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What US Health Care Needs
Medical doctor and writer Atul Gawande gave the commencement address recently at Stanford's School of Medicine. In it he lays out very precisely and in a nonpartisan way what is wrong with the institution of medical care in the US — why it is both so expensive and so ineffective at delivering quality care uniformly across the board. "Half a century ago, medicine was neither costly nor effective. Since then, however, science has... enumerated and identified... more than 13,600 diagnoses — 13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we've discovered beneficial remedies... But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures. Our job in medicine is to make sure that all of this capability is deployed, town by town, in the right way at the right time, without harm or waste of resources, for every person alive. And we're struggling. There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver. ... And then there is the frightening federal debt we will face. By 2025, we will owe more money than our economy produces. One side says war spending is the problem, the other says it's the economic bailout plan. But take both away and you've made almost no difference. Our deficit problem — far and away — is the soaring and seemingly unstoppable cost of health care. ... Like politics, all medicine is local. Medicine requires the successful function of systems — of people and of technologies. Among our most profound difficulties is making them work together. If I want to give my patients the best care possible, not only must I do a good job, but a whole collection of diverse components must somehow mesh effectively. ... This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition. And it will take humility. But the fantastic thing is: This is what you get to do."
Cuba is a perfect example of this.
Wait, people still think Cuba has this magical, awesome health care system? Wow.
Cuba has a dog and pony show. Shit for the vast majority of the population, and high quality care for VIPs and foreigners.
is for people to realize that "Health Care" is (read: 'should be') concerned with people's health and not be thrown around as "injury care". If someone goes out on vacation to go bungee jumping or runs a recreational boat into a bridge pier, there's no reason that my taxes should pay for injuries that were induced by a conscious (idiotic) decision on their own part.
Now, providing "health care" to people who have health problems? Yes, that's what Health Care is.
When the LHC finally goes online...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
News at 11, people who are able to afford to eat and be lazy have more heart problems than those who eat nothing but rice and beans. What else will you shock us with? The fact that we can afford to have cars and actually drive them and so we have more car accidents.
If only there were some centralized planning committee who could redistribute the wealth for us plebes, then we would stop hurting ourselves, unnecessarily.
Err...if you're a grown person and not making > $40K a year, you have made some serious vocational errors along the way. Get to school and do something that does not involve wearing a name tag.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........