Category Archives: Health Insurance

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.

Scarier than COVID-19: No Freedom

FOOD BANKS ARE OVERRUN

The United States is a country with a history of overcoming huge problems when the people are left to be inventive, innovative, and free.  We have forgotten that basic fact, to our great detriment.

In the name of health and security the government has denied millions their right to feed their families.   In Texas,  Shelly Luther was jailed for opening up her beauty shop.  In Birmingham you can be fined for not wearing a mask. The Episcopal Dioceses of Kansas says Churches must keep a register of names of people attending in-person services for possible future contact tracing.  Why is that?  Are Christians to be tracked?  Across the country meetings of more than 10 people are banned. Tech companies are filtering and removing information with which they don’t agree,  preventing people’s voices from getting out and hindering even scientific exploration.

The response to COVID-19 is not protecting the most vulnerable, just damaging everyone else.  In New York 66% of the new cases have come from people sheltering in place, yet “Non-Essential workers” can not go to work.    Studies have show that the number of people infected but who never were sick enough to seek treatment is far higher (20%)in New York City than imagined.  The virus has been here and the shelter in place orders may have flattened the peak and kept the hospitals from being overwhelmed, but at this point all these orders are are draconian steps demonstrating the arbitrary execution of power by government.  There is no science to it. 

The government has arbitrarily decided who is “Essential”.  It is not just healthcare workers, delivery drivers,  grocery workers.  Every person who has to feed a family is essential to that family.  Every business with customers is essential to those customers. Daycare is essential to working parents.   To a near sighted person eye doctors are essential, to the sick the availability of emergency rooms is essential even if they do not have COVID-19.

go away

Instead we have run patients with milder problems away from our medical facilities, so when they do return, those problems will be severe.  We have cut off those who are sick from any disease from their loved ones and advocates.  Patients that could not speak for themselves now have no one to speak for them.

What makes sense, is that instead of locking up everyone, denying even the most basic rights of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to assemble, and the freedom to worship, is that we protect the people that are most vulnerable.  Clearly the elderly, those in nursing homes or those who have significant co-morbidities are most at risk.  The vast majority of everyone else is at minor risk of serious infection.

Those at risk need personal protective gear or need to limit their exposure to others who have known COVID-19 statuses.  In New York City 20% of the people tested for antibodies showed exposure.  That is millions. They have already been exposed, had the disease, mostly without symptoms and so have no need to shelter.  They do not need to be protected.

We have let the media scare us into terrible and horribly destructive policy decisions.  These decisions have failed to protect the most vulnerable while scaring everyone into giving up their inalienable rights.  The media have tried to scare us at every turn, they have dismissed the proven effectiveness of Hydroxy-Chloro-quinine although the drug has been around for 50+ years.  They have helped fuel bad decisions at every turn.  Much of the media took China’s propaganda and repeated it slowing recognition of the true threat from this virus.

Google has said they will only allow posts that agree with World Health Organization guidelines.  This is the same WHO that told us that the virus was not human to human transmittable, and who’s ties to China are more than questionable.   Science is about putting all ideas out there for evaluation, not just those approved by the communist party of China.

There are a whole host of players to blame for the destruction of our economy and the loss of freedom that has resulted.  Now is the time to reverse those errors.  Look at the science, the true numbers, as some of the media have inflated the deaths to sow fear. Look at Sweden as they did not shut down and fared better than us.  Stop state and city oligarchs from exercising petty rules designed to show their power. Be smart about protecting the vulnerable and fully open up the country.

Not opening up the country will extend the depression that is already upon us. If you care for this country for the well being of your family, now is the time to step up and demand the freedoms guaranteed by our constitution.

