Dr. Julie's Blog

Thanks, Rico

Rico highlights beautifully one of the things that I think is at the very crux of how our healthcare system got so far out of hand ~ the big PR ~ personal responsibility.  And while he's at it, he simultaneously overcomplicates AND oversimplifies what he thinks my opinions are.  Rico, I invite you to reread my last two posts carefully.  I think I was pretty clear about the fact that my argument with this film has nothing to do with Michael Moore's contention that the American healthcare system......uh...er, sucks.  It needs to be reworked from the ground up.  No aspect of it should escape the metaphorical bulldozer.  It is too expensive, too impersonal, too bloated to continue to exist as it is.  By the way, did you catch the part where I likened the U.S. healthcare system to a festering lesion whose scab needs to be picked off?

My point in "Oh yeah, and..." was to draw attention to the issue of the big PR, and what a glaring lack of it there was in the story of the guy with the table saw and the missing finger tip.  Certainly, accidents do happen ~ but, for me, there is a very important distinction between the accident that is a completely random event ~ the one that no amount of planning or foresight could have prevented, and the accident that follows as a fairly predictable result of inattention, ignorance, stupidity, laziness, arrogance, bravado, fatigue, impatience...etc.  Perhaps surprisingly, I think that victims of both the completely random accident and the (let's just call it) stupidity accident should receive medical treatment equally.  I'm just not sure how much the patient from the stupidity accident deserves to moan about the treatment that he receives.......its cost or any other aspect of it.

The fact that Michael Moore showcases this fool in an attempt to emotionally manipulate his audience must call into question virtually every example he employs as he makes his point.  The trickery was apparent to me, but I'm more than a little flabbergasted at the number of people who were really taken in by the guy with the missing fingertip, and his whining about his care.

It is extremely distressing to me that Michael Moore has such a big megaphone and no apparent compunction about the ramifications of his questionable representation of this huge problem.

Oh Yeah, and...

Try as I might to leave yesterday's post alone, I was bothered all night last night about the fact that I decided not to comment on one of Michael Moore's main characters in SiCKO.  So, in the name of personal responsibility ~ one of my mantras, especially in the area of wellness and healthcare, I find I must say something about the guy who cut off two of his fingertips on a table saw....... and then became a primary player in Moore's diatribe because he had to choose which fingertip to keep and which one to loose.

There are so many things wrong with this guy's story, that I scarcely know where to start...

First, I am married to a wood worker.  At times he has done it for a living and at times (like lately) it's more of a hobby.  He's taught students as young as 5th graders to safely use power tools.  In the middle of a particularly complex carpentry project, I've seen him execute decidely "off label" feats with a table saw ~ free-hand cuts, and solo cuts that would be worthy of medals, if such accomplishments came with medals.  I trust his word when it comes to what is and isn't a smart move when working at a table saw.  After seeing this movie, he was beside himself about the guy who had the table saw incident.  He tells me that one thing he's never ever done while working at a table saw is reach over and across the blade to try to pull a cut through from the wrong side (which is what the guy in the movie did).  The guy broke a cardinal rule of table saw operation ~ an amputation waiting to happen, according to my beloved.

Anyone who has ever purchased a power tool will recall the pages and pages and pages of instructions and cautions and warnings.  Ignore them at your own risk....... Loose your concentration at your own risk.......Hurry at your own risk...

OK ~ so there's that.

Next, it's not really clear to me whether the guy from the movie uses power tools as part of his job, or is just a casual user.  Either way ~ isn't a guy who steps up to a table saw, knowing that he doesn't have insurance coverage, and then pulls a completely boneheaded stunt, causing the amputation of two fingertips fully responsible for the results of his actions?

Yes, it's a terrible thing.  I am a healer down to my bones ~ it hurts me when another human hurts, but I have very little patience for people who make bad choices and do stupid things, and then expect someone else to bail them out.  The emergency personnel who treated him did their jobs when they made sure that he didn't die from his self-inflicted injuries.  What is not their job is making it possible for him to afford to have his fingertips reattached, especially when he wasn't forward-thinking enough to make plans for such matters before he checked his brain at the woodshop door.

