A rant against the “Establishment” and American “Medicine”

Discussion in 'Politics' started by parmalee, Mar 15, 2017.

  1. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    For nearly two decades of my life I was routinely misdiagnosed by unscrupulous and incompetent doctors, owing largely to my state of impoverishment. I was also pumped full of drugs which, not only did not work, but which also greatly exacerbated my condition, even after discontinuation—neuroleptics/antipsychotics do tend to cause permanent and irreversible “side effects.” Finally, thanks to Canadian Blue Cross—I was somehow, inexplicably, a graduate student at University of Toronto for a year—I was correctly diagnosed with a seizure disorder following a three hour appointment with a psych, and several follow-ups with neurologists. At the age of 25. I was placed on sodium valproate, which kindasorta worked, but after a few years it kind of fizzled out and made me more agitated and aggressive than anything else.

    Back in the U.S., the fine “doctors" decided to try me on a slew on new so-called anti-convulsants, in turn receiving generous kickbacks for their services. These newer drugs did little more than fuck me up majorly, and after becoming a research subject at Harvard and elsewhere—apparently, I’m like an archetypal temporal lobe epileptic—I learned, from the more informed and ethically uncompromised researching neurologists, that these newer ACs don’t really do shit for “real” epileptics, and I’d be better off smoking pot, doing yoga, or avoiding triggers at all costs. Alternately, if being a zombie were an acceptable concession, I could take sizeable doses of benzodiazepines or phenobarbital. Fuck that.

    Compounding my situation, I got the shit beaten out of me twice by upstanding officers of the law over the course of five years. The first time was just a regular beating: the cop was just a typical dumbass who interpreted a seizure as a threat of some sort, somehow—oddly, every other witness present seemed to recognize it as a seizure. No further head injury, but it made me excessively paranoid. The second time, I had the good fortune of having my skull bashed into the pavement repeatedly by on of Providence, Rhode Island’s finest coked up, roid-raging LEOs—an officer Robert Kells Jr. pictured here beating the shit out of another citizen:

    If you ever see this guy, bear in mind that he may well prove a genuine threat to your very existence--especially if you are epileptic or an adolescent (again, plenty of evidence to back this up): do keep this in mind, and act accordingly.

    Now this fucker gave me a concussion, and three months of non-stop seizures—though in truth, I’ve never really fully recovered from that one. I have chronic insomnia and am typically awake for three or four full days before crashing for 24 to 36 hours. And I seize ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Now, one might ask, why didn’t I pursue legal action? Well, two attorneys contacted and met with me, and informed me that would have to relocate—out of state—were I to pursue such a course of action. You know, cause the cops might hunt me down and “disappear” me.

    So when I hear about Republicfucks and their idiotic health care reforms which will likely uninsure 24 million over the next couple of years, and their serious commitment to “law and order” and militarizing our police forces, I kinda feel an obligation—a duty—not only as a citizen, but as a human being to do something about this. Fuck the legal route, not like it’s ever worked for me. And when I feel personally in danger for my life, or for the live’s of millions of innocent persons, I think certain courses of action are entirely justified. Even if not necessarily prudent, and possibly counterproductive.

    Am I in the wrong here?

    And apologies for typos and incongruencies--I haven't slept in days.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 15, 2017
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  3. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The uninsured, in these new estimates, will include those who will make the conscious economic choice not to buy health insurance. It will also include healthy people who will use health savings accounts, instead of insurance. Neither will be covered by insurance yet still have access to care when needed.

    The current system under ObamaCare works under the assumption everyone is sick and needy and everyone needs to have health insurance or else. There is no such thing as a heathy person in ObamaCare. If you are healthy and don;t need insurance you are considered a criminal. The Trump system is not about big brother deciding your health, to grow bureaucracies. Rather it is about individual choice, as adults. The left is not ready to grow up and assume the position of an adult with choices.

    What may change is people with preexisting conditions, will be separated from the insurance marketplace, and placed in a pseudo-entitlement program. This will lower costs in the rest of the insurance marketplace, by removing the highest cost people. The system under Obama lumped everyone as having a preexisting condition; often unknown, thereby creating extra demand, leading to increasing premiums. This philosophy also opened the flood gates to the hypochondriacs who will self diagnose and discover all kinds of clique medical conditions adding extra strain to the system. Under the new system, the hypochondriac will need to find a policy for hypochondriacs, which in a free market, will be available but at a premium price to cover the extra costs of pampering.
     
