Myth vs Fact: The truth about Obama whining about health care.

Remember when Volpone wasn't this stupid?



Yeah, me neither.

My first attempt at getting into the Marines, after a big hike halfway through the course I started limping. The docs had a look at my leg and couldn't find anything wrong.

Then they X-rayed it and didn't find anything wrong.

Then they sent me up to Bethesda for a bone scan and found out I had a stress fracture in my femur.

The interesting thing, and the reason they'd been so persistent instead of just giving me a fistful of Motrin is that I wasn't feeling any pain in my femur. I was feeling it in my hip (possibly because of subconscious gait compensation) The reason the did the bone scan is that if you break off that ball at the top of the femur, it's artificial hip time with a replacement every 10 years or so--no fun for a 24 year old guy.

That's the most boring story I've ever heard.




Stop being boring.

The statistic I've seen cited is that approximately 3/4 of prescribed MRIs are only marginally useful efforts that merely confirm what a doctor already knows or are totally medically useless. I can't vouch for the validity of the statistic, but I find it readily believable given how much we spend on health care for results that are worse than average.

And, BTW, from what I've heard, all the money we spend on things like MRIs for early detection for cancer is a large part of that waste. In reality, a lot of very early stage cancers spontaneously remit, with the effect that major surgery to "cure" them carries as much or more danger than the cancer itself. Never trust anyone who cites 5 year cancer survival rates as evidence of how well the American medical system works. Those rates are boosted by diagnosing a whole lot of cancers that never were going to kill anyone anyway. Our actual raw death rates from cancer, as opposed to the number of deaths per diagnosis, are pretty average.

And, most importantly given our current system of funding MRIs through insurance and by paying by the procedure rather than by results, insurance companies rarely refuse to pay for MRIs. MRIs are cash cows for doctors and also pretty good evidence that the medical insurance market is fundamentally broken.

And insurance companies approve these "unnecessary procedures" because they are also ignorant and under the spell of sales reps? Not buying it.

The procedures are approved because they are medically justifiable, and effective on those who need them. They are only "unnecessary" because we cannot tell in advance who needs them, and because the majority who undergo the procedure do not.

Calling a procedure "unnecessary" implies that giving the procedure to a lot of people is too high a price to pay to ensure that the minority who actually benefit from the procedure get it.

Which leaves only one question: Why don't they just say it that way in the first place?

And that should tell you everything you need to know about who and what we're dealing with here.

Of course, some people will never understand. And some will only come to understand at their first "end of life" counseling session, when you learn the hard way what it means to be a minority who inconveniences the majority. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at one of those!

Got any examples of a doctor successfully defending himself from a malpractice lawyer with that one???

Are you saying that biopsies to determine which cancers are the remitting kind, and which ones are not, are unnecessary? Or that they are more dangerous than the non-remitting cancer?

There's a big difference between health care where every symptom is treated as a clue that you might have something bad, and one where we would rely on the probability that you don't. And that difference is most apparent to the small minority of folks who actually have the disease that a progressive healthcare system is too "efficient" to look for.

Thing is, he used to at least be somewhat entertaining and not quite always overbearingly obnoxious while being this stupid. Now he's the lovechild of Sean Hannity and Glen Beck.

Many many tests are also ordered by the doctor tocover all bases from a lawsuit perspective. Tort reform, not part of Barry's plan at all would be the biggest money saver. But them lawyers giving $$$$$ to Dems makes sure the best thing they could do will not happen.

Dr. Obama’s Tonsillectomy

In other words Mr. President: Link?

Also, check this out:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune/

God, that kind of shit is exactly why I've never had my shoulder looked at. I built the shoulder up around the area of pain, and I'm now I'm again able to make modest gains in strength. I don't need some quack talking me into a fucking year of rehabilitation from surgery to leave me with a shoulder that's even less functional.

That'd be the problem right there.
What makes you believe the free market is in competition?

Well, there's the fact that insurance policies primarily fall within the jurisdiction of individual states and their smaller markets under the current regime, with the result that many or most states have insurance markets in which individual policies are dominated by a single seller without meaningful competition. And, of course, there's the fact that insurance policy contracts are obscenely long and based on technical fineprint that the average consumer can't decipher without about 15 more years of education. And, of course, people frequently are unable to switch policies because of preexisting conditions, recent medical crises, or other situations. And all of this would magically go away and leave everyone with a magical pony and efficiently allocated health care if only the federal government would let the states and insurance companies continue doing whatever the fuck they're doing.

From that lefty rag, Business Week:

Now, why is that, Liet? I fucking dare you to blame it on a "free" market.

Don't go blaming the FedGov for that one. In the interest of state's right health care has largly been left up to the states and this is the result. State govs have created their 50 little fiefdoms. You want that to change, the Fed will have to do it. Part of reform has to include the end of this insanity. I want a public option and regulation of insurance companies to be done at the Federal level.

I would only support a public option if the plan involved at least 3 government insurance plans, run separately and competing with each other.

Then throw in a little federal law to free up interstate competition between the private insurance companies. State regulation is a mess and needs fixing.

In this dream world, the government-run plans would be cheaper and offer inferior (but still adequate) medical services and treatments. Slightly longer waits, doctors from the bottom half of the class (but still graduated, duh).

And the private insurance co's would have the gold-plate, silver-plate, and perhaps a bronze-plate or two (lower budgets, maybe comparable to the three gov. plans I envisioned).

If someone wants the best treatment they should have to pay for it. But it should at least be possible to get the best, at the right price.

After myth #1, I omitted a lot - above is just the heading and first paragraph for each topic. He goes into details on a few of the myth items.

See the rest for yourself, it's a good read.

@ ehrie: So the fact that the States as opposed to the FedGov were making the silly regulations is somehow a retort against 'I fucking dare you to blame it on a "free" market'?