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Topic: The height of Choetspa (Read 1367 times) |
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Hermit
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The height of Choetspa
« on: 2009-06-27 20:36:07 » |
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GOP: After big fed spending 'Where are the jobs?'
[ Hermit : The medical proposals put forward by Obama might as well have been written by the medical insurance companies given that they appear to be the primary beneficiaries. This is perhaps reason to mourn if you imagined for a moment that Obama might have done better.
Here, rather than mourning. we have the clowns who have not just dismantled what was the world's greatest economy, but in a paroxysm of unmitigated greed and a parody of fiscal sense who have, since their figurehead Reagan, deliberately ravished, raped and wrecked it, now gathered for a circle jerk over the tattered remnants.
It is true that employment opportunities are vanishing and that it seems probable that the USA is going to collapse, lead by California, once the World's 3rd greatest economy even had the rest of the US not existed. The combination of the Bush Wars, and Obama's ongoing Asian insanities would have guaranteed it, even if the disaster of the last 40 years transition from a sound manufacturing and agricultural base to phantasmagorical fiscal fantasies and the perceived need to reward the looters in the financial sector for their efforts hadn't already made it quite certain.
But it is clearly the actual deficit (including the off-budget contingent liabilities) which the Bush Administration converted from a worrisome but decreasing half of USA GDP at the end of the Clinton era into the totally unrepayable six times GDP that it is today that is the real threat. The added estimated $1 Trillion of the Obama medical proposal, while unlikely to mean that the US improves its medical system, currently on a par with Serbia, despite being the most expensive in the world, is like cum drops in the ocean in comparison to the Republican's approximately 60 Trillion dollar (before interest) deficit legacy.
While it would be nice to have a single payer universal health care system to take care of the millions of Americans whose incomes, pensions and insurance have been sacrificed to the Republican's "greater goals", and it would be lovely if Obama had worked to achieve this; which as we have seen previously, could be trivially achieved for a fraction the cost of the current system if politicians simply worked to institute a viable and affordable system instead of taking care of their "special interests" for relatively tiny bribes; even so, it is simply not credible than any effort which represents less than one tenth of the bloated defence budget of the same period could actually be blamed for the loss of jobs, livelihood, economy and ultimately the United States.
Particularly when, as we have recently seen (reply 110), the health sector is the only one where significant numbers of jobs have been added, and many more than are funded in these proposals, are needed.
No matter what the wankers practising bukake on the taxpayers, below, aver. ]
Source: Associated Press
Authors: Will Lester, Associated Press Writer
Dated: 2009-06-27
Republicans concerned about the Obama administration's big spending on economic stimulus, energy and health care are asking, "Where are the jobs?" [ Hermit : The Republicans exported them, mainly to other countries with universal health care, social security and "real" pension systems where they don't need to bankrupt their manufacturing sector from time-to-time to allow them to shed their obligations for work already delivered. ]
"The president and Democrats in Congress claim this spending binge is necessary to put Americans back to work," House Republican leader John Boehner said Saturday in the Republican radio and Internet address. "They promised unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if their trillion-dollar stimulus was passed.
The administration was wrong, Boehner said. "Unemployment has soared above 9 percent. And now the president admits that unemployment will soon reach double digits. [ Hermit : Unemployment hasn't often been below 20% in the USA, only the way they determine unemployment has been redefined to camouflage this. Now only people receiving the laughably termed "unemployment benefits" before they run out are counted as unemployed. The new Government is perhaps engaging in less in distortion than those since Carter, but more significantly perhaps, suffers from the additional handicap that Bush had already used the traditional American unemployment mitigation technique of engaging in military escapades to soak up otherwise able bodied workers from the population, so that buffer wasn't available to them - though expansion of the Bush wars into the central Asian republics might double the number involved to perhaps 3 million. The down side is that this draws people out of the productive economy too, ultimately accentuating America's comparative weakness, but clearly Republicans don't object to that. ]
"After all of this spending, after all of this borrowing from China, the Middle East, our children and our grandchildren, where are the jobs?" he said. [ Hermit : Destroyed and exported by Republicans? ]
Since President Barack Obama's stimulus plan to trigger job creation was passed, the economy has shed 1.6 million jobs. The administration has focused instead on its estimate that the stimulus has created or saved 150,000 jobs.
That estimate comes from a formula that uses government spending and tax cuts to predict job growth. The formula has been used by Republicans and Democrats alike, but was built to predict, not count jobs. To count jobs, economists traditionally rely on Labor Department data on unemployment, manufacturing and construction activity, and county-by-county, state-by-state job reports.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said early this week that the president expects the nation will reach 10 percent unemployment within the next few months. In January, Obama's economic team predicted unemployment would rise no higher than 8 percent with the help of a $787 billion stimulus program. The unemployment rate in May reached a 25-year high of 9.4 percent. Obama aides have said that the economy took a turn for the worse since their initial forecast.
Boehner has seized on the administration's revised forecast.
He predicted Democratic proposals on health care, stimulus and energy would all be bad for the economy.
He said Republicans have proposed improvements to health care and economic stimulus that are less intrusive and expensive than Obama's plans. And he criticized Democratic efforts to pass an energy bill that he described as "a national energy tax," which passed the House Friday. He singled out proposed health care changes as a job killer.
"It's about to get worse for middle-class families and small businesses," he said. "Democrats are pushing a government takeover of our health care system that will cost at least a trillion dollars."
"The president has repeatedly claimed that Americans will be able to keep their doctors under the Democrats' plan," Boehner said, adding he's seen government reports that indicate millions will lose their current health coverage and millions more will lose their jobs if the Democratic plan is adopted.
