and FORCING THEM to give me answers (allowing their endless qualifiers, but also forcing real information from them too). Eventually they were providing information, but I was making the decisions for them... even though they KNEW I was not family or related.
That was one of my first experiences with how horrible hospitals are. I had two other experiences where I wasn't there [soon enough], and my friends died. They were killed - by the doctors and nurses at the hospital. Not by gunshot to the head, but by blatant carelessness and lack of willingness to do their job and take it seriously. That was just as deadly.
For anyone reading this... listen up. If anyone is in the hospital, stay with them. I don't give a damn whether they are "very sick" or just "in for tests or procedures". One of my friends who was killed (when I was out of town) was sent home from the hospital and told to come back the next day for further observation. He objected, saying "no, I can tell something very serious is wrong with me". They kicked him out anyway. And yes, he HAD insurance... very good, expensive insurance, so it was just carelessness and maliciousness. He died later that night, and was discovered on the floor of his home 3 days later by a neighbor. The hospital, even after hearing his desperation and warnings about how serious his condition was, did not even call the next day when he failed to appear for follow-ups! And believe me, this guy was no hypochondriac, and not someone people would tend to write off as a terrified wimp. They had no excuse for tossing him out on his ass.
I believe most doctors and nurses used to care about their clients. I'm sure a few with private practices still do. However, the predators-DBA-government have so completely destroyed that industry, a majority of doctors and nurses (especially in hospitals) have given up. They have been made so cravenly uncaring that they don't give a damn whether they heal or kill. Either way, they get paid and room is created for their next victim.
My message is... if you possibly can... stay away from hospitals in the USSA. If you can't, but have time for a plane flight, fly to singapore, thailand, malaysia, even ecuador or mexico for treatment. And if you get stuck in a hospital, make absolutely certain you drag your most intellectually independent, self-conscious friend with you... with plans to STAY WITH YOU until you are released.
I know that sounds absurd. In some cases, in many cases, your friend will not need to take charge and save your life. True enough. But the danger is much too high to go it alone. And believe me, taking anyone except an intelligent, intellectually-independent, self-confident personality may not help you much if and when the SHTF. They must insist on being given ALL relevant information, being told all possible responses, and they must take charge if they feel even slightly uncomfortable with the level of care and attention you are receiving.
Finally, if you have any brains, you'll do what I did 2~3 years ago... leave the USSA for good. It is not just healthcare that is dangerous in the 4th reich.
Sadly, you are completely right. No matter the age or mental state of someone admitted to the hosptial these days, they ought to be considered endangered and in need of protection as one would a child that you cannot entrust to anyone else, certainly not the medical or nursing staff. I know it sounds extreme but their lives or future ability to function may depend on someone being with them while they're inside that hospital. Never be afraid to question whether what the patient is being given is necessary or even the best course of treatment. It may ruffle feathers but if the idea can't be explained or defended, you're not dealing with the right people. There is nothing wrong with being a little difficult.
I sat with my dad for hours each day for five days in a medical ICU fifteen years ago when he had pneumonia. The nurses were okay but not real quick to pick up obvious changes in his condition despite the warnings of all the monitors. I'd let his nurse know that this number had strayed too far or that one, but she did nothing about it (didn't give the requisite meds for which she had the standing orders that would have stopped the shortness of breath, reversed the increasing chest pain, etc.). When it got to be too much for me, I would give his doctor a call and he'd intervene. Those ICU nurses were glad to see my dad and me go I am sure, but I suspect he'd have died a few times over if I hadn't intervened. Maybe not.
Expect medical mistakes. Most doctors and nurses don't mean to make them and feel really awful when they do but mistakes will and do happen. Ask about any medication that comes your way. They aren't always meant for you (or the person you're guarding.) Ask about procedures before they happen. Mark on the patient's body if surgery is planned so they don't operate on the wrong body part ("Not this side!" But don't mark where they are going to operate -- that may mess with the incision.). And the simplest of things: Make sure that every single person washes their hands before they touch you or the person you are guarding. It is the best defense that you have for getting out of there without a hospital-acquired infection, especially in the days of superbugs that take extraordinary courses of antibiotics that have nasty side effects of their own.
Yes, staying away from doctors is a great idea. Staying out of hospitals, as a general practice is even better. But when a Mack truck hits you there is little choice but to go where your chances of being fixed is the greatest.
This post' answer to a problem is just tinkering within an allready broken system. GET GUBMINT OUT OF HEALTHCARE, ED-JEW-CATION, BANKING AND MUCH ELSE. End medicare and medicaid. Do that, and you could pay for 90% of your needs out of pocket. Allow only catastropic insurance policies. Above all else, END THE FDA, it exist for the benefit of the industrial medical complex.
