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The DIY Dialysis Machine
Millie Kelly was born with a condition that required an immediate operation. During this operation her kidneys started to fail and since she was too small for dialysis machines, doctors told her parents that she was unlikely to live. Luckily for Millie, Dr. Malcolm Coulthard and a colleague tried to build a much smaller kidney machine on their own and they were successful. Her mother said, "It was a green metal box with a few paint marks on it with quite a few wires coming out of it into my daughter - it didn't look like a normal NHS one." The girl was hooked up to the machine over a seven day period to allow her kidneys to recover. Two years later, her mother Rebecca says she is "fit as a fiddle." You should see what Dr. Coulthard can build using a postage stamp, a tuning fork, a lawn chair and a jellyfish.
Don't put pictures with stories unless you're going to take being a news organization seriously, with you know, editing and responsibility.
Chewing gum was used, he's got nothing on Macgyver.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Sadly, this would have never happened in the US. The malpractice liability would be too great.
now i trust there will be a whole slashdot article category devoted to these girls? i, for one, welcome our new humanoid dialysis-building overlords.
Is the picture really worth a thousand words? I think the summary is more than enough.
He has one of these in each cave
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Indeed, I SHOULD see that. What the hell DOES the good doctor make out of those things?!?
"You should see what Dr. Coulthard can build using a postage stamp, a tuning fork, a lawn chair and a jellyfish"
I guess some sort of reclining jello chair that resonates with certain sonic frequencies that he can send in the mail. See, being MacGyver isn't THAT hard.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
C'mon! A dialysis machine built using a breadbox. This doesn't compete with my hommey Ricky-Dean who can build an atomic bomb with a digital timer using only a dead bumble-bee, bits of string and twigs found on the forest floor. Feh!!!
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
I thought women put on weight during pregnancy?
A tuning fork! Of course!!!
When I tried it I used a salad fork!
The picture of the patient is nice and all but the interesting part is the machine, right? I'd like a clear picture of that instead ...
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
A fiddle?
IBM doesn't play chess with the Universe.
Before you flame me, yes, I know gastroschisis is usually (but not always) hereditary, but the point stands.
everything in moderation
Doctor Who?
Only if you count the baby. This idea that women gain ten pounds during pregnancy is a fallacy that was propogated, in part, by an early belief in the medical establishment that women needed to gain weight for a healthy pregnancy. Once that idea was disproven, fewer women forced themselves to gain weight during pregnancy.
In fact, most women only experience a mild increase in food intake while pregnant. My understanding is that it's more important to pay attention to sudden food cravings, as those are often signs of missing minerals and vitamins. (e.g. my wife wanted bananas while she was pregnant)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...yesterday. http://www.hackaday.com/2008/08/05/diy-kidney-machine-saves-girl/
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
I get the feeling that my patient-doctor relationship is more adversarial than cooperative sort. It's like two parties haggling over a trade, neither party trusting the other. I'd guess that some of doctors don't enjoy that either.
I'd rather have a system where docs are not pressured to act like commodity traders.
Oh, almost forgot. Thumbs up from across the pond, Dr. Coulthard. Happy for Kelly family.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
...you should see his espresso machine.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
How can the existing machines be too big? From what I understand, a dialysis machine simply filters blood by pumping it through the machine. One needle for input, one for output. Was the needle too big or something? I suppose the pump might have been too powerful, but wouldn't that be an easy thing to switch out, rather than creating an entirely new machine?
your not the only one - the gene base there is diffrent from else where.. so yea.. rarely do you see a good looking English woman
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
The doctors deserve to receive some sort of notice from whatever professional association they belong to, and also a Patent for the smaller size machine that they created. Thats some pretty amazing work - and they already have a human test trial to back it.
submit this as a cautionary example to not put pictures with summaries.
Just in case ;)
but the point stands.
That doesn't make your point any less flamebait in this story. You might as well go to AIDS conferences and tell their speakers that it's their own fault for getting AIDS.
[quote]my wife wanted bananas while she was pregnant[/quote]
And now you have a little chimpanzee bundle-of-joy!
Thanks everyone, be sure to tip your waitress!!!!
No sig for you!!
So we saved her life. That's good. Because of our advanced medical science, this disease will claim fewer lives.
And she will likely grow up and have kids of her own.
And they will likely have this disease too.
And they will likely need access to practitioners of our advanced medical science to survive.
Before we start talking about Godwin, understand that I believe that racial diversity is necessary in order for the gene pool to remain healthy and adaptive. I am not advocating that we should have let this girl die. I am just pointing out the disturbing consequence of our science combined with our compassion: a species that is genetically weakened and hence increasingly dependent upon the availability of expensive medical caregivers.
I am sure various members of the medical industry love this trend. They are more than happy to provide an expensive service which makes it very likely that one (and one's offspring) will live long enough to continue needing more such expensive services.
And we will pay through the nose for them. It's that or die. And our children will pay for them too...in ever-increasing numbers...because their ancestors chose life-in-debt over natural selection.
More information about these accounts can be found here.
My aged step-father requires Dialysis due to Liver & Kidney failure. Now with gradual Heart failure his blood pressure sometimes dips too low for dialysis - a crisis. So far we have been fortunate that his blood pressure comes back up a bit, at least high enough to perform the dialysis.
Might one suppose that this apparatus, designed for small people, might work for those with low blood pressure?
If you'd RFTA (but why should you be different?) you would have seen that the UK, just like the US, does indeed have miniature dialysis machines designed for children. However, this child -- weighing less than six pounds at birth -- was too small to use them. Not just the UK ones -- she was too small to use any existing dialysis machine anywhere in the world.
So, had this happened in the US, she would have been OK, just as long as she had a doctor who was willing to spend his own time and his own money inventing a new machine and building it himself in time to save her life.
I have mod points, but I would rather say something.
That is a beautiful woman with a happy, healthy child child. Get out of your make-believe Hollywood world and into the real one. I for one, saw the picture and thought it was sweet.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
True poetry, this I like to add.
Big lady, Big lady at the Starbucks Talk about sweet creamy latte and big nice smile - this lady's got it
Slim lady, Slim lady at the Starbucks Talk about bitter latte no cream and small awkward smile - that lady's got it
Good latte, big smile drive me out of my mind
How could I leave this behind?
put my menial, insignificant, network admin job into perspective. Dr. Malcolm Coulthard is a brilliant man, and he is saving lives.
