healthcare Archive

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Sentence to Ponder

By
Tom OHare
– March 28, 2012

I stole that title from Tyler Cowen, who usually uses it to link to something asinine from one of his deranged right wing economist pals. Here, then, is the sentence I’ve selected:

Protestors were out in force this morning in front of the Supreme Court asking the court to overturn the Affordable Care Act because, if the founders had wanted poor children to receive treatment for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia, they would have mentioned it in the Federalist Papers, BUT THEY DIDN’T NOW, DID THEY MARXISTS!

I have it on good authority that Madison (or was it Hamilton? Or Jay? THE CONSPIRYSEEE DEEPENS!) intended to mention the ACA in Federalist 10, but was busy doing stuff, or getting gout, or fathering illegitimate children, or whatever. Okay, it’s 6:30 in the morning and I don’t have any jokes about this. I already gave you a joke, people! THAT’S THE SENTENCE TO PONDER!!!1!SQUEE!1

1

Life sucks: in perspective

By
Trevor Macomber
– October 24, 2011

"Wesley Warren Jr., who suffers from a condition called scrotal lymphedema, rests his 100-pound scrotum on a pillow and milk crate while waiting for a bus at the Bonneville Transit Center. JEFF SCHEID/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL"

In anticipation of a shitty week — both professionally and, as a result, bloggingly — please do not enjoy this story about 47-year-old Las Vegan, Wesley Warren Jr, and his 100-lb ball sack.

The article’s got the seriously painful details if you want them, but suffice it to say, dude could use a break:

In hopes of getting the money for a possible corrective procedure that physicians have told him can cost about $1 million, Warren swallowed his pride by outing himself recently on shock jock Howard Stern’s national satellite radio and cable TV freak segment.

But he used the pseudonym “Johnathan from Las Vegas” to let people know that his penis is so buried in his scrotal tissue that he can’t direct his urination and often sprays the area around him.

He also told — to more laughter on the set — of how he can’t sit down for a bowel movement and must catch it in the same kind of pail used in casinos for coins.

“I don’t like being a freak, who would?” Warren said. “But I figured that the Stern show is listened to by millions of people and they might want to help me. I hope some millionaire or billionaire will want to help me.”

Many people have reached him through his benefitballsack@yahoo.com email address, he said.

Of course, even if that million comes down from on high, Warren won’t necessarily be sitting pretty (as it were):

Urologist Kassahun informed Warren that a team of urologists and plastic surgeons would be needed to cut away the excess tissue and to perform the reconstructive surgery that would include skin grafts. Every attempt would be made to save and reconstruct Warren’s penis and testicles, but it was possible that they would have to be completely excised.

“I told him that if there was major bleeding we might not be able to save them,” Kassahun said.

That news shook Warren.

“Basically, he was telling me there was a good chance that I would be castrated and have to go to the bathroom through a tube for the rest of my life,” he said. “I really would like to have a relationship with a woman. I should be in the prime of my life right now.”

If you need me, I’ll be over there in the corner, curled into the fetal position and rocking back and forth while whispering incoherently to myself.

Jesus, somebody help this dude out. (Not Jesus specifically, mind you, because any deity who would visit such maladies on his flock is a deity whose further help you can probably do without, thank you very much.)

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Surprise, surprise: Walmart has no soul

By
Trevor Macomber
– October 21, 2011

Hey, guess who topped the Global Fortune 500 this year with $422 billion in revenue ($16 billion in profits)? Walmart!

Now guess who’s “substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff”? Walmart!

Because, you know, fuck coming away with only $15 billion next year.

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Shunninglingus

By
Trevor Macomber
– October 6, 2011

There are many ways I could introduce the following article, but my wife’s mother reads this blog occasionally, so I’m gonna let the headline speak for itself:

Oral Sex May Cause More Throat Cancer Than Smoking in Men, Researchers Say

This is not going to make women’s lib crowd happy.

The cringey deets:

Researchers examined 271 throat-tumor samples collected over 20 years ending in 2004 and found that the percentage of oral cancer linked to the human papillomavirus, or HPV, surged to 72 percent from about 16 percent, according to a report released yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. By 2020, the virus-linked throat tumors — which mostly affected men — will become more common than HPV-caused cervical cancer, the report found.

[...]

“The burden of cancer caused by HPV is going to shift from women to men in this decade,” Maura Gillison, an oncologist at Ohio State University and study senior author, said in a telephone interview. “What we believe is happening is that the number of sexual partners and exposure to HPV has risen over that same time period.”