I am French living in the US.. this is not to say that I am particulary fond of the French socialist system.. but here is what strikes me here..
- I am a software engineer in the healthcare insurance industry.. what we do essentially is try to become the mastercard of healthcare payments and easily connect providers to the thousands of payment plans in the US. In a single payer world, there would not even be a need for this, and from my boss mouth "If we were in the UK we would not even be in business".
- A lot of the people I know here work in something related to healthcare.. my wife for instance works for a medical device manufacturer, her ex-husband used to work until recently for a health insurance plan until recently. In France I barely know anyone who works in something related to healthcare.
- Lots of payments never get collected.. payment collection at least in France is not an issue, we usually know how much we will have to pay up front.. and since it's usually cheap we will pay at the spot. In the US with the presence of multiple heath plans it is very difficult for the medical provider to figure out the patient's payment portion up front.
- When I walk into a medical office, I usually several staffers and lots of papers. Staffers usually make tons of phone calls to heath plans in order to find out whether a patient is eligible for coverage, or why a payment was denied by the plan. In France in many instances I would not see anyone work but the actual doctor.
- In the past 3 years I received 3 letters from my health insurance.. trying not to pay a specific claim. So essentially they spend significant amount money trying to not pay coverage.. something one would not see in a single payer world.
- I always hear lots of advertisement from health plans... Advertisement need in a single payer world would be 0..
These are my obervations..
Those observations are ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT.
Let me make a few observations. If we set off all nuclear weapons and kill off all human beings, there will be no more murder, no more suicide, no more cancer, no more heart-attacks, no more mass shootings, no more terrorism, no more... fill in 1000s of blanks.
What you say is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT and BLATANTLY STUPID to raise.
It is like saying, "Obviously everyone should be a slave to some master of earth, because in this "single-decider" plan, nobody ever need be confused. Nobody ever need struggle over difficult decisions. Nobody ever need struggle with tradeoffs. Nobody ever need decide what to do for a living. Nobody ever need to decide what to eat, what to grow, what they enjoy doing, etc.
You have everything 100% backwards. What we need is 7 billion individuals making 7 billion sets of decisions, taking 7 billion sets of actions, and enjoying/baring/suffering 7 billion sets of consequences.
Of course, I have exaggerated a bit. People do tend to look around to see what consequences others enjoy/bare/suffer as a result of which decisions-made and actions-taken. And thus people do tend to make decision and take actions that lead to consequences they imagine they'll enjoy (or know they'll enjoy).
Which is the point of individualism, is it not?
ANY and EVERY kind of centralization is BAD, EVIL, DESTRUCTIVE. And in the real world, whenever humans create fictitious entities (governments, corporations, organizations, etc) that give power to some to control others, the obvious result always follows --- PREDATORS GAIN CONTROL OF THAT FICTION, suck everyone dry, and eventually cause horrific widespread debt, death, warfare, disaster and destruction.
The FACT is this. If you elimiate ALL government rules and meddling in the so-called "healthcare industry", most people would not buy or have conventional healthcare insurance. So everyone would pay at the counter, just as you said works so well. That's what almost everyone did in the USSA before about 40 years ago, and it worked VASTLY better and cheaper than what exists today. For one thing, people did not flood doctor offices for minor irrelevancies, or just because they have nothing better to do.
However, I still think there is room for health insurance --- the type that is sometimes called "catastrophic care" plans. You flat-out pay the first $10K (or $25K, or $50K, or $100K) of your own healthcare expenses. But if something "really bad/expensive" happens, after your "deductable", everything else is covered. Those plans are not terribly expensive.
The biggest change in this system would be... costs would NOSEDIVE... and I do not mean some modest pullback. Oh no. Costs of medical care would drop 90% within a year. Maybe 95%. Maybe even 98%. Nobody would worry about "paying at the front counter" for their medical care.
Humans: Stop advocating totalitarianism as the answer for everything!
Sheesh!
21 August, 2012
“Eating egg yolks is as bad as smoking in speeding up coronary heart disease” the Daily Mail says, reporting that egg yolks contribute to the clogging up of arteries which, in turn, can increase the risk of heart disease.
http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice/clinical-zones/nutrition/eating-egg-yolks-as-bad-as-smoking/5048432.article?blocktitle=Behind-the-Headlines&contentID=4530
So does this mean we are going to slap a $3 tax per egg on anything with a yolk?