We should all try to be like this man.
-ted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dia_de_Los_Dangerous!
And he didn't even complete his doctorate!
...you should see what miracles occur when you're not oppressed by an onerous "single-payer" socialist-welfare-state "health" care system like the NHS.
Yeah, like enormous savings on overall national spending on healthcare, and protection of our strategic interests in healthy individuals who can keep our economy sustainable and reliable,
I'm not ready to say that the NHS model would cure all of our ills, but a desire to revamp and improve our healthcare system is hardly socialist (unless one calls Warren Buffett a socialist).
MacGyver did it in season 5 episode 5 "Second Chance" way back in 1989. He must have taped it and copied MacGyver's design.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I just googled "british women" and there are ony two ugly ones there. I don't know where you're from, but Springfield has its share of fugly women too (Betty Boop, Olive Oyle, and Alderman Gail Simpson live here, among other cartoons). In fact, I think ugly ones beat out hotties something like ten to one.
If anything, the women Google provided are perhaps too skinny, but otherwise damned good looking (except one or two, like I said). Where do you see these ugly british women? Or are you just trolling?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It was my experience when I became a vegetarian that paying attention to cravings was just good practice in general. Not necessarily caving in to them all the time, but to this day, if I'm really craving a bean burrito, I know I could probably use more protein.
That's not true.
A healthy woman who is the normal weight for her height can gain 25-35 pounds. This is normal.
Baby weighs 5-10 pounds.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What? When a woman is pregnant she is not only carrying a baby, but a very large uterus, enlarged breasts, and probably other stuff that I can't remember. Maybe your wife only gained the baby's weight but that honestly sounds unhealthy for the mom and child as she was net losing weight during the pregnancy due to other things adding necessary mass.
And if you could tell me what minerals and vitamins are in chocolate fudge brownies (my wife's latest craving at 7 and a half months) I'd love to know.
Maybe you have info to back your claims up, but none of this is in line with my current experience.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
...you should see what miracles occur when you're not oppressed by an onerous "single-payer" socialist-welfare-state "health" care system like the NHS.
Infant mortality rate in the US: 6.3 per 1,000 live births
Infant mortality rate in the UK: 4.9 per 1,000 live births
Personally, I'd rather not see the "miracle" of more dead babies.
Correction: I meant to say that costs of "socialized healthcare" are, on a national basis, dramatically lower than what they are in the US.
Despite the fear-mongering, the public health outcomes are also quite positive.
Hate to feed the trolls here.
Hate to break it to you but YOU are a troll.
But if you're going to post a picture, at least have it be of an medium attractive woman.
I always find it amazing that guys who are rather hideous themselves (Howard Stern I'm looking at you) seem to feel it is their job to criticize the appearance of women. It's especially comical here on a website devoted to nerd news where most of the readership wouldn't have any idea how to please a woman. Here's a clue - no one cares what your ugly ass thinks of someone else's appearance. If you feel the need to criticize you had better be a model yourself. Given that you are posting here on Slashdot that's pretty unlikely - so kindly shut the hell up.
That in a socialist utopia like the UK, the nationalised health service might have a hard time coming up with the right machine for the job? In the backwards, lawless, dysfunctional nation like the US surely they haven't even devised such a machine.
Or, they have them available in children's clinics across the country ready to save young lives. Amazingly, the inefficient and dangerous US healthcare system has addressed this need without resorting to rogue doctors scratching parts together in garages to accommodate the health needs of the citizens.
Do they have them for newborn babies? I don't see much useful on Google, but I don't really know what I'm looking for.
But, you can be 90% sure that the UK media would have taken the chance to complain that the NHS didn't have the machines if they existed, and they haven't.
My wife, in fact, lost weight when she was pregnant with our first child. After the baby was born, she was 10 pounds lighter than she was before she got pregnant.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
would you expect this to happen in a country with "socialized medicine"?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No results found for "american infant dialysis machine" -Google
I fail to see how the above flamebait is in any way "insightful". We don't have them here, according to Google. From the HTML version in the Google cache of the PDF (also available) the official US Food and Drug Administration website:
Mod parent troll.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
It's got to take serious balls to whip something like this up and plug somebody's baby into it, even if the baby was going to die.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No. the kids just die. RTFA
Down with categorical imperatives
The normal adult has about 70 ml blood per kg body weight, or about 5 L total. An infant has something like 90 ml/kg, IIRC (I'm a doctor but not a neonatologist), so that would be about 270 ml for a 3 kg newborn. Two tablespoons would be about 10% of that, which is about what someone can lose suddenly without serious symptoms.
And in some cases it just might be. Hardly anybody looks twice if you laugh at people "winning" darwin awards, let alone say that it was their own fault. Nobody minds if I say that some drunk driver killing himself in the car accident had no-one but himself to blame. But when it's a fat person or somebody getting AIDS because of having unprotected sex, suddenly it's a whole different matter. I call bullshit.
You stupid little fuck. RTFA. No, why bother, because then you'd have to think before spouting bollocks.
Troll? You morons, he posted lyrics to a Spinal Tap song!
http://www.babycenter.com/pregnancy-weight-gain-estimator Pregnancy weight gain estimator
Estimate for my wife:
You should gain roughly 25-35 lbs. during your pregnancy. Over the last two trimesters you should gain about 4 lbs. every 4 weeks. How it breaks down If you gained the average of range above, this is where the weight would go (totals are rounded): Maternal: Uterus 2.39 lbs. Breasts 1.0 lbs. Blood 3.09 lbs. Water 4.15 lbs. Fat 8.27 lbs. Subtotal 18.89 lbs. Fetal: Fetus 7.5 lbs. Placenta 1.6 lbs. Amniotic Fluid 1.97 lbs. Subtotal 11.07 lbs. Total 29.96 lbs.
And even though you are posting on /. - I'll trust the baby center site over your own experience.
I'm just wondering how long something like this would take to develop? Did they use standard parts or did they have to fabricate them?
I think I've seen that doctor. Tall, skinny, scraggly dressed, uses a cane...?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
> So, had this happened in the US, she would have been OK, just as long as she had a doctor who was willing to spend his own time and his own money inventing a new machine and building it himself in time to save her life and didn't care about beeing sued for malpractice.
See? Fixed that for you...
Such imaging technologies are not so remote that you couldn't produce homebrew ones. My podiatrist had an Ultrasound box about the size of a small PC.