Obama argues that health care changes will help the economy and scoffs at predictions that his plans to offer a public plan as an alternative will harm the private insurance industry. He says it's not logical that private industry provides the best quality health care but can't compete with a public plan. [ Hermit : This is probably too clever by half for those opposing him to even recognize as devastating their assertions. ]
Boehner said Democrats should abandon their determination to pass measures without GOP cooperation. "We hope our Democrat colleagues will abandon their failed go-it-alone approach and work with us to make these reforms a reality," he said.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #1 on: 2009-06-30 18:12:58 » |
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Obama argues that health care changes will help the economy and scoffs at predictions that his plans to offer a public plan as an alternative will harm the private insurance industry. He says it's not logical that private industry provides the best quality health care but can't compete with a public plan. [ Hermit : This is probably too clever by half for those opposing him to even recognize as devastating their assertions. ]
While visiting http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/05/01/vetting-the-future-supreme-court-justice/ I noticed this apposite twitter flit past:
Quote:| Did Obama notice that Medicare completely crowded out private health insurance for the elderly? http://bit.ly/3E8ACi # 16 hours ago |
Apparently the twitterer twittishly did not comprehend that the market was clearly voting with its feet, in other words, the market decided that "private health insurance for the elderly" was unable to 'compete with a public plan" and therefore the market made the determination that "private health insurance for the elderly" does not "provide(s) the best quality health care."
As I noted initially, "too clever by half"
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #2 on: 2009-07-01 05:01:05 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-06-30 18:12:58 <snip>the market made the determination that "private health insurance for the elderly" does not "provide(s) the best quality health care."</snip>
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[Blunderov] I have to wonder why the assumption seems to be that "the best quality" health care is the standard which must necessarily be met? ISTM that the standard for Goldilock's pilfered porridge is probably usually more appropriate; "neither too hot nor too cold but just in between". I wonder if the previously mentioned aged didn't settle for a "sufficient" quality of health care?
Of course anyone who requires a heart transplant or brain surgery is going to want "the best quality health care". But in practice, in my experience anyway, the best quality health care also seems to (suspiciously often) translate into the best quality remuneration for the medical practitioners involved. Win/win? Hmm. When I have (in the dim and distant past) been able to afford medical insurance that covers consultations and tests it has been my experience that the battery of blood test, x-rays and referrals involved has usually been significantly greater than that which was required to deal with the actual problem. (All in the service of scientific rigor and medical excellence of course.) Go to a dentist with a bad tooth. Tell him you have insurance. Standby for thousands of Rands worth of maxillo-facial surgery, possibly including a full rhinoplasty. Tell him you don't have insurance and wish to pay him from your meager supply of personal money. He'll yank the tooth for 150 bucks.
Best Regards.
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Hermit
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #3 on: 2009-07-01 17:48:04 » |
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I think it turns on the definition of best.
The US has the most expensive healthcare in the world by far, costing them over 15.3% of GDP (World Health Statistics Report WHO 2009 page 114) to 16.5% (Harkin 2009). In quality, as measured by the WHO metastudy (ibid), the US comes 37th, on a par with Serbia [ibid] although Serbia at 4.8 infant deaths/1000 (22nd lowest) does much better than the USA at 6.3 infant deaths/1000 (32nd lowest) putting the USA on a par with Croatia at 6.4 (33rd lowest) and abysmal in comparison to Icelands' 2.9/1000 (lowest) (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate). Meanwhile in density of doctors, at 26/100,000 the USA is on a par with Mongolia rather than advanced economies which tend to have 35-40/100,000 (Source: WHSR WHO page 98 ibid).
Perhaps not having experienced the joy of American medicine, your point about insurance is telling but incomplete. Here is a recent occurrence. The husband is a Red Cross Gold Medalist and Paramedic who earned his experience as a volunteer delivering ambulance services in "black areas" in South Africa during the riots of the 1980s when the government refused to provide service claiming it was too dangerous and running clinics in farm areas. The wife holds the Russian equivalent of a BSN with specialities in pediatric care. Neither is particularly stupid and while doting parents they tend to be neither overly protective or inclined to hysteria.
Recently their daughter picked up a virus and ran a serious temperature for a week. They monitored for fluids, blood pressure and temperature (basally using infra-red in ear measurement) and managed the temperature with cold baths, sponge baths, paediatric doses of acetaminophen and cold drinks. After three days, they saw a doctor at his clinic, home visits not being an option here no matter how ill the child, to make sure it wasn't anything more than some tummy bug. For $65 they were told it was something doing the rounds and typically cleared after 3 days.
When after 5 days their daughter's temperature was peaking higher, rather than lower, and it was Saturday morning, they went by a pharmacy to pick up some antipyretic so as not to be caught by surprise over the weekend. In most of the world one can get antipyretic over the counter, but realizing that this might be different here, they phoned ahead. "Oh yes" they were told, we have antipyretic. They realized that maybe they had been misled when the Walmart pharmacist offered them "Tums," an anti-acid, on their arrival. So next stop was to visit the Doctor for a second $65 visit to get a preventive prescription to try to avoid being stuck with an unaffordable visit to an emergency department on a weekend.
They were more than a little gob-smacked to discover that the doctor refused to see them, and refused to prescribe antipyretics, saying that their daughter needed to be taken to the emergency department for a battery of tests. Having a clue from a previous exorbitant visit (fortunately covered by insurance) what this might entail, mother and daughter waited in the car, while the father reconnoitred pricing in order to prevent being billed for unnecessary services. He was told that the cost of an emergency visit and needed tests would be about $2500.
He did say that he could see that it was a brand new hospital building (it only opened the week before) and understood that it had to be paid for; but observed that it was badly built, had practically no insulation, he didn't want to convert it into a house and really didn't want to carry the cost for it single handedly in one payment anyway, so requested a discount. The hospital representative was not amused. After checking with the doctor again where they were told, "her temperature is too high, you must take her to emergency" and "I'm not going to prescribe anything without seeing her", <sarcasm>greatly impressed by the wonderful American medical system</sarcasm>, they left to continue watchful home care.
Fortunately she recovered without complications or the parents may well have been charged with denial of needed medical service (I kid you not).
A broken forearm can cost $27,000, a bypass $168,000 and treatment for chronic leukaemia about $120,000 a year (all actual numbers from the last 5 years). This in an area with a median household annual income of $33,851 (2000 census), where medical insurance for a family of 3 (with strict coverage limitations and no dental or optical components) costs about $14,400/year and where for obvious reasons related to the above, medical insurance is the exception rather than the rule.
