Millions of unemployed face years without jobs

[iyamwutiam]

Re: Millions of unemployed face years without jobs

I think it would, actually. Take a look at cost of end of life care and do not resuscitate cost savings in Google and see for yourself. Getting control of even one part of that cost would be a major victory. Once there is control of that part, the medical establishment would likely decide that cooperating made a lot more sense than being marginalized by edicts. Right now the medical insurance establishment can buy whatever they want. Once they lose even one line item it will put them on notice. Then they will face the choice of cooperating or losing their power in incremental steps.

Incremental change suckles at the bosom of dliatory tactics and fattens itself to grow from an infant of obstructionism to the king of the hill given enough time to siphon profits and hence corrupt the review process and particularly the reviewer.

I have seen this so much in healthcare that I have unfortunately become stridently against it. How many billions of dollars of fraud is tacitly and implicitly consented to by government (if you do a perfunctory search at a minimum 30 billion). Medicare itself funds no less than 4 industries -Nursing home/Transport/etc ad nauseum. Fraudulent papers churned out by the New Enron Journals of Medicine/Pharmacy/CDC etc to 'refine' ever more stringent standards of 'health' and wellness-- it can not be any other way -witness the rather un-necessary alarm created by the Public Health Task Force recommendations on Breast Cancer Screening.

Where have government agencies acted upon the externalities of business -in lead poisoning? Asbestos? Dioxin? Organophosphorus? Don't get me started onthe food business -with Nabisco/Kraft/fast food titans etc.

The point is the cost of doing business necessarily entails that someone else pay for it -mainly the consumer and most definitely the taxpayer -not just as a price -but hidden costs (some deliberate -some not).

The definition's are increasingly blurred - and known definitions re-assessed -for whose benefit? For example say Diabetes -a common chronic disease. I lower the threshold from say 120mg/dl to 90 - how many people would i add to my treatment pool? Millions upon millions -who benefits ? Certainly not the patient - as we know it is a chronic disease and damage occurs from years AND years of having this condition untreated. Which doctor or scientist DOES NOT KNOW that we are being inundated with sugar for the last 4 decades? Which doctor/CDC/etc thought in view of this massive sugar overlaod -we should INCREASE the threshold for blood sugar -and focus on individuals who have accelerated morbidity? Blood pressure -we have gone from 140/90 to whatever it is now and the cyclic nonsensical chase of whether systolic or diastolic is more damaging. In the meanwhile I am sorry to report an increasing number of trained (HA) receiving 80K a year nurses 'observing' a blood pressure of 90/60 in a woman as being 'too low'. With healthcare like this -who needs health care.

The point is - that until the financial burden threatens to destroy us -or as Rahm Emmanuel says -put us in crisis mode -we will all just sit here and dither away at the margins -like the epic poem Ship of Fools. No one wishes to talk about the direction of the ship -everyone is too busy squabbling about unimportant things.

How many physicians do you know -who charge you or the insurance company $500.hr -receive 100 and offer no health care to their employees. To live and make a living in this world of irony or pyschoticness is what causes the endless parades of once proud and ethical professions literally going to the dogs (primarily lapdogs).

If change must come -it must be foundational and from this havoc - we may see the way out.

[Sharky]

Re: Millions of unemployed face years without jobs

I think there may be a solution to the problem of supporting the elderly.

I can't say for sure, but it's possible that you could be right in the short term. However, this is another example of pragmatism, which means that in the long term, it's doomed to fail.

The reason is that you are only attacking one symptom; the real problem is a multi-headed hydra. Cut off one head, and you still have many others that will pop up to bite you.

The only viable long-term solution is to have a system based on rational principles, including individual rights and responsibilities -- and not just the rights of the patients, but the rights of the care-givers, too. If you really want to fix health care, a much better approach would be for government to keep their damn hands off of it! The existing levels of regulation are stifling; it's to the point now where many doctors today wish they had chosen a different profession. That doesn't bode well for the future.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Millions of unemployed face years without jobs

I think it would, actually. Take a look at cost of end of life care and do not resuscitate cost savings in Google and see for yourself. Getting control of even one part of that cost would be a major victory. Once there is control of that part, the medical establishment would likely decide that cooperating made a lot more sense than being marginalized by edicts. Right now the medical insurance establishment can buy whatever they want. Once they lose even one line item it will put them on notice. Then they will face the choice of cooperating or losing their power in incremental steps.

The cost of end of life care is primarily prior to issuance of DNR. The article you pointed to on DNR did not talk about the age involved. I doubt that many of these 75 persons were over 65. Most of them probably were younger. Of all the people I know who have died in the past decade who were elderly, only 1 died in a hospital and she was only 60 and she was waiting for an opening in hospice. All of the rest died at home, in a nursing home or in hospice. In the past month alone, 3 close friends have died. Only one was in a hospital prior to death, but was in a hospice at the time of her death as were the other 2.

[leegs]

Re: Millions of unemployed face years without jobs

Would a inter-regional conflict involving Pakistan/India/China, possibly including the use of a number of nuclear weapons in the region, provide the US the opportunity to reduce the economic and future military threat or competition posed by China and India respectively?

There has been plenty of discussion here before on big war as a 'solution' to the economic ills of the world, analogous to how WWII was such a boon to the US. I have thought such talk to be fairly nonsensical, only because I couldn't see the 'practical' value in a big war in current times. However your scenario puts things into a totally different light. Like Flintlock said 'stop scaring me dude'.

That was a heck of post.