Strangely, my mum craved the smell of petrol... To be honest, I'm kinda glad she didn't pay too much attention to it.
As do the fluids and placenta.
A healthy woman gains weight during pregnancy. A healthy woman doesn't get fat during pregnancy.
I was thinking somthing along the lines of using a resonant frequency inspired of the tuning force adapted to neutralise the poison inside each nematocyst sack of a jellyfish. Then we'll strip down the lawn chair to the two square metal frames, and have maybe unwoven a quantity of 36 lengths of that 2 inch by 18 inch biodegradable plastic used in the lawn chair butt and back support. Removing some of the pop-rivets holding the two main squares of metal together to the chair arm-rest, and two beams that are folded to become the chair legs...
I don't see anything yet... wait. The chair frame is pipe..hollow.hrm.... I think we can safely chop the jellyfish into a mulch, bend some of the frame together and tied to an uppertorso as a blowgun, and shoot everyone we see with non-lethal stinging jellyfish plasma. We can then wrap some of it up in a plastic-wrap envelope and send it through the mail with a postage stampe so we can get the thing to explode on the mail-sorting conveyor system that will lead to it all adhering to someone else's mail and thus stinging the mail handlers and recipients.
Excellent!
From the first comment here: http://www.amazon.com/MacGyver-Complete-Season-Charles-Correll/dp/B000CNESLW
5.) Second Chance First aired: 10/16/1989
In China,Macgyver and his old friend Jesse Colton help with a Phoenix Foundation funded hospital for sick children. While there,they discover a gang stealing supplies (including a dialysis machine vital to the survival of a girl name Susie) from the hospital,and something even more surprising: a Amerasian boy who is the son of Jesse Colton. A son he never knew he had. When he and Mac find out the boy helped the gangsters steal the supplies,they must get them back,before Susie dies....
I'd be interested to see some sources on that. As I understand it, the current medical recommendation in the US is that a 30-40 pound weight gain is healthy. I gained about 40 pounds during pregnancy, and my baby weighed 7.7 pounds. Even counting placenta and blood loss, that's a pretty decent weight gain, and it's average among my acquaintance. Most mothers I know gain at least that much. And trust me, it's not from trying. When the kid orders up a 16-ounce steak, that's what it gets.
Well... I was half joking. Also, the Wikipedia article about that episode is incomplete. TV.com was my reference.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Let's see the numbers on the use of fertility clinics and births by older women before you start implying causation.
People have easier access to far more exotic treatments in the US than they do in the UK. It is likely the cause of these numbers. Those extra 1.4 births per thousand might not have even been pregnancies there.
I'm counting that toward the baby weight as most of that stuff will be gone as soon as the baby is born.
Here's the Mayo Clinic page on weight gain during pregnancy.
Here's the breakdown:
* Baby: 7 to 8 pounds
* Larger breasts: 1 to 3 pounds
* Larger uterus: 2 pounds
* Placenta: 1 1/2 pounds
* Amniotic fluid: 2 pounds
* Increased blood volume: 3 to 4 pounds
* Increased fluid volume: 2 to 3 pounds
* Fat stores: 6 to 8 pounds
Here's the information on how much your caloric intake needs to increase:
Emphasis is mine.
The expectation is that once the baby is born, the remaining weight will disappear on its own through a normal diet. Much of the extra fat put on supports breast feeding of the child. Once weened, many women actually find themselves slightly lighter than they were before, even if they were not overweight. (Which is also what happened to my wife. ;-)) I've heard some women refer to pregnancy as a good way to shed the pounds. I don't recommend it, but it does seem to work.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That is what makes them so awesome.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
The costs are lower, in part, because less treatments are provided.
For example, half of all the joint replacement surgeries done in the entire world are done on US patients. That's 50% of the procedures on less than 5% of the world population. Either people in the US blow out their joints way more frequently than Europeans with socialized health care (unlikely), or their system isn't providing them with that option.
So our "inferior" privatized system is providing more people with life-improving treatments, and when something goes wrong the error rate (not the treatment rate) is used to tell people our system sucks. If you don't get the procedure, the system has failed you, but it wasn't screwed up, so you're a positive statistic!
Sorry, but I'd rather pay more, and pay for myself.
and didn't care about beeing sued for malpractice.
See? Fixed that for you...
That wouldn't be an issue in this case, since the patient was dying. In the USA, under the Good Samaritan Act, the "responder is not legally liable for the death, disfigurement or disability of the victim as long as the responder acted rationally, in good faith, and in accordance with his level of training."
Suppose the home-made device failed and the patient died. Since the patient would certainly have died if he had not acted, but might have lived if the doctor's plan had worked, that obviously qualifies as acting rationally and in good faith.
(The part about "in accordance with his level of training" is irrelevant in this case, because the "responder" was a qualified doctor. That caveat is meant to apply to non-doctors. For example, I'm not a doctor. So if your heart stops, and I break your ribs while giving you CPR, you can't sue me. But if you have a heart attack, and I attempt open-heart surgery on the spot, and you die, your estate can sue me.)
Just keep paying your overpriced medical insurance (assuming you can get any) and telling yourself you're getting a better standard of care and the bad commies will just go away.
Where's the diagrams?
You can't advertise a DIY Dialysis machine with no diagrams.
Hell, I thought I'd get instructions on building a kick-ass hangover machine. Drink all I want one night, clean my blood the next morning, and all would be good.
I hate false advertising.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Do you have to pay for fertility treatment in the USA, or does insurance provide it?
You can pay for fertility treatment in the UK (from a private hospital) if you wish. What you get for free varies from area to area for some reason, but it should be available if you're under 40 and not obese.
lol! you think a private capitalist system would have delivered better?
Let's all remind ourselves that the UK ranks 18th in the world (this is according to the WHO), and the USA ranks 37th, and to rub it in a bit more, the USA spends a higher percentage of it's GDP than any other country (something like 15% I believe), and the UK spends just 6% of it's GDP on healthcare. So you tell me which system is the one that works here?
No doubt in the US, they would have paid a private contractor thousands to build a kid-sized dialysis machine, the insurance company wouldn't pay for it, then they kid would have died before they finished it.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
No duct tape?
Have gnu, will travel.
In theory, there would be no standing to sue under the good samaritan laws.