Just a couple of final questions:

If this did happen on the job, where is his workers' compensation insurance coverage?

If this was hobby wookworking, why is this guy spending money on power tools and woodworking projects when he can't afford health insurance?  Hmmm.

All I'm saying is... use your brain, recognize the risks that you encounter in everyday life, and don't expect anyone else to take up the slack for your ignorance or stupidity.

Obviously, I haven't offered anything here that will fix our healthcare system, but neither will knee-jerk reactions to an emotionally manipulative movie which, I suspect, is chock-full of inaccuracies and bias and falsehoods.

SiCK OH!

I went to see Michael Moore's latest film, SiCKO, mostly because I thought I ought to.......I ought to at least be able to have a conversation about it, I reasoned, as I forked over my $9.75.

I've steered clear of Moore's films in the past because I don't understand or appreciate his way of muck-raking a problem without offering any real suggestion of a solution.  It seems immature and unproductive to bring attention to a problem the way Moore does, without any noticeable attention given to a fix ~ sort of like picking the scab off of a festering lesion without having a bandaid, or at least a tissue handy to help clean up the ensuing mess so that some real healing might take place.  Even if the scab needed to come off (which, in the case of our "healthcare system," it plainly does), I think that the one who picked it should shoulder at least a little of the responsibility of being ready with a few answers, or suggestions, or ideas about the mess they've exposed.

Moore clearly spent a lot of time and energy getting his version of ironic comedy and his sing-song sarcastic narration just right in SiCKO, but it all wraps up without any redeeming "what-ifs" to balance out the snideness of it all.  He can't really be proposing that we adopt the real, everyday Cuban way of practicing medicine, can he?...Or that we start handing over upwards of 50% of our income to the government so that it can provide us with "free" births, and "free" nannies, and "free" extra time off to recover from illness?...Can he?  Do some research, follow the money, don't be naive.

My #1 fear about any form of universal healthcare coming to this country is that "the powers that be" will almost surely take the path of least resistance and adopt a wider version of the system that already exists here.......that's right ~ Medicaid & Medicare (M&M).  Any healthcare system that begins with M&M as its model is unacceptable as far as I'm concerned.  Just imagine a government monopoly on decisions about your health.  It's a recipe for disaster.

The one bright spot that has stayed with me over the week or so since I saw SiCKO is the image of a young doctor who revealed that everytime he helps a patient stop smoking his government gives him a raise.  Talk about walking the talk of preventative wellness care!!  I am entranced by this concept.  Whether or not it is actually happening somewhere at this moment ~ shouldn't it be?  What if the government actually gave your doctors a bonus for helping you change your lifestyle for the better?  What if your doctor's more attractive choice was to interest you in an exercise schedule or better quality food rather than a cholesterol-lowering drug... what if the rewards that she received from the government for practicing true wellness care were greater than the rewards she's currently getting from her pharmaceutical rep for getting you hooked on another medication?  Wow.

I think that the most effective way to cause real change in our current medical model is to stop participating in it as much as possible, thereby rendering it better able to do what it does best ~ caring for the true traumas and the true emergencies and the truly needy.

What if:

You spend more time at the offices of the practitioners who help you/coach you/guide you to safeguard and support your own, inborn health, rather than the ones who cash in on you when you're sick.  It's a lot more fun and cost-effective to stay well than it is to get well.  But go ahead and get well anyway!  Spending time, money, and energy with your preventative and wellness practitioners will pay big, BIG dividends throughout your life.  Be aware, though:  Getting well and being well is a process, not an event.......and it is up to you ~ not your doctor, or your massage therapist, or your acupuncturist, or your spouse.  Your body, your habits, your lifestyle, your health.

Obviously, this idea won't go over very well with your insurance company, which would rather pay $20,000.00 for a spinal surgery once you're crippled with pain than approve $5,000.00 worth of chiropractic adjustments to help you keep your spine (and therefore your nervous system, and therefore your entire being...) healthy.  Nevermind that the spinal surgery is most likely just the beginning of a lifetime of dependence on orthopedic specialists and pain medications, as well as a marked decline in your ability to be active and proactive in your own health.  Welcome to the Medical Merry-Go-Round.

