Malpractice lawsuits are a problem with the current medical system.
I don't know that I think they are as big a problem as other people do, but they are certainly there, and they raise the cost of medical care significantly.
The problem is that, whatever you do, you are going to open the door for people to abuse some privilage.
If you allow malpractice lawsuits, you create an environment in which people will inevitably sue frivolously. This has led to doctors being required to have malpractice lawsuit insurance, which drives up the cost of care.
If, on the other hand, you do not allow malpractice lawsuits, or restrict them in some way, you create an environment in which malpractice will happen more than it already does.
Not all malpractice lawsuits are frivolous, and not all cases of malpractice become lawsuits.
Forced to make the choice, I would choose a world in which malpractice lawsuits are allowed than one in which they are not. That said, here is the way I feel we could get around having to make a universal choice one way or the other. Let doctors choose whether or not they want malpractice insurance. Do not make malpractice insurance manditory. This will allow the doctor to choose between one set of advantages and disadvantages and another. Both courses of action have good and bad points. One lowers the cost of practicing, allowing doctors to lower their fees, but is riskier. One raises the cost, but is safer. There will be doctors who choose each, and there will be patients who choose to go to each type of doctor. There are two final details to this plan that I would address. The first is that the doctors without the malpractice insurance should not be subject to multi million dollar lawsuits. There should be a limit to how much someone can ask of a non insured doctor. It should be high enough to scare the doctor and help the patient if things go wrong, but not these immensely high numbers. Off the top of my head, I would say about $50 to $100 thousand. The second is that lawsuits must be directed at the appropriate person. A hospital might be reluctant to allow an uninsured doctor in private practice to practice or perform tests in its building, so the hospital must not be liable for a private doctor's actions. Similarly, I don't know that an individual nurse or doctor working in a hospital should be able to be individually sued, because they are employees. This is the most I would do about malpractice lawsuits. I think it would help address the problems of frivolous lawsuits without creating an atmosphere which allows for the much more dangerous problem of malpractice.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Health Care versus Medical Care ...
Health care versus medical care, what is the difference?
Health care is care dedicated to preserving health, keeping people healthy. This includes everything from vaccines to advice on how to live healthily to actual needed medical care.
Medical care is care specifically dedicated to treating illnesses and injuries.
What does this mean? Universal health care is health care. It means that, out of the finite amount of money which can be dedicated to keeping people healthy, a large percentage of it is dedicated to telling people how to be healthy, giving people all the vaccines they might need, and monitoring to make sure that they follow these rules (in fact, in England, there are refrigerator checks, where government officials go into peoples' houses and look through their kitchens, to see how much sugar, fat, protein, fiber, etcetera is there, and make reccomendations for improvements in diet. They have similar baby checks for new mothers.) as well as treating very minor ailments, in addition to the care which people actually need. Because the goal of health care is to keep the largest number of people healthy, treatments for serious illnesses, in which the treatment is going to be long and expensive, and the prognosis is less promising, especially if the person is old, the priority of spending money on that person goes down. Perhaps people can be trusted to take care of themselves? Perhaps the money does not need to go into refrigerator checks, or preaching safer sex practises, or telling people not to smoke, or that junk food is bad for them, the fact is that people should be able to live how they want to if they are not hurting anybody else. So what if I want to eat the occasional hot dog? So what if someone wants to smoke? It does not hurt anybody else, they know the risks, let them make their decision. There cannot be a system in which one person's decisions on how to live his or her own life is seen as affecting the whole of society to the point that it must be controlled. Medical care is the only thing that I think people are truly entitled to, and I truly believe that everyone is entitled to medical care. The thing is that universal health care does not ensure that everyone will have access to medical care. It actually lowers the chances that someone will have access to medical care. Cancer survival rates in Europe are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than in the US, 14% lower for breast cancer, 50% lower for colon cancer. What can we do? We have to address the core of the cost problem, for starters. This will not be simple. Malpractice lawsuits send the price of healthcare up dramatically. Insurance programs need to be improved (not sure of everything wrong at this point, collecting problems). Government regulations send the cost of research up dramatically. This leads to more expensive drugs. Obviously some regulations are necessary, but some are excessive (one thing that I feel should be the case is that, in the case of experimental treatments of illnesses with an extremely low prognosis, researchers should be able to go to the human stage of research much earlier, as long as the people consent with full knowledge, cheaper, gives people access to experimental treatments much sooner). Strep tests should be offered as home kits, which is technologically feasable, and would be much, much cheaper, like home pregnancy tests, and blood sugar tests. In fact, tests drive the cost of medical care up dramatically. Not all of them are necessary, all necessary ones should be available, in their cheapest form, but unnecessary ones are performed, often to avoid malpractice lawsuits. Addressing these problems, alone, will send the cost of medical care down dramatically. Another problem is the lack of knowledge. There are institutions currently in place which help people who need medical care obtain it, but people do not know about these! This information must be collected and spread. Combined, these actions should fix the health care problems in this country.
