Jun

30

Screw Cuba, How About Them Albanians? (And Other Musings)

June 30, 2007 | 83 Comments

One More Time…
Let me try to explain this again. American medical care is expensive for everyone because the costs are shifted from one set of consumers to another. Most of us are not sick and except for the odd hospitalization for something unexpected don’t really require that much doctoring. There is, however, a small but [...]

Jun

26

Kabuki Medicine and other Wonderful Tales

June 26, 2007 | 48 Comments

Kabuki Medicine

In one month I have had Mary as a patient four times. I have also noticed her roaming restlessly through the department on days when some other resident had the bad luck to pick up her chart. I would not be exaggerating if I said that she has been a patient in our [...]

Jun

21

Panda-pouri

June 21, 2007 | 62 Comments

Free at Last, Free at Last
After six years of screwing around, I finally have a job. As many of you know I had to repeat my intern year because of a little something I like to call The Biggest Fucking Mistake of My Life. I won’t mention where I did my first [...]

Jun

15

Socialized Medicine: Survival of the Fittest (Addendum)

June 15, 2007 | 90 Comments

See, you folks don’t get it. If all you expect the government to provide is crappy and relatively inexpensive primary care and would be content to eschew the expensive, admittedly low-yield technological and labor intensive medical care that we currently waste on the elderly, the terminally ill, and those with extremely complicated health problems [...]

Jun

15

Kingdom Come

June 15, 2007 | 14 Comments

I could count the openings in the radiator grill of the truck that killed me and as I lost conciousness I noted with satisfaction that it was a good old-fashioned International Harvester of a kind that I had seen thousands of times but never from that close.
And then the cool darkness closed around me [...]

Jun

13

Socialized Medicine: Survival of the Fittest

June 13, 2007 | 27 Comments

(My mother, who is an avid reader of my blog, is a native of Greece and while a fierce partisan of that country is never-the-less perplexed at the love so many of my readers have for socialized medicine of the kind which is the rule of life over there. I offer this brief description of [...]

Jun

9

Ask Yer’ Uncle Panda….

June 9, 2007 | 35 Comments

Say Uncle Panda, I notice you haven’t written about chiropractors. What do you think about them and chiropractic in general?
.
Chiropractors serve a useful role in society, particularly when it comes to taking some of the pressure off of used car salesmen who would otherwise have the market cornered on chicanery. Nobody likes to [...]

Jun

3

Curbing Health Care Spending, Belling the Cat, and Other Dangerous Activities

June 3, 2007 | 41 Comments

Where the Money Goes
American medical care is expensive and only getting more expensive. I blame the nurses. Think about it. Who is always at the hospital drawing their princely 25-to-40-dollar-an-hour salary? Who must provide continous coverage for the patients? Who are the most numerous employees of the hospital?
Nurses, that’s who.
Think about it. Doctors may make [...]