That is what goes on in too many cases: Doctors doing procedures to make money, not for any sense of best interest in their patients.
I've seen this happen within my own extended family, where doctors recommend procedures or invasive tests that will ultimately accomplish nothing. My favorite was the doctor who wanted to do a colonoscopy to check for colon cancer on a relative who had metastatic, inoperable and untreatable lung cancer.
I have been to far too many dry-eye funerals, where the deceased had passed from a lingering illness or condition and where everyone was relieved that the suffering of both the departed and their families was over.
Modern medicine is largely to blame for that.
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I don't blame medicine or the institution of medicine I blame the industry of medicine. It the industry has never had a touch on the idea of humanity or healing, its industry, profit is it's measure. Cost and profit are useless measure of people or their suffering.
Then we have the doctors, a dozen years of schooling and abuse to amass a debt that mandates getting profit in their life or else. By time they
are 40 they may achieve some sense of balance and a career starts.
We turn attention to insurance, the insidious beast. Its a world of contracts rules and humanity that was never there. It's actuarial tables of risk and what to charge for that risk. In a different context it is betting on the roll of dice predictable in statistical form. To insure profit they also play both sides. Even the
above mentioned industry and doctors are saddled with the cost of insurance.
Who wins? not the patient for they are are more often just cogs in the wheel. Those that are educated it's better as knowing adds choices. There is only one winner, not you or me, unless, "we" are an insurance company.
Used to be the certainty of birth, death, and taxes. Oh, and insurance.
That insurance does not protect us from any of those. That insurance
does profit handsomely from the fact
those events will all occur with statistical regularity.
Dice?
Eck!
Capitalism and Medicine do not mix, period. Universal healthcare, administered like Medicare, would have a chance at taking the profit margin out of testing, treatment and care. Waste and fraud will still be an issue but only if we get Republican-style oversight. Lower overhead, profit standardization, good regulation = better outcomes for all of us.
Illustration here: http://www.farleftside.com/2009/8-3-09.html
I looked at the mortality statistics for Britain's much-derided Public Health Service, and discovered an interesting thing: Mortality rates (as vs. survival rates) for major diseases in Britain were almost identical to those of whites in the USA and Canada -- despite the fact they spend roughly half of what the U.S. spends on health care. That is, yes, if you're diagnosed with prostate cancer you're less likely to live 5 years than if you're diagnosed with prostate cancer here in the USA... BUT THE SAME PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE DIE OF PROSTATE CANCER, AT ROUGHLY THE SAME AGES AS IN THE USA!
So what's the point of modern medicine American style, if all it accomplishes is diagnosing more prostate cancers that aren't going to kill you and doesn't stop prostate cancers that *are* going to kill you?
Note that I can pick pretty much any disease and get the same results. The difference in mortality rate between the US and Britain (the British live longer) is mostly because people of African descent have a higher mortality rate -- regardless of where they live, but there's more of them in the USA than in Britain. If you're a 60 year old white American, you're going to live as long as a 60 year old white Briton. So why pay twice as much as that Brit for medical care, when it isn't going to make a damned bit of difference in the end? Curious penguins want to know!
- Badtux the Curious Penguin
Bad Tux
OK the standard answer. So shut up already.
The real answer you already know. Profit. Someone can always profit off the suffering of others. The trick is to be on the profit side. The insurance industry has made a business out of making us believe that we can not live without them. Of course you are going to say right now we are not living with them. I read yesterday someone saying Mittins was right that the insurance companies are not the problem. BS. Health care providers get paid by insurance companies. But not until having to have huge staffs to make any sense of billing and collecting their money. My doc's office has more people working on insurance and billing than medical professionals doing the actual work. That runs up the cost dramatically. And it's the same in every Dr's office I've been in in the last 20 yrs. The system is so inefficient due to the insurance industry. But there's huge money involved so I suspect it will never change.
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