Health care is care dedicated to preserving health, keeping people healthy. This includes everything from vaccines to advice on how to live healthily to actual needed medical care.
Medical care is care specifically dedicated to treating illnesses and injuries.
What does this mean? Universal health care is health care. It means that, out of the finite amount of money which can be dedicated to keeping people healthy, a large percentage of it is dedicated to telling people how to be healthy, giving people all the vaccines they might need, and monitoring to make sure that they follow these rules (in fact, in England, there are refrigerator checks, where government officials go into peoples' houses and look through their kitchens, to see how much sugar, fat, protein, fiber, etcetera is there, and make reccomendations for improvements in diet. They have similar baby checks for new mothers.) as well as treating very minor ailments, in addition to the care which people actually need. Because the goal of health care is to keep the largest number of people healthy, treatments for serious illnesses, in which the treatment is going to be long and expensive, and the prognosis is less promising, especially if the person is old, the priority of spending money on that person goes down. Perhaps people can be trusted to take care of themselves? Perhaps the money does not need to go into refrigerator checks, or preaching safer sex practises, or telling people not to smoke, or that junk food is bad for them, the fact is that people should be able to live how they want to if they are not hurting anybody else. So what if I want to eat the occasional hot dog? So what if someone wants to smoke? It does not hurt anybody else, they know the risks, let them make their decision. There cannot be a system in which one person's decisions on how to live his or her own life is seen as affecting the whole of society to the point that it must be controlled. Medical care is the only thing that I think people are truly entitled to, and I truly believe that everyone is entitled to medical care. The thing is that universal health care does not ensure that everyone will have access to medical care. It actually lowers the chances that someone will have access to medical care. Cancer survival rates in Europe are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than in the US, 14% lower for breast cancer, 50% lower for colon cancer. What can we do? We have to address the core of the cost problem, for starters. This will not be simple. Malpractice lawsuits send the price of healthcare up dramatically. Insurance programs need to be improved (not sure of everything wrong at this point, collecting problems). Government regulations send the cost of research up dramatically. This leads to more expensive drugs. Obviously some regulations are necessary, but some are excessive (one thing that I feel should be the case is that, in the case of experimental treatments of illnesses with an extremely low prognosis, researchers should be able to go to the human stage of research much earlier, as long as the people consent with full knowledge, cheaper, gives people access to experimental treatments much sooner). Strep tests should be offered as home kits, which is technologically feasable, and would be much, much cheaper, like home pregnancy tests, and blood sugar tests. In fact, tests drive the cost of medical care up dramatically. Not all of them are necessary, all necessary ones should be available, in their cheapest form, but unnecessary ones are performed, often to avoid malpractice lawsuits. Addressing these problems, alone, will send the cost of medical care down dramatically. Another problem is the lack of knowledge. There are institutions currently in place which help people who need medical care obtain it, but people do not know about these! This information must be collected and spread. Combined, these actions should fix the health care problems in this country.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Harry Potter ...
Ok, I was not going to write this as a note, but whatever, it is irritating me. How have I seen three movies in the past couple of months, two of which I had no interest in, and all of which were bad, and, worst of all, all of which were popular?!
X Men? The best word I have to describe this movie is prissy. Everything about it is prissy. All of the actors just prissed around thinking they were hotter than they were. The fights were prissy. The love scenes were prissy. The movie was based on total visual stimulation. There was no interesting story. I did not care when the girlfriend died. I did not care when she was alive. I did not care when she died again. The movie would have been predictable if I weren't too bored to even attempt it.