Eh, that never kept the sharks away. Could somebody please start a Good Samaritan Defense Fund charity so people will fell less antisocial due to fears of tort suits?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I for one, saw the picture
I thought most Slashdotters used lynx so people wouldn't know they were slacking off?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It depends on your insurance plan. Some don't pay for it at all, some pay for one try, and if it doesn't work you have to pay for subsequent tries (later tires are usually cheaper than the first try though), and some pay for three or more tries. Age limits also depend on the plan, but I've never heard of a plan requiring you not to be obese.
This is slashdot. Statistically speaking, some fat person always has mod points.
everything in moderation
The problem is that, what with the morning sickness, additional weight from the baby, and the bloated feeling from having a baby growing in your midsection, a lot of otherwise active women don't feel like exercising very much while pregnant. As a result, even if their eating habits don't change, they can, in fact, gain weight while pregnant (although this can be offset by the lack of appetite caused by morning sickness).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
like enormous savings on overall national spending on healthcare,
Of course, 50% of medical dollars spent in the US already come from the government, and we already have all kinds of government health regulations (tax benefits for employer but not employee paid for insurance, HIPAA, mandatory coverage elements for insurance that vary state-by-state, etc.). So maybe it would be better to de-regulate medicine to reduce costs?
The costs are lower, in part, because less treatments are provided.
Also US doctors make 50%-100% more than the OECD average (generalist versus specialist).
So all we need to do is cut doctor pay - oops, we just tried to do that with Medicare and it didn't get passed!
If you think socialized medical care is a good idea, just keep in mind the idiots we put into office in the US. Perhaps European politicians are smarter than ours....
TFA is deliciously vague. I need something similar for my CRF cat. Where is the howto link?
The Admin and the Engineer
An anecdote that I planned to add before my boss came over and I hastily hit submit...
I know a 52 year old woman who had her fertility treatments covered by her insurance plan, and succeeded after her third attempt.
This is a great story and its sad how people are making rude comments about the mom. If you had a dying child, you were helpless and couldn't do anything to help save the child, you'd be like that too. So, please be a bit more sensitive about others. Regardless, this is something that can save the life of these insensitive people's children too if needed (if they are able to reproduce in the first place!) Give the guy some credit doing the best as a doctor to save a life.
Well I suppose the mods know nothing.
I don't know if they're smarter... But they can't raise taxes any higher 'cause they're already way up, where politicians here see the vast difference and think they've got a ways to go before tax revolt.
Doctors have plenty of good ideas on how to lower costs. They present ideas all the time. Some of them request government involvement, but usually not in the form of paying for treatments. If anything, the gap between the patient and the payment is part of what drives the costs up here. Most things are covered, and the patient doesn't see the costs, so they're more likely to seek treatment for things they would otherwise deem too costly to worry about.
People didn't used to seek out their doctor for a cold... But then again, there used to be a class in high-school that taught girls how to take care of people who were sick with non-threatening conditions. When it was deemed sexist, they did away with it instead of making it for boys too.
Are you vieing for a spot in the special olympics again this year?
Ackk! It's Bush senior!
You're aware that civilized people consider eugenics to be out of vogue, right?
Whether or not some group of people considers it to be "out of vogue" has little to do with whether or not it is a good idea (or valid observation, as in this case the poster wasn't actually advocating eugenics so much as observing the consequences of the current trend). Reasoning that the group must be right because it is a group is known as the "bandwagon fallacy."
Also, you are subtly implying that the poster is not civilized. Be that as it may...uncivilized people can still make correct statements. Rejecting an idea because of some attribute of the person who states it is known as the "ad hominem" fallacy.
But I suppose if a little irrational thinking allows you to post comments that make you feel superior, have at you!
Chocolate is a good mood stabilizer, helps against stress.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
My wife asked her gynecologist about this very issue. Her gynecologist said that when pregnant, you only need to eat about the caloric equivalent of an apple more per day. That's not exactly much....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Show me a post-pregnancy mom who hasn't gained 30+ pounds and I'll show you someone UN-AMERICAN.
Alert the DHS. This guy's wife/bf/sister is a terrorist!
Homer: What if instead of donating one of my old worn out kidneys, I gave grandpa that artificial kidney I invented.
Marge: Oh Homer, that was just a beer can with a whistle glued to it
You've got to be kidding. They spend MORE than we do? I'd got the idea that they put up with having no health service because it meant they could spend more money on, er... I think the term they use is 'defending freedom'. I'd never imagined they spent anything like as much. I mean, the common wisdom in the UK is that the NHS is a colossal money pit. The American system is even more expensive?
Jesus. So, 15% GDP in the US, versus 6% in the UK... and adjust for the higher per capita wealth of the US... that's just horrible. Where the hell is all the money going?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Old news... Bin Laden obviously has been using a mini-dialysis machine for years. It's even has stealth tech built into it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's going to our emergency rooms. All the people without decent health insurance are forced to rely on emergency room care for medical issues that could be handled, at a vastly lower cost, by a general practitioner. Also, they tend to let what start out as minor medical issues progress far longer because they can't afford to get them treated until an emergency room would deem it bad enough to deal with. That's the hidden reason why socialized healthcare ends up saving money overall, you get to take advantage of preventative medicine and catch issues early before the cost to treat them skyrockets.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem with dialysis devices is blood volume. A large area is usually required to get effective mass transfer across the semi-permeable dialysis membrane. That large area must be exposed to a volume of blood, and on the other side, to dialysis fluid (this is an equilibrium problem). So, large area --> large volume to cover that area --> lots of blood volume tied up in the device. Babies don't have much spare blood volume, to supply the device.
Another problem is overcoming the flow resistance in such a device, this has already been pointed out. Large area --> large pressure drop. Babies don't have big hearts, and pushing a large pressure drop for an extended time is a significant stress.
Get out of your make-believe Hollywood world and into the real one.
Or move to a continent such as Europe where there are still lots of fit girls and where the proportion of obesity in the populations isn't as high as in northern america (Yet. But it is getting widespread at an alarming rate)
I for one, saw the picture and thought it was sweet.
And I for one, happen to live in an European city featuring a good share of sexy girls.
But I agree on one point with you : it is just plain mean and cruel to criticise this woman only because of her weight.
You must be new here
But if you're going to post a picture, at least have it be of an medium attractive woman.
