Monthly Archives: May 2022

Liberal Logic – High Gas Prices are Good

I can hear the conversation happening in the halls of congress among the liberal caucus explaining how if the price of gas was raised in the US, American would flock to purchase electric vehicles. Their liberal allies in the media nod their heads vigorously cheering on the save the planet mentality, thinking that those evil fossil fuels are going the way of the dodo. In the meantime the price of food has exploded with inflation, interest rates are starting to soar upwards and more people than in 50 years are living pay check to pay check.

Honda Electric Car

Who will buy these wonderful electric cars with a greater and greater number of Americans are battling poverty caused by the increase in gas prices? The cost of these cars, already significantly greater than the cost of an old fossil fuel standby will also increase. Then as credit gets tighter, as interest rates go up, no one will be able to finance these electric luxuries.

Inflation and gas prices will drive people to use available credit, then to default, forcing millions into bankruptcy. They won’t be buying electric cars or any car for years to come. The cars that remain on the road will get older and older and as those cars age they will spew out more and more carbon emissions. So much for saving the planet.

Oh, they say, “People will drive less.” The vast majority of driving is to and from work, over the road with trucking and delivery people. In order to work they will have to drive. Sure there will be fewer vacations, so that those working at resorts and inns and destinations will lose their jobs. Those people will drive less, lose their homes and suffer greatly.

But never fear, there will be charging stations everywhere. Already in California 25% of the charging stations are not functional. If you are driving any distance in South Alabama charging stations are pretty much non-existent. So the people telling you to buy electric, want you to over pay for a car you can’t afford, with money you can’t afford to spend, at rates that you can’t afford to pay, so you can not drive it in over one half of the country.

Someone tell me how this makes sense. A return to Trump’s energy policy where this country was energy independent would go a long way toward reducing inflation, creating high paying jobs, and keeping the middle and lower class from absolute economic destruction.

The Failure of Our Medical System

Access Denied

A woman with uncontrollable whole body shakes, arms flailing, legs jerking, stomach muscles folding her in half goes into the emergency room in a small town hospital. (Eufaula) The doctor does a CT scan, takes history, and can’t figure out why this is happening. He sees a possible stroke on the CT but that may be old. Over the next 12 hours he figures out that they can suppress the symptoms using a Parkinson’s medication, but still has no answers as to the underlying cause.

Community Hospital

He calls the state’s most prestigious and well known hospital system(UAB) to have the woman transferred. They won’t take the patient, no available beds and no option for a later admit. Unable to do more than keep the woman medicated and barely comfortable, the small town hospital just sends her home with medication, no solution, no diagnosis. That capability is beyond the resources of the small town.

It is now up to the patient to find a neurologist/specialist before either her medications run out or she returns to an emergency room with another acute event. She has a primary care doctor in Birmingham at UAB but that doctor retired. A referral from that practice would get her seen. They will see her, in 45 days well past the end of the medications that control the tremors. It’s an emergency only held back by medication.

The absolute indifference to the plight of the patient by UAB and I am sure, a multitude of other institutional medical centers has become the trend not the exception. The primary care has its processes, and won’t budge, the specialists use this as a shield against seeing new patients and the result is patient lives are at risk. The time to diagnosis and treatment is extended and maybe the patient survives until they can find the right resource, and perhaps the patient dies while waiting.

This certainly seems to be the approach at UAB where the wearing of flimsy paper masks is still required even though there is no medical evidence that the masks prevent any disease, Covid-19 or otherwise. The patient is left with calling every neurologist across the state in hopes of finding one that will look at her case.

Medicine has become more focused on the process of limiting access, even to fully insured patients, than making any attempt to resolve the most serious cases as soon as possible. Is it equity that ties up the resources now, not the need to treat the most serious cases first? Do serious cases no longer matter? What ever happened to the oath physician’s take?

Life expectancy has fallen precipitately over the last two years. While therapeutics for Covid were discouraged, critical patient needs ignored, cancer screenings delayed and fear promoted, the result has been increased death. There has to be a point where doctors stand up and say that this is not acceptable. Still, I see few signs that in the face of increased administrative burdens, the push for more expensive pharmaceuticals, greater interference by insurance companies that the doctors, the people most invested in this system other that the patient are willing to say anything.

Doctor’s and nurses have gone from being perceived as heroes, fighters for their patients, champions of good health, to being perceived in large part as bureaucrats, too scared to take up for their patients, too frightened of consequences to state even the obvious. Science now means less than personal security. Of course there are a few that stand up to the pressures put on them and they pay a high price for stating the obvious. There are far too few champions to change this trajectory.

In the meantime, the case of the woman above remains unresolved and it is only a matter of time before things become life threatening again.