Star Trek. Did they even watch the original series? I guess they didn't have to, considering that it seemed that the whole premise of the movie is saying that the original series never really happened, anyway. How bizarre is that? And then the numerous problems within the movie, itself. Oh, and the movie felt like a Star Wars movie. Oh, and point singularity projectors (black hole guns) are an Andromeda creation.
And then Harry Potter. In the movie's defense, the book was worse, because it wasted more of my time. The fifth and sixth books were just filler material to get to the seventh book, which fizzled more than any book, movie, or tv show has ever fizzled. Nothing happens, nothing happens, but in the end, nothing happens! And you will care, because along the way, a lot of people die meaningless, but dramatic deaths which the reader is supposed to care about. It was funny, as soon as Hedwig died in the seventh book, my brother and I started discussing who would die in the rest of the book. He bet it would be Fred. I bet it would be Dobby. You should never be able to do that with a book. Snape and Malfoy could get into a competition for which character fizzled the most. Was it Snape, the guy who had been a spy for one side or the other for years, dying before he could actually do anything interesting? Or was it Malfoy, who may or may not have had a change of heart, oh wait, he didn't have a change of heart, he's just a coward. I guess if they got into a competition, they could both just stop fighting as soon as anyone took any interest. And Lily and James potter. How am I supposed to care about such horrid people? I guess that at least explains why Harry is such a terrible person. So Lily got married to the guy who ostracized, bullied, and pretty much destroyed her best friend, because the years of constant torment had actually taken a toll on him? Wow, they are so wonderful. And Tom Riddle is the only character in the movie who acts of his own volition. Yes, what he wants to do is horrible, but no one actually opposes his ideas, they just oppose him because harry opposes him (which is because he killed his parents), and they like Harry better than they like him. There does not seem to be any true, deep moral conviction on the part of any of the characters. And dumbledore, blah. So he was a dark wizard who killed his sister and then decided that maybe he should be a better person? Great. In short, three great movies, with lots and lots of great previews for other great movies, indicating that the forseeable future is going to be filled with interesting, powerful, thought provoking movies. If I remember correctly, the last good movie that came out was in 2005. The last good non independent movie which came out was in, what, 2003?
X Men? The best word I have to describe this movie is prissy. Everything about it is prissy. All of the actors just prissed around thinking they were hotter than they were. The fights were prissy. The love scenes were prissy. The movie was based on total visual stimulation. There was no interesting story. I did not care when the girlfriend died. I did not care when she was alive. I did not care when she died again. The movie would have been predictable if I weren't too bored to even attempt it.
Star Trek. Did they even watch the original series? I guess they didn't have to, considering that it seemed that the whole premise of the movie is saying that the original series never really happened, anyway. How bizarre is that? And then the numerous problems within the movie, itself. Oh, and the movie felt like a Star Wars movie. Oh, and point singularity projectors (black hole guns) are an Andromeda creation.
And then Harry Potter. In the movie's defense, the book was worse, because it wasted more of my time. The fifth and sixth books were just filler material to get to the seventh book, which fizzled more than any book, movie, or tv show has ever fizzled. Nothing happens, nothing happens, but in the end, nothing happens! And you will care, because along the way, a lot of people die meaningless, but dramatic deaths which the reader is supposed to care about. It was funny, as soon as Hedwig died in the seventh book, my brother and I started discussing who would die in the rest of the book. He bet it would be Fred. I bet it would be Dobby. You should never be able to do that with a book. Snape and Malfoy could get into a competition for which character fizzled the most. Was it Snape, the guy who had been a spy for one side or the other for years, dying before he could actually do anything interesting? Or was it Malfoy, who may or may not have had a change of heart, oh wait, he didn't have a change of heart, he's just a coward. I guess if they got into a competition, they could both just stop fighting as soon as anyone took any interest. And Lily and James potter. How am I supposed to care about such horrid people? I guess that at least explains why Harry is such a terrible person. So Lily got married to the guy who ostracized, bullied, and pretty much destroyed her best friend, because the years of constant torment had actually taken a toll on him? Wow, they are so wonderful. And Tom Riddle is the only character in the movie who acts of his own volition. Yes, what he wants to do is horrible, but no one actually opposes his ideas, they just oppose him because harry opposes him (which is because he killed his parents), and they like Harry better than they like him. There does not seem to be any true, deep moral conviction on the part of any of the characters. And dumbledore, blah. So he was a dark wizard who killed his sister and then decided that maybe he should be a better person? Great. In short, three great movies, with lots and lots of great previews for other great movies, indicating that the forseeable future is going to be filled with interesting, powerful, thought provoking movies. If I remember correctly, the last good movie that came out was in 2005. The last good non independent movie which came out was in, what, 2003?
