Health Care in US: a family's perspective

[Jay]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

Excellent stuff, thanks for posting. The whole thing reminds me of a book by an old professor of mine, Ivan Illich. He had developed a tumor on his face in the eighties and refused Western medical care, as he felt that the entire system was a threat to the health of the society. By the time I met him the tumor was larger than a softball, about cantaloupe sized.

How did that decision work out for him and his face?

[Rajiv]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

How did that decision work out for him and his face?

See Ivan Illich

During his later years, he suffered from a cancerous growth on his face that, in accordance with his critique of professionalized medicine, was treated with traditional methods. He regularly smoked opium to deal with the pain caused by this tumor. At an early stage, he consulted a doctor about having the tumor removed, but was told that there was too great a chance of losing his ability to speak, and so he lived with the tumor as best he could. He called it "my mortality."

Also see - So radical he makes NoamChomsky look like an AmericanRepublican

[marvenger]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

I don't think its just pyramid debt schemes, its also market incentives. I think the pyramid debt scheme rational is a cognitive soother of finding a simple reason for all ills.

[Jay]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

I don't think its just pyramid debt schemes, its also market incentives. I think the pyramid debt scheme rational is a cognitive soother of finding a simple reason for all ills.

If you learn a bit more about our monetary system or about economic history and the opinions of some of the great minds of the past you may feel differently. Where do you think the driver of those important incentives comes from? Do you know how the "market" we live in is created? What role do you think slavery played in the past? There is less overt slavery now yet many more people inhabit the planet. Was slavery replaced and if so, by what? Debt, and its purveyors are the epicenter of it all.

This should get you started:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...06773770802849

It's limited in some ways, but it's a start.

[marvenger]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

Maybe it all does start with debt, maybe my mind isn't big enough to comprehend it but it hasn't sounded convincing to me so far, sometimes these things take a while to settle but I have reading this stuff for quite a while now and it hasn't settled yet. Even if it does all start with debt, i think its market ideology that sustains it now, and many other problems that are so directly related to debt. Get rid of the market ideology - wich is just a set of relations that the powerful establish - and the problem of debt will be whole lot different.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

So we are clear, "get them sick" is not in anyway a belief of any physician that I have ever met

I agree. I should have stated who I was blaming. I was blaming some ethically challenged, profit motivated large corporations, not individual physicians. I don't claim that "get them sick" is one of such corporation's primary goals (though in my more paranoids moments, I have been known to suspect that.) Rather I am claiming that it's secondary consequence of their primary motive - profit.

I do suspect however that many individual physicians are inadvertently complicit in prescribing medications that contribute to the problem, rather than enthusiastically preferring what I (at least for myself) would consider to be healthier and more economically nutrition and alternative approaches.

For one example, to be specific, I fired my doctor five years ago when he prescribed statins for me. After I read up on them some, I canceled all further appointments with him. I still have the never used bottle of pills, as a souvenir. I changed my diet -- radically -- instead. Back then, I suffered from a wide variety of minor ailments, from toenail to scalp, with moderate obesity likely headed toward diabetes and chronic cardio-vascular disease, and with chronic "brain fog." All that's fixed now. I'm healthier, more alert and younger feeling now than I was ten years ago. To hell with statins. The entire saturated fat and cholesterol explanation for our epidemic of cardiovascular disease is fatally and radically wrong, in my view. Disclaimer: I am no doctor, no lawyer, no Indian Chief, no medic, no mid-wife, no pharmacist, no ophthalmologist, no surgeon, no professional of any kind in these matters.

Which debate, can you be more clear?

The above New York Times article was providing (well written) support for the position that we should not force excessively expensive and invasive treatments on those near death. The other side of "this debate" was perhaps captured in Sarah Palin's denouncement of "death panels."

We've made some lousy choices in our agriculture, food processing, and lower cost or preventive medical care, which have resulted in an epidemic of chronic illness (cardio and cancer, and various and related.)

Rather than deal with the cause of this epidemic (with healthier food and water, for example) we are engaging in a debate as to how deal with this epidemic.