Small wonder suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the USA with rates increasing with age, highest among Americans aged 65 years and older and with disease a major leading indicator. Difficult to comprehend why anyone stays here except habit. But then, of course, the people most likely shouting against universal single payer health care are the same ones who "love life" so much that they can "understand" why people murder medical abortion providers. I do not think that this can be comprehended or explained.
But other nations, with more medical personal, much better quality of care and vastly better medical and quality of life indicators, all with universal healthcare, tend to pay less than half of what it costs the US. For example Switzerland has 40 doctors/100,000 and spends 6.3% of GDP on medicine, the Netherlands at 37 doctors/100,000 spend 9.4% and Japan with 21 doctors/100,000 spends only 7.1% of its GDP on healthcare - despite having the longest lived population.
In my opinion, the trick to managing costs effectively is not only to have sufficiently skilled doctors to be able to request those tests which will change treatment plans and outcomes, but also to saturate the population with medical workers (not just doctors) whose task is to manage and monitor wellness and to know the patients and meet with them sufficiently often to identify anomalies requiring treatment early in their development, so minimizing treatment costs and optimising treatment prognosis. On that basis, perhaps the 25% of Americans suffering from obesity and over 60% overweight (Source: NIDDK: Statistics Related to Overweight and Obesity) would receive appropriate treatment (diet and exercise) before it develops into other more expensive diseases and perhaps corn syrup will eventually be recognised as being even more lethal than cigarettes. Taxing it appropriately might reduce US medical expenditure by some 50%.
Kind Regards
Hermit & Co
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #4 on: 2009-07-11 10:49:06 » |
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[Hermit] While wondering why the USA continues to suffer cognitive dissonance on the subject, and so continues to be the only industrialized country without universal healthcare, has by far the most expensive healthcare system and yet receives among the worst healthcare in developed countries, while the French and Germans who have publicly run systems have the best healthcare at reasonable prices, I am following a number of rather good discussions and bloggers about it and will post extracts from the best to this thread.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #5 on: 2009-07-11 10:50:28 » |
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http://cmhmd.blogspot.com/ Totally excellent blog
Post from 2009-07-06, the blogger's review of a toxic article from the LA Times. He also blogs at DailyKos and at firedoglake where in an insight filled reply to a comment (saying that at less than 1% to 2%, the costs of legal threats are not a particularly significant cost driver) it became clear that he is an MD.
I think that he sums up the "conservative" perspective rather brilliantly when he writes
Quote:| ...if you ignore everything wrong in our system, every other system looks awful. If you ignore every good thing in every other system around the world, our system looks great. If you focus on Canada and Britain, the two countries that perform near the bottom in the world for health care system performance (you know, down there close to as poorly as we do), our system looks pretty good. On the other hand, if you look at the high performing systems with great outcomes, satisfied patients and physicians, great high tech medicine and great primary care and low cost, we don't look so hot. |
The painful side effects of Obama's healthcare reform - Los Angeles Times:
Quote:"Now, I'm well aware that having 47 million people who can't afford medical care is a genuine social problem -- although many of those millions are illegal immigrants, people between jobs and young folks who choose to go insurance-bare. I'm also aware that I can't necessarily have everything I want, whether it's a dozen pairs of Prada boots or a pacemaker at age 99. I know that Medicare is on the greased rails to a train wreck, and not just because of spiraling costs but because doctors are fleeing the system because they're sick of below-cost reimbursements and crushing paperwork. There are ways to solve some of these problems: healthcare tax breaks, malpractice reform that would lower the cost of practicing medicine, efforts to make it easier to get cheap, high-deductible catastrophic coverage, steps to encourage fee-for-service arrangements of the kind that most people have with their dentists.
"In short, as someone who's not getting any younger, I'd like to be the one who makes the 'difficult decision' as to whether I can afford -- and thus really want -- that hip replacement in my extreme old age. Sorry, President Obama, but I don't want 'society'-- that is, government mucky-mucks -- determining that I've got to go sit on an ice floe just because I'm old and kind of ugly, no matter how many fancy degrees in medicine or bioethics they might have." |
Nothing like folksy wisdom for understanding and dealing with the complexities of health care reform and modern bioethics. The usual right wing disinformation and misdirection are especially tiresome. So, to the rebuttal:
First pillar of fear mongering on health care reform: rationing. Be afraid, be very afraid. Ignore the rationing (by income and economic class) that's already going on. Ignore rationing by private health insurers. Ignore spiraling costs that will soon have all but the top tiers of income earners on shoe-string insurance plans. Forget all that, just worry about the potential for rationing.
The point of Ms. Allen's piece is that health care will be rationed by using arbitrary clinical parameters to deny care based solely upon costs. Or, she also warns, that some procedures will be denied based upon scientific, non-arbitrary clinical parameters, specifically along the lines of England's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence which publishes guidelines and does medical and economic analyses of medical treatments to determine whether they are worth it to individuals and to society as a whole. I’m sure Ms. Allen finds it infuriating that some all other societies consider how utilization of finite resources affects everyone, not just the well off.
Interesting thing, that concept of “allocating scarce resources.” It is actually one of the centerpieces of medical professionalism developed by the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American College of Physicians and the European Federation of Internal Medicine and adopted by the American Medical Association and many other physician organizations. The Charter states, “The medical profession must promote justice in the health care system, including the fair distribution of health care resources. Physicians should work actively to eliminate discrimination in health care, whether based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion, or any other social category.”
This brings up fear mongering pillar two, always frame the debate as a choice between our current “system” or, the systems of either Canada or England, two countries that, while providing universal health care, because of their parsimony, have performed in international health care outcomes research almost as badly as does the United States! It seems genuinely ludicrous (but convenient for generating insecurity among the under-informed) to set as the benchmark for improving our health care system two countries who only do a bit better than we do. I have yet to see an opinion piece from a conservative decrying the inferior care and long wait times in France or Germany, the top performing countries in the world. That's because they provide excellent care to all of their citizens, have no longer waiting times than our own, have much more satisfied physicians and patients and do it all at a sizeable discount to ours.