No, on /., if you're going to post a picture, at least have it be of an *attractive technology*, like the DIY machine it self.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
My father & mother-in-law both had kidney failures and relegated to kidney dialysis machines. I seen the various sizes of kidney dialysis machines at the kidney dialysis centers but never though one for the size of a infant or toddler. It is sad to see children about 5 years old that need kidney dialysis due to many factors but at least they have an kidney dialysis machine. Kidney dialysis takes much out of you and it never a permanent solution. I never though a infant or toddler will ever need one.
It is great for these doctors to make one for this infant and they should find a manufacture to make them for infants and toddler that will eventually need them. It is great for them to have the technical knowledge and creative skills to make such a device.
Again good show!
"Deftly Incessant Digital Gnomes?"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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If the doc's gamble on an unproven treatment didn't pay off and the patient died sooner than he/she would have without any treatment then there's the liability of knowing he robbed the patient of days, weeks or months of time with their family -- not to mention the potential liability of criminal charges for causing someone to die before their time (aka "killing them").
Personally I think patients diagnosed as terminal by approved treatment approaches ought to be able to choose (themselves! never their doctor's sole choice) to gamble their life on an unproven treatment but that comes awfully close to infringing on the AMA's monopoly so it'll never be legal.
Yes.
Trolls, on the other hand...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I think the recoomended additional intake is around 500 calories a day, nowhere near the "Eating for two" you hear people talking about.
For some during pregnancy the added weight gain is due to the additional snacking and the change in diet that is necessary.
My wife gained about 15 lbs in addition to the baby during pregnancy due to having to snack to fight off nausea. Between the added carbohydrates (the only thing that got rid of her "Morning sickness" was pasta) and having to lay off the diet foods I was kinda surprised she was able to keep it in check that much.
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he posted lyrics to a Spinal Tap song!
Frank Zappa, I think you'll find...
My wife craved McDonald's breakfast sandwiches. If your theory holds true, I wonder wtf deficiency THAT was about.
(She even made me wait until the drive-thru opened up to take her to the hospital!)
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
Uses a cane? I think that went out with the Seventh Doctor, no?
You're absolutely right. EMTALA essentially created universal healthcare in the US by making it illegal for an emergency room to refuse to treat someone based on their ability to pay. This is (in my opinion) a worthwhile goal, but one which is terribly inefficient with health-care money if not backed by a socialized healthcare system at the same time.
If you've got no healthcare, but get sick, you can roll into the ER for free treatment. Of course, ER care is an order of magnitude more costly than care from a family doctor, and does not include checkups, history, or preventative care that could have avoided the issue in the first place. It also requires that you wait until your condition is far enough gone that it constitutes an emergency, likely making things more difficult and expensive to treat.
So we pay for healthcare for everybody, except we do it as inefficiently as possible, tying up ER doctors, nurses and facilities with things that should have been taken care of at a tenth the cost elsewhere, earlier, and without occupying a bed somewhere at a facility designed for broken bones and heart attacks, not festering infections you should have had cleaned up a year ago.
Explain that to the socialists (i.e., Democrats).
very interesting ! that sounds like something that should be studied more widely
MP3 Search Engine
While a DIY dialysis machine is pretty awesome; it was successfully designed, built and put into use 2 years ago. Shouldn't this story have come out then?
Perhaps because it prevented an increase in premiums? Or it went into preventing a decrease (or an outright increase) in quality of care?
These possibilities are worth considering.
Or course, it's also quite likely that malpractice insurance companies, health care providers, and health insurers had little incentive to pass any savings on to those insured. An insurance marketplace isn't like some other basic marketplaces like, say, restaurants (if it were, we wouldn't eat out at the restaurant of our choice, we'd get subsidized meals at the company affiliated locations). Most of us don't chose our health plan on our own, and nobody really knows how good their plan is until they really, really need it -- and by that point, if there's a problem, you're going to have trouble getting someone else to cover you, so it's not easy to switch away from a poor alternative. Furthermore, choice at signup time is plagued by the problem of considerable information asymmetry -- the insurance companies most assuredly have an army of actuaries and lawyers and others to assess and manage the risk each potential new customer adds to the pool, but individual consumers don't have ready access to similarly significant information about insurers for comparison, and even where some sources exist, the time investment's pretty daunting. Market forces operate pretty weakly for the consumer, if at all.
So, two plausible scenarios:
1) Tort reform prevented cost increases, and resulted in more stable costs for consumers, but not price reductions
2) Tort reform prevented cost increases, and resulted in more stable or reduced costs for insurers, who kept extra as profits
Which is it? Either's fairly plausible; we'd probably have to see either stats on health care / insurance prices in texas, or have public balance sheets for insurers....
Tweet, tweet.
There is a very interesting discussion about comparing infant mortality rates at Wikipedia; the short story is comparing two countries infant mortality rates is comparing apples and oranges: countries tend to use different standards as to what they count as an infant mortality.
It was implied all the weight goes away at child birth, it does not. Women do not have 20+ pounds of placenta and fluids.
The often gain fat, they don't get fat. Not a lot, but it happens.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Probably started eating better.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For the record, I'd like to point out that I love the British spelling in this troll. It's... telling.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
Research. The United States performs vastly more medical research than any other country in the world. Socialized health care systems take advantage of US research while sharing none of the costs.
no, it's cash spend on actual healthcare only, not research. Research for all science is far below that figure, if the US was spending 9% of it's GDP on medical research we would all be living to 100 by now. The actual figure spent on ALL research by government and private industry is less than 3%. In the UK, it's a little under 2%.
Anyway, you should realise that most medical research is done by drug companies who make money from it, a course of Erbitux costs the same for NHS as it does for a private hospital, so they are paying for it's development just the same as everyone else who benefits from it. And when the NHS pays a surgeon's salary, they are paying for the development of the surgical techniques they have learned just the same as any other hospital who employs them.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Troll? What a joke.
*bdum-tsch!*
No sig for you!!
I got that same sudden "bean burrito" craving out of the blue, while I was in college. I'd been vegetarian for about four years, was coping with some heavy depression during my first year of school...I guess it must have been chemical, because as soon as I ate what my cravings told me to, the depression vanished. Like, in a day. Not vegetarian any more, but I still pay close attention to my cravings.
countries tend to use different standards as to what they count as an infant mortality.
Wait, you mean there's more than one definition of dead?
