This issue is a problem. Chris is correct about the dichotomization that occurred with the structural economic and regulatory changes that have taken place in healthcare since the introduction of Medicare. There are a goodly number of books about healthcare economics from dissenting voices including Scott Atlas, MD and others, but the gist of the issue is that since the 1960's and the injection of government payment into the healthcare equation, there has been progressive consolidation in allopathic ( meaning not alternative) healthcare in terms of corporate takeovers and buyouts and the inevitable enmeshment of the government agencies with the big corporations - hospital systems, health care insurers, big pharma. This has been no accident. Those of us who can recall the 1990's, besides parachute pants, remember Hillary's ill fated attempt at Hillary Care, which was basically what Obama got done with a questionable assist from the SCOTUS to enact Obamacare. The goal at one level is consolidate and incentivize the industry into a manageable ( for the government ) number of large players through regulatory and financial mechanisms. While they tell you they want to save you money, they don't really care about costs. They keep going up rapidly. And after all it's not their money. It's your money. So the cost savings argument made by the socialized medicine crowd is a misdirection play. At that point, you can do many things to the industry. You can mandate behavioral changes through carrots and mostly sticks. If a doctor rolls his eyes or sighs because a nurse or somebody at the corporate healthcare facilty screws up, and that doctor is a little too independent, they can force him/her into disciplinary proceedings. There is a draconian process with very little if any due process. If they want to make your life miserable, they can do it. The process is the punishment. So the doctors are disincentivized from sticking up for themselves or their patients when it conflicts with the corporation's objectives. They have them by the short hairs. We have also seen the state medical boards and specialty certification boards bully doctors during COVID for standing up for truth in science and questioning the dominant narrative. Thus we end up with a semi-seamless integration between the government and big healthcare. The formula is pretty simple. They buy off the big guys and they punish the small guys. In this way healthcare was a canary in the coalmine for other sectors of the economy.
So the corporate and academic physicians who are employed by large systems and incentivized financially and in other ways by the systems adopt the ideology promulgated by the system. If they don't, they keep their mouth shut. Failing that, they get the message to quit or get fired for being a pimple on the ass of the hospital system. This is identical to the big corporate law firms, and academia in general.
So in private practice where I live, many docs are conservatives. But we are a minority. It's uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, because even if we are not employees, we are subject to hospital bylaws and threats from government and insurance companies. There are plenty of levers that these entities can pull if they want to which will drop you in the shit. This is a significant reason for me to practice with as little exposure to the system as possible.
Just like many lay people I talk to, I no longer trust many of my colleagues to do the right thing under duress. I no longer trust the results of a lot of research that has come out or the pharmaceutical industry, or the orthodox medical structure ( although I've thought them to be a bunch of ponces for as long as I can remember). Medical schools are indoctrinating DEI crap into the students. And the schools absolutely do not want original thinkers. They want to produce a uniform product. It's a scary situation. The political evolution and capture of US healthcare is shameful because it has resulted in dead and injured patients, and a total DISREGARD for real science and independent inquiry. On the patient side, suffice it to say that you need to be your own advocate. The other massive problem is that the cost structure, again like everything the Feds do, is totally unsustainable. It's ridiculously expensive to get sick or buy medications. The system will collapse at some point. I don't know when, but it's not possible to continue like this. We either end up like Canada or the UK, which suck btw, and go broke more slowly while denying care, or go bankrupt. Cash pay, which seems anachronistic, may turn out to be the most efficient and honest way to buy healthcare. Everything is transparent and if a genuine marketplace emerges, costs would come down. Don't hold your breath.
It's how we buy other things. We know the price before we buy it and agree to it. If we don't want to buy it for whatever reason, we don't buy it. Healthcare should work the same way.
Knowing the price is something corporate/government medicine doesn’t want you to know.
I’m having some thyroid issues and had to get some biopsies done the other day. Not one person in the office could tell me what the cost for all this is going to be. They’ve signs up that copay, deductibles etc. are due at the time of service, but they just let me waltz out the door without paying anything or saying bupkis, despite my asking. I did double check again that they are an in-network provider and was told I wouldn’t even have been scheduled for all the latest round of fun if I wasn’t. Somehow I’m not reassured.
Is anyone else running into this new way of trying to squeeze more out of you now, which has already happened to me and my husband and our daughter? You go to place for a procedure/exam/scan, what have you, and find out AFTERWARDS via your insurance company that so and so, who worked on you or did at least part of the procedure is NOT in the network and so you owe extra money for what they did.
How in the holy hell am I supposed to know that ahead of time? And why isn’t everyone working at AT an in-network office or hospital or clinic by default in-network as well? I’m old enough to know this was not something that in days past ever used to happen. But it would appear to be a growing issue.
So we’re supposed to quiz the anesthesiologists and technicians and lab people as to their status with our insurance? I’ve asked ahead of time before and never have I gotten a straight answer as the people doing stuff in a medical setting seem to themselves be ignorant of their own in or out of network status. They’re just doing their job.
This same Endocrinolgy office has a lab in-house, but no one at their front office could tell me if their lab is in or out of network. We’ve been caught in that trap before too. My insurance company couldn’t answer this question either. I was actually told the only way to know was get the labs done there and see what the bill/EOB came back with.
It’s a suckers game and the customer is piggy in the middle all the time.
Correct. It’s frustrating, and nobody that you interface with usually knows the answer. The doctors usually don’t know because they hand it off to their billing company. It’s analogous to buying a car and the dealership saying we don’t know how much the car costs today, but drive it home and we’ll send you a bill in six weeks ( or six months!).
Usually( but not always) the doctor’s office manager will know how whatever common procedure’s billing will work out for a given insurance company, if you can get to talk to them ahead of time. But the root of the problem is the insurance company that makes it as hard as possible for the doctor to get paid, and the hospital systems that bill absurd amounts for the use of their facilities.
