What’s not mentioned, left unaddressed, is whether a legitimate goal of health care is to prolong life beyond a certain point. Few may be willing to mark that point, but I do think we’re missing it.
See more What Underlies the Costs of Dementia
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Profit is not what medical care is about, or should be about. What we need is a simple, national health plan, Europe-style, available to everyone, with minimal paperwork and, yes, limits to care. See more Why I Support Health Care Reform I read Your Medical Mind in hard cover, the old-fashioned way. This book, on how patients think, offers a penetrable, informed and anecdote-riddled discussion of how people make health-related decisions. It’s co-authored by a husband and wife, Drs. Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband. The two are experienced physicians: Groopman’s an oncologist and familiar author; Hartzband’s an endocrinologist. He says he’s a “believer” in modern medicine, although his faith’s been challenged since suffering untoward effects of back surgery. She’s a “doubter” and tends to wonder about other doctors’ directives. One thing I like about the book is its dual authorship; underlying its course lie communication, mutual respect and, in all likelihood, some compromises. The book resembles a travel narrative of sorts, starting with an overview of the planned medical decisions “tour.” The pair sets out to interview “scores of patients of different ages, in different parts of the country, of different See more Two Minds on Medical Thinking Today a short article in the NY Times, New Kidney Transplant Policy Would Favor Younger Patients, draws my attention to a very basic problem in medical ethics: rationing. According to the Washington Post coverage, the proposal comes from the United Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond-based private non-profit group the federal government contracts for allocation of donated organs. From the Times piece: Under the proposal, patients and kidneys would each be graded, and the healthiest and youngest 20 percent of patients and kidneys would be segregated into a separate pool so that the best kidneys would be given to patients with the longest life expectancies. This all follows last week’s front-page business story on the monetary value of life. I have to admit, I’m glad to see these stories in the media. Any reasoned discussion of policy and reform requires frank talk on health care resources which, even in the roviding health care is or should be unlike other commercial transactions. The doctor, or other person who gives medical treatment, has a special professional and moral obligation to help the person who’s receiving his or her care. This responsibility – to heal, honestly and to the best of one’s ability – overrides any other commitments, or conflicts See more Why the Term ‘Patient’ Is So Important in Health Care A front-page story on the Humanities and Medicine Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, here in Manhattan, recently added to the discussion on what it takes to become a doctor in 2010. The school runs a special track for non-science majors who apply relatively early in their undergraduate years. Mount Sinai doesn’t require that they take MCATs or the usual set of premedical science courses – some college math, physics, biology, chemistry and organic chemistry — before admission. The idea of the program is two-fold: first, that the traditional med school requirements are a turn-off, or barrier, to some young people who might, otherwise, go on to become fine doctors; second, that a liberal arts education makes for better, communicative physicians and, based on the numbers published in a new article, a greater proportion who choose primary care. Today Orac, a popular but anonymous physician-scientist blogger, considers the See more Back to Basics – But Which Ones? “The insurance market as it works today basically slices and dices the population. It says, well you people with medical conditions, over here, and you people without them, over here… — Jonathan Cohn, Editor of The New Republic, speaking on The Brian Lehrer Show, February 16, 2010* —– There’s a popular, partly true, sometimes useful and very dangerous notion that we can control our health. Maybe even fend off cancer. I like the idea that we can make smart choices, eat sensible amounts of whole foods… |
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