Skip to main content

Death Panels or Whatever

The new health care plan (ACA - Affordable Care Act) suggests that seniors and others in need of medical care will have their cases reviewed by panels of experts to determine merit.   On their recommendation, you may or may not get needed treatment.  Alternatively, you may need to wait a month or many for treatment.  So we hear...

But let us note that without all the government sponsored research, eliciting so many do's and dont's we may not be available to review their somber judgement - even with hearing aid, spectacles, and all.  The decades of medical research has produced a bounty of evidence, of clues, of guidelines on how to conduct our lives more sensibly. Many of us have listened and are now so advanced, so far beyond, and so linked with age that we think we always knew what to do.

So!  There is now a possible downside.  Panels! The government gives and it takes away.  Unless, of course, you have resources to by-pass the panels, by-pass the guidelines, and by-pass the norms to gain the care you seek. This is really the world of the iffy, and dollars, et. al.  make the difference.  What's new?

Access is and always has been the key, whether through dollars or party or privilege or guile. There it is.
Labels:

Comments

  1. MerikayMarch 12, 2013 at 3:59 PM

    My plan is to live as healthy a life as I can. Then die. Hopefully in my sleep after a long fun day of sunshine. But then, my plan was to be rich and young forever too.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please Comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Behavioral Science and Problem-Solving

I.                                       I.                 Introduction.                Concerning our general behavior, it’s high about time we all had some understanding of how we operate on ourselves, and it is just as important how we are operated on by others. This is the wheelhouse of behavioral sciences. It is a vast subject. It touches our lives constantly. It’s influence is pervasive and can be so subtle we never notice it. Behavioral sciences profoundly affect our ability and success at problem-solving, from the elementary level to highly complex wicked problems. This is discussed in Section IV. We begin with the basics of behavioral sciences, Section II, and then through the lens of multiple categories and examples, Section III. II.     ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Lemming Instinct

  In certain vital domains, a pervasive mediocrity among practitioners can stifle genuine advancement. When the intellectual output of a field is predominantly average, it inevitably produces research of corresponding quality. Nevertheless, some of these ideas, by sheer chance or perhaps through effective dissemination, will inevitably gain traction. A significant number of scholars and researchers will gravitate towards these trends, contributing to and propagating further work along these established lines. Such a trajectory allows an initially flawed concept to ascend to the status of mainstream orthodoxy. However, over an extended period, these prevailing ideas invariably fail to withstand rigorous scrutiny; they are ultimately and conclusively disproven. The disheartening pattern then reveals itself: rather than genuine progress, an equally unvalidated or incorrect idea often supplants the discredited one, swiftly establishing its own dominance. This cycle perpetuates, ensurin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Principles of Insufficiency and Sufficiency

   The principles we use but don't know it.  1.      Introduction . Every field, scientific or otherwise, rests on foundational principles—think buoyancy, behavior, or democracy. Here, we explore a unique subset: principles modified by "insufficiency" and "sufficiency." While you may never have heard of them, you use them often. These terms frame principles that blend theory, practicality, and aspiration, by offering distinct perspectives. Insufficiency often implies inaction unless justified, while sufficiency suggests something exists or must be done. We’ll examine key examples and introduce a new principle with potential significance. As a principle of principles of these is that something or some action is not done enough while others may be done too much. The first six (§2-6) of our principles are in the literature, and you can easily search them online. The others are relatively new, but fit the concepts in the real world. At times, these pri...
Post a Comment
Read more