Another classic tactic is blaming the poor, the unhealthy, the “other.” On one hand, Ms. Allen laments the imposition of the 47 million uninsured onto our system, and forecasts that it will lead to unacceptable waiting times for those of us already “in.” A few paragraphs later she notes her understanding of the seriousness of the issue of the uninsured, but then posits that many of these 47 million don’t really need or deserve health care insurance as they are illegal immigrants or between jobs, etc. My brother was nearly bankrupted by being “between jobs” and having an illness in his family.
Back to our story. Ms. Allen makes a troubling conflation by muddling together limiting the amount we spend on health care in the last months of life with limiting health care to the elderly. There is a HUGE difference.
Ms. Allen cites the example of the hip fracture treatment President Obama's grandmother received before her death and the pacemaker placed into the 99 year old mother of a town hall audience member as cautionary tales, indicating the "government run" healthcare would allow these patients to simply die because some intellectual, academic physicians in their ivory towers will give the thumbs down sign and demand their euthanasia. How sad that the public's opinion of physicians and medical professionalism has deteriorated so badly that this is their expectation. Or, if not their expectation, but their cynical gambit that others will think this rings true.
Here's the difference: Obama's grandmother was terminally ill with cancer. The questions surrounding her surgery boiled down to whether it would improve her comfort in her last months and whether the surgery would ultimately shorten her life. As it turns out, it appears to have done both, making this a difficult case to slice down the middle as black and white. That's why decisions like this cause ethical dilemmas: there are pros and cons to the decisions. There are sometimes non-operative decisions involving immobilization, aggressive pain management and other palliative measures that avoid the pain Mr. Obama was rightly concerned about. And sometimes these measures, especially in extremely frail elderly patients, are the right measures, because they avoid the very high mortality associated with surgery and other aggressive measures in this population.
The medical team, had they made the decision not to operate, would not have been bureaucrats determined to painfully end the life of an elderly cancer patient, but a compassionate team of professionals, balancing the patient's quality of life in her last months (pain, hospitalization, removal from family and home, etc.), with her wishes and goals - perhaps to see her grandson elected President! When we strive to provide excellent end-of-life care, we balance all of these issues and we counsel our patients and their families as best we can because it is the right thing to do, not because it saves money. We would do it if it cost more: that is apparently the decision arrived at in this case. The calculation was made, as it should always be, based on the goals of the patient and family, not on a corporate balance sheet and potential executive bonus.
The second case, of the 99 year old requiring a pacemaker, is actually not much of an ethical problem. I agree with President Obama that these decisions should not be made based on "spirit," but they certainly can be made based upon clinical guidelines and the individual patient's health status. Regardless of this woman's spirit, if she was a frail 99 year old with advanced chronic heart or lung disease, or with advanced dementia and a feeding tube for nourishment, one would be hard pressed to justify placing an expensive pacemaker or defibrillator into her, but a healthy 99 year old is another matter. It is important to note that Medicare did not deny either of these patients care, as a private insurer may have.
The other inappropriate conflation is the issue of limiting the amount we spend with limiting the amount we spend on treatments without proven benefits or with benefits so limited as to make them frivolous in most senses. If we presume that any guideline that determines a treatment not useful to be rationing, we will be in a world of economic hurt. This is actually the point of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER), to try to figure out what we do that is costly but adds no value to patient care on one extreme, and figuring out what is relatively inexpensive and saves lives on the other.
Her assessment of the inherent inferiority of screening mammograms every three years compared to annually demonstrates precisely the need for CER: The automatic assumption that more testing means better outcomes. This is actually one of the bigger problems with American medicine, the automatic assumption that doing something, and not just something, but the newest latest most expensive something, is always best. Should the 99 year old patient get the latest greatest pacemaker? Maybe, but having some CER to help us make intelligent judgments should be lauded, not reflexively ridiculed by the anti-intelligentsia.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Mermaid
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #6 on: 2009-07-12 02:39:12 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-07-01 17:48:04
[...]
They were more than a little gob-smacked to discover that the doctor refused to see them, and refused to prescribe antipyretics, saying that their daughter needed to be taken to the emergency department for a battery of tests. Having a clue from a previous exorbitant visit (fortunately covered by insurance) what this might entail, mother and daughter waited in the car, while the father reconnoitred pricing in order to prevent being billed for unnecessary services. He was told that the cost of an emergency visit and needed tests would be about $2500.
[...]
Kind Regards
Hermit & Co
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after being at the emergency room twice(first visit 3500+ and the second visit was billed at 5200+) for a diagnosis of 'asthma', i was prescribed corticosteroids. turns out it wasnt asthma at all. my 'asthma' was really a side effect of silent reflux/GERD. diagnosed by a second doctor who was raised in greece and who was (thankfully) rather reluctant to accept that steroids was a cure-all miracle drug.
this was about the time i discovered homeopathy. its not easy to wrap one's mind or logic around it, but it works. although i have to admit that i found comfort in the knowledge that my homeopath was also a stanford educated MD who had no qualms about whipping out his prescription pad when he was stumped so that he can give me the best drugs with least gruesome side effects. (did you hear about the new disease they just discovered? restless leg syndrome, it's called. one of the side effects of the medication is 'sudden desire to gamble'. i was informed about this via a television commercial in which the public is not only encouraged to ask their physican about this newly minted disease, but are also nudged to ask for a specific drug. at this point, the pharmaceutical industry is just making up shit to sell their goods, me thinks)
i have also looked into ayurveda and found that it is useful for maintaining balance through diet. i am not comfortable with ayurveda as a healing modality(maybe i dont know enough about ayurveda), but i think it's concepts are wonderful if one needs to design a balanced diet based on one's individual constitution. imo, following ayurvedic precepts is great as a preventive measure and is most effective when adopted by someone healthy... who wishes to remain healthy.
