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Healthcare/Medical discussion

OnScreenTyper

OnScreenTyper

Planetoid
Joined
Sep 2, 2010
Location
Peoria, Illinois, USA
A place to talk about healthcare either on specific things or in general.

Ran across an article today that really set me on fire and i wanted to talk about it.

British Nurse Turned Off Quadriplegic's Life Support [VIDEO]
http://www.aolnews.com/world/articl...?icid=main|htmlws-main-w|dl1|sec1_lnk3|180565

Omfg are you serious, a nurse turned off his vent! She didn't even know how to use the manual bag! Poor guy is like vege now. I am glad i got a nurse that knows what she is doing.

Ok first off all I'm happy to live in the USA but dispite having all the med technology there are sooo many stupid people working in the healthcare industry. Really all around the world its an issue and third world countries who dont even have national healthcare man i feel sorry for them.

Everyday i read articles about some health or medical issue gone wrong because of worker error. Stupid mistakes that never should happen.

And don't even get me started on medical costs. How can they charge you $200 for a roll of medical tape, makes me sick.
 
People tend to make healthcare into a political left/right issue - either it needs to be socialized, or it needs to be privatized - but that's not the problem, in my opinion. Here are the problems that I'm aware of, and I'm sure I'm missing several.

1. The Death Spiral

Let's suppose you're trying to make your expensive health insurance payments. Will you be more likely to continue paying for your policy if you're at high risk for disease or if you're at low risk? If you're in a low-risk group, you might decide to let your insurance lapse; if you're frightened for your health, you'll stay on.

The problem is, this means that only the most expensive, high-risk patients get insured! So the premiums have to go up to compensate for their tendency to get sick more often.

But when the premiums go up, guess who leaves? Not the high-risk patients... but more low-risk patients who decide they'd rather not pay. So the average risk for the group goes up yet again.

Net result: Either insurance costs rise higher and higher until it's impossible to keep insuring people, or insurance companies find sneaky ways to eliminate coverage, raise premiums, and deny treatment.

(Socialized medicine fixes this problem! Sadly, it introduces other costs and may encourage high-risk behavior.)

2. The Guild System

To be effective, a doctor needs absolute trust. If patients don't trust their doctors, their health will suffer for it; it's a powerful psychological effect. One way to make sure doctors are trustworthy is to make it very, very hard to become a doctor.

Net result: Medicine runs on what amounts to a medieval guild system. On the bright side, it's very prestigious. Unfortunately, it also makes doctors absurdly undersupplied and expensive.

3. Huge Punitive Damages

In a medical lawsuit, a person can get money to compensate them for the suffering they have undergone. In addition, they can demand an additional payment, often exorbitant, to punish an alleged wrongdoer. If that wrongdoer is a doctor, you can expect to see malpractice insurance rise for everyone. This also applies to giant lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. Was Vioxx seriously that much worse than Sudafed?

Net result: Expensive malpractice insurance -> expensive doctors.

4. End-of-life Care

We spend an incredible amount of money - vast amounts of money - on the last few weeks of human life. In some cases, this is only humane. But when someone is being forcibly kept alive through brain death, effectively being force-fed nutrients and oxygen so that their family can delay the inevitable, all at the expense of the wider system, is that really humane? What about the surprisingly common case where the family keeps an elderly relative alive so they can cash in on his government benefits?

Net result: An incredible inflation of health costs.

The thing is, none of these problems are as politically "sexy" as ranting about socialized medicine or promising health care for all. So I can't see them being honestly addressed by politicians any time soon.
 
Sadly, little mistakes are made regardless.
There are always clumsy people who don't think something through the least bit and then they fuck something up.

A lot of children do this, but then they don't learn a lesson and it carries over to the real world, into their career; and it has some grim and very dire consequences.
 
OnScreenTyper said:
...there are sooo many stupid people working in the healthcare industry...
Click to expand...

There are so many stupid people that are driving, too. That risks a ton of lives as well. Drivers' licenses are pretty much HANDED out because it's "a necessity." Yet I see people every day not being able to stay in a lane because they think they need to stare into their lap and text instead of focusing on the road. Or someone digging around in their back seat while driving. Or applying make up. Or shaving. My point is that PEOPLE are FUCKING RETARDED. The problem is that the health care industry needs a ton of people, and a lot of the people smart enough to handle these jobs don't want them because you have to deal with people (which we've discussed as FUCKING RETARDED).

I got out of retail because I get tired of dealing with people because 75%-90% of the people I'd see in a day were FUCKING RETARDED. I will never work retail again because of these people. So if people like I won't work for them because I don't like FUCKING RETARDED people, they have to take the few competent people they can and start sending FUCKING RETARDED people to school. And since the health care industry needs workers, they're willing to hire the FUCKING RETARDED people, but will pay the competent ones far more.

And don't tell me that nursing school is hard. I've been taking my friend's tests for her online since she has some weird mental disorder that makes multiple-answer quests really fucked up or something, and I've been passing them just fine. Drunk. It's not hard - I know it's not. Most of it can be answered with a simple Google search... Kinda reminds me of that Scrubs episode where J.D and Turk Google symptoms for Dr. Cox's patient and discovers the cause.

OnScreenTyper said:
...And don't even get me started on medical costs. How can they charge you $200 for a roll of medical tape, makes me sick. ...
Click to expand...

Because health profiteering isn't illegal. And never will be. Politicians have investments in hospitals.
 
On December 11, 2009 I had been in the hospital for already a day or so from ammonia. But it was this day a year ago that I lost my life. I coded and had no pulse for 3 minutes. While I do not recall this event when it happened but it no doubt did. So while the led line crossed the life monitor roughly 10-15 people were gathered in a tiny ER room working to save me. I am just so glad I made it till today. Yes things are harder now being vent dependant but it’s manageable and a decent life. I have good days, I have bad days sometimes but even so I’m here for a reason so I want to continue to live on and cherish those I meet, what few friends I have and most of all God and my family; including my cat Domino of course.

I'm glad i was able to find Blue Moon and rp again.
 
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