Other tidbits of information, none of them so joyous as that related in the last Percolator post, gleaned from our appointment this morning:
• Did you know Gardasil, the 3-part vaccine that is supposed to protect sexually active young women from cervical cancer is now approved to be administered to young men? I didn’t either. The last I knew, young men don’t come equipped with cervixes. But, in this ‘brave new egalitarian world,’ even sexually transmitted diseases don’t discriminate…so treatment is now ‘equal opportunity’ as well; we’re still not stepping into this line, though.
• We can surmise what we wish, but there is a definite rise in credibility when a medical doctor recounts his own clinical experiences, even when they are …unsavory…such as high school and college-age patients who come in for STD treatment lamenting, “you never told me it would be this bad!”
These communication transactions don’t break down on the sending end. Nope; the messages aren’t received when their content does not correspond to what people want to hear. Come to think of it, I think this happens in other spheres of life, too.
• There followed some graphic descriptions of how these infections can manifest—which seemed bad enough until mention was made of certain body parts needing cauterization, etc….at which point, I will now desist.
• I mentioned that both of my older sons had heard the message loud and clear in their school health classes and had quoted, more than once, the ominous statistic that 25% of American women between the ages of 18 and 25 have or have had an STD infection. Not true, we learned.
“It is now 35%, and that is based on the ones that are reported. This type of thing is usually under-reported.” Nice.
• National Health Board-I haven’t been paying enough attention, being a rather shameless approach-avoidant type, but evidently this new gorgon is part of President Obama’s Health Care program which, sorrowfully, has come to pass. It is always easier to get into a mess than to get out of one, and that is no less true here. In fact, I think only a resiliently salient temperament will maintain that there can be any turning back once the juggernaut launches. Among changes we should expect:
o Online patient records. “Did you know that doctors have been offered an incentive--$40-60K—to have their patient records put online? People don’t know this. But it is true.” Evidently, he was recently at a townhall meeting and mentioned this; constituents were unaware. Then, our district’s federal representative, who was present and who had convened the meeting, corroborated the truth of this. Why would the government want everyone’s patient records online?”
Well, probably for no good reason, but I would guess so they can know everyone’s business.
“It’s because then they are accessible to the National Health Board, who can see how often you’ve been seen and by whom. Then if you’ve been to see a doctor five times, say, they can tell you, ‘no more; you are done.’ Someone over here has seen no one for 5 years…so it all has to be evened out and rationed so that everyone gets the same number of visits” – apparently, details such as who has paid for health care become irrelevant. [Rationing?]
“And doctors will already have received this incentive money.”
Which probably buys some “loyalty” to the program, at least in some quarters. And there is more; but, for the moment, I am sufficiently discouraged.
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