Tag Archives: doctors

Therapeutic Nihilism

The HIV/AIDS epidemic caused fear and panic in the 1980s. Yet physicians stepped up, set new protocols, and continued to treat patients without requiring HIV tests before seeing them At the time this disease was 100% fatal and they did not fully know how it was transmitted. Today, COVID-19 if you are under 60 the crude mortality rate is less than .4% and if you are under 30 this rate is less that .2%. Yet even with known precautions, patients with severe NON-COVID disease are being put off, sent to the ER or ignored. It’s an embarrassment to the medical community. Most of the heroes of the HIV era are gone, replaced by physicians that would rather cower behind overblown fear than take care of their patients.

A part of the modern hippocratic oath as taken by physicians today says:

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

John Smith, (not his real name) waited weeks for an appointment to meet with the orthopedic surgeon to remove infected bone from his hip. He had already been diagnosed with osteomyelitis (an infection in the bone) in his hip. After waiting two weeks as his infection raged in his hip he developed a fever but was finally able to come to Birmingham for his appointment and leg and life saving surgery. Upon arriving at his doctor’s office they took his temperature. Then sent him away.

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9gO6sCzcnc

It does not take much intelligence to figure out why he had a fever. Instead the doctor puts his patient at risk by refusing to see him. He will now have to go through an emergency room and will likely lose his leg or his life.

Another friend of mine, call her Jill, has been diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia. She has tested negative for COVID. The pneumonia is getting slowly worse. Her doctor refused to see her for two weeks. This too will most likely result in an ER visit at the point her life is in danger.

Where are the physicians, those heroes that took the Hippocratic Oath, the one’s who swore to do something to help the sick and injured, who swore not to do nothing. Yet, doctor after doctor is letting their patients get sicker and sicker, even die rather than take the chance a patient might be infected with COVID. Even when they know their patient does not have COVID from testing, they are turning them away, or delaying seeing them.

This used to mean something.

I have been unable to see my cardiologist for 3 months past when they told me I needed to be checked. If I had a problem, they would let me go to the ER or have a heart attack before I was treated. No heroes there, and I have tested COVID negative.

These few examples are being repeated millions of times across the country. Yet physicians have gone along with this approach to healthcare, intentionally putting their patients at risk rather than seeing any patient that might carry the disease. The patient and the doctor can wear masks and limit the time of exposure yet fear rules these former heroes.

Since when was being a physician supposed to be risk free? Each one signs on to treat sick people. Healthy people have no need for doctors. With the advent of COVID, they are violating, en mass their commitment to patients. Is this why they are so highly paid, so they can cower behind policies that keep patients away. It’s like a roofer that won’t go up high because he might fall. But the roofer is at much greater risk and has far more fortitude than those that are not caring for their patients.

From: https://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-real-estate-hiring-a-roofer-story.html

No one is measuring the deaths that could have been prevented with normal care. So if a patient waiting to see his physician gets COVID he or she is more likely to die or to be sicker than if they had been treated properly.

We should call it the hypocritical oath instead. These former heroes took an oath they refuse to uphold. It is a shameful response to a virus that seldom kills anyone without underlying disease. If they had not taken such an oath I would not hold these physicians responsible, but they did take the oath. History is full of physicians that took much greater risks in order to treat infectious patients. Yet, even knowing a patient does not have COVID many of these doctors are still not seeing their patients or are delaying treatment.

No wonder our ERs are full, everyone with an issue, or fever, or cough is being sent to the ER, even if the cause is known. This exposes these patients to COVID when it is completely unnecessary. Even if they did not have COVID, by the time they leave the hospital or ER, they will have it. Where are the doctors that took the Hippocratic oath? Why don’t they speak up against this crime against their patients? This approach to personal safety is putting every patient at risk. It is killing many of them.

Thanks to WebMD My Healthcare is Worse

Many companies will take money for just about anything.   Thanks to WebMD and others such as AARP that promoted Obamacare my ability to afford the doctors visits I need has been compromised.  My quality of my overall healthcare as a post open heart patient is greatly diminished while my costs have sky rocketed. WebMD was paid 14 plus million  to promote Obamacare.  In addition, their contract has just been extended.   It’s like selling juggling knives to blind people.

So, a web site that supposedly cares about people’s health is contributing to the destruction of the very system that used to provide some of the best healthcare in the world.  Across the spectrum, seniors have less benefits than before and they pay more for the reduced benefits, those in middle age now get free checkups, but can’t afford to see a doctor if they are actually sick.  Doctors and hospitals are being weeded out of the system at a time when they are more needed than ever.   We are watching the wanton destruction of the very thing that once made America exceptional.  I may have to go to Canada to afford treatment.

Of course the media knows and ignores this horror.  ABC, CBS and NBC do not dare report the truth as it would sink their socialist agenda.  I already dropped AARP for its support of Obamacare.   It is time to hold all these groups accountable.  If you advertise on WebMD I hope no one will buy what you sell ever again.   They were advertising a depression drug today.  Their willingness to get paid to throw peoples health under the government bus is depressing.

Obomacare — Kiss Your Old Age Good Bye

Image     Yesterday saw the government taking a huge bow for reaching the 7 million mark in enrollees. Never-mind that over half of those signups came from people who lost the insurance they liked.  Only a third of the signups are among the previously uninsured.  So, the law, designed to insure the 40 plus million of Americans who did not have insurance only insured 2.1 million of those people.  And folks, that is a best case scenario since many of those people have not paid their premium so are really not insured.   Looking at the best case scenario, the program only achieved 5 % of what it was supposed to do.  A 5% success rate is the good news that our government is celebrating. 