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Hermit
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #7 on: 2009-07-12 12:35:10 » |
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[Mermaid] after being at the emergency room twice(first visit 3500+ and the second visit was billed at 5200+) for a diagnosis of 'asthma', i was prescribed corticosteroids. turns out it wasnt asthma at all. my 'asthma' was really a side effect of silent reflux/GERD. diagnosed by a second doctor who was raised in greece and who was (thankfully) rather reluctant to accept that steroids was a cure-all miracle drug.
[Hermit] Scary. And a major modality in which the cost of incompetent medical care in the US is inflated to crazy levels. When people can visit a doctor for $65 (still too high for 4 minutes (average) of doctors time), rather than an overworked, underskilled emergency room, for a savings of $8600 it doesn't take a lot of such savings to pay for a whole lot of medical benefits.
[Mermaid] this was about the time i discovered homeopathy. its not easy to wrap one's mind or logic around it, but it works. although i have to admit that i found comfort in the knowledge that my homeopath was also a stanford educated MD who had no qualms about whipping out his prescription pad when he was stumped so that he can give me the best drugs with least gruesome side effects.
[Hermit] Homoeopathy means many different things to different people. If it is implemented as water diluted to the point where there is no active ingredient in it (which is the case for much of "classical" homoeopathy), then it won't do much good, but equally is unlikely to do much harm. If it is used by somebody who is competent to diagnose and prescribe homoeopathic medication (and scientific medicine) as indicated in useful quantities, the biggest concern is from side effects and dosage irregularities due to "homoeopathic" medication seldom being either pure or of assayed quality.
[Mermaid] (did you hear about the new disease they just discovered? restless leg syndrome, it's called. one of the side effects of the medication is 'sudden desire to gamble'. i was informed about this via a television commercial in which the public is not only encouraged to ask their physican about this newly minted disease, but are also nudged to ask for a specific drug. at this point, the pharmaceutical industry is just making up shit to sell their goods, me thinks)
[Hermit] RLS is a real syndrome which can be confirmed through EEG. Complex side effects like a 'sudden desire to gamble' are perfectly conceivable when dealing with neuroactive medications and no more strange and unexpected than "a sudden desire to commit suicide."
[Mermaid] i have also looked into ayurveda and found that it is useful for maintaining balance through diet. i am not comfortable with ayurveda as a healing modality(maybe i dont know enough about ayurveda), but i think it's concepts are wonderful if one needs to design a balanced diet based on one's individual constitution. imo, following ayurvedic precepts is great as a preventive measure and is most effective when adopted by someone healthy... who wishes to remain healthy.
[Hermit] Canada and the UK have both implemented bans on Ayurvedic products due to- Unpredictable contents and quantities (they often apparently contain random contents indicative of sweepings from the spice floors)
- Excessive contaminants (including rat and mouse fecal material - again indicative of spice floor sweepings)
- Contamination with heavy metals (many Ayurvedic substances contain heavy metals in neurotoxic concentrations)
- Inability to deliver claimed benefits
- Purporting to offer unsubstantiated medical or health benefits
Knowing this and that the US simply does not test "nutritional supplements," which is how these items are sold, and knowing that the purveyors know this too (and are typically sue-proof), I'd be extremely cautious of any and all of them, especially the pills which tend to contain the highest levels of toxic metals.
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #8 on: 2009-07-12 22:00:34 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-07-12 12:35:10
[Mermaid] after being at the emergency room twice(first visit 3500+ and the second visit was billed at 5200+) for a diagnosis of 'asthma', i was prescribed corticosteroids. turns out it wasnt asthma at all. my 'asthma' was really a side effect of silent reflux/GERD. diagnosed by a second doctor who was raised in greece and who was (thankfully) rather reluctant to accept that steroids was a cure-all miracle drug.
[Hermit] Scary. And a major modality in which the cost of incompetent medical care in the US is inflated to crazy levels. When people can visit a doctor for $65 (still too high for 4 minutes (average) of doctors time), rather than an overworked, underskilled emergency room, for a savings of $8600 it doesn't take a lot of such savings to pay for a whole lot of medical benefits. |
of course...except doctors dont work here on weekends. which is bizarre, imo. does illness/accidents pick only weekdays to strike?
Quote:[Mermaid] this was about the time i discovered homeopathy. its not easy to wrap one's mind or logic around it, but it works. although i have to admit that i found comfort in the knowledge that my homeopath was also a stanford educated MD who had no qualms about whipping out his prescription pad when he was stumped so that he can give me the best drugs with least gruesome side effects.
[Hermit] Homoeopathy means many different things to different people. If it is implemented as water diluted to the point where there is no active ingredient in it (which is the case for much of "classical" homoeopathy), then it won't do much good, but equally is unlikely to do much harm. If it is used by somebody who is competent to diagnose and prescribe homoeopathic medication (and scientific medicine) as indicated in useful quantities, the biggest concern is from side effects and dosage irregularities due to "homoeopathic" medication seldom being either pure or of assayed quality. |
to me, homeopathy is worth it at least for the 30-45 minutes someone takes to talk to me and hear me talk about my troubles. i pay a little more because my homeopath is also a doctor. because he is a MD, my insurance covers the cost partly(because he is not 'in the network..or else he'd be covered completely) i think physicians underestimate the importance of a caring and sympathetic voice esp when most patients turn to their doctors only when they hysterical, scared shitless and/or depressed.
my homeopath never claimed that he can cure me. i totally appreciate that. for example: he says it would take three years at least to get used to seasonal allergies and to be free of it. on the other hand, if it's GERD, he says that medication is completely useless without a change in diet/lifestyle. we discussed this and we cant decide whether my GERD acts up during spring or if the laryngo-spasms are caused by acid reflux. neither could my allopathic doctor. but between a choice of steroid based medication and homeopathy, i'd pick the latter.
whether it is placebo or self-hypnosis or magic or homeopathy, i dont care because i feel healthy. i am not burdened by the label of 'sick'..the ridiculous compliance to the insurance scam...the frustrating wait at the hospitals. the overworked and apathetic doctors. this, imo, fucks up my quality of life.
for what it's worth, i have had good results from homeopathy. i am also aware that homeopathy wont work for all illnesses. but when i have the choice, i'll make my stand and it favours homeopathy.
new methods such as prescribing LM potency have reduced the risk of side effects from wrong homeopathic diagnoses and dosages.
