Notes on the Healthcare System in America: Shameless, Souless, Hopeless

For anyone attempting to make an appointment with a Healthcare Provider, fill a prescription or simply find out what ails them, the labyrinth of rules, exceptions and co-pays can be overwhelming.

It is bad enough to be restricted to providers in the Network controlled by ones health plan. But it is even worse when the provider one has to settle for cannot recall details from the initial consultation, the original complaint or directions given between consultation and follow-up. Moreover, he/she is likely to be more concerned with co-payments in cash, handing out samples of recently launched pharmaceutical cures – which if all goes well he/she will prescribe - and how many more patients he/she can fit into the waiting room before tempers flare. More often than not, the patient is merely a statistic, a guinea pig, a potential lifetime user of pharmaceutical products.

If a healthcare provider is so busy that the patient’s health is worth only three minutes of valuable $300 per hour time, then there is a serious problem. Doctors have hundreds of patients. Patients have only one life to live.

This reality is especially stark in the field of mental health, which, with its already scarlet stigmata, is terrifying enough for most patients. But to have a so-called mental health expert diagnose a patient in less than five minutes, and then not even review the data on follow-up visits, is a serious breach of the trust so essential for effective patient care. For patients, the dismissive and often arrogant demeanors of the drug-prescribing psychiatric set, has the potential to cause the patient serious harm. If the doctor has no time or interest in the life of the patient, what does that tell the patient?

It is not merely the drug prescribed that has an effect on the patient – it is the entire mental healthcare experience that informs the patient.

The dispensing of drugs, particularly those elicited by an intimate relationship between doctors and pharma, has no apparent end. There is simply too much money to be made. The Healthcare and Pharmaceutical industries make enormous profits, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and lobbying, and hold the patients hostage.

My own personal story has taken me down a very frustrating road. Since my unfortunate incarceration in a psych ward, I have been diagnosed as mildly depressed, severely depressed, mildly bipolar, unipolar and so on. I have been told I will need medication for life, for a year, or maybe not at all. I have been told, “my office is very busy; I can’t guarantee there will be interruptions,” and “if you miss any appointments we will bill you anyway”, and my personal favorite “just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’”, when asked questions of a complex nature that can never be answered “yes” or “no”.

Attempting to commune with a doctor about mental illness, considering psychopharmalogical treatment, which affects the brain and therefore the very seat of perception, individuality, hopes and dreams, is not the same as having a bunion. Yet the podiatrist is much more likely to show concern, listen to questions and answers and to spend more than three minutes with a patient. It is not surprising to me that a patient, after being roughly handled by a mental health professional, will never return again, will go off medication, will take matter into his/her own hands.

This is a shameful situation. There is no excuse for the psychiatrist to put him/herself in such an elevated position that he/she can evaluate, prescribe and predict in five minutes or less. Surely, he /she spends more time planning that night’s dinner than in making a decision that will have a direct impact upon a patient perhaps for that patient’s life. Shameful.

I ask myself: Would my cousin have committed suicide if a mental health professional had had more than five minutes to diagnosis him?

Tags:   healthcare providers, mental health, pharma, psychiatric care, psychiatrists, suicide, US Healthcare

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Posted on 5/18/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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Cheney - Most Hated Man in America begs BYU for Podium

What does it feel like to be the Most Hated Man in America?

Let’s ask Dick Cheney, who if he is not the most hated man certainly is a runner-up (the winner remains to be named).

Here’s the proof: Cheney’s office sent a letter to the ultra-conservative BrighamYoungUniversity in Provo, Utah, asking that he be the key note speaker for BYU’s graduation.

What is wrong with this picture?

Obviously, Cheney’s dance card for the upcoming graduation season is not full. I bet it’s largely empty. He had to ASK to be asked. While I am sure that this is not the first time that a politician has asked to be asked, this instance of such asking so smacks of Roman Imperialism that it is actually frightening.

I wonder how the letter read……..

size="3">Dear BYU Deciders

Dear BYU Deciders,

The Vice President of the United States of America requests that you request the honor of his presence at your upcoming graduation ceremonies. Remember all that he has done for you, and when the moment comes for the undoing of these deeds, he will take into account the things done by you, prior to any undoing. He is already pleased by the extension of your heartfelt invitation.

Thanking you in advance

Dick

The best part of this story is that the students at BYU don’t even want him to come. If the students at BYU can’t stand you and don’t want you to talk to them, and have even in a very rare move requested permission to protest, how can you possibly wish to inflict yourself upon them? How can you want to be there?

I wonder what Cheney’s mirror says to him each morning…. “Hey handsome! Everyone wants you at the party!”

Tags:   BYU, BYU student protests, Cheney, Cheney asks BYU to speak, Provo Portests

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Posted on 4/5/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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Email: The Achilles Heel of the Rovian Dream Team

The Bush Spin Machine needs an overhaul. Aside from the fact the Scooter Libby has proven that being dipped in Teflon still leaves an Achilles Heel that can be sliced by the blade of Justice, we now have the Judicial Branch itself rife with scandal.

The Rovian dream of building a political machine based on sports analogies (with Bush as Head Coach, Cheney as owner and Gonzalez as Team Captain) has not set well with the American people. We are notoriously fickle when it comes to supporting a team. Do you see the kids clamoring for Chicago Bulls gear now? The only enduring franchise is the New York Yankees, a team that is a caricature of itself. But I digress.

