05/04/2007
EYES WIDE SHUT II
Once again the humanity has problems that are being ignored, and not because the solutions are not there, but that we don’t want a discussion of these for that the solutions are not acceptable. Like the environment ( air, rivers, oceans and the land) being poisoned by the use of the chemicals, like free trade being a major contributor to the green house gases, like “run away consumption” society causing more and more pollution and waste.
Sadly enough as we achieve major break through’ in science and technology the fewer the number of people that we can really benefit from these. As we transition form say glass tube TVs to plasma and LCD the number of people able to buy the new system is reduced. Not everyone can afford to go out and buy the top of the line computer every six months, even though some do. People in the poorer nations keep falling behind in access to the top of the line technologies( as a percent of the aggregate).
Those of us living in the countries with “money”, real as in the oil rich nations or say China or Japan are affected to a lesser extent than the people and even the governments of the poorer nations.
The worst is the situation in this regards as it applies to the field of medicine. Where as we in the advanced nations have the luxury to worry about our sexual performances, people and especially children have to worry about access to clean water, basic hygiene and immunizations against the childhood diseases.
But pardon me, I am not here talking about the vast inequities of health care between the poor and the rich nations. The problem is how to provide, equal and quality, healthcare for all in a free market economy. In a perfect world we would all be taken care of, health wise , from cradle to the grave but we do not live in a perfect world.
Healthcare with the insurance plans, or health care with the government as a sole provider is above all rife with corruption and over charges and restrictions and gimmicks and scams. It is by its own nature, a competition to see who can beat whom out of most of their money. It is full of over charges, wasteful procedures and medications, as long as someone has money in their pocket the rest will try to take it from them. First the insurance company wants to make money by cutting down on care, the doctors and the hospitals are in struggle for their lives to see how they can get more money from the insurance company or Medicare/ Medicaid or whatever other till with money in it. Insurance companies in turn raise the premiums and the doctors and the hospitals in turn raise their fees, and so on it will go till everyone is broke.
Let us then realize that the government and the doctors and the insurance companies and the politicians (Democrats and Republicans), they are all lying to us. Well, because they know that we are stupid.
There are among the conservatives who think that everyone should buy their own insurance and we know that they are all full of sh**. As I told you when I talked about the money and the economy, that how much a person must make in hourly wages so he/she can buy their own health insurance and save for their own retirement and for their children’s education, (I guess it would be like eighty dollars per hour? J/k). Liberals on the other hand tell us don’t worry the government should pay for all health care and that they will tax the rich, they also equally full of **it. The reality is that we don’t, no one and no government has the money to pay for all the healthcare for everyone in all situations. And now what you don’t want to hear, THE HEALTH CARE SHOULD BE, IT MUST BE RATIONED.
Right now, Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and the Democrats all tell you that they are looking out for our best interests in the healthcare, they are all lying. If the idea of the Democrats is that the government can tax the rich to pay for everyone’s health care, they know, they must know that that would be impossible, we can not tax the rich or the otherwise enough to provide everything available in medicine for everyone in need. The Republicans lie that it is possible for everyone to buy their own insurance, even thru their employers. The premium cost of a full coverage policy for everyone will be prohibitive. Also when we establish laws so that a hospital must provide care for the indigent the cost of medicine rises the most for those that can ill afford it for themselves in the first place. Why should the working poor and the middle class have to bare the same cost of providing care for those who can not afford to pay for it.
We know, in general the poor are also less healthy, they smoke, they spend food monies on alcohol and tobacco, they eat greasy foods and exercise less, and receive less preventive health care. As a result they get sicker and are prone to chronic diseases that are costly to treat.
We also know that the do gooders on the left and on the right want everyone to live for ever, but there are difference, but the total net result of their ideas is that the country will be broke in short order. If the liberals want to preserve the abortion right and euthanasia ( great ideas that can save money , honestly), they also want everything for the disabled from cradle to grave, from special education classes for one suffering from cerebral palsy, to equal access to everything for the mentally retarded and the crazies, a heart or kidney transplant for someone on the death row, it matters not whose money. On the other hand the conservatives who want to ban abortions, would have the patients with cerebral palsy and brain damage kept alive indefinitely, but at whose expense? They have no clue so long as they don’t have to pay taxes. Both the Liberals and the conservatives are always willing to differ payments for all expenses to someone else, to a pie in the sky account in the future when the money will be growing in the trees. The truth is that as a nation, we are always willing to burn our house down to keep our hands warm.