 

 

 

 

Women’s Health — Planned Parenthood

The chance of getting breast cancer in the overall US population is 12.5% over the course of a woman’s lifetime.  Whether abortion increases the risk of breast cancer is something that is medically disputed. However the impact of abortion on cervical cancer is less so.  Each year 7.5 women per 100,000 will contract cervical cancer.  Cervical-Cancer

Among women who have had one abortion that risk is 2.3 times higher than the risk in the general population.   For those women 17.25 out of every 100,000 will get cervical cancer. Based on the fact that Planned Parenthood performed 300,000 abortions last year 45 women more per year will contract cervical cancer.  Roughly a quarter of those women will not survive.  Some studies suggest an 5 fold increase of cervical cancer among post abortive women which would mean an extra 90 cases per year.  Roughly 20 of those cases will be fatal.

Do you think this information is given to Planned Parenthood’s often young and vulnerable clients?    Beyond the immediate medical risks associated with abortion there are a host of long term life risks.  I would think that this information should be widely distributed and given to clients seeking abortion services.  Even if you believe it is a women’s right to chose, they need to know what they are choosing.  It may well not be what they think.

For many the immediate convenience of not having to try and raise a child outweighs the effort to carry to term and either attempt to raise the child or have it adopted.  The long term consequences to the physical and mental health of the client have long been ignored in this space.   For many those consequences are far worse than having a child that they ultimately love and who loves them.  For some the consequence is an early grave.  There is tremendous research to support this.

For me I would do everything in my power to make abortion unnecessary and undesirable. Learn more at Sav-a-Life Shelby.  Or sponsor me for the walk dedicated to changing women’s minds and helping them succeed in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in Fear

That is what the media wants from you, to live in terror, to fear that the oceans will rise and wipe out Hawaii or that there is a rash of crime and you are the target.  Compounded with legitimate fears it is amazing that any of us function at all.  I was recently  impressed by a friend of mine facing potentially terminal cancer, but he was not fearful.  To be more accurate he was not worried about death.  He was more worried about the discomfort  of chemo than he was about the prospect of dying.

I have noticed that believers who have accepted Christ as their savior generally face potentially fatal events with far less trepidation than those that are in any other religion. There a grace and peace that believers in Christ have that provides an assurance of what will occur after death.  That assurance is not one of a mental understanding but one of a heart understanding that is often described as from the holy spirit.  Beyond the indisputable events of Jesus’s death and resurrection that to me is proof of that reality.  It is the impact of that reality on this world.

Obamacare – Deathcare

Tens of thousands lost their doctors.  Millions of American lost their insurance. Millions more now pay substantially more out of their own pockets for health insurance for substantially less benefit.  Yet, Obama this week claimed that Obamacare Works.  The only measure that indicates that this program works is that some insurance companies are making a lot more profit than they were before this program was enacted.  The program does not work, has never worked and costs lives, and livelihoods.

Congress has the numbers and the power to abolish this program and override a veto as it remains so unpopular that even senate democrats will vote to abolish it, if they are presented with the bill as a campaign issue.  The insurance companies that are making more lobby to keep Obamacare, often more out of fear than true desire.   ABC, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC all continue to support it because it fits their agenda and provides ad dollars from the insurance companies.  In fact, these outlets are as responsible for this law remaining in effect as is Congress.

Obamacare won’t pay for a head transplant, (we can understand why this is experimental)  but cutting out the best cancer drugs and doctors has already caused the loss of life.  Every time one of these stories is ignored by ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, or FOX News these organizations along with Congress are responsible for murder.   Most of the media ignores the truth and continues to put out false information about these programs.

Whether they do so because they improve their profits, or because of ideology, or because of political pressure does not matter.  They are, by law, supposed to foster the public good.  This is one area among many where they have not only fostered public harm, but continue to do so.  As Obama Praises Obamacare this week, none of them challenged him, or publically excoriated a program that continues to harm Americans by the millions.  By that standard their license to be on the airwaves should be revoked.

Congress needs to cancel this program lock stock and barrel.  Pay for play in this area continues to cost American lives and make millions of Americans poorer and at greater health risk than ever before.  It is almost impossible to boycott every news organization but every Congressman that does not successfully repeal this law needs to be voted out. Period.  Every candidate that does not actively work toward its repeal needs to be not elected.  It is time to take back our lives in this area.