Mar

17

The Best-Laid Schemes O’ Mice an’ Men Gang Aft Agley (And Other Things)

March 17, 2008 | 16 Comments

(With apologies to Robert Burns. -PB)
Less is Better
I imagine that some day Graham, the author of the superlative medical blog Over!My!Med!Body, who is just now emerging Siddhartha-like from the palace of his father to see the world-as-it-really-is rather than how he wants it to be, is going slam his imported microbrew down on the bar [...]

Feb

15

Overdoctored

February 15, 2008 | 26 Comments

Rocking Your Fragile World-View
Let us again consider Albania, a tiny country tucked into a little corner of Europe which is only now emerging out of the communist Dark Ages in which it had stagnated while the rest of Europe moved on. This very poor country sits on the Northern border of Greece for [...]

Jan

14

Freeloader Mothership

January 14, 2008 | 44 Comments

(Let us delve, oh my long-suffering and indulgent readers, into the realm of real economics, an area of study much neglected in the utopian groves of academe. It’s almost as if our isolated professariat, protected behind the great bulwark of tenure as they are, have become afraid to get their hands a little dirty [...]

Jan

9

Freeloader Nirvana

January 9, 2008 | 36 Comments

No Cows Were Harmed
Your typical leftist, a person conditioned for shameless abasement to every social issue that can be blamed on his distant ancestor who allegedly once shot an indian, eats his bowl of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream with the same gusto he usually reserves for giving other people’s money away in the name [...]

Jan

5

Freeloader Heaven

January 5, 2008 | 86 Comments

Screw Social Justice
If you proposed to me that all of the poor were lazy and desired nothing more than to live lives of sloth and overindulgence; smoking their cigarettes, drinking their cheap booze, shooting their drugs, and having their lllegitimate babies willy-nilly at the taxpayer’s expense I would call you a starry-eyed idealist and and [...]

Dec

31

Throwing Money Away and other Medical Topics

December 31, 2007 | 30 Comments

(I confess, what with the feasting, shopping, caroling, and wassailing of the holidays I cannot collect my thoughts to write anything coherent longer than a couple of paragraphs. My apologies. -PB)
Taking Leave of our Common Sense
In a previous article I mentioned that politically, health care reform was not a big issue for me and [...]

Dec

13

Putting Granny Down and Other Health Care Conundrums

December 13, 2007 | 31 Comments

(I hesitate to present this article because everything in it is so indisputable to those who work in health care that I might be accused of belaboring the obvious. With this in mind I ask for the indulgence of you, oh my regular readers, who may skip this article entirely as nothing new will [...]

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

15

Socialized Medicine: Survival of the Fittest (Addendum)

June 15, 2007 | 89 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

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 [...]

Apr

23

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There: Part Three

April 23, 2007 | 46 Comments

(In which we mostly belabor the obvious.-PB)
Mostly Over-doctored
How much health insurance do most people need for most of their lives? The answer is none. Most people are fairly healthy and have mostly healthy children who could probably manage to go years between visits to the doctor. When they do go, it is [...]

Apr

19

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There: Part Two

April 19, 2007 | 15 Comments

(Medical care is expensive, no doubt about it, but the remedies proposed by the usual suspects who hope to leverage the problem into political power don’t address the real factors driving up the cost. Maybe I’m just not an excitable fellow but I like to keep a cool head and not get swept up [...]

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