Frequently, you guys ask me my advice or opinion on this issue which I am more than happy to dispense. I love to talk about health care. So, in order to inform the debate (at least among us) I am linking to a fantastic story by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker. I recently read that this particular story has become one of Obama's favorite on the subject. He allegedly said in some meeting with high-ranking Senators, "This is what we need to fix." It has certainly become popular and widely read among health care policy tools. I highly suggest reading it, even if you don't have much interest in health care reform. It can give you some insight into the financial structure of American medicine.
I'll reserve my opinion for the comments section.
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4 comments:
Man, you weren't kidding! That really is a great article, and I don't even claim to know much about healthcare. Thanks for posting that.
It really is interesting to think about how one man can do some investigation, research, and synthesis and come up with what seems to be a very thorough and accurate assessment of the current healthcare crisis. It's amazing that with this we still leave it up to the politicians who seem to deal with the problem in ways so far removed from the actual solution.
The same criticism can really be applied to a number of institutions, including education, I think. Unfortunately, there always seems to be a disconnect between understanding "ethics" and acting ethically. Our culture at once glorifies wealth and claims to be founded on ethical principles. It seems that despite our proclamations, in practice the latter tends to succumb to former.
That's not to say, of course, that you can't be wealthy and ethical at the same time. Yet, what this article seems to imply is that the quest for wealth often blinds us to the ethical implications of our decisions.
I just wanted to point that out.
Just had a weird convergence between two topics the three of us talked about the other night: Ivan Illich and poor medicine. Read this from the wikipedia article on Illich:
In his Medical Nemesis, first published in 1975, also known as Limits to Medicine, Illich subjected contemporary western medicine to detailed attack. He argued that the medicalization in recent decades of so many of life's vicissitudes—birth and death, for example—frequently caused more harm than good and rendered many people in effect lifelong patients. He marshalled a body of statistics to show what he considered the shocking extent of post-operative side-effects and drug-induced illness in advanced industrial society. He was the first to introduce to a wider public the notion of iatrogenic disease. [7] Others have since voiced similar views, but none so trenchantly, perhaps, as Illich.[8]
Seems fairly interesting - there is also a link that explains "iatrogenic" - which seems right along the lines of what the healthcare article was talking about.
Nice connection. I've already ordered a copy.
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