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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Challenge
  • Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 09:47:06 -0700

You are sort of right and sort of wrong <g>

Docs are retiring, now. Some are just simply getting out of the run-your-own-office business. Others are leaving practices to go to work for the insurance companies. Up until now, insurance companies had a rough time getting docs to sit in an office and review charts. Now they are having no problems filling those seats. A lot are jumping ship to work at the bigger HMOs (Kaiser, Humana) where they work 9 to 5 and don't have to be on-call or pay for anything.

While a lot of docs are making the big bucks, it is mostly the specialists. And the docs who suffer from Tin God Syndrome (lord it over staff) are usually specialists and shrinks.

And, while Merck and where you work dusted off some meds, a lot of the invent the new diseases come from "oops, this doesn't work like we intended."

For the folks who haven't worked with coding, let me fill you in on how they decide there is a disease or condition to be treated. Each year, sometimes two years, the folks who publish the lovely code books send out a request for, hmmmm, I guess you'd call it suggestions. When a pharma company or group of docs or whatever decide they need a new coding, they give it a name (ADHD, for example) and get it in the code book and then they can go "wow, look at this. we have a med to help you cure this problem that is in the code book."

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>

There's a stock scene in sitcoms and movies where the cocky belligerent
fellow is offended and jumps toward the offender while his friends restrain him
by the arms while he yells "Let me at him, let me at him!" The the
friends let him go and he stops, straightens his tie, looks left and right and
mumbles, "Yeah ... ah ... OK .."

So all these doctors are going to close their offices, are they. Horse
hockey! And then do what? Oh, I'm such a brilliant fellow I could be making
millions as a CEO but instead I've dedicated myself to medicine! Reminds me
so much of the Jim Croche song "Car Wash Blues."

It's a lot like we keep hearing there's a shortage of teachers, Go to any
public place and throw a handful of gravel and you will hit 25 people who
have degrees in education and could teach.

But back to medicine, the problem is not primarily malpractice nor any of
the other things mentioned, it is a mass and public hallucination that 16% or
more of all our efforts (GDP) needs to be devoted to us staying healthy and
treating out disease.

Throughout history there has always been one group of people who rise up in
a society, convince people that they are doomed without them, then sponge
off most of the wealth for themselves. In some societies it was the
military, in others the clergy, .... make us the wealthiest amongst you or else you
will be invaded, make us the wealthiest amonst you or else you will go to
hell.

Now days it's medicine. Make the doctors a very wealthy class with a vast
army of acolytes (nurses, technicians, therapists, etc.) to lord over or
else you are going to die.

There is no reason that "health care" should be anywhere near 16% of the
GDP.

First, says I, a health care system overall would have to stop inventing
and treating imaginary illnesses. As I've said before, I did work for a long
time for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies ever (GlaxoSmithKline)
and was witness to the process whereby the company pulled old drugs from
it's repertoire that had been supplanted by better drugs from its competition
and than invent some disease for that drug to cure. Drug first, disease
afterwards.

Next, any condition that could be treated by diet, exercise, and meditation
should be ineligable for medical intervention unless the person wants to
pay for the whole thing out of pocket. You'd immediately eliminate about 50%
of all medical treatment with this policy.

Then eliminate insurance (or else go with a single payer). People are
presented with the myth that insurance companies want to keep medical costs
down. Nothing could be farther from the case. The industry operates from a
percent of the total amount of money involved. Let's suppose that lawn care
operated like "health care". Instead of anyone paying the mowers directly,
they all purchased lawn care policies. If you owned and ran a lawn care
policy company which by regulation (same currently as health care) had to
disburse 80% if its gross reciepts to mowers and kept the rest .... would it be
more to your advantage if mowing a lawn cost $20 or $400? You have no
incentive to keep the cost to policy holders down ... just the opposite.

One might wonder how some medieval societies where willing to live in
abject poverty while the large cathedrals were being built and bishops dressed in
gold trimmed robes. Well just look around at our "health care" industry
and you'll see that things haven't changed all that much.

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