Being ethical and moral is easy when it is not your own money, I guess. But with the healthcare today, and with the technologies that we have each one of us could easily become a six million dollar man, or a woman, for you politically correct ones. Do we really need to spend millions taking care of Terry Schiavo’, or people laying in the nursing homes, half dead and unaware? or force people to have babies they don’t really want, only to provide jobs for the social workers and the police and the nurses. Whatever happened to the common sense?
As I mentioned about the corruption, the doctors, who are partners in various hospitals and MRI and X-ray and lab corporations are not beyond requiring multiple tests and procedure. The patients and their relatives who think everyone must live forever want every possible and improbable effort to be made to “save” the patient (of course the insurance or the Medicare or the Medicaid will foot the bill). Insurance companies wanting to deny charges for procedures that may be sometimes absolutely needed for proper care, and raising premiums much as possible, they all contribute to the rise in healthcare.
The drug companies are also guilty, so long as people believe that being with the Lord is not all that important, that catching aids or herpes or hepatitis is not so bad, or that obesity or the heart disease can always be cured by a pill, that we need not monitor our behavior and stay healthy, the drug companies are willing to oblige. Yes we have pills for this and shots for that, but mostly unproven, drug therapy is not called by its real name, “chemo therapy”. Many of these drugs have so many side effects that one may end up sicker and require more and more medicines, but that is just extra money in the pockets of the drug companies.
But can we as a society keep footing the bill? When we don’t want higher wages, or provide employee health benefits, or to pay more in taxes. Is it not simple then to just announce that we can no longer afford to have everyone here trying to live for ever? Say if you have an alcohol problem, and a liver disease, and then you end up in a bad wreck e will just go ahead and not waste money on you? Or say if you are seventy and have high blood sugar, and have had an amputation, and then you fall in to a comma we will just have to let you move on? Like sort of a triage? Well that will be the truth soon enough.
EYES WIDE SHUT II
Once again the humanity has problems that are being ignored, and not because the solutions are not there, but that we don’t want a discussion of these for that the solutions are not acceptable. Like the environment ( air, rivers, oceans and the land) being poisoned by the use of the chemicals, like free trade being a major contributor to the green house gases, like “run away consumption” society causing more and more pollution and waste.
Sadly enough as we achieve major break through’ in science and technology the fewer the number of people that we can really benefit from these. As we transition form say glass tube TVs to plasma and LCD the number of people able to buy the new system is reduced. Not everyone can afford to go out and buy the top of the line computer every six months, even though some do. People in the poorer nations keep falling behind in access to the top of the line technologies( as a percent of the aggregate).
Those of us living in the countries with “money”, real as in the oil rich nations or say China or Japan are affected to a lesser extent than the people and even the governments of the poorer nations.
The worst is the situation in this regards as it applies to the field of medicine. Where as we in the advanced nations have the luxury to worry about our sexual performances, people and especially children have to worry about access to clean water, basic hygiene and immunizations against the childhood diseases.
But pardon me, I am not here talking about the vast inequities of health care between the poor and the rich nations. The problem is how to provide, equal and quality, healthcare for all in a free market economy. In a perfect world we would all be taken care of, health wise , from cradle to the grave but we do not live in a perfect world.
Healthcare with the insurance plans, or health care with the government as a sole provider is above all rife with corruption and over charges and restrictions and gimmicks and scams. It is by its own nature, a competition to see who can beat whom out of most of their money. It is full of over charges, wasteful procedures and medications, as long as someone has money in their pocket the rest will try to take it from them. First the insurance company wants to make money by cutting down on care, the doctors and the hospitals are in struggle for their lives to see how they can get more money from the insurance company or Medicare/ Medicaid or whatever other till with money in it. Insurance companies in turn raise the premiums and the doctors and the hospitals in turn raise their fees, and so on it will go till everyone is broke.
Let us then realize that the government and the doctors and the insurance companies and the politicians (Democrats and Republicans), they are all lying to us. Well, because they know that we are stupid.
