Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Aspen Health Questionnaire: President's Answers

Karen Bracken shared this link to the Aspen Institute's health care questionnaire, as answered by President Obama:

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/hbsi/hs_ObamaQuestionnaire.pdf

I sometimes think "PDF" stands for "Pain to Download, Forget about it." If your computer tolerates PDF documents, careful reading is recommended. For instance, female cardiac patients currently tend to have "worse outcomes" than male patients...probably because the basic cardiovascular care program has been relentlessly marketed as a men's health care program. Women are immune to high blood pressure (though not to diabetes) before menopause...so, most women who aren't diabetic think they have more to fear from breast cancer or from the aging process itself than from cardiovascular disease. And they're wrong. Those of us who are female need to be working out, meditating, and watching our fat and sodium intake just like the men we love. Instead, many of us end up dying from the conditions we (successfully!) help our men control. But you notice how these insiders in the insurance-pharmaceutical-government conspiracy ooze right over this problem of miseducation, or mis-marketing. Women are an "underserved population." Women don't need simply to do what we already know men need to do; women need to be sold more "screenings," and maybe some of those wonderful "preventive" statin drugs that cause diabetes. Bah, humbug.

There is an incredible amount of humbug about almost all our politicians' responses to questions about "health care." Maybe if we demanded that they stop using words in a weaselly way, and make a clear distinction between the health care everyone needs to take for ourselves (without being nagged or bullied into it, because nagging and bullying generate rebellion, see "Prohibition") and the medical insurance system that so badly needs to be reformed...specifically by getting the insurance industry out of the system of paying for poor people's medical care.

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