Is more medical care dangerous to your health?
1 I have often had extra and what I felt was unnecessary tests run while in hospital. Is it doctors covering themselves against malpractice suits or just running up the bill? .
2 I would imagine there are a lot of hypochondriacs who just love what this country offers in medical care, and could probably do without.
A little of both, as well as other things. And also a presumption that it's what you want. The article goes into it in some depth, but there are a lot of different factors involved.
Patients demand treatment. They request unnecessary care a lot of the time. When an ad comes on TV telling you to "ask your doctor about..." the doctors offices are stormed with people who have just been told that a pill will make their life better; they'll be smiling and twirling around meadows in no time.
Similarly, the vast amount of care spent at the end of life. According to one study, 30% of Medicare is spent in the last year, and 12% in the last two months. People spend everything trying to keep from dying.
Which is admirable, but it means spending vast sums of money to little benefit in terms of either time or quality of life. In that famous WHO study of health care efficiency, the US scored #1 in one critical area: responsiveness.(who.int/whr/2000/en/whr00_en.pdf) Americans love the fact that, assuming they can afford it, they can have any health care they want, whenever they want it.It doesn't actually improve the outcomes, and it costs two to four times as much as other rich-world countries, but you can get it RIGHT NOW if you want to spend the money. And when it's your health, who isn't going to spend all of their money?
We saw a similar thing in the past year. Remember when a panel recommended delaying mammograms since they caused a lot of false alarms and unnecessary worry and expense? People screamed their heads off, made comparisons to Nazi Germany, and generally got spastic about it.
That's regardless of the numbers demonstrating what the effectiveness was and how much waste there was: people had their anecdotal evidence and their paranoia and that was all they wanted to know. Screaming your fool head off is your right in America, so it's what people are going to do. And doctors are going to respond to that.
4 When I get to the end of life, give my morphine pump and leave me alone. They put my Mother, Father, and Sister on life support after they were brain dead.
America is facing a shortage of qualified health care professionals, including doctors and nurses. The Health Services and Resources Administration (HRSA) has identified over 6,000 Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas across the country, with 64 million Americans living in them. According to HRSA, it would take over 16,000 new primary care doctors in these shortage areas to meet the need.
The problem is even more acute in crucial specialties such as obstetrics and gynecology. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that almost one third of women in rural areas live in counties with no practicing OB-GYNs. Observers predict the current problems will only get worse, with some foreseeing nationwide shortages of doctors and other health care professionals in the next decade.
Many factors affect the supply of doctors, including the aging U.S. population, low reimbursement rates paid by government-funded insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, burdensome paperwork mandates, and high medical malpractice insurance costs. But astoundingly, rather than working to bring more people from diverse backgrounds into the medical field, advocates of abortion have gone on record saying there should be fewer, not more, doctors. The latest proof is found in the debate over the Obama Administration’s effort to overturn the provider conscience regulation.
This regulation clarifies and implements longstanding federal laws prohibiting discrimination against health care workers who object to performing certain controversial medical procedures, such as abortion and sterilization. In a New England Journal of Medicine op-ed written in opposition to the provider conscience regulation, UCLA adjunct law professor Julie D. Cantor argues that, to keep our health care system functioning, conscience rights must be stripped away.
She believes doctors who practice life-affirming medicine or who otherwise object to providing abortion on demand should be booted out of the medical profession. In Cantor’s view, physicians should be required to provide, counsel on, and refer for “all legal options,” even if it violates their deeply held religious beliefs and moral convictions. So, if you are a doctor or medical student who has “qualms” with performing abortions, Cantor has a simple prescription for you: “do not practice women’s care.”
By Cantor’s logic, if you are opposed to euthanasia (now legal in some states) the answer is simply:: do not practice end-of-life care. In other words, if you happen to hold a view on ethical issues that differs from that of the official, state-imposed view—whatever that view may be, now or in the future—your only choice is to leave the profession or else face potential retribution. Apparently Cantor and others sharing her view are willing to live with the devastating reductions in women’s access to medical care, especially in poor and rural areas, that would result from her dangerous prescription.
Even a small percentage of practicing OB-GYNs leaving the profession would impose dire consequences on patients. Existing shortages would be exacerbated as students avoided or were turned away from training programs in health fields where their views were unwelcome. Not to mention the fact that much health care in the United States is provided by faith-based institutions like Catholic hospitals, which would be forced to shut their doors or reduce services if conscience protections were removed.
Unfortunately for patients, Cantor is not alone. Others, including The New York Times (which said in an editorial, “any doctors who cannot talk to patients about legally permitted care because it conflicts with their values should give up the practice of medicine”) have made public statements or taken actions reflecting this disturbing viewpoint . By proposing to overturn regulations protecting the conscience rights of health care providers, the Obama Administration is moving in a very troubling direction on health care issues and leaving doctors and nurses open to attack on account of their beliefs.
No one should be forced to violate their conscience. Now is the time to protect conscience rights and encourage caring individuals of all faiths and backgrounds to seek careers in the health professions. Let the Department of Health and Human Services know of your support for regulations protecting conscience rights in the health care work place by visiting www.adoctorsright.com and sending your comment before April 9.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.
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