[...]

In a 2007 epidemiology study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gillison and her colleagues found that having a high number of oral or vaginal sex partners are risk factors for HPV-associated throat cancer. The cancer may also be spread by open-mouth kissing, Gillison said in the interview.

“Nobody paid attention to oral HPV infections until 2007,” she said. “We are about 15 years behind in the research” compared with the data on cervical cancer and HPV, she said.

An editorial accompanying the study concluded that trials to see whether vaccines prevent oral cancer “are needed, given that prevention through vaccination will almost certainly be the ultimate solution” to HPV-positive oral cancers.

No comment no comment no comment

2

A fully equipped gynecological operating theater has been discovered underneath Tripoli’s Fateh University

By
Trevor Macomber
– September 9, 2011

Highly disturbing news from BBC Africa:

A fully equipped gynaecological operating theatre, bedroom and jacuzzi have been discovered underneath Tripoli’s Fateh University.

The rooms were discovered beneath the Green Theatre which was used to teach about the revolution and the Green Book which contained Col Muammar Gaddafi’s thoughts and solutions to the country’s social, political and economic problems.

From The Daily Beast: "Tripoli University Dean Faisal Krekshi shows the press gynecological equipment in an examination room at the school., Credit: Babak Dehghanpisheh"

 
Yikes. Just…yikes.

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Shoot any chemicals up your ass recently?

By
Trevor Macomber
– August 1, 2011

If there is any more powerful imagery than the phrase “colonic irrigation,” I don’t want to hear about it. (Okay, yes I do. TELL ME.) That said, if you’ve got this less-than-innocuous two-word combination written somewhere in your day planner, you may be interested in the following information.

According to the Life | Health section of USA Today,

Despite the popularity of colon cleansing, there’s no evidence that the procedure — which can be done at home or in day spas — offers any health benefits.

However, colon cleansing can cause serious side effects ranging from vomiting to kidney failure and death, the authors of the report say. [emphasis my own]

Colon cleansing — also called colonic irrigation or colonic hydrotherapy — often involves the use of chemicals followed by flushing the colon with water through a tube inserted in the rectum, explained the Georgetown University researchers.

Sooo, what did you think the benefit was again of shooting Windex up your bum?

2

In Which I Use My Proclivity Towards Self-Neglect to Argue For Universal Healthcare

By
Ben Nolan
– July 6, 2011

1. I live in Toronto, I have an OHIP card (a health card), and I can walk into any emergency room or walk-in clinic any time and receive care for free.

2. I bought a bike about two months ago, and two weeks ago, decided that I would be one of those people who bikes distances. Two weekends ago, therefore, I went from casually biking around the city to trying to go on one 70+ km bike ride per weekend.

This is the route of the ride I did two weekends ago:

There and back, so about 90 click. It’s a good route. Lots of cool breezes off the lake. Seagulls. Preposterous, decadent houses.

This is the route of the ride I took last weekend:

Nice at first — the Don Valley trail’s pleasant — but then it gets all suburby, so you’re either driving down thoroughfares heavily trafficked by Rob Ford-voting cyclist-haters going 70-100 kilometers per hour, or you’re getting turned around in windy suburban developments. I chose the route because my grandparents live in Markham, and I hadn’t seen them in a while, and thought it might be nice to drop in.

I took the first ride with a couple friends. I did the second ride on my own. What I discovered is that when I ride on my own, I tend to lose all perspective and push maybe a little bit harder than I ought to. At one point I was blasting down 14th in my highest gear, trying to go fast enough so it wasn’t so scary when some asshole suburban driver in an 8 million ton Escalade blew past me at 90 kph, its right mirror clearing my left handlebar by inches, and my left foot got all clawed up in a brutal cramp and the only thing that occurred to me to do was power through it.

I’m pretty sure that was the moment my left foot/ankle decided to fuck me over and become, for the next four days, about one-and-a-half to two times as big as my right. Probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d iced it right away, but I made the bad decision to ignore it and then stand around for four hours in thirty degree heat watching the Pride parade the next day.

Point is: My left foot/ankle is fucked up right now. In addition to being swollen, it feels weird and clicky when I move it. The larger point, though, is: I should probably go to a fucking clinic and get it looked at.

3. I don’t want to go to the clinic to get it looked at. And I’m going to put going to a clinic to get it looked at off for one more day. Why? Because I don’t like going to the doctor when I’m not sure that they’re not just going to say something like “it’s fine, you just need to stay off it for a couple days,” which is what you would’ve done anyway and which makes you feel like a big whiner. Especially after you’ve just spent however long you’ve had to spend sharing a waiting room with people with real problems.