Quote:[Mermaid] (did you hear about the new disease they just discovered? restless leg syndrome, it's called. one of the side effects of the medication is 'sudden desire to gamble'. i was informed about this via a television commercial in which the public is not only encouraged to ask their physican about this newly minted disease, but are also nudged to ask for a specific drug. at this point, the pharmaceutical industry is just making up shit to sell their goods, me thinks)
[Hermit] RLS is a real syndrome which can be confirmed through EEG. Complex side effects like a 'sudden desire to gamble' are perfectly conceivable when dealing with neuroactive medications and no more strange and unexpected than "a sudden desire to commit suicide." |
regardless, i think a 30 second commerical selling a pharmaceutical product is the height of bad taste. "you could have this syndrome.."....."ask your doctor if you have that disease"..."if you have this kind of illness, make sure you ask for our drug." makes my skin crawl...
Quote:[Mermaid] i have also looked into ayurveda and found that it is useful for maintaining balance through diet. i am not comfortable with ayurveda as a healing modality(maybe i dont know enough about ayurveda), but i think it's concepts are wonderful if one needs to design a balanced diet based on one's individual constitution. imo, following ayurvedic precepts is great as a preventive measure and is most effective when adopted by someone healthy... who wishes to remain healthy.
[Hermit] Canada and the UK have both implemented bans on Ayurvedic products due to- Unpredictable contents and quantities (they often apparently contain random contents indicative of sweepings from the spice floors)
- Excessive contaminants (including rat and mouse fecal material - again indicative of spice floor sweepings)
- Contamination with heavy metals (many Ayurvedic substances contain heavy metals in neurotoxic concentrations)
- Inability to deliver claimed benefits
- Purporting to offer unsubstantiated medical or health benefits
Knowing this and that the US simply does not test "nutritional supplements," which is how these items are sold, and knowing that the purveyors know this too (and are typically sue-proof), I'd be extremely cautious of any and all of them, especially the pills which tend to contain the highest levels of toxic metals.
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i dont understand the business of ayurveda. i am currently reading a commentary on charaka samhita...at about chapter seven of volume 1(there are seven volumes), i have learned about eating appropriately during the different seasons. makes perfect sense to me. perhaps there is more in the subsequent chapters.
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letheomaniac
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #9 on: 2009-07-13 10:37:02 » |
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Mermaid:
Quote:| ...its not easy to wrap one's mind or logic around it, but it works. |
[letheomaniac] The placebo effect is very well documented. Before you think that I am being too dismissive of homeopathy, you should know that my mother was a big fan of taking me to the homeopath when I was a child. The homeopath's little lactose-pills never did a damn thing for me, even though as a child one believes ones parents when they tell you to take your so-called "medicine" in order to feel better. Invariably, I would either get better all on my own or end up having my dad take me to an atual MD's office to get some actual medicine. I'm really glad that your homeopath has a medical degree to suppliment his homeopathic quackery. I will however concede that arnica ointment does work really well for bruises and sprains, so that's one point to the homeopaths I guess. Not curing cancer though, are they?
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #10 on: 2009-07-13 12:31:03 » |
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right.
placebo effect theory doesnt make sense when you see it work with infants and animals. it worked for me and i'd rather not go into my medical history, but test results have proved homeopathy to me. if the similimum doesnt match, homeopathy will not work.
i dont think homeopathy can cure cancer..maybe suppress it for some time or a very long time...altho i have heard some homeopaths claim that they can cure cancer. on the other hand, i have also heard homeopaths who specialise in cancer treatment admit honestly that they have never been able to cure a single cancer patient altho' they always insist on a combination of therapies. it can certainly alleviate the side effects of chemo and make life easier. definitely on an emotional level and i also suspect that a homeopathic session that often lasts 30-45 minutes also helps the patient more than the touch of cold, stainless steel equipment. often times, it helps patients 'let go' and die peacefully.
my approach to homeopathy is the same as my approach to vet. homeopathy. i use allopathic diagnostic methods as homeopathic diagnosis is notoriously difficult. it is getting easier with the spiffy radar software, but i believe in diagnostic tests, blood work, ultrasound etc. whatever result i get, i exclude the 'name of the disease' and consider using different therapies to combine them. for example, a dog that caught canine distemper went through aggressive antibiotic treatment for the secondary bacterial infections, but the congestion in the lungs/seizures was treated homeopathically. CD is really difficult to cure...it can only be controlled. most times, shelters simply euthanise the dog because a treatment plan is just not worth their time/money/space. another dog was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and also cancer that had spread to the liver. the thyroid was treated with thyroxine and the cancer was treated with homeopathy(still in remission). now...this doesnt mean that all cancer cases can be treated with homeopathy.
imo..what is heartbreaking is how certain homeopaths make dogmatic, unsupportable statements(not unlike allopathic fans who dismiss homeopathy) about the magic of homeopath. a responsible physician should place patient's health over dogma. not all 'modern medicine' is non invasive or sans horrendous side effects. cant there be a middle ground? homeopathy isnt 'alternative' therapy. it isnt magic nor is it herbal supplements. imo, it is scientific...ymmv. however, people should follow what works for them...what is comfortable for them. i do get the urge to be evangelical about homeopathy sometimes, but i back off because health is more than healing modalities. you got to do what you believe in..thats it.
p.s.i love arnica. homeopathic arnica is not only good for bruises or sprains, it is also great pre/post surgeries....tooth extraction, plastic surgeries etc..for blood clots.. in the event of a stroke, the highest dose of arnica helps. i have had great success with arnica and horses. well..really only with two horses, but the point is that it worked with animals too.