Oh yeah, and it's OK for a healthy person to get sick now and then.......good and darned sick!  Running a fever, vomiting, getting congested, aching & fatigue ~ all of these (and others) are signs of a healthy immune system fighting a foreign invader.  No formal medical intervention is needed in most cases.  Watching & waiting, resting & recouperating have become a lost art.

In fact, I think a pretty compelling argument can be made that the current epidemic of chronic and autoimmune diseases we are experiencing as a society (fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, some forms of cancer, and on and on and on), is due in large part to the meddling of medical doctors, clinics, and hospitals with too much technology and pharmaceutical companies with too much political influence who would rather send us home with a new handful of pills than try to encourage us to modify our lifestyle or habits.  Heck, the pharmaceutical geniuses have even started selling their drugs directly to us, haven't they?  Their television and magazine ads tell us what we need, then we go in and badger our medical doctors until they finally relent and give us a diagnosis, followed shortly by a page ripped from their prescription pad.  I remember reading an article several years ago in which 45% of medical doctors interviewed anonymously admitted to writing prescriptions for patients simply to get them to stop complaining and leave the office.  Amazing.

While he fairly adeptly obscures it with 2 hours of shenanigans, I have to say that I have no argument with Michael Moore's fundamental point that healthcare in this country is truly astonishing in its ghastliness.  More than ever, I think that if you're not outraged about the status quo of healthcare here, it's only because neither you nor anyone you care about has ever been caught in the system ~ needing and expecting help, but receiving only BS and COA from their doctors and hospitals (that's "bullshit" and "cover our ass" for those of you are more delicate than me).

While Mr. Moore stops rolling tape just at the time when he could become a true activist for change, I'll step up and say that I happen to think the solution is up to us, you & me, as individuals.  There is not a satisfactory government fix out there.  I think we should stop waiting for it.

Finding Some Perspective

Friends and patients will recall that I've always said that the theory of vaccination is a sound one.  The idea of introducing a small amount of a disease-causing "bug" into the body to initiate an immune system reaction, resulting in antibodies and subsequent immunity to that particular bug is, on its face, an entirely reasonable notion.  It is the execution of the theory that I object to.

As is so often the case with current technology capabilities, I find myself thinking... "Just because we can brew a vaccine for nearly every known pathogen, does that mean that we should?"  Add to that my "follow the money" charge, as well as our societal attitude (wrong-headed as it is) that we can somehow defeat germs and become disease-free, and vaccinations-in-practice becomes a very messy proposition indeed.

An article by Dr. Joseph Mercola has caused me to wonder:  "Was there ever a time that vaccinations-in-practice, made sense?"  Or, even more to the point:  "Do vaccinations-in-practice make sense in any setting today?"

It could be that in countries which are very poor, where basic nutrition is awful and basic hygiene is absent.......where the specter of preventable disease is so overwhelming, that mass vaccination will almost certainly improve the public health from the status quo ~ even if you factor in the poor manufacturing practices and adverse reactions of vaccines.

As I thought about it, I found that I could even allow that maybe the 3rd World country above was us, U.S., decades ago....... but does it still make sense for us today?... Or have we been so bewitched by the promise of the power of vaccines that we can't see any other way, even in the face of pharma-political corruption, epidemic levels of chronic illness, and the pervading fear-as-sales-tactic antics of the vaccine industry?

Dr. Mercola summarizes it this way:  “Epidemiologic studies…have shown that as families improve their living conditions, hygiene, nutrition, literacy and education, the risk of life-threatening acute infectious, inflammatory diseases very much decreases....... Families with good living conditions, hygiene, nutrition and education probably would benefit from vaccinations very little or not at all."  This an extremely damning statement, given the toxicity of the brews that comprise our vaccines.  Damage with no benefit.......flies directly in the face of the Hypocratic Oath, no?

Our needs (and our kids' needs) change as we learn to take better care of ourselves and our families.  Isn't it time that our health care system catch up a little bit?