TV Bill Moyers JournalBill Moyers is possibly the last of the breed of journalists who carry the trust and respect of the people.

If you didn’t see it last night, he used his show to host a screening of the film, based on the book, “Money Driven Medicine”.  As much as I’ve tried to educate myself about the state of medicine in this nation, I have a feeling that you will learn a few things you didn’t know by watching this as I did. I highly recommend it:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/watch.html

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tyler-durdenAdLibKQµårk 死神QuestiniaKalima Recent comment authors
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tyler-durden
Member

this Moyers piece is great. thank you for posting the link.

another interview by Bill that is a real eye opener on the corrupt health insurance industry is with Wendell Potter. Link here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/profile.html

i agree that a single payer system now is too big a sandwich to put in your mouth right now. but i want a public option that is as efficient as possible, with a commitment to expanding its abilities as far as possible, up to becoming a single payer system if the public support is still there. i’m tired of dancing around this as if the interests of health ins. co’s are something valuable to protect. they’re not!! they’ve been getting away with gouging us for years. they don’t deserve protection; they brought this on themselves with their greed!

this is not the same as microsoft crying when they were forced to offer more than IE with Windows.

it would be comparable to a situation where microsoft cried about firefox being available for free, so firefox should be forced to charge a fee for it, because microsoft got used to charging so much for IE when they were the primary browser.

i want a public option, that is well funded, and is most efficient!

KQµårk 死神
Member

Cheers AdLib I’ll have to check it out later.

Questinia
Member

Thank-you AdLib. I Love Bill Moyers. ILBM!

I went into primary care medicine… I got $10,000 bonus to start the program. I wanted to be a community medicine doc. Did one year of internal medicine during my residency, saw the writing on the wall and got out fast. Primary care docs are responsible for all and get paid peanuts. Consequently they’re becoming less and less like holistic caretakers and more and more like switchboard operators connecting people to specialists.

I am lucky since medical school was paid for me by my parents. Really lucky. My friend, who stayed in the primary care medicine field owed $200,000 in tuition costs. She works like a dog, on call all the time and has to fight tooth and nail for every dime she gets from the insurance companies.

Primary care docs are expected to take insurance, specialists aren’t. Those specialists who do take insurance might not be that special. You get what you pay for.

There was no broken system when the agreement was an 80/20 split (way before my time), it’s just insurance companies weren’t making a lot of money. As soon as they got into the making money game the health care system started going where it’s going.

If I had practiced medicine back then, I would have had an older office manager named Mildred who was much smarter than I, still looked dynamite in mini-skirts, kept her hair long and blond, spoke with a Brooklyn accent and chided me for being such an administrative wreck. She’d smile and shake her head and then we’d go out for a drinkie-poo.

KQµårk 死神
Member

Interesting life story. I knew you were my fellow formally trained sciency geek.

I’ve personally seen a big change in the expertise level of primary care physicians and access to your PCP. When I lived in FL I had two very good PCPs the first one was the doctor who early diagnosed my lymphoma.

But since I’ve been in GA I’ve had four PCPs. I had a good one at first but he moved his practice and I got this one PCP just out of residency. Even though she did chest X-rays she never diagnosed my enlarged heart, only my pneumonia. I cannot even be too tough on her because when I first went to the ER they mis-diagnosed my heart failure again.

Questinia
Member

Chemo did your heart no good. Right KQ?

KQµårk 死神
Member

Yup adriamycine was the specific chemo drug that did the most damage but radiation didn’t help either. They still use it but they changed the protocol and added another drug to help mitigate the toxic effects of that specific drug.

Questinia
Member

I remember that about adriamycin. Ejection fraction fairly decent KQ?

KQµårk 死神
Member

Still pretty low 15-20%. I’ve had some renal insufficiency as well but I’ve gone on O2 again at night and increased the dose of my diuretic which seems to have helped.

Questinia
Member

Good. I wish they had a way of tightening up the heart, making it smaller and more efficient. I think about you KQ!

Kalima
Admin

Could it be as these people as they age, faced with their imminent own mortality, have a flash of sanity?

Many a tyrant would call God’s name after slaying thousands of innocent lives, I say fry for your sins, it’s not all up to God.