4. The whole argument that if you make healthcare freely accessible it’ll collapse because everyone will go in to get the doctor to check out their hangnails (I’m pretty sure I heard that argument being made a lot last year during the whole health care debate) is bullshit. Some people (hypochondriacs), I’m sure, do live in the emergency room up here in Canada and elsewhere where there’s free access, but there’s not a lot of them. And most of us don’t like undergoing medical examinations. We don’t need financial disincentives to keep us away.

If I seriously thought there was something wrong that was likely to get worse, I’d go in in a second. Wouldn’t even have to think about it. But that’s as it should be. In the States, because seeking treatment has been so over-disincentivized, people will put off going to see a doctor even when they know that things are getting worse. Why? Because the prospect of a $45,000 bill fucks with people who may not even make that much money in a year’s ability to be rational. They start to question whether debt slavery is really less painful than living with an exploded appendix (which is actually dying). Or they just work really really hard not to think about it, because both options suck, and can you really blame them?

Basically: Americans, your system is barbaric, and my ankle hurts.

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Healthcare < Guns

By
Trevor Macomber
– April 29, 2011

Earlier this week, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart once again played the role of our collective conscience by calling out Congressman Cliff Stearns’ proposal (and the rest of congress’s discussion-free acceptance of said) to vet 9/11 first responders against the terrorist watch list before providing them with the health care assistance due to them under the only recently enacted Zadroga bill — which took a mere 10 years to pass in the first place. (death + taxes has a characteristically sensible review of the episode and subject matter.)

Now fast forward to today and the AP’s sadly unshocking report that “More than 200 people suspected of ties to terrorism bought guns in the U.S. last year legally, FBI figures show.”

And how is that possible? Well, obviously because “It is not illegal for people listed on the government’s terror watch list to buy weapons.”

So to recap: 9/11 first responders who rushed into burning, collapsing skyscrapers and/or spent months and years of their life at ground zero inhaling poisons and other biologically destructive elements in an effort to find bodies and remove rubble are still dying or bankrupting themselves without a scintilla of assistance from the federal government, but if they want to go out and buy a handgun to, say, hold up a liquor store to pay for their chemo or simply to blow their brains out before their life comes to a slow, painful end? Well, have at it sirs and madams! And by the way: you’re welcome.

3

Have You Heard About the Hearing?

By
Trevor Macomber
– March 11, 2011

The highly anticipated series of hearings chaired by U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, finally commenced in Washington yesterday with the catchy title, “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” A simple Google search will demonstrate the wide-spread coverage it received and the hotly opined essaying that followed from both sides (including the amusing, McCarthy-esque hashtag #MUAC that has been peppering all hearing-related tweets of late), but let’s stick with the opening remarks for now, taken right from the horse’s — uhh, mouth:

Today’s hearing will be the first in a series of hearings dealing with the critical issue of the radicalization of Muslim-Americans.

I [Peter King] am well aware that the announcement of these hearings has generated considerable controversy and opposition. Some of this opposition — such as from my colleague and friend Mr. Ellison has been measured and thoughtful. Other opposition — both from special interest groups and the media has ranged from disbelief to paroxysms of rage and hysteria.

Let me make it clear today that I remain convinced that these hearings must go forward. And they will. To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness and an abdication of what I believe to be the main responsibility of this committee –  to protect America from a terrorist attack.

Of course, with the hearing lasting for four hours, there was no shortage of chewy quotes to masticate (Esquire will back me up here), but I’m not really interested in the political jai alai at the moment. I merely wish to make a brief observation about King’s final line above, regarding the committee’s responsibility “to protect America from a terrorist attack.”

Reading between the lines, presumably (hopefully?) King’s primary reason for wanting to protect America from a terrorist attack is to protect American’s themselves — which is to say, to prevent the loss of American life. An admirable goal, to be sure, even though, according to various reports filed by the State Department, only about 150 Americans have died from terrorist attacks between 2005-2009 and none of those deaths took place on American soil. However, throw another five years of data into the mix (which would include 9/11) and that figure balloons to well over 3,000 terrorism-related deaths for U.S. citizens in the last decade, which probably explains why the Department of Homeland Security had a budget of $45 billion last year (pg. 9).

