Category Archives: General Cynicism

Out health care costs are out of control. We pay more and get limited benefit from our huge expenditure. We lead the world in health care related bankruptcy, hospital expenditures, drug costs, physicians pay, and the proportion of our population without health insurance. We are number 1.

The 2011 analysis of the US health care (non) system suggests that the reasons for our expenditures are “substantially higher prices and more fragmented care delivery that leads to duplication of resources and extensive use of poorly coordinated specialists.”

And concludes that:

Despite much higher spending, U.S. performance in terms of quality is variable relative to other countries. While cancer care in the U.S. seems to be of particularly high quality based on five-year survival rates, the high rates of hospital admissions for chronic diseases suggest opportunities for improvement.

Some graphics from the study:

On Hospital spending:

On comparative costs:

On Cancer survival:

Medicynical Note: It’s wonderful that our cancer survival is somewhat better than elsewhere, but if we accept that as true we also have to accept the shortcomings identified in the study and noted above.

The debate on the conservative side hinges on whether health care in the US should be a right of citizenship. It’s seems somewhat irrational to maintain such reasoning, tantamount to trying to reclaim virginity, when these same conservative friends continually laud U.S. Health Care for providing “free” access to ER’s for all. Is this not a form of defacto health care for all albeit inefficiently and poorly instituted.

Their reasoning, in some ways, is not surprising. After all, what other form of care would the most expensive inefficient health care non-system provide? And it goes without saying that it is not free. Can’t we do better?

It’s difficult to believe that in the early part of the 21st century there should be finding the debate amongst evangelicals regarding the existence of Adam and Eve or that it should be of any interest. Perhaps this is a significant moment for American church people that will allow them to reclaim a modicum of intellectual respectability……….or not.

But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: “That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.”

And:

“Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost,” Schneider says. “So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings.”

Medicynical Note: Who knows what’s next? That earth is billions of years old? Acceptance of evolution as the best explanation of man and life on earth? Acceptance of the bible as a book of nice stories?

Or perhaps, more likely, banishment and ostracism of the heretics.

It’s amazing that this is tolerated:

Now, after losing re-election last year despite hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from grateful hospital executives, doctors and other industry officials, he has moved on to Plan B: promoting their cause as a lobbyist.

Yet it’s common practice in our congress which has recently shown faux concern about deficits, spending and governing.

His role as an industry champion shows the enduring power of being a well-placed friend in the capital. At least 160 former lawmakers currently work as lobbyists in Washington, according to First Street, a Web site that tracks lobbying trends in Washington, with many more exerting influence as consultants or advisers.

Medicynical Note: The problem cuts across party boundries, though there are many more republican linked lobbyists. These people do not represent you and me. For the most part they are clients of business and in the medical field, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, device manufacturers and so on. Guess whose interests are sacrficed.

Is it no wonder our system of health care is only a system in that it is systematically rigged to promote the well being of business interests, not patients.