Health Reform is a Faith-Based Initiative, the Dying Art of the Physical Exam, and “Take Back Day” to Collect Old Drugs
Obama: Health reform is a faith-based initiative.
New York City man received a 25 percent rate increase on the first day of ObamaCare’s mandates. Gov. Paterson accuses insurances companies of unfairly blaming the president’s health plan.
The physical exam is dying a slow death. But Stanford Medical School has 25 bedside tests that it considers essential to good doctoring.
Myth: all the “real” research on pharmaceuticals is done in universities, and drug companies just steal the ideas. Good rebuttal at Megan McArdle’s blog.
“Take Back Day”: You can turn in pills, powders and other solid medicines anonymously and without fear of prosecution. On the other hand, you could try to sell them.
Glad to see Megan Mcardle’s post on drug companies. This is a myth that is widely believed.
Obama Care is faith based in the sense of believing in miracles.
I think a lot of doctors don’t even know how to do a physical exam.
Why would I want to turn all my pills over to the government?
There was a great Slate piece about the drug collection day. The author basically said, “Why would real drug dealers/addicts turn in their drugs? The only people who will participate in this are the honest ones.”
It was an excellent point. It alluded to the fact that laws designed to keep people from using prescription drugs don’t work, that the problem is not as bad as everyone says it is, and that we should legalize all of this stuff so that we don’t had to worry about it.
Most doctors don’t perform a physical examination because it’s labor intensive and there is not much evidence of benefit — except for the potential of a placebo effect. Diagnostic tests such as blood chemistry may be unnecessary, but they provide a quantifiable baseline for future metrics.
Most of us do a directed physical exam. The history is much more important than a physical exam. A directed exam based upon the history is more effective and efficient.
Steve
I must admit that this is one great inigsht. It surely gives a company the opportunity to get in on the ground floor and really take part in creating something special and tailored to their needs.