My first thought when I saw this article a few days ago on news.google.com was... Why didn't this hospital have a neonatal dialysis machine, or transfer the child to a tertiary care center that did? Is this what it's like in the NHS, that they are willing to let a baby die for lack of renal replacement therapy? I can't help but think that in the US, no physician would have had to develop this piece of equipment in his garage, because many tertiary care centers have this equipment already.
To blame the infant mortality rate on the simply on the health care system ignores a variety of factors. Here is a news article that gives more suggestions to the reasoning behind the high mortality rate. Reasons such as race, fertility drugs, and poverty.
IANADoctor, but I seem to recall hearing that the idea that cravings are correlated to missing minerals/vitamins/etc is no longer believed to be correct. We don't get minerals by eating rocks, so why would the body signal a mineral deficiency by triggering a desire for gritty textures?
Off the top of my head, it would seem to me that when we are experiencing a gritty texture in our mouths it is often by accident and rarely nutritious.
On a related note, I put on more baby weight than my wife :-(
I know a 52 year old woman who had her fertility treatments covered by her insurance plan, and succeeded after her third attempt.
Almost certainly with donor eggs, at that age. This would be considered unethical in many countries.
Wrong. A 1990 report by the Institute of Medicine called for a weight gain during pregnancy of 25-35 pounds (for women with normal weight for height.) - http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1695171
How have these recommedations stood up? A meta-analysis of studies from 1990-2007 found: "Regarding outcomes of weight gain within or outside 1990 IOM guidelines, moderate to strong evidence suggests an association between weight gain below IOM recommendations and preterm birth, low birthweight, SGA birthweights, and failure to initiate breastfeeding, and strong evidence for the association between weight gain above IOM recommendations and high birthweight, macrosomia, and LGA birthweights. Moderate evidence supports an association between weight gain above IOM guidelines and cesarean delivery and postpartum weight retention in the short, intermediate, and long term." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18620471
Clinical evidence calls for a weight gain of 25-35 pounds. What baby is 25-35 pounds? When was this idea supposedly disproven?
Infant mortality rate in the US: 6.3 per 1,000 live births
Infant mortality rate in the UK: 4.9 per 1,000 live births
Unfortunately, this difference is due primarily to race. The figure for black Americans is about double these numbers.
Except you haven't a shred of evidence for any of this.
Well, now I know what a DIDG is...
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
And if you could tell me what minerals and vitamins are in chocolate fudge brownies (my wife's latest craving at 7 and a half months) I'd love to know.
Chocolate is rich in a certain class of flavonoids as well as other anti-oxidants. It's rich in the alkaloid theobromine has been linked to fewer birth defects in rats.
Our food cravings have evolved over millions of years and are so common, they probably provide some sort of survival advantage.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
One of my friends thought that laundry soap smelled really good. She thought she was going crazy, and finally told her doctor, who apparently said that certain smell cravings like that were tied to different deficiencies, and once she got her started with the correct supplement (not sure what it was), the craving went away instantly. Your mother was probably deficient in some nutrient.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
They do say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so considering that you are, presumably, a yank I guess you're right there aren't really all that many 25+ stone bloaters with frizzy hair and loud voices here. You could probably pick up something to your taste on one of our council estates. You're strange yankee tastes would probably be best served if you advertised for something like this
"Dole bludging chav minger required for randy Yankee Doodle Dandy. Supersize only"
Bah, humbug. European taxes aren't much higher than in many US states. I'd pay almost exactly as much in California as I do in the UK for example (I've done the math - was considering a move). Except in California I'd need to spend additional money on private health insurance etc..
It's actually quite lower than 6.3 in the US, the higher infant mortality rate is just American people using their american freedom to put babies on spikes.
Listen to a BBC documentary comparison of health care in the UK and Massachusetts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2008/07/080715_better_health.shtml
You have the causative chain the wrong way round: why do black Americans suffer greater infant mortality than white Americans? Two reasons: they're poor (and poverty is a risk factor for morbidity and mortality), and the healthcare they receive is of a lower standard.
Listen to this podcast for more:
http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/yale.edu.1320598949.01320598958.1583568871?i=2073945130
You didn't read the Wikipedia article properly. It said that countries used to use different standards but that most developed countries have been using the same WHO definition of infant mortality since the late 1980s or early 1990s. It strikes me that this is mostly squirming around trying to find reasons why infant mortality is higher in the US than other developed countries other than the obvious one: because for a large fraction of the US population, health and healthcare is worse than in other countries.
You've set up a false dichotomy with your either-or. The other obvious explanation for the high rates of joint replacement in the US compared to everywhere else is that doctors and insurers are trigger happy and recommend earlier and more aggressive intervention. This may or may not be the right thing to do, but it's not *obviously* the right thing to do. There are always risks and downsides to each course of action (or inaction) in healthcare.
As for your final comment, it's very nice that you'd rather pay more and pay for yourself. Let's hope your disease isn't one that's too expensive for you to afford to treat out of your own resources.
I'm surprised this doctor isn't being sued by NICE out here. We're such a nanny state :)
Great info, thanks for responding.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Of course, you can find beautiful people in any country, especially among celebrities. But the more interesting question, and a much harder one to answer, is whether there are differences in the average level of beauty of ordinary people between different countries.
:-)).
Anyway, I do wonder if any research has been made in the perception of average beauty of people from one nation by people from others. Is it possible to assemble a list of countries ordered by average beauty as perceived by foreigners, of the same dubious utility as those lists of countries by IQ?
I presume the GP got his impression from visiting England in person; otherwise, it wouldn't even be worth considering. To add to the anectodical data, when I visited England with my family, several years ago, we also noticed something similar: although there was no shortage of cute children, pretty adult women seemed exceedingly rare. I wouldn't go as far as the GP and say that "98% were ugly"; many could be called plain or homely rather than ugly, but there definitely seemed to be far fewer pretty women than there should be.
We noticed this without any negative expectations about English people, and without expressly looking for it, so please regard it as a mere observation. I am also well aware that it's too unsystematic to draw any conclusions.
It could also be a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. I am from Europe, though, so I probably don't have the same standards as the GP (who I am assuming is from America, since in the English-speaking web everyone is American by default
Solution: Don't live in California. They're all nuts there anyway.
Actually, you are completely wrong. It is currently recommended that average weight women gain 25-30 pounds during pregnancy, less if they are overweight and more if they are underweight. Just so you know, babies don't weigh 25 pounds
Let's hope your disease isn't one that's too expensive for you to afford to treat out of your own resources.