Quote from: letheomaniac on 2009-07-13 10:37:02
Mermaid:
Quote:| ...its not easy to wrap one's mind or logic around it, but it works. |
[letheomaniac] The placebo effect is very well documented. Before you think that I am being too dismissive of homeopathy, you should know that my mother was a big fan of taking me to the homeopath when I was a child. The homeopath's little lactose-pills never did a damn thing for me, even though as a child one believes ones parents when they tell you to take your so-called "medicine" in order to feel better. Invariably, I would either get better all on my own or end up having my dad take me to an atual MD's office to get some actual medicine. I'm really glad that your homeopath has a medical degree to suppliment his homeopathic quackery. I will however concede that arnica ointment does work really well for bruises and sprains, so that's one point to the homeopaths I guess. Not curing cancer though, are they?
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letheomaniac
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #11 on: 2009-07-13 12:49:32 » |
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Mermaid:
Quote:| ...what is heartbreaking is how certain homeopaths make dogmatic, unsupportable statements(not unlike allopathic fans who dismiss homeopathy) about the magic of homeopath. |
[letheomaniac] Sometimes they veer in the direction of outright witchcraft. The homeopath I mentioned in my post actually advised me to rub half a potato on a wart I had, then bury the potato and wait for it to grow whereupon the wart would fall off! I'm pretty sure she wasn't representative of the entire profession, but thinking like that is not encouraging to say the least, even in isolated cases.
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #12 on: 2009-07-13 13:24:06 » |
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clearly she was not up to date with technology. everyone knows that duct tape works better than rubbing a potato..
p.s. the 'popular' homeopathic remedy for warts is homeopathic thuja. whether thuja matches you is dependent on so many other factors. there are over 100 remedies for warts in the repertory. so someone reads 'thuja is remedy for warts'...tries it..oops..it doesnt work. which is homeopathy fails so many people...i blame "homeopaths", not homeopathy.
but then again, there is always duct tape. unless an unfortunate suffers from genital warts..if so, NOT.
Quote from: letheomaniac on 2009-07-13 12:49:32
Mermaid:
Quote:| ...what is heartbreaking is how certain homeopaths make dogmatic, unsupportable statements(not unlike allopathic fans who dismiss homeopathy) about the magic of homeopath. |
[letheomaniac] Sometimes they veer in the direction of outright witchcraft. The homeopath I mentioned in my post actually advised me to rub half a potato on a wart I had, then bury the potato and wait for it to grow whereupon the wart would fall off! I'm pretty sure she wasn't representative of the entire profession, but thinking like that is not encouraging to say the least, even in isolated cases.
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Hermit
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #13 on: 2009-07-13 13:29:47 » |
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I see no reason to change a word from this post Church of Virus BBS, General, Free For All, Edge Question 2008, Reply 6, 2008-01-19, Hermit
"homeopathy. it is not 'scientific'" ... "dawkins railed against it in the channel4 program"
Confusion arises because the term "Homeopathy" means different things to different people. Technically homeopathy means using drugs intended to provoke the same symptoms as the patient is displaying but through using drugs so dilute that there is a strong likelihood that the "tinctures contain no hint of the supposed active ingredients. Lincoln referred to this In the Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate as "He [Douglas] has at last invented this sort of do-nothing Sovereignty – that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of "Sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is not that running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"
In this sense "homeopathy" is total nonsense and deserves to be laughed at.
Yet some practicing homeopaths today are really herbalists who use drugs in concentrations that are meaningful and may even recommend or offer alleopathic medications when this seems indicated. Their primary failure is not so much in the treatment they offer (although it clearly is not scientific in the sense that it is neither consistent nor peer reviewed), but for continuing to call themselves homeopaths.
In this sense the label "homeopathy" is total nonsense and the people using it deserve to be laughed at.
In both senses, Dawkins was right.
Next time somebody tells you that natural cures are better, consider that natural just means inconsistent and impure. The actual active ingredients in many commercial drugs are the same as those in "natural" medications. The key difference is that the concentrations are predetermined so that you know how much you are getting, and the number of contaminants are reduced.
None of this is to say that some practitioners may not be competent. Just that there is no reliable way to tell which are and which are not. Which might explain why Americans currently spend some three times more per year on hokum nostrums and quackery as they do on actual medicine - and also why their lifespan data is as poor as it is.
[Letheomaniac] I will however concede that arnica ointment does work really well for bruises and sprains, so that's one point to the homeopaths I guess
[Hermit] I admit to being conflicted here. My opinion is that no "alternative medicine" has been proven to consistently provide measurable benefits - else it would not be alternative. I definitely view homeopathy in this category along with other charlatans such as acupuncturists and chiropodists (Hermitess disagrees with me on acupuncture, which is why I am handling this one. She thinks it works, but perhaps not for the reasons the practitioners claim and probably not as well as they claim). However, my mother is a dispensing homeopath, but I excuse her because she prescribes medicines, conventional and alternative, which contain measurable doses of active ingredients. Still I definitely worry about quantities, particularly in products with a low therapeutic index, where small differences exist between ineffective and recommended dosages or between recommended dosage and a toxic overdoses, as well as the side effects of ingredients other than the primary intended pharmacological active ingredients not removed through processing or avoided through synthesis. Having said this, there are definitely times when "natural" drugs are not available, not because they don't work, but because the drug companies haven't figured out how to make a profit from them. So despite the above, I will accept her recommendations for "muti" and follow her instructions for use because they are generally efficacious. Still, I will ask her not to provide her reasoning for prescribing them or explanations of why they work because her reasoning and explanations make no sense to me, and if I listened to them, I might not follow her prescriptions. So perhaps I am not so far removed from the Hermitess as I thought when I started writing this.