One thing that we can all learn from this whole unfortunate political mishap is this: It is never wise to put things you really don’t want others to know about in email. (Did you hear that Esther, you harlot?) Email has been the real Achilles Heel of the Bush Administration, just as The Tapes were the downfall of Nixon.

Tags:   Achilles heal, Axis of Evil, bread and circuses, Bush, Cheney, email, Esther Yoon, Gonzalez, Rovian dream

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Posted on 3/20/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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Alegra's Terrifying Journey of Loss & Betrayal

Allegra has been off-line for a while but us now back. She would like to share her story and get some feedback.

Where has Alegra been? On a terrifying journey of loss, betrayal and lies.

For the past seven years, Alegra has been married to a man whom she deeply loved and whose artistic life she supported both emotionally and financially. They were a loving and caring couple, sharing many happy moments together and expressing love and concern and respect for one another. They had plans for the future, for the art and music that was possible. They were a team.

That is what Alegra saw, or wanted to see. She believed in love and in building a relationship, making it stronger over time.

Unbeknownst to Alegra, her husband was filled with doubt – doubts about his talent, his love for her, his path in life. What kept him there, with her, if his heart was truly so filled with doubt?

In the shadow of her husband's doubts, Alegra became depressed, part of an undiagnosed clinical condition that ate away at her. In her depressed mind, her husband’s artistic block and inability to achieve his goals was somehow her fault. He complained to her that she talked too much, that she was oblivious to other people’s feelings, that she didn’t understand art, that she did not know herself. She believed all the things he said and took them to heart, isolating herself, trying to give him as much space possible so that he could focus on his art.

Then came the day her husband told her that he “didn’t want to share his life with her” any longer. Alegra was devastated. She broke down, unable to sleep or eat. Her world was crashing down around her ears, the taste of debris in her mouth.

Her husband had her committed.

The humiliation of being committed to a mental hospital – stripped naked and inspected by strangers, medicated, monitored – shocked Alegra into a new reality.

When she was released from the hospital she began to take stock of her life and what had led her along a path of destruction.

And there it was, in front of her eyes and she saw it clearly. Yes, it was the old cliché, the 7 year itch, the midlife crisis, the husband straying. Yes, he had begun an affair with one of his students, and together the two of them had conspired to commit Alegra to the mental ward. Yes, it was easiest, wasn’t it, if the “crazy wife” were labeled thus. He would get so much sympathy for his years of suffering, and would be free to explore “all the experiences” that his life with her had kept him from. And his lover would benefit from the belief that he was justified in the affair, and in the treatment of his crazy wife.

Was this just his doubt about the uncertainties of life and love? Was this simply a mis-match? Or is there a darker side, one where a man and his lover can commit his wife to such a cruel place? Is this a man who will ever find happiness, living as he does with a personal philosophy is so bleak that it allows the uncertainties to dominate even the most intimate of acts, so bleak that joy becomes colorless?

Alegra must forever live with the specter of a betrayal so profound and so cruel that it defies description. She had no voice, no say no choice in the way that her world came crashing down, the tragedy in which she now plays such an unenviable role.

Tell me, who deserves such an end to seven years of a marriage where never once were harsh words exchanged, never once were insults thrown in anger? How can a human being so cruelly discard another?

Ah, but this is not a new story; the world is full of such tragedies and stories of exacting pain. But Alegra has learned a valuable lesson. We can never really know what is in another human being’s heart, no matter how much we might believe that we do.

Tags:   betrayal, cruel, depression, infidelity, mental hospital

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Posted on 2/26/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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Legislating Gender – The Logic Of Law As Pertain to Biology

The Massachusetts so-called gay marriage legislation has brought up many interesting points.

First, what is a Man and what is Woman? If one has a sex change operation, is he/she prohibited from marrying? What about inter-sexed people? Can they marry? Will there be a chromosome test to see who is the x and who is the y? Will childless couples be re-classified? Will the infertile be disallowed the right to matrimony?

Biology tells us that gender is not a black and white thing. Inter-sexed children are not as rare on you might think. In my family, we have three individuals who at birth were deemed male, but who have latticed chromosome structures (male and female) and whose reproductive organs are mixed. If the doctor said they were male, does that make it so? Or does one ovary mean female? And who can they legally marry?

And what about the brain, the real “decider” when it comes to gender. All embryos have the potential to be male or female. The nascent organs of reproduction are awaiting instructions as the embryo develops. Sometimes, things go slightly wrong, and the results can cause consternation in a world where everything is either the One or the Other, Black or White, Right or Wrong, Christian of Heathen.

The Right Wing claim that marriage is defined as a contract between a Man and a Woman and that it has always been that way, is erroneous. It is willfully ignorant to stand before the Nation and make such a proclamation. Marriages have been between a man and more than one woman, two families, and not at all. The real purpose of Marriage has always been to define Paternity. We all know where the baby comes from, but we don’t always know how it got there – we have only the woman’s word, and if there are no rules in place to keep her little basket of tricks under control, then we will never know who the real father is.

And what about the actual Brain itself? Recent studies have shown that male & female brains behave differently. Should we have two sets of laws? And what about inter-sexed people? Should we have a third set of laws governing them?

All the brouhaha about so-called gay marriage skips over what most people believe to be the reason couples enter into such a contract: Love. Love, it seems, is only for those with reproduction on their minds. That is the way the laws will go if the Religious Right have their way. We will be not be considered good, upstanding citizens if we do not dutifully re-produce under carefully controlled conditions.

Tags:   gat marriage, heathens, inter sexed, reproductive rights, transgendered

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Posted on 1/11/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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