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If you want to save lives, you are wasting your time with medicine. http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm To save lives and improv

If you want to save lives, you are wasting your time with medicine. http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm To save lives and improve the quality of life, you'd be better off providing EVERY American with access to a gym. I whole heartedly disagree. Why then do you suppose that people who live in the Third World (where I grew up) tend to die younger and die of easily curable/preventable diseases? Is it because they got more exercise working in the sugar cane fields swinging a machete for 16 hours? I've read other studies that show that if you exercise 1-2 hours, 3 times a week, you end up living 5-7 years longer, but then, the extra 5-7 years that you live, you've spent in the gym exercising. The article you quoted has a fundamental flaw in that it assumes that we can simply reduce an ICU stay at the end of life by 1-2 days. When a person is in the ICU, it's not quite so clear that a person is only going to live 1-2 days and then die. People want their family in ICU, because they want that person to have any and every chance at living. Certainly he raises some good points about cost effective health care. No on would disagree that a bunch of low cost primary health clinics are going to be a much cheaper way to treat people than an ER or ICU. But, dismissing ER or ICU treatment as unnecessary is absurd.

yummyfajitas 18y ago
>Why then do you suppose that people who live in the Third World (where I grew up) tend to die younger and die of easily curable/preventable diseases? The vast majority of those diseases are prevented in the developed world by non-medical means. A doctor didn't prevent me from dying of malaria, DDT eliminated malaria in the US before I was born. Doctors didn't cure my cholera, other people flushing preventing me from being exposed to it. The NY/NJ water utilities prevented me from being exposed to water-born diseases and my refrigerator/consistent food supply protected me from spoiled food. >The article you quoted has a fundamental flaw in that it assumes that we can simply reduce an ICU stay at the end of life by 1-2 days. When a person is in the ICU, it's not quite so clear that a person is only going to live 1-2 days and then die. People want their family in ICU, because they want that person to have any and every chance at living. True, which is why the ICU study alone isn't conclusive. However, the RAND health insurance experiment (discussed in the article) doesn't have that flaw. Randomly chosen people consumed different levels of health care, and few statistically significant differences were observed.
- iamelgringo 18y ago
  The vast majority of those diseases are prevented in the developed world by non-medical means. A doctor didn't prevent me from dying of malaria, DDT eliminated malaria in the US before I was born. Doctors didn't cure my cholera, other people flushing preventing me from being exposed to it. The NY/NJ water utilities prevented me from being exposed to water-born diseases and my refrigerator/consistent food supply protected me from spoiled food. Malaria is still one of the top killers of people world wide, which is why the Gates foundation is funding vaccine research. There are 300 million people world wide infected with malaria, and 1.5 million people die from malaria each year. How's that DDT working for them? I'm an ER nurse by trade, and I pick up old medical textbooks in antique shops whenever I can. There are usually entire chapters on Polio, Tetanus, Tularemia etc... These are diseases that we just don't see any more. Why? Because of vaccines and antibiotics. My uncle, (now a surgeon) almost died in the 40's from a ruptured appendix. Know what saved his life? The new miracle drug that had just come on the market: Sulfa antibiotics. I haven't seen a person die from a ruptured appendix in years. Why? Because of antibiotics and surgery. People used to die from infectious diseases all the time, and they do in the Third World as well. Yes, prevention and basic sanitation help a lot, but that's not the only answer. Pneumonia used to be a major killer. It's not anymore. Why? Antibiotics and oxygen. I was born with a cleft lip. I had two surgeries on my lip before I was 1 month old. My parents took me down to Honduras where they worked in a rural village running a school. People in the village were shocked that there was something that could actually fix cleft lips. There were a number of people in that village and surrounding countryside who lived decades with a cleft lip, not knowing that a surgeon could change their lives. To say that medicine doesn't help people is absolutely absurd.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    >How's that DDT working for them? It would probably work if it were permitted and available. That isn't happening, due to pressure from the various third parties (US/EU governments, donor agencies) who care more about keeping rich environmentalists happy than about saving children's lives. The fact is, flushing, soap, clean water and food have saved vastly more lives than medicine ever has or will. That's the difference between developed and undeveloped countries; medicine is a distant second. By the way, my claim is not that medicine doesn't help, that we hit the point of diminishing returns a long time ago and a marginal change in medicine available does not affect health levels.
cjoh 18y ago
Yeah-- I gotta disagree here too. As a guy who weighed 300 lbs and smoked two packs a day two years ago, and a guy who weighs 220 and runs marathons now, I spend more time (and money) paying for my healthcare now than I ever did when I was living a far less healthy lifestyle. I just broke my fibula and dislocated my ankle in an accident. Fortunately I have health insurance, fortunately I have sick days at work, and fortunately I have enough money where I can pay the $3000 out of pocket it's going to cost me, even with the insurance, for the surgery I can have to walk (and hopefully run) again. But somebody without insurance, making it so that they could get back into stable condition could lead them into bankruptcy and making them a burden on society. Quite frankly, I'd rather be paying to the burden of keeping that person well and making sure they can stay in the workforce than I am paying for their unemployment and bankruptcy because they can't get well because they can't afford to. Universal Healthcare just makes sense and it is embarrassing that we're the only western country without it.