The debate is whether:

1. to fund these exorbitantly expensive (and profitable) procedures and prescriptions that sometimes have dubious consequences for quality of life, or
2. to have government "death panels" to decide for us when not to fund them.

We're debating between a rock and a hard place, ignoring the open door behind us through which we could walk away from this conundrum.

Is that clearer?

I don't know of any physician who recommends eating at fast food joints, lounging on the couch watching TV and smoking all day.

And I don't know of any physicians in an ordinary practice recommending the sort of aggressive nutrition choices that someone like a Mike Adams, Joseph Mercola, or Russell Blaylock might recommend.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

How did that decision work out for him and his face?

See pages 38-40 of The rivers north of the future: the testament of Ivan Illich for a gentle and sympathetic telling of this story.

Thank-you, bpr, for referencing Ivan Illich. I had not known of him before. He has a delightfully warm and humane understanding of culture and medicine, not trapped in the damnable dichotomies of our present discourse.

For an excellent critique of modern medicine, I recommend The ‘Sickening’ Search for Health: Ivan Illich’s revised thoughts on the medicalization of life and medical iatrogenesis.(pdf) -- by Francis C. Biley, RN PhD .

[Jay]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

I do suspect however that many individual physicians are inadvertently complicit in prescribing medications that contribute to the problem, rather than enthusiastically preferring what I (at least for myself) would consider to be healthier and more economically nutrition and alternative approaches.

I don't suspect this, it is a fact that many do it all the time.

The above New York Times article was providing (well written) support for the position that we should not force excessively expensive and invasive treatments on those near death. The other side of "this debate" was perhaps captured in Sarah Palin's denouncement of "death panels."

We've made some lousy choices in our agriculture, food processing, and lower cost or preventive medical care, which have resulted in an epidemic of chronic illness (cardio and cancer, and various and related.)

Rather than deal with the cause of this epidemic (with healthier food and water, for example) we are engaging in a debate as to how deal with this epidemic.

The debate is whether:

1. to fund these exorbitantly expensive (and profitable) procedures and prescriptions that sometimes have dubious consequences for quality of life, or
2. to have government "death panels" to decide for us when not to fund them.

We're debating between a rock and a hard place, ignoring the open door behind us through which we could walk away from this conundrum.

Is that clearer?

Yes. While I am in general agreement with your poisition on preventative medicine and healthy choices, I would add that just because it is an important issue in no way means a focus on end of life care should be minimized. This is not just a crude dialectic to draw your attention away from issues about nutrition and lifestyle. This article highlights well some of the scary questions that many doctors and Americans have been unwilling to ask. If you know of someone you love who has suffered greatly you will understand this deeply. Please don't hijack the issue.

[Jay]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

See pages 38-40 of The rivers north of the future: the testament of Ivan Illich for a gentle and sympathetic telling of this story.

Yes, everyone should read that passage. Then you can decide what you might do if faced with the same situation. Illich had every right to follow the path he did. And the doc on the plane that touched his tumor without asking was way out of line. Not having his tumor treated by Western means was Illich's personal decision and it is his body. Paternalism should be relegated to history.

That said, I would take the simple surgery when the basal cell was as small as a pea over the Pakistani hakim's advice or that of the astrologer. But that is just me. I'd rather not bear a disfiguring, painful mass on my face when there is an easy solution provided by Western medicine.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

That said, I would take the simple surgery when the basal cell was as small as a pea over the Pakistani hakim's advice or that of the astrologer.

I recommend glycoalkaloids from solanum sodomaeum (such as in a product called "Sunspot ES") for basal cell carcinomas.

[bpr]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

Also see - So radical he makes NoamChomsky look like an AmericanRepublican

That really made me laugh.

See pages 38-40 of The rivers north of the future: the testament of Ivan Illich for a gentle and sympathetic telling of this story.

Thank-you, bpr, for referencing Ivan Illich. I had not known of him before. He has a delightfully warm and humane understanding of culture and medicine, not trapped in the damnable dichotomies of our present discourse.