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  5. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    Are you even capable of making sense?
     
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  7. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    When it comes to national security the right has no problem with imposing a single payer system, but when it comes to national health security they prefer every man for himself. How adult of them.
     
    joepistole likes this.
  8. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Does the government provide hospitalisation for everyone ?
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    No. Indeed, there was recently a bit about "access", and the watchword is now "coverage"; it's a weird word game that, if taken at face value, puts us back to sending people to the emergency room under the pretense of dumping the expense onto others.

    Yes, really. Republicans. To the one, it should be staggering to hear this from the Party of Accountability that perpetually whines about freeloaders. Idealizing idealizing medical bankruptcy in order to recommend freeloading at the ER as health policy is a perfect example of how government would fulfill conservative preidctions and lamentations of failure.

    To the other, it should be staggering, but it isn't. This is actually pretty normal for the GOP. And this time around, it seems like more people perceive the basic idea that the Republican health policy really is cruelty dressed up as Liberty. It is unclear what it will take to convince some others.

    Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) promised this week that everyone would have “coverage” under the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act because federal law already requires emergency rooms to treat all patients ....

    .... “Well, we've got 318 million people,” Meadows replied. “The goal is to allow access to all. There's a federal law right now that if you show up at a hospital, you get coverage, Alisyn. And so, it's a false narrative to suggest we have people who can't go in and get coverage. It's a federal law.”


    (Raw Story↱)

    Steve Benen↱ takes a slightly different tack; what he finds "stunning" is that "Republicans are still, even now, turning to the refuge of the 'show up at the emergency room' argument". This actually sounds about right.

    BURNETT: ... I want to start with Tiffany's story that you just heard there because of course, the GOP house plan that we've seen does roll back the Medicaid expansion. And I know you don't think it quite does enough on that front. What do you say to Tiffany? I mean, she's a republican, but, you know, she wouldn't be alive, she wouldn't be here without that Medicaid expansion and Obamacare.

    REP. RON DESANTIS, (R) HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS: Well, if you remember when Obamacare was enacted, there were millions of people who had their healthcare canceled. And so there are stories of people who had certain needs, cancer or whatnot who got pushed into policies that they didn't want, and then they didn't have the same coverage that they had because of the broken promise. So I think this law has really created a lot of different aspects.

    I would say though, and people who supported Obamacare used to this point a lot before it passed, there really is no lack of healthcare. If people really need it, if they show up to the emergency room, they do get care, it just gets passed on―

    BURNETT: But not—I mean, she had $1 million in cancer treatments. You're not going to get that by showing up in an emergency room.

    DESANTIS: Well, I would say this. The bottom line with Obamacare is, a lot of the folks who were qualifying on the policies on the exchanges, more people are leaving, insurers are leaving. So that's just not a sustainable system. You're not going to have that going on two, three, four years into the future if nothing is done. And so that's just the reality that we're dealing with here with this system.


    (CNN↱)

    Or, as Benen put it, "DeSantis then changed the subject":

    Let's set the record straight again. It's true that in the United States, the system has long allowed the uninsured to receive emergency treatment at public hospitals' emergency rooms.

    It is, however, extremely expensive to treat patients this way. It's far cheaper—and more medically effective—to provide preventative care to insured people so that people don't have to wait for a medical emergency to seek treatment.

    For that matter, as DeSantis mentioned, when sick people with no insurance go to the E.R. for care, they often can't afford to pay their bills. Those costs are ultimately spread around to everyone else—effectively creating the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised, which makes it that much more unusual that the Freedom Caucus member touted this model as if it has merit.

    What's more, emergency rooms tend to be great at treating emergencies, but those needing chemotherapy can't exactly stop by the e.r. and say, “My Republican congressman sent me.”
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Benen, Steve. "Freedom Caucus member points to emergency rooms for uninsured". msnbc. 10 March 2017. msnbc. 15 March 2017. http://on.msnbc.com/2nF6Pr7

    Burnett, Erin. Interview with Rep. Ron DeSantis. Erin Burnett OutFront. 8 March 2017. Transcripts.CNN.com. 15 March 2017. http://cnn.it/2mJIroK

    Edwards, David. "GOP rep. calls emergency room health care 'coverage': 'If you show up at a hospital, you get coverage'". Raw Story. 8 March 2017. RawStory.com. 15 March 2017. http://bit.ly/2m0WA41
     

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