Why? If it's not, it's probably not economically viable to keep me alive. Who better to do the cost benefit analysis on saving somebody's life, than the person paying/the person dying?
You have the causative chain the wrong way round
I thought I was dodging that whole question :-)
I'm certainly not here to defend the US health system, but you can't blame it for infant mortality.
Whatever the causes, it means that a simple comparison is unfair and pointless.
However, I just googled this and see that poor hispanic immigrants in the US have quite low infant mortality. So its not so simple.
The other obvious explanation for the high rates of joint replacement in the US compared to everywhere else is that doctors and insurers are trigger happy and recommend earlier and more aggressive intervention.
That's not the "obvious" explanation. The obvious explanation is that from a bureaucratic perspective, a $600 wheelchair or $200 walker is just as much a solution to the problem as a $25,000 joint replacement.
All that added crazy must add weight too.
Good point; more than likely half of all slashdotters are obese, and the other half are skinny. I was i nthe skinny half, the McDonald's diet didn't help a bit.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
But in the US, if you can't pay the admission fee of a tertiary care centre through health insurance, then you don't get in.
Yes, our NHS has problems but at least the care is free.
So you "septics" go and sort your health service out first before poking your fat snouts into ours.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I don't know, but when I was in Thailand in the Air Force in 1974, almost all the Thai women under 35 were damned good looking, even beautiful. And they were the absolutely niceset people I ever met, which is saying a lot because I worked at Disney World for five years, meeting people from all over the world.
The British I met at Disney were the most polite of anyone, and the British women pretty much were about the same as American women.
But as they say, beauty (and ugliness) is in the eye of the beholder. Redd Foxx (or was it Richard Pryor?) once famously said "Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly's to the bone!"
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm not sure the Guardian's "soulmates" section would be too happy with that.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you aren't a Danish supermodel, I would poitely suggest fucking off and trolling elsewhere. If you are, please provide pics.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is incorrect. The hospital will admit you and treat you, but you will be required to pay out of pocket for the service. You are treated first and then you are sent the bill.
In addition, I know of no Health Insurance company who tracks your movements so specifically. You get whatever treatement you need as recommended by your doctor. The cost of the treatment is forwarded to your Insurance company. If there is a dispute about your treatment or any cost associated with the treatment you get the bill later.
The only time you pay up front is for doctors visits. Since the average co-pay is around $20 you can pay right away, though I belive even then you can ask them to send you a bill later.
Your comment is just more propaganda against a private health care system.
Keep in mind I don't know enough about costs and benefits to say which is actually better. But US hospitals don't turn away patients without insurance. In fact, the ER will often take in and treat walk-ins with no insurance and let them go without paying.
Since when did Slashdot turn into 4chan? What's posted for discussion isn't the attractiveness of the woman in the picture, but the medical marvel of a couple doctors building their own custom dialysis machine for an infant. Please keep your opinions of beauty to yourself; I will.
You know, I've heard the same thing about Thai women from people who've been in Thailand. That suggests that we can't discount all differences on "eye of the beholder" grounds. If almost all men agree that someone is beautiful (or ugly), then we might call it a fact (and define beautiful/ugly as what most people find attractive/unattractive); and travelers seem to agree that the average Thai woman is more beautiful than the world average. Further research is needed, though.
That said, I agree that there are much more important qualities than superficial beauty, such as programming skill.
I was told that "Thailand" means "land of smiles", and the people there are (at least were) extremely friendly, and they smiled a hell of a lot.
Nothing is prettier than a smile. A fat girl with a big nose and a smile is prettier than a frowning supermodel.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Not really. She ate pretty much the same. Of course, some of the caloric intake of her food went to feed the embryo so she was left with fewer calories for herself. We actually started eating better after our first son turned two and we realized that our eating choices would affect how he ate thoughout his life.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Those statistics are skewed. Doctors in the U.S. intervene on very very premature babies and other "lost cause" situations more often than doctors in Europe. So a stillbirth or "spontaneous abortion" elsewhere -- not included in infant mortality statistics -- can end up as an "infant mortality" statistic in the U.S.
doc
Forgot the link.
Where the hell is all the money going?
hookers and beer, of course
European taxes aren't much higher than in many US states.
Some European countries are worse than others. In France, top tax rates are 51% income, 60% for both sides of social security, and 20% VAT. Even California can't beat that.
An easily portable dialysis machine is just what Osama has been looking for!
Can't tell you how much of a PITA it is to push one of the standard bulky ones through the mountain caves of Afghanistan.
OK, you got me. I almost believed you were serious. And then I thought, no-one could be that much of a dumb prick to think that "if I can't afford a 300K operation, then I'm not worth keeping alive. But if I can, I am". So you must be a troll. Right?
Um. The explanation you've laid out here is just a repeat of your previous explanation, which is that pennypinching bureaucrats are cruelly denying Europeans of the care they so desperately need.
You may disagree that my explanation is obvious, but I think it's pretty fuckin obvious myself. Especially given that there's plenty of evidence of aggressive early intervention for lots and lots of diseases in all branches of healthcare, and not all of it is helpful, and lots of it happens in the US. Breast cancer screening is just one such area.
I agree that confounding factors make it challenging to understand what statistics about health are telling us, but I don't think that we should simply throw our hands up and say "such figures cannot be compared from one country to another" or that "infant mortality cannot be shown to be affected by health systems as opposed to the social and environmental determinants of health".
No. I was completely serious. I also think you're a moron.
I didn't put any numbers in my post, but I'm curious to hear where you'd draw the line. How much is it worth spending to save somebody's life, and how long do they need to be expected to live to justify it?
Given that the decision is going to be made by somebody, who would you want making the decision.
Stop "feeling", and think.
Um. The explanation you've laid out here is just a repeat of your previous explanation, which is that pennypinching bureaucrats are cruelly denying Europeans of the care they so desperately need.
You seriously should consider lessons in reading comprehension.
The explanation I've laid out is that elective procedures are neglected if there is a cheaper option that covers the need. I don't know how that matches up with your description of my explanation in any way.
You're nowhere near the clear-sighted rationalist you believe yourself to be, and I'm not the dewy-eyed, woolly-minded liberal you're imagining me to be either.