So what is Obamacare actually doing or has it done?

 

  1. Taken the free market of 100’s of plans and forced those into just a handful of plans with higher deductibles and copays.
  2. Substantially increased the cost for the majority of Americans, often by 50 to 100 percent.
  3. Increased insurance overhead by over $300 per person with no benefit whatsoever.
  4. Caused an ever increasing number of doctors to plan to withdraw from the system or retire.
  5. Eliminated access through insurance to many of the best hospitals and cancer centers.
  6. Given the government a new way to track every American’s behavior.
  7. Given the government a way to control the behavior of every American.
  8. Proven that the government does not need to go to Congress to change a law it does not like.
  9. Made Congress totally powerless.
  10. Implemented death panels by eliminating expensive care
  11. Start to bankrupt insurance companies.
  12. Proven the AMA and AARP have nothing but their own pocket’s interest.
  13. Destroyed the best healthcare in the world.

If you plan to live a long life, you and I and everyone we know need to get people in place to repeal this thing completely.  It is already a source of oppression, and has already endangered the lives of the people it is supposed to protect.  If you expect your future heart disease, cancer or other debilitating disease to be treated by government run healthcare, think again.  The whole country should march on Washington.  Not a single incumbent should remain in office.  Recall elections for every Senator not up for election should be held.  Obomacare is the loss of freedom, the future of state oppression, and the death of our Constitution.  I don’t know what all it will take to stop this, but if it is not stopped, you can kiss your old age goodbye.

Musings on Freedom

     Today was an interesting day.  Our family is fighting the remnants of a sinus infection and we are not feeling the best that we could.  In a perfect world (or at least one without massive government regulation) I could call my doctor and discuss with him my treatment options.  I might give him a credit card over the phone so he could be paid for his time.   He would then tell me to go to the pharmacy and to pick up an antibiotic,an anti-histamine and a decongestant. (Sudafed)  I would then (after sniffling, sneezing and clearing my sinuses.) get in my vehicle and drive to the pharmacy.  I would then walk up to the section on the shelf that said  antibiotics, select the one he suggested, then do the same for the anti-histamine and decongestant.  I would then take them to the counter, pay a reasonable price for them and then go home.

     But this is not a regulation free world, nor is it free in any way.  Let’s compare the scenario above to today’s reality.  If I call my doctor, more often as not because he is worried about law suits, he will not just recommend a medicine.  Instead I have to go in and see him.  Actually he can’t recommend the medicine, he has to call the pharmacy and tell them to let me have the medicine he wants me to take.   The government does not trust me enough to pick the correct medicine from the shelves as I might pick the wrong thing, take to much or too little or even worse, I might get high on Keflex. We can’t have our sick people getting high on over the counter antibiotics  that would be terrible.  So instead we have this whole system where we pay people to approve a drug, then pay them to dispense the drug, and then pay them to track how much of the drug was used.  What a waste.  I wonder how many lives are lost because access to simple prescriptions has gotten so convoluted? I wonder if that information is kept out of the news.  Already the FDA has started to try to limit access to the more expensive cancer drugs.

    What about the Sudafed.  It used to be I could walk up to the shelf an select an anti-histamine that contained Sudafed.  Now I have to go to the counter, show my drivers license and have the pharmacy check and see if I will be concocting methamphetamine from the Sudafed.  If I am sinusy more than 20 days this month I will be cut off because I am clearly a criminal.  Of course, traffic in methamphetamines  has not decreased, it just gets brought in from Mexico.  I however am treated like a criminal.  The next time I apply for a driver’s license they are going to look at me and say. “Sorry sir,  you tried to buy more than your allotment of sinus medicine.  We are going to have to deny you a license.  Please return next year and show that you are clean.”

    Oh my gosh, I have a Sudafed record.  They are going to lump me in with those old people smuggling cheap blood pressure meds and Plavix from Canada.  No wonder our jails are filled with drug abusers.  

    Actually, the point is that this whole infrastructure designed to protect us from ourselves is costing us a fortune while actually limiting the legitimate use of drugs.  How many terminal cancer patients have been denied pot, morphine, or codeine just because the physician was afraid of what the government would say.  His prescribing habits are being tracked and monitored.  Once again I can here the doctor explaining the issue.  “Yes, I know you are in pain and will die in the next few months.  There is nothing I can do to heal you and the government is worried that you might get addicted to codeine so we are not going to give you any pain relief.  You could end up a junkie and on the street.  You will addict your family members.  No we would rather you die a slow, horrible painful death. We are the government and here to help with your every health care need.”

    The current system already costs us, the consumer far more than a system that was truly free of government regulation.   The problems associated with inappropriate use would work themselves out with far less problems than the government thinks.  The cost savings would be tremendous.  Right now, the opposite is occurring.  Government regulation is impacting the legitimate distribution of drugs.  Life saving drugs that cost too much are being limited.  The motive for drug companies to develop new life saving drugs is being stripped away and less R & D is already happening.  Instead of a system that brings the best care, where the vast majority have better access to care than anywhere else in the world we are moving to a system that dispenses medical care the same way we dispense Sudafed.  If you use to much care, you will be denied.

     The government won’t have to kill its enemies, just forbid them to get ambulance rides when they need one, or cut off their medical device allowance.  We are going into a brave old world.  This is a world where freedom exists only for the powerful that can escape the system.    It’s why Congress does not have the same rules applied to them as the rest of us.  Where is the Constitution when you need it?