yummyfajitas 18y ago

>Why then do you suppose that people who live in the Third World (where I grew up) tend to die younger and die of easily curable/preventable diseases? The vast majority of those diseases are prevented in the developed world by non-medical means. A doctor didn't prevent me from dying of malaria, DDT eliminated malaria in the US before I was born. Doctors didn't cure my cholera, other people flushing preventing me from being exposed to it. The NY/NJ water utilities prevented me from being exposed to water-born diseases and my refrigerator/consistent food supply protected me from spoiled food. >The article you quoted has a fundamental flaw in that it assumes that we can simply reduce an ICU stay at the end of life by 1-2 days. When a person is in the ICU, it's not quite so clear that a person is only going to live 1-2 days and then die. People want their family in ICU, because they want that person to have any and every chance at living. True, which is why the ICU study alone isn't conclusive. However, the RAND health insurance experiment (discussed in the article) doesn't have that flaw. Randomly chosen people consumed different levels of health care, and few statistically significant differences were observed.

iamelgringo 18y ago
The vast majority of those diseases are prevented in the developed world by non-medical means. A doctor didn't prevent me from dying of malaria, DDT eliminated malaria in the US before I was born. Doctors didn't cure my cholera, other people flushing preventing me from being exposed to it. The NY/NJ water utilities prevented me from being exposed to water-born diseases and my refrigerator/consistent food supply protected me from spoiled food. Malaria is still one of the top killers of people world wide, which is why the Gates foundation is funding vaccine research. There are 300 million people world wide infected with malaria, and 1.5 million people die from malaria each year. How's that DDT working for them? I'm an ER nurse by trade, and I pick up old medical textbooks in antique shops whenever I can. There are usually entire chapters on Polio, Tetanus, Tularemia etc... These are diseases that we just don't see any more. Why? Because of vaccines and antibiotics. My uncle, (now a surgeon) almost died in the 40's from a ruptured appendix. Know what saved his life? The new miracle drug that had just come on the market: Sulfa antibiotics. I haven't seen a person die from a ruptured appendix in years. Why? Because of antibiotics and surgery. People used to die from infectious diseases all the time, and they do in the Third World as well. Yes, prevention and basic sanitation help a lot, but that's not the only answer. Pneumonia used to be a major killer. It's not anymore. Why? Antibiotics and oxygen. I was born with a cleft lip. I had two surgeries on my lip before I was 1 month old. My parents took me down to Honduras where they worked in a rural village running a school. People in the village were shocked that there was something that could actually fix cleft lips. There were a number of people in that village and surrounding countryside who lived decades with a cleft lip, not knowing that a surgeon could change their lives. To say that medicine doesn't help people is absolutely absurd.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  >How's that DDT working for them? It would probably work if it were permitted and available. That isn't happening, due to pressure from the various third parties (US/EU governments, donor agencies) who care more about keeping rich environmentalists happy than about saving children's lives. The fact is, flushing, soap, clean water and food have saved vastly more lives than medicine ever has or will. That's the difference between developed and undeveloped countries; medicine is a distant second. By the way, my claim is not that medicine doesn't help, that we hit the point of diminishing returns a long time ago and a marginal change in medicine available does not affect health levels.

cjoh 18y ago

Yeah-- I gotta disagree here too. As a guy who weighed 300 lbs and smoked two packs a day two years ago, and a guy who weighs 220 and runs marathons now, I spend more time (and money) paying for my healthcare now than I ever did when I was living a far less healthy lifestyle. I just broke my fibula and dislocated my ankle in an accident. Fortunately I have health insurance, fortunately I have sick days at work, and fortunately I have enough money where I can pay the $3000 out of pocket it's going to cost me, even with the insurance, for the surgery I can have to walk (and hopefully run) again. But somebody without insurance, making it so that they could get back into stable condition could lead them into bankruptcy and making them a burden on society. Quite frankly, I'd rather be paying to the burden of keeping that person well and making sure they can stay in the workforce than I am paying for their unemployment and bankruptcy because they can't get well because they can't afford to. Universal Healthcare just makes sense and it is embarrassing that we're the only western country without it.