 | Glenn McGee (@glenn_mcgee) |
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"...the single payer is you" newyorker.com/humor/daily-sh…
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NEW HEALTH-CARE PLANS AVAILABLE UNDER DRUMPF
By Sam Weiner February 10, 2017
PLATINUM
For a monthly premium of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, this plan gives you prime access to all health-care options—no referrals or medical ailments required! If you’d like an MRI just for the fun of it, you’ll be slid into the very next available magnetic scanning tube. All prescription medication is free, plus the pharmacist has to say, “I love you; you are my moral superior,” when you pick it up.
GOLD
The same as the Platinum Plan, but only available to people who own a gold mine.
SILVER
For the incredible price of just $49.99 a month, you’ll receive a five-hundred-millilitre bottle of an unbelievable liquid miracle cure containing nanoparticle colloidal silver! Just one tablespoon daily will boost immune-system strength, make skin look decades younger, and improve your performance in the boardroom and the bedroom.*
*A study conducted by the Colloidal Silver Foundation of Orlando confirms colloidal silver’s effectiveness. Patient Todd S. reported, “After I started taking colloidal silver, my necrotizing fasciitis cleared up and my blood has skyrocketed in value because of all the silver in it!”
BRONZE
You can see any doctor in your network for only a ten-dollar co-pay. Your deductible is forty million dollars.
CADILLAC
A man in a top hat will throw a crumpled-up hundred-dollar bill at you if he hits you with his Cadillac. (Not to be confused with the ROLLS ROYCE plan, in which your decrepit body will be rolled up into a carpet and sold to a man named Royce.)
TURQUOISE
Only when your lesions turns this color will you be allowed to see a doctor.
REASONABLY AFFORDABLE OPTION
This plan features small co-pays and a low deductible, and allows you to see out-of-network specialists for the in-network price with just a single referral. This shockingly fair option is listed here because decades of social patterning have taught poor people to skip the top half of any list ordered by price.
WOMEN’S EMERGENCY PLAN
If you’re a woman who needs quick and compassionate help with family planning or contraception, this taxpayer-funded plan allows you to see any in-network priest.
BAUXITE
Only covers catastrophic injuries. Only lets you visit a veterinarian.
FELDSPAR
No health care will be provided to you, but nurses will remind any living relatives to mourn you.
AMETHYST
If you often require medical assistance but can’t afford to pay a lot, this plan lets you see—whenever, wherever, and however often you need—a photograph of a doctor. (You will need prior authorization if you prefer to look at a picture of a dog wearing a stethoscope.)
GRANITE
Free pickup of your carcass from the gutter after your death.
GRANITE+
Includes all the features of the Granite Plan, plus a guarantee that you’ll be buried in your own grave.
DIAMOND
You pay nothing up front. You pay nothing later. You receive the highest quality medical care available. No matter what happens to you, you will never die. However, as the centuries pass, you will discover that immortality has its own price.
SINGLE-PAYER
A single payer covers the entire cost of your health care. The single payer is you.
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The nyt magazine’s Ethicist columnist on self-administering an untested therapy, lying to your dementia-afflicted mother and unequal pay:
Can a Researcher Studying an Alzheimer’s Treatment Try It on Himself?
I’m an older scientist who has spent decades leading a small laboratory at a well-known medical center. Much of our work is purely for the joy of discovery, but we also seek badly needed cures for illnesses. A cure for Alzheimer’s disease is beginning to look attainable with technology we are pioneering. While investigating genes for early-onset Alzheimer’s, we invented a gene-transfer method that stopped the brain damage and restored cognitive function. Eureka! Sadly, my doctor has just given me a diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer’s. Given that no truly effective treatment is out there yet, can I try dosing myself with our potential cure? Do I have the right, given that I will otherwise die of dementia before a clinical trial could even begin? I plan to do this alone. None of my people will know about it. It’s something like a high-altitude, low-opening jump. It is not reversible and may be dangerous. But is it wrong? Name Withheld
I’m sorry to hear about your illness. As our diagnostic capacities regarding dementia increase, more and more people face this distressing news. That makes the work you are doing especially important, and I’m glad that you have hopes for the approach that your lab is studying. I can see the temptation you face.
What’s more, the history of medicine is full of cases in which researchers experimented on themselves. Salk gave himself his polio vaccine before it was given to the public. The inventor of Valium tranquilized himself before tranquilizing the multitudes. Barry Marshall, the researcher who identified Helicobacter pylori as a cause of stomach ulcers, gagged down a bacteria-laden broth and studied the results. One reason this practice was permissible — even heroic at times — was that because the subject was the experimenter himself, informed consent wasn’t an issue. There are obvious limits to such “n of 1” case studies — an anecdote isn’t data — but knowledge has sometimes been advanced this way.
Because you are entitled, in my view, to take your own life if you have normal mental competence, you have the right to risk your own life, especially in the interest of improving the quality of your remaining years. And if having subjected yourself to this experimental treatment, you experienced drastic improvement and revealed what you’d done, it’s conceivable that you could help accelerate the process of moving the therapy to clinical trials. (Or not: Early dementia can be episodic, and its progression may lack a fixed course.)
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Zoltan Istvan ran for president with a modest goal in mind: human immortality.==
 | Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) |
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Even by 2017 standards, this is deranged. twitter.com/GodDoesnt/stat…
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Republican lawmaker in Tennessee proposes bill designating children born via artificial insemination "illegitimate."
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A national physicians’ group says back pain is treated best by exercise, massage therapy or yoga and over-the-counter pain relievers, not medications like opioids
Added to the problem are the incentives that push doctors and patients toward medications, scans and injections, Dr. Deyo said. “There is marketing from professional organizations and from industry,” he said. “‘We have the cure. You can expect to be cured. You can expect to be pain free.’”
Medical insurance also contributes to the treatment problem, back experts say, because it does not pay for remedies like mindfulness training or chiropractic manipulations which, Dr. Deyo added, “are not cheap.”
Even if doctors want to recommend such treatments, there is no easy referral system, Dr. Atlas said.
“It is much easier at Mass General to get a shot than to get a mind-body or cognitive behavioral therapy,” he added.
Dr. Weinstein has a prescription: “What we need to do is to stop medicalizing symptoms,” he said. Pills are not going to make people better and as for other treatments, he said, “yoga and tai chi, all those things are wonderful, but why not just go back to your normal activities?”
“I know your back hurts, but go run, be active, instead of taking a pill”... (continues)
Added to the problem are the incentives that push doctors and patients toward medications, scans and injections, Dr. Deyo said. “There is marketing from professional organizations and from industry,” he said. “‘We have the cure. You can expect to be cured. You can expect to be pain free.’”
Medical insurance also contributes to the treatment problem, back experts say, because it does not pay for remedies like mindfulness training or chiropractic manipulations which, Dr. Deyo added, “are not cheap.”
Even if doctors want to recommend such treatments, there is no easy referral system, Dr. Atlas said.
“It is much easier at Mass General to get a shot than to get a mind-body or cognitive behavioral therapy,” he added.
Dr. Weinstein has a prescription: “What we need to do is to stop medicalizing symptoms,” he said. Pills are not going to make people better and as for other treatments, he said, “yoga and tai chi, all those things are wonderful, but why not just go back to your normal activities?”
“I know your back hurts, but go run, be active, instead of taking a pill”... (continues)
Alternative quiz-
ReplyDelete1. Who coined the term "bioethics"?
2. What's a good sign of the health of bioethics?
3. What's TIGR?
4. To what danger does synthetic biology open the door?
5. What % of the American population believes in evolution?
6.