Tag Archives: hospital

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.

 

 

 

 

Hospitals Refuse to Readmit Sick Patients — They Die — The Next Headline

With the VA scandal still in the throws of discovery it is clear that the federal government incentivized the fraud that led to 100’s of veteran deaths.  Bonuses were paid to federal employees if it looked like the VA was doing its job and taking care of patients.  This lead to massive fraud.  No one actually verified that the patients were taken care of.  

In non-VA hospitals:

“The U.S. has begun levying fines against hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within a month, and rewarding hospitals that do well on a benchmark of clinical outcomes and patient surveys. ”  (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-26/hospitals-soon-see-donuts-to-cigarette-charges-for-health.html)

In other words, regular hospitals are being paid if they can prevent patients from being re-admitted.  My guess, based on human nature, is that some patients have already died because hospitals have refused to admit them.  This is no different than the VA scandal where people are rewarded for not providing appropriate care.  

Just think of it this way.  A recently released heart patient develops an arrhythmia.  It’s been 29 days since he was last discharged.  In order not to pay out extra in fines, the hospital tells the patient he needs to wait three days before he comes in.  He dies in the meantime.  How many times will this scenario be repeated. Once again government intervention results in untimely deaths.  Yet the hospital and its administrators have a better bottom line.  

It is time to get the government out of health care.  The government’s interest is not patient health but cost control and if patients die on the way, so be it.  The VA situation has proven this to be the case.  The stage is set for many, many more avoidable deaths.

Our Veterans Deserve Better — Here is the Fix

There are lists of over 1000 veterans waiting for their first appointment at bunches of VA hospitals.  How that happens baffles me.  The fix is simple, Hire 10 doctors seeing 3 patients an hour for 8 hours a day.  (Any doctor in private practice will tell you that they often see 8 to 10 patients an hour, so 3 is peanuts.)  Each doctor would see 24 patients a day so that is 240 patients per day for the 10 doctors.  In a week they have seen 1200 patients and in two weeks the backlog is gone.  Keep the 10 doctors and support staff to take care of the follow up and in two months you have either treated and released, admitted, tested, or set up ongoing therapy for 2400 patients all who were initially seen and evaluated within two weeks.

In order to enroll, document and plan for the influx you will no doubt need to hire 5 nurses, and 5 front desk folks, schedule labs, hospital admissions, equipment purchases,  plan for in-house lab tests and outsourced lab tests, plan for reviews of those tests and arrange for treatment protocols with follow up.  Any competent medical office manager could do this blindfolded while having a stroke.

The fact that this was not done in all these facilities is a total mystery.  It’s simple resource allocation.  Competent people do it in every business and healthcare organization in the country every day.