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Sarah Palin ...
To everyone who tried to win a debate about Sarah Palin by bringing up her wardrobe, her baby, her children, her beauty pageants, or the fact that she is from Alaska, I have only one thing to say.
You won.
If by win, you mean higher taxes and fewer freedoms.
The thing is that elections may be won using trivial sideline information like that, but countries are not run using it. Winning an election is a means to an end, not an end in an of itself. A campaign is not a game, and an office is not a prize. When the right person wins an election, the whole country wins, and when the wrong person wins, the whole country loses. There can be rational debate over who the right person is, but bringing in random facts and allegations does not contribute to positive political discourse. It does not determine who can help the economy the most, or who will be the best in foreign policy. It does not determine what should be done about healthcare. The fact is that we are all part of the same country, and we all recognize and face the same problems and challenges. There can be rational debate over which solutions are best, but arguing based on petty, personal attacks, and treating elections as things to "win" for your party, rather than times to seriously sit down and evaluate what need to be the solutions to problems, and who will best implement those solutions, is the height of apathy. Dismissing arguments based on who made them, arguing to win rather than arguing to further the cause of the country as a whole, those are all apathetic things to do.
Apathy is not not voting.
It is voting without taking the time to understand the issues. How do you know when you understand the issues? You know when you can argue both sides without assuming that the person with another viewpoint is fundamentally different from you. If you say "yeah, I guess you could say that, if you were stupid, racist, rich, etcetera," you don't understand the other side. If you vote without this understanding, you are being apathetic. If you argue without trying to achieve this understanding, you are being apathetic. If you try to defend your side without even trying to accept criticism of it, or put politicians on a different level than normal people, saying that we should simply trust them for one reason or another, you are being apathetic. Freedom cannot survive in an apathetic environment.
Running a democratic republic in this way is akin to digging yourself into as deep a hole as you possibly can, and then admiring yourself for your accomplishment.
You better hope someone will be there to help you out at the end.
You won.
If by win, you mean higher taxes and fewer freedoms.
The thing is that elections may be won using trivial sideline information like that, but countries are not run using it. Winning an election is a means to an end, not an end in an of itself. A campaign is not a game, and an office is not a prize. When the right person wins an election, the whole country wins, and when the wrong person wins, the whole country loses. There can be rational debate over who the right person is, but bringing in random facts and allegations does not contribute to positive political discourse. It does not determine who can help the economy the most, or who will be the best in foreign policy. It does not determine what should be done about healthcare. The fact is that we are all part of the same country, and we all recognize and face the same problems and challenges. There can be rational debate over which solutions are best, but arguing based on petty, personal attacks, and treating elections as things to "win" for your party, rather than times to seriously sit down and evaluate what need to be the solutions to problems, and who will best implement those solutions, is the height of apathy. Dismissing arguments based on who made them, arguing to win rather than arguing to further the cause of the country as a whole, those are all apathetic things to do.
Apathy is not not voting.
It is voting without taking the time to understand the issues. How do you know when you understand the issues? You know when you can argue both sides without assuming that the person with another viewpoint is fundamentally different from you. If you say "yeah, I guess you could say that, if you were stupid, racist, rich, etcetera," you don't understand the other side. If you vote without this understanding, you are being apathetic. If you argue without trying to achieve this understanding, you are being apathetic. If you try to defend your side without even trying to accept criticism of it, or put politicians on a different level than normal people, saying that we should simply trust them for one reason or another, you are being apathetic. Freedom cannot survive in an apathetic environment.
Running a democratic republic in this way is akin to digging yourself into as deep a hole as you possibly can, and then admiring yourself for your accomplishment.
You better hope someone will be there to help you out at the end.
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