However, if protecting American lives are really King’s main concern, one might reasonably wonder what cause could have focused his ire more productively. Consider Alzheimer’s, for example. In 2006 alone, this disease was reported as the underlying cause of death for more than 72,000 people in the United States (pg. 20). Yet last year it received literally 1/90th of DHS’s budget, with the National Institute of Health slapping down approximately $500 million on Alzheimer’s-related research.

As you might surmise, similar points can also be made about cancer, AIDS, heart disease, African sleeping sickness, et al (well, maybe not African sleeping sickness) regarding their cost in lives to society versus the public monies spent to protect ourselves against them.

And while none of this is to say that the DHS doesn’t need $45 billion to do its job, or that King’s hearings are necessarily a circus-like waste of time, a little perspective might go a long way when the question of American lives are supposedly at stake. (Not to be confused with vampire lives, which are always at stake. Hey-oh!)

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What the health?!

By
Justin Coffin
– March 7, 2011

 

If you have been anywhere near a source of media in the past three years, or even ventured out of your solipsistic bubble long enough to overhear human conversation, then you are probably aware of the ongoing debate over the status of health care in America in general and so-called ObamaCare in particular. It strikes me as at least mildly amusing that ObamaCare is being battered from all sides; labeled socialist garbage from the right and decried as falling well short of the mark by his alleged allies on the left. As a preliminary matter, I have to disagree with those who call this monster undertaking “socialist.” From the insurance companies’ point of view, this is more like a capitalist wet dream: the government just decreed that EVERYONE BUY THEIR PRODUCT. If I am a health insurer (i.e., I love making mad money on the backs of desperate people), this is my golden city (not to be confused with my golden shower — see: capitalist wet dream).

Beyond this silly and admittedly un-nuanced interpretation of complex economic and public policy, recent events compel me to share a few thoughts about the ridiculous arguments against “socialist” healthcare in general. By “socialist,” of course, I mean a system whereby we all pay a bit more in taxes for the privilege of having Uncle Sam (the patriotic one — not the sex offender registry one) pick up the tab for our trips to Dr. Cosby (or whatever sweater-clad comedian you go to for your gallbladder infections). You know, a system like they have in Canada, or England, or France, or anywhere else in the industrialized world.

You know, like Cuba!

Obviously this is an abhorrent idea for a god-fearing free market capitalist. After all, it will cause rampant, out-of-control healthcare costs that the open market won’t be able keep in check. You’ll lose your ability to choose your doctor, leaving Uncle Sam (the pedophile one this time) in charge of what medicines you take and who prescribes your erectile dysfunction pills. And death panels will kill your grandma and steal your grandpa’s aforementioned Viagra.

Except, no.

Now look, I’m a lawyer, so I know from experience that personal anecdotes do not an unambiguously open-and-shut case make, but I would nonetheless like to share two personal anecdotes to support my position that anyone who makes any of the above arguments has either never even attempted to make use of health insurance or is a moron.

As a brief background: On paper, I have kick-ass health insurance. My employer picks up most of the tab, but I will disclose that — to cover my family of three — my premiums amount to about $18,000 per year. $18,000. For that I get a manageable $1,000 deductible while damn near all of my in-network doctor’s visits are covered for a mere $20 co-pay. However, the reality of my situation rarely jives with this ostensibly awe-inspiring cost and coverage. Last year, for example, I received a grand total of $350 worth of health coverage. Not only that, but I was also forced to pay $2,500 out of pocket to cover the birth of my daughter since my wife and I used midwives and had the baby at home, which — despite being cheaper and, by many accounts, safer than a hospital birth — is apparently too risky for Anthem Blue Cross’s delicate sentiments. But I digress.

The point is that my health coverage seems pretty comprehensive as far as health coverage goes — but as the previous and forthcoming tales illustrate, that’s not saying much. Another example: I recently used this beastly coverage to take my eight-month-old daughter to the pediatrician to determine why she was trying to rip her ears off the side of her head with a pair of pliers. It turns out she had a double ear infection. (That this was a revelation would perhaps help to explain why I flunked college biology.) Our pediatrician, who like every children’s doctor goes by her first name (Dr. Meg), gave us a prescription for an antibiotic and sent us on our merry way. Problem solved. So imagine my surprise when my wife calls me from the pharmacy and tells me (with our screaming, ear-infected infant exercising her impressive pipes in the background) that our insurance won’t cover the prescription and it is going to cost us $70. Apparently, the “clinicals” indicate that the dosage we were prescribed was just too high.

So, wait. How did that happen?

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