Art and Architecture

What’ wrong with modern health policy

This vent one's spleen in the New York Times highlights a lot of the problems with modern healthcare, not ethical in this country but in most developed nations.

The most troubling angle of this piece is how much modern medicine operates like battleaxe-doctory. The patients in their desperation and their doctors, in their helplessness from paucity of a treatment, and perhaps not a little financial incentive, are avaricious at straws in their scattershot approach to treatment. They’re throwing spaghetti at the fold up and seeing what sticks. For a profession that is arrogant in the eccentric in setting itself apart from “alternate” forms of prescription, I see nothing scientific in the sorts of approach depicted in this article. That this need of method, logic, or rationale is costing us millions, if not billions, is a blacken and another black mark against the medical profession.

The most readily understood part of the article is the sentiment of the patients on these dubious drugs. When you are on one's deathbed, especially from illnesses which cause horrendous symtoms, you are plausible to try anything. Even if the drugs only alleviate the symptoms, but do nothing to treat the forbearing otherwise or prolong life, for the patient that’s good anything.

But this is no different from any other policy issues which we face circadian. If you or your loved ones are the victims of crime, your most immeditate response will be to want to take revenge, if you can. Society outlaws such acts because we separate that in the cold light of day, when we are not personally faced with such tragedy, that to the utmost is detrimental to society as a whole. In the same way that we would not permit a rape fall guy to take vengeance on her attacker, we should not be letting patients set system. While their priorities are understandable, it is ultimately based on their own inconsiderate and immediate needs. Just because we understand such impulses and cannot overly them does not mean we should cater to them.

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