For an excellent critique of modern medicine, I recommend The ‘Sickening’ Search for Health: Ivan Illich’s revised thoughts on the medicalization of life and medical iatrogenesis.(pdf) -- by Francis C. Biley, RN PhD .

Likewise, thanks for the links. Here are some audio files for audiophiles.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

This article highlights well some of the scary questions that many doctors and Americans have been unwilling to ask. If you know of someone you love who has suffered greatly you will understand this deeply. Please don't hijack the issue.

Sure - ok. My apologies for the distractions.

Your original post just showed the article. Obviously it was clear to you the point of the article and yes this is an important issue.

My reading of the article led me to conclude it had a different purpose, taking one side of the "debate" I described above. I reacted to that purpose. I could point out details in the article buttressing my contention that it had such an ulterior (inferior?) motive, but that would further hijack the issue on which you hoped to focus this thread, so I will gladly refrain from such tedium.

It seems that no matter how obvious the motives of an article or post are, someone (or some tin-foil-hat wearing cow) will find a devious undercurrent to the motive. I encourage myself and others to state up front, for the record, their purpose in or conclusion to be drawn from a post.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming ...

[Jay]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

Sure - ok. My apologies for the distractions.

Your original post just showed the article. Obviously it was clear to you the point of the article and yes this is an important issue.

My reading of the article led me to conclude it had a different purpose, taking one side of the "debate" I described above. I reacted to that purpose. I could point out details in the article buttressing my contention that it had such an ulterior (inferior?) motive, but that would further hijack the issue on which you hoped to focus this thread, so I will gladly refrain from such tedium.

It seems that no matter how obvious the motives of an article or post are, someone (or some tin-foil-hat wearing cow) will find a devious undercurrent to the motive. I encourage myself and others to state up front, for the record, their purpose in or conclusion to be drawn from a post.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming ...

Sometimes those cow glasses are so effective and unwavering at peering into the molten core of a problem they have to leave other members to touch upon at least a few of the others ; )

Edit: Man, I don't write so good. That sentance makes little sense.

[sishya]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

One of my friend who is a Internist told me in 2005, that there is a good chance that in the future that our non-productive life can exceed our productive life.
If so - How can societies be sustainiable ? add to that the negative demographic issue in developed secular countries, it excacerbates the issue.

This NY Times articles highlights this dilemma. Maybe Govt will provide tax breaks for children of old people to perform Euthanasia.
If Euthanasia of elderly is encouraged by Govt for resource reasons, we humans can surely curse ourselves.

Well on a side note, the Hospital my wife did her earlier MD in India used to do this to young children because of ventilator costs
whose parents could not afford it. They used to take such sick kids outside the premise of Hospital and remove the ventilator so
that records will show death happened outside the premise. So such actions are taken on Children in Third world countries,
so doing to Elderly in First world is just another extension. In Third world countries Physicians loose much of their heart and compassion
because of things like this - they just follow what the Hospital says.

[cjppjc]

Re: Health Care in US: a family's perspective

One of my friend who is a Internist told me in 2005, that there is a good chance that in the future that our non-productive life can exceed our productive life.
If so - How can societies be sustainiable ? add to that the negative demographic issue in developed secular countries, it excacerbates the issue.

This NY Times articles highlights this dilemma. Maybe Govt will provide tax breaks for children of old people to perform Euthanasia.
If Euthanasia of elderly is encouraged by Govt for resource reasons, we humans can surely curse ourselves.

Well on a side note, the Hospital my wife did her earlier MD in India used to do this to young children because of ventilator costs
whose parents could not afford it. They used to take such sick kids outside the premise of Hospital and remove the ventilator so
that records will show death happened outside the premise. So such actions are taken on Children in Third world countries,
so doing to Elderly in First world is just another extension. In Third world countries Physicians loose much of their heart and compassion
because of things like this - they just follow what the Hospital says.

This site because of it's posters wordwide locations and expertise has given me so much information. I seriously feel I may throw up.