[Hermit] Please note that Arnica, like other remedies containing quantified levels of active ingredients is, like the other products I mention below, strictly speaking a homotoxicological agent rather than a homeopathic agent. That said, Arnica helps as a lotion (particularly the gel) and when taken as tablets. Traumeel is even more strongly recommended for any shock or injury and I consider Urtica Urens to have preserved my dexterity after cooking (like a steak) my hand on a workpiece upon which I had been welding (it was so hot that the nerves did not detect the burn and I only realized what had happened when I looked round when I smelled something delicious to see if meat was being cooked for lunch - only to discover that my hand had stuck fast to the white hot metal). Prying it free, and leaving tissue on the metal, my experience lead me to anticipate from the appearance that I would need repeated long and painful transplant surgery to recover partial use of the hand, I was persuaded to keeping the hand in light sterile dressing inside a glove filled with urtica urens till the 3rd degree burned tissue sloughed off. Amazingly, new skin developed under the old tissue, which, in the course of weeks came away in chunks, and 3 months later there was no visible sign of the damage done other than the new tissue being a little lighter in color. Urtica Urens is also efficious against minor burns including sunburn. The way to use it is to apply a sterile dressing, cover it with something waterproof and then soak the dressing in urtica urtens, replenishing it as needed to maintain a wet environment. (Not mentioned by most suppliers, Urtica Urens is contra indicated when breast feeding as it will end milk production).
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Mermaid
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Re:The height of Choetspa
« Reply #14 on: 2009-07-13 17:18:25 » |
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hmm..i dont think you understand homeopathy at all. it took me a while and i am still learning.
but it's ok.
p.s. dawkins is bordering on hysterical these days. simon singh fares slightly better. am fans of both, but wont blindly accept the proclamations of my heroes.
to say that homeopathy doesnt work is like saying the sky is green while wearing coloured glasses when others can see that it is blue with their naked eyes.
p.p.s: on a completely different note, can you please ask the hermitess to drop me a line. i can send her my email by PM. i do miss her.
Quote from: Hermit on 2009-07-13 13:29:47 I see no reason to change a word from this post Church of Virus BBS, General, Free For All, Edge Question 2008, Reply 6, 2008-01-19, Hermit
"homeopathy. it is not 'scientific'" ... "dawkins railed against it in the channel4 program"
Confusion arises because the term "Homeopathy" means different things to different people. Technically homeopathy means using drugs intended to provoke the same symptoms as the patient is displaying but through using drugs so dilute that there is a strong likelihood that the "tinctures contain no hint of the supposed active ingredients. Lincoln referred to this In the Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate as "He [Douglas] has at last invented this sort of do-nothing Sovereignty – that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of "Sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is not that running his Popular Sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"
In this sense "homeopathy" is total nonsense and deserves to be laughed at.
Yet some practicing homeopaths today are really herbalists who use drugs in concentrations that are meaningful and may even recommend or offer alleopathic medications when this seems indicated. Their primary failure is not so much in the treatment they offer (although it clearly is not scientific in the sense that it is neither consistent nor peer reviewed), but for continuing to call themselves homeopaths.
In this sense the label "homeopathy" is total nonsense and the people using it deserve to be laughed at.
In both senses, Dawkins was right.
Next time somebody tells you that natural cures are better, consider that natural just means inconsistent and impure. The actual active ingredients in many commercial drugs are the same as those in "natural" medications. The key difference is that the concentrations are predetermined so that you know how much you are getting, and the number of contaminants are reduced.
None of this is to say that some practitioners may not be competent. Just that there is no reliable way to tell which are and which are not. Which might explain why Americans currently spend some three times more per year on hokum nostrums and quackery as they do on actual medicine - and also why their lifespan data is as poor as it is.
[Letheomaniac] I will however concede that arnica ointment does work really well for bruises and sprains, so that's one point to the homeopaths I guess
[Hermit] I admit to being conflicted here. My opinion is that no "alternative medicine" has been proven to consistently provide measurable benefits - else it would not be alternative. I definitely view homeopathy in this category along with other charlatans such as acupuncturists and chiropodists (Hermitess disagrees with me on acupuncture, which is why I am handling this one. She thinks it works, but perhaps not for the reasons the practitioners claim and probably not as well as they claim). However, my mother is a dispensing homeopath, but I excuse her because she prescribes medicines, conventional and alternative, which contain measurable doses of active ingredients. Still I definitely worry about quantities, particularly in products with a low therapeutic index, where small differences exist between ineffective and recommended dosages or between recommended dosage and a toxic overdoses, as well as the side effects of ingredients other than the primary intended pharmacological active ingredients not removed through processing or avoided through synthesis. Having said this, there are definitely times when "natural" drugs are not available, not because they don't work, but because the drug companies haven't figured out how to make a profit from them. So despite the above, I will accept her recommendations for "muti" and follow her instructions for use because they are generally efficacious. Still, I will ask her not to provide her reasoning for prescribing them or explanations of why they work because her reasoning and explanations make no sense to me, and if I listened to them, I might not follow her prescriptions. So perhaps I am not so far removed from the Hermitess as I thought when I started writing this.
[Hermit] Please note that Arnica, like other remedies containing quantified levels of active ingredients is, like the other products I mention below, strictly speaking a homotoxicological agent rather than a homeopathic agent. That said, Arnica helps as a lotion (particularly the gel) and when taken as tablets. Traumeel is even more strongly recommended for any shock or injury and I consider Urtica Urens to have preserved my dexterity after cooking (like a steak) my hand on a workpiece upon which I had been welding (it was so hot that the nerves did not detect the burn and I only realized what had happened when I looked round when I smelled something delicious to see if meat was being cooked for lunch - only to discover that my hand had stuck fast to the white hot metal). Prying it free, and leaving tissue on the metal, my experience lead me to anticipate from the appearance that I would need repeated long and painful transplant surgery to recover partial use of the hand, I was persuaded to keeping the hand in light sterile dressing inside a glove filled with urtica urens till the 3rd degree burned tissue sloughed off. Amazingly, new skin developed under the old tissue, which, in the course of weeks came away in chunks, and 3 months later there was no visible sign of the damage done other than the new tissue being a little lighter in color. Urtica Urens is also efficious against minor burns including sunburn. The way to use it is to apply a sterile dressing, cover it with something waterproof and then soak the dressing in urtica urtens, replenishing it as needed to maintain a wet environment. (Not mentioned by most suppliers, Urtica Urens is contra indicated when breast feeding as it will end milk production).
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