Health Care BS

911DOC over at M.D.O.D. provides some useful insight into how government-run health care works in actual practice. He begins with a photo of the multifarious prescription meds a VA patient brought with her to the ER:

Here is the bag ‘o pills brought in by a very nice gal tonight … Half of these expensive and dangerous medicines are duplicates.

The VA docs had given this patient so many different medications that the pills probably presented a graver threat to her health than any actual ailment she may have had. How did this dangerous situation develop?

No doctor-patient relationship … Since their system is high on procedure and protocols it is light on personal responsibility on the doctor side. It’s not that the docs don’t want the personal responsibility, it’s that the system doesn’t allow for it.

So, the patient sees a different physician each time she goes to the VA. Each of these docs is in a hurry and each encounter closes with another hastily written prescription. And this lady is very ill:

She will be admitted but guess what, the VA is ‘full’. We are admitting her here but we don’t know jack shit about her history and the VA medical records department is closed for the night.

911DOC closes the post with the following rhetorical question:

This is what the government does with health care. Do you want this for you and your family?

Most people would respond to this question with a resounding no. Nonetheless, there are a lot of politicians who want to give you a government-run health care system whether you want it or not. Remember that in November.