Healthcare quickie
Hi there folks, sorry I’ve fallen a bit behind my self-imposed posting schedule. I’ve recently found a potential publisher for my novel, and I’ve been tidying things up there in preparation for submission.
But I stumbled across a video today which brought back some memories. This past summer my girlfriend was going through some medical procedures, and the experience was just awful. Arrogant, unknowledgeable physicians with no understanding of Bayesian Probability Theory, secure in the knowlege that – since this was Soviet Canuckistan – they were the only game in town. If you don’t have a family doctor here (and good luck getting one if you don’t – their paycheque comes from the government) then you’re stuck with the plebian free clinics. You’re just a number to be processed, and there’s no one to complain to.
Anyway, here’s the video, one of Reason TV’s best so far:
Now I’d like to address any Obama-care supporters out there directly.
One of my favourite exchanges in that video was:
Protestor: “All the corporations want to do is cheat to win. That’s not the great American way. The great American way is where we know there are rules of the game, we play within the rules, and the best one wins.”
Nick Gillespe: “Good point. Drug companies hire armies of lobbiests to bend the rules in their favour, and that is a lot like cheating.”
Consider what will happen if the single-payer system does get implemented. The pharmaceutical industry and the insurance providers have deep pockets and are huge lobbiers. I have trouble imagining that they’ll be kicked out the door after the passing of this legislation. Chances are that whatever law does get passed will simply induct them into the official government structure; they’ll remain ostensibly private, but they’ll be working hand in hand with the Ministry of Health (little 1984 joke there). I’m all for being suspicious and vigilant of our evil corporate structures, but having the government get in bed with them doesn’t seem like the best way to keep them tranparent (say, isn’t there a word for this?).
A couple months ago I saw an episode of Law & Order:SVU which featured a group of Transexuals who were staging midnight raids on different Pharma companies to steal crates of sex-change hormones. I’ve got a lot of sympahty for the Transgender movement; they’ve been stuck with a biological condition that’s not only expensive as hell to treat, but they suffer a lot of social ostracism and violence because of it, too. It might not be the worst condition to be born with, but it ain’t no fun either.
But what you’ve got to keep in mind is that it ain’t the drug companies that afflicted them with it; the drug companies are the saviours, finally creating a solution after thousands of years of people being stuck in the wrong bodies. They worked hard to invent this solution, and they deserve to profit off of it as much as I deserve to profit off of people reading my book.
Back to that line of dialogue again:
Protestor: “All the corporations want to do is cheat to win. That’s not the great American way. The great American way is where we know there are rules of the game, we play within the rules, and the best one wins.”
Nick Gillespe: “Good point. Drug companies hire armies of lobbiests to bend the rules in their favour, and that is a lot like cheating.”
The other side of that coin is that the corporations deserve consistent rules when they show up to play the game. Consider the push to nationalize drug patents, and what it’s doing to the companies fighting AIDS;
A number of pharmaceutical groups, including the Swiss giant Roche, have withdrawn from the HIV drug market, blaming increasing difficult commercial conditions.
So, do we extend a few hundred-thousand lives by taking away company’s right to profit off their hard work? Or do we save a few billion, by giving them the incentive to find a vaccine?
The world’s got sharp edges, people. The best we can do is keep the behemoths fighting against eachother. The day they cosy up with eachother is the day when everything goes to the fuck.
Thanks for the post, brother. I’m glad to hear your opinion on this matter. While I disagree with your assessment of the Canadian medical system, I respect your approach to this contested problem. Good stuff, man.
Speaking of Orwellian nightmares in relation to medicare, let’s add Groupthink. I saw a program the other day, W5 I think, on multiple sclerosis. Apparently a doctor in Italy has discovered a physical reason for the disease, and an explanation for the uncharacteristic iron deposits that appear in a patient’s brain. MS has always been considered a neurological disorder. This doctor realized (after his wife contracted it) that the major vessels delivering blood away from the brain were always dangerously narrowed in all MS patients. He hypothesized that the narrow vessels actually caused blood to back up into the brain, and eventually deposit iron where it shouldn’t be. An almost too-perfect explanation, but the medical community refused to support him because MS is classified as a neurological disease. Obviously the overall picture is more complicated, but the fact that the medical community is rejecting outside-the-box thinking speaks to fundamental problems in the dna.
The socialization of profit motives in the system is a retarded prospect. Big Pharma contains a lot of evil but the fact still remains it costs billions to research, develop and test these drugs. Everybody is always touting cheap generic alternatives. Without the original drug there is no generic.
In any case, giving control to the government never allows individuality, creativity, innovation, etc. to flourish, which is exactly what the medical industry needs. Regulation, fine. Government control, no thanks.