There are among the conservatives who think that everyone should buy their own insurance and we know that they are all full of sh**. As I told you when I talked about the money and the economy, that how much a person must make in hourly wages so he/she can buy their own health insurance and save for their own retirement and for their children’s education, (I guess it would be like eighty dollars per hour? J/k). Liberals on the other hand tell us don’t worry the government should pay for all health care and that they will tax the rich, they also equally full of **it. The reality is that we don’t, no one and no government has the money to pay for all the healthcare for everyone in all situations. And now what you don’t want to hear, THE HEALTH CARE SHOULD BE, IT MUST BE RATIONED.
Right now, Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and the Democrats all tell you that they are looking out for our best interests in the healthcare, they are all lying. If the idea of the Democrats is that the government can tax the rich to pay for everyone’s health care, they know, they must know that that would be impossible, we can not tax the rich or the otherwise enough to provide everything available in medicine for everyone in need. The Republicans lie that it is possible for everyone to buy their own insurance, even thru their employers. The premium cost of a full coverage policy for everyone will be prohibitive. Also when we establish laws so that a hospital must provide care for the indigent the cost of medicine rises the most for those that can ill afford it for themselves in the first place. Why should the working poor and the middle class have to bare the same cost of providing care for those who can not afford to pay for it.
We know, in general the poor are also less healthy, they smoke, they spend food monies on alcohol and tobacco, they eat greasy foods and exercise less, and receive less preventive health care. As a result they get sicker and are prone to chronic diseases that are costly to treat.
We also know that the do gooders on the left and on the right want everyone to live for ever, but there are difference, but the total net result of their ideas is that the country will be broke in short order. If the liberals want to preserve the abortion right and euthanasia ( great ideas that can save money , honestly), they also want everything for the disabled from cradle to grave, from special education classes for one suffering from cerebral palsy, to equal access to everything for the mentally retarded and the crazies, a heart or kidney transplant for someone on the death row, it matters not whose money. On the other hand the conservatives who want to ban abortions, would have the patients with cerebral palsy and brain damage kept alive indefinitely, but at whose expense? They have no clue so long as they don’t have to pay taxes. Both the Liberals and the conservatives are always willing to differ payments for all expenses to someone else, to a pie in the sky account in the future when the money will be growing in the trees. The truth is that as a nation, we are always willing to burn our house down to keep our hands warm.
Being ethical and moral is easy when it is not your own money, I guess. But with the healthcare today, and with the technologies that we have each one of us could easily become a six million dollar man, or a woman, for you politically correct ones. Do we really need to spend millions taking care of Terry Schiavo’, or people laying in the nursing homes, half dead and unaware? or force people to have babies they don’t really want, only to provide jobs for the social workers and the police and the nurses. Whatever happened to the common sense?
As I mentioned about the corruption, the doctors, who are partners in various hospitals and MRI and X-ray and lab corporations are not beyond requiring multiple tests and procedure. The patients and their relatives who think everyone must live forever want every possible and improbable effort to be made to “save” the patient (of course the insurance or the Medicare or the Medicaid will foot the bill). Insurance companies wanting to deny charges for procedures that may be sometimes absolutely needed for proper care, and raising premiums much as possible, they all contribute to the rise in healthcare.
The drug companies are also guilty, so long as people believe that being with the Lord is not all that important, that catching aids or herpes or hepatitis is not so bad, or that obesity or the heart disease can always be cured by a pill, that we need not monitor our behavior and stay healthy, the drug companies are willing to oblige. Yes we have pills for this and shots for that, but mostly unproven, drug therapy is not called by its real name, “chemo therapy”. Many of these drugs have so many side effects that one may end up sicker and require more and more medicines, but that is just extra money in the pockets of the drug companies.
But can we as a society keep footing the bill? When we don’t want higher wages, or provide employee health benefits, or to pay more in taxes. Is it not simple then to just announce that we can no longer afford to have everyone here trying to live for ever? Say if you have an alcohol problem, and a liver disease, and then you end up in a bad wreck e will just go ahead and not waste money on you? Or say if you are seventy and have high blood sugar, and have had an amputation, and then you fall in to a comma we will just have to let you move on? Like sort of a triage? Well that will be the truth soon enough.
1 comment:
Mo - I can't read
White on Black
What is wrong with Black on White?
KJ
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