Skip to main content

watching Cspan

During my lunch hour (25 minutes more like) I went to the gym where I caught up on a small portion of TV.  I have been avoiding the news about health care reform legislation lately because it feels like an “Obama’s gonna fail” fest. But today I had a TV all to myself and there was a representative from New Hampshire on CNN, telling me, live, how he felt about the budget reconciliation process and the health care reform bill that might pass.

The Republican congressman said about what the standard line appears to be about health care reform: “The majority of Americans don’t want to see this bill pass.”  He said that it was too expensive, that small business would no longer be able to afford health insurance for employees, that it would put 17% of the nations economy into the governments hands, that it would make health care a puppet of the government.
It is absolutely clear from this that he hasn’t read the health care bill.  It has many faults, but what he said was grossly inaccurate. And even if he had read the bill, it isn’t the bill that’s going to be voted on, so how are his comments even relevant? And as for some invented percentage of the American populace not wanting the bill to be passed, how could that possibly be relevant when the American people have even less of a clue than he does what would be in the bill? I can’t believe that my taxes go to pay the salaries of people like this so they can stand up and say stuff that is completely lacking in data or sense.

Health care reform detractors also keep returning to the statement that it’s all going to suck, no matter what we do, because health care costs are just going to keep on going up.  There is huge amount of thinking and writing happening right now in the medical community about ways to reduce costs, and the magnitude of potential savings is huge, precisely because so much in medicine is grossly overpriced right now, and so much waste is uncontrolled.  The pessimistic attitude put forth by lawmakers may be self fulfilling, but with a little bit of common sense, costs could go way down. Basic medical care is just not that expensive to provide and providing it could drastically reduce the need for the not so basic expensive medical care.

It is true that we have to tread lightly on an industry that accounts for 17% of our GDP because that represents many jobs and much of our industry. Legislation should strive not to be heavy handed, and changes should occur slowly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to make your own ultrasound gel (which is also sterile and edible and environmentally friendly) **UPDATED--NEW RECIPE**

I have been doing lots of bedside ultrasound lately and realized how useful it would be in areas far off the beaten track like Haiti, for instance. With a bedside ultrasound (mine fits in my pocket) I could diagnose heart disease, kidney and gallbladder problems, various cancers as well as lung and intestinal diseases. Then I realized that I would have to take a whole bunch of ultrasound gel with me which would mean that I would have to check luggage, which is a real pain when traveling light to a place where luggage disappears. I heard that you can use water, or spit, in a pinch, or even lotion, though oil based coupling media apparently break down the surface of the transducer. Or, of course, you can just use ultrasound gel. Ultrasound requires an aqueous interface between the transducer and the skin or else all you see is black. Ultrasound gel is a clear goo, looks like hair gel or aloe vera, and is made by several companies out of various combinations of propylene glycol, glyce...

Ivermectin for Covid--Does it work? We don't know.

  Lately there has been quite a heated controversy about whether to use ivermectin for Covid-19.  The FDA , a US federal agency responsible for providing unbiased information to protect people from harmful drugs, foods, even tobacco products, has said that there is not good evidence of ivermectin's safety and effectiveness in treating Covid 19, and that just about sums up what we truly know about ivermectin in the context of Covid. The CDC, Centers for Disease Control, a branch of the department of Health and Human Services, tasked with preventing and treating disease and injury, also recently warned  people not to use ivermectin to treat Covid outside of actual clinical trials. Certain highly qualified physicians, including ones who practice critical care medicine and manage many patients with severe Covid infections in the intensive care unit vocally support the use of ivermectin to treat Covid and have published dosing schedules and reviews of the literature supporting...

Actinic Keratoses and Carac (fluorouracil) cream: why is this so expensive?

First, a disclaimer: I don't know why Carac (0.5% flourouracil cream) is so expensive. I will speculate, though, at the very end of this blog. Sun and the skin: what happens If a person reaches a certain age, has very little pigment in her skin, and has spent lots of time in the sun, bad stuff happens. The ultraviolet radiation of the sun does all kinds of great things: it makes us happy, causes us to synthesize vitamin D which strengthens our bones and it gives us this healthy glow until we get old and wrinkled and leathery. And even that can be charming. The skin cells put up with this remarkably well for a long time, partly aided by melanin pigment which absorbs the radiation, which is why we tan and freckle, if we are fair skinned. Eventually, though, we absorb enough radiation that it injures the skin and produces cells which multiply oddly. It also damages the skin's elasticity which creates wrinkles. The cells which reproduce in odd ways peel, creating dry skin or...