FOR PROFIT medicine in the USA - or anywhere else- also involves the danger of unwise and scientifically unjustified over-treatment. I do agree with friends and relatives working in hospitals and nursing homes that we are being bullied into getting flu vaccines ( and the statistics for positive results are appalling ).
And overnight the medical bureaucracy has decreed that the clinical standards for high blood pressure are not low enough . So now -not by nature- but by decree - half the population needs to be treated - and with $$$ in their eyes , the good doctors will write more blood pressure prescriptions ( each patient on three or four different pills , said the radio report ) .
Meanwhile, the make- a- buck doctors ( no more Dr. Kildare or Dr. Ben Casey ) will enforce more mean spirited austerity on pain medicine ( they don't want 80 year old cancer patients to develop a narcotic drug habit. Suicide is the lesser evil here ).
My woman companion , Dorene , after a diagnosis of liver cancer ( which began 20 years ago with breast cancer ) , finally declined " treatment " at the local hospitals. What cold INCOMPETENT places those cancer treatment centers. Dorene did love her primary care physician . She did die with good care and dignity at the Providence Hope Hospice Center.
While most Americans believe that good health care is a basic human right , the reality of health care in the USA is a lot more depressing.
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