I am thinking. I'm thinking, "I think it's worth spending $200k to save my life, but oh shit, I don't have the $200k needed for this operation. Oh well, I'm economically non-viable. This feller thinks I should therefore just be left to die." I'm also thinking, "this feller either does not know or does not care that his proposal would create yet more inequities in health, to join a crowded field: a rich person and a poor person with the same disease and the same desire to treat it, but the poor person dies because they don't have the money to pay for treatment, while the rich person lives". Tell me, are you the kind of moralising snit that blames poor people for being poor, so they get what they deserve, or do you have some other form of motivation, such as "the market will sort it all out"?
In any event, in answer to your question, health economists long ago needed to develop a method to compare the relative benefits and costs of different interventions and non-interventions. It's called the QALY, and in the UK, the cutoff for funding ("range of acceptable cost effectiveness") is set at about £30k (oh my god, a number! and set by the state and not a freeborn individual making sovereign decisions for their own selves. What cruel and stupid calculus is this!!). Given the UK median household income was ~£25k in 2004, it's clear that the UK health system provides a safety net for families against illnesses whose treatments would otherwise be catastrophically expensive or simply unaffordable.
If it's worth spending $200k to save your life, you can afford it. That doesn't mean you necessarily have cash on hand already, or that you have health insurance... It simply means that if you have the earnings potential after being saved, you can afford it. $200k isn't all that much money in that context. It's not "catastrophically" expensive given appropriate financing (which admittedly is an area that we could use some work on).
My motivations are neither of those that you speculated. They are simply that I wish to be in control over my care, and the amount of risk I wish to mitigate. I don't want others making the decision, and I don't want to pay for others making different decisions. Nor should I have to.
[Sigh]
I'll lay it out for you:
You originally said:
"Either people in the US blow out their joints way more frequently than Europeans with socialized health care (unlikely), or their system isn't providing them with that option [joint replacement surgery].
So our 'inferior' privatized system is providing more people with life-improving treatments..."
So you've provided two possible explanations for your observation that 50% of joint replacements globally happen on just 5% of the global population:
1. People in the US blow out their joints way more frequently than Europeans
2. Socialized health care systems are not providing them with the option for joint replacement surgery
I caricatured 2 as "pennypinching bureaucrats are cruelly denying Europeans of the care they need". Your "socialized health care / system" = my "pennypinching bureaucrats". Your "not providing" = my "cruelly denying". Your "that option / life-improving treatment" = my "the care they need". My caricature is thus firmly rooted in each part of your original explanation. And it's not much of a caricature, either -- your original statement was clearly implying that you thought the American system was better than European systems because it provided more access to joint replacements.
You then rephrased your original explanation as follows: "from a bureaucratic perspective, a $600 wheelchair or $200 walker is just as much a solution to the problem as a $25,000 joint replacement"
It's still all in there: your "from a bureaucratic perspective" directly equals my "pennypinching bureaucrats". It also clearly implies "cruelly denying" (after all, who could read your sentence and not be moved to compare "a bureaucratic perspective" with "a humane perspective"?). And the only reading of the phrase "a $600 wheelchair or $200 walker is just as much a solution to the problem as a $25,000 joint replacement" that rings true is that you are saying "Europeans are being given wheelchairs instead of joint replacements as a cost-saving, ie pennypinching, measure"
Finally, you rephrased your original explanation from:
'Socialized health care systems aren't providing Europeans with the option of [joint replacement surgery]...so our 'inferior' privatized system is providing more people with life-improving treatments'
to:
"elective procedures are neglected if there is a cheaper option that covers the need"
By writing in the third person, and removing words such as "socialized", "privatized", 'inferior', "life-improving", you created a more dispassionate argument, but the core contention remains the same: the reason there are fewer joint replacements in Europe is that to save money, cheaper options are used instead.
Your position has thus not shifted at all throughout, which is good. And my description of your explanation holds as true for your third restatement of your position as your first. And I repeat, there is at least one other explanation for why Americans have joint replacement surgery more frequently than Europeans, and I think it's obvious: American doctors and insurance companies recommend earlier and more aggressive intervention than European doctors. And I went on to cite one example of where the jury is out on whether earlier and more aggressive intervention is worthwhile (breast cancer), and I'll now cite another example of where higher operating rates are undoubtedly because of earlier and more aggressive intervention: c-section rates.
Studies show that the best outcomes for mothers and babies appear to occur with cesarean section rates of 5% to 10%. Rates above 15% seem to do more harm than good (Althabe and Belizan 2006). And the rate in the US is about 33% (up ~50% in about a decade). And in the UK it's about 20%, and somewhat lower in many other European countries. I raise this to make clear that you cannot assume that a lower rate of intervention (eg fewer joint replacements) demonstrates worse levels of care or outcomes (eg more pain and less mobility).
Mate, this is just horseshit. Asserting that "if it's worth spending $200k to save your life, you can afford it" doesn't make it so. There are tens of millions of people in your country and mine who could never even dream of persuading anyone to lend them that much money, nor of paying it back if by some weird chance some kindly bank manager made them the loan. In 2006, the bottom 20% of US households earned less than $19,178. Do you really believe that the vast majority of these households could ever get or pay back a loan of $200k (no matter how dire the consequences of not obtaining the money)? And if you don't consider $200k expensive, then have in mind that care can be much, much more expensive than that: well in excess of £1m for a single intervention. And of course, you don't always get to be conscious or competent at the point at which treatment decisions need to be made. For example, a young man was caught in a bomb blast in London in 2005. His care involved rescue by paramedics and firefighters, a complete resus team who restarted his heart twice, a full CT scan, a major trauma op involving six doctors, ten nurses and many more support staff, a microbiology team to identify and resolve fungal infections, another bout of surgery to remove a damaged eye and replace with a prosthesis, more surgery to resolve a pulmonary embolism, extensive stays in intensive care and rehab involving dozens more doctors, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and pyschiatrists, etc, plus prosthetic legs, vast amounts of pharmaceuticals, etc etc. The costs for this must easily have exceeded £500k. Lifetime costs will be much higher. He had no opportunity to make the kind of sovereign decisions about his care that you so fondly imagine, and at the most crucial point, nor did anyone who could be regarded as a guardian (parent, significant other).
This kind of story sits beautifully alongside your glorious statement that "if you have the earnings potential after being saved, you can afford it". So presumably, if you don't have the earnings potential after being saved, you can't afford the treatment. In which case, if someone's say, 80 years old and has a stroke, they should get the treatment only if they commit to going back to work. What happens if the stroke renders them unable to work, by the way?