In the cash world you just get a hard price and pay the bill. Some people can do that. Most can’t. In my own situation buying insurance, the insurance for the family costs me $25K for the year. We have a high deductible so a lot of the minor stuff comes out of that and the whole thing feels like a giant rip off. If I had a crystal ball and knew no disasters were coming, or was rich enough to self-insure(a nice racket if you do it right) I wouldn’t buy insurance. Because I could invest all that money and make a lot more, which could then go back into the economy from my account rather than from the insurance company’s CEO’s account.
Thanks for the response. I’m just so frustrated right now. When you’re anxious over the outcome of biopsies to begin with, the last thing you want to be stressing over is the “surprise!” mystery bill I suspect we will be getting. In a better world none of this would be the tangled mess it is. I hope you’ll be able to find a way forward for a better outcome with your insurance needs.
I don’t know how they did your biopsy. Most thyroid lesions will get a needle biopsy under local anesthesia with ultrasound guidance. Shouldn’t be ultra -expensive, but your definition of expensive and kind may differ. Some may require an open biopsy. The “good news” about thyroid lesions is that most biopsies are benign. And if they aren’t benign, most thyroid cancers do not prove life threatening and can be removed. There are exceptions to what I just wrote and bad lesions.
Concierge medicine is often cheaper than insured bc cash docs don’t have to hire billing companies, people to negotiate with insurance & Medicare, people to help patients navigate insurance issues, etc. A couple of my friends have gone cash-only and it’s great. Some have money pools for the indigent. You just have to ask.
How does one find these type of practices? I’ve tried on my own before and not had much success. I did find one place in the big sprawling suburban area we live in now after exiting CA, and they only took patients under 65.
NanaW, I am a doctor myself and don’t know how to find them. (I mainly avoid going to the doctor.) It’s word of mouth around here. One day a colleague will come in and announce he’s going cash only. Next thing you know the practice is filled up!
One problem with finding a non-employed doctor is that the current pool of doctors isn’t very enterprising or creative, and can’t run a business. It’s better that way for The System.
If you can find a concierge doc, they don’t have to comply with government electronic health records regulations so your information isn’t mined by big health systems. They also (coming soon!!) won’t have to lecture you about climate change and DEI. I’m not kidding, the current medical literature suggests that that is coming down the pipeline.
Thank you again for the helpful tips. I’ll have to see if my daughter-in-law or sister-in-law knows of anyone out here that isn’t part of the beast system medical care. I don’t even know if we could afford concierge care. But I’d like some options for sure.
I do my best to avoid doctor visits myself. But they won’t even refill some prescriptions I’ve been taking for years without a visit at least annually since we moved and had to start from scratch trying to even find replacements for all those I actually trusted because they took care of me long before the madness ramped up. God only knows what things may look like down the road. I imagine you won’t be able to get care if you haven’t been a good little slave of the state. You’ve a lot of fortitude to be able to stick it out as a doctor yourself.
Can’t wait to be lectured to by wet behind the ears leftist apparatchiks!
Yes, Concierge medicine, but also you can also buy lab tests, radiology studies, surgical services , medications. And often get a much better price than if it goes through insurance.
When I post from my phone I frequently fat finger it and need to edit. The only way to do it via phone if I miss an error is to copy the post, delete it and repost it corrected.
Generally speaking practices and hospitals will give you a cash self pay price if you ask them for it. You may be able to negotiate as well. It’s usually a lot less than the insurance price. If they know you have insurance they will try to get you to go that route because it’s often more lucrative for them, but not always. So you may not want to tell them you have insurance when you start shopping around. You aren’t legally obligated to use your insurance for services. It’s very common to be able to get radiology studies for discounted cash prices at outpatient imaging centers. Of course you need to know the exact type of study you want to get, so usually your doctor has to be involved as you will need an order for the study. Labs are also providing self pay pricing for common lab studies on their website sites, like quest for example. As noted above in another post, concierge medical practices don’t take insurance for services. You basically put the doctor on a self pay retainer. Hope that answers your question.
“be your own advocate”. YES! Fortunately I have a spouse who questions and researches everything and has been deeply involved with “alternative” medicine since 1994 after many failed encounters with the system for one of our children.
I will turn 65 in May and have been amazed (sadly to say) how efficient the system has been in working to get me transitioned to Medicare (who says there isn’t efficiency in healthcare, lol). I am hoping to stay out of the system for as long as possible.
Sadly, one can no longer assume that the “medical professional” you interact with even knows their head from a hole in the ground. I had a recent experience with an ENT (at least that is what he represented himself to be) who misdiagnosed my ear infection for just ear wax. Saw him three times in the course of 30 days and the diagnosis was the same each time. On the third visit I was discussing with him about having a cough, congestion and runny nose and could any of that be affecting what I was experiencing with my ears. He said (and this is the Gods honest truth) that whatever was happening with my sinuses had no affect on my ears. What a revelation that his specialty was just three random body parts strung together and were not connected with each other in any way.
Needless to say I never returned to him. My best case take on him is that he just wanted to add me to his recurring revenue stream and take my co pay. Worse case, he’s a total quack.
The problem is that as a lay person it’s hard to know the ins and outs of any profession. And even the best doctors don’t get it right 100% of the time. Your case sounds pretty basic, as in any doctor with the faintest knowledge of basic primary care should have had some reasonable idea of possible causes including an ear infection , so I’m not sure what that person was thinking. Getting a Medicare card is a good idea, especially if you have a catastrophic illness. That doesn’t mean you are obligated to use Medicare for everything. You can still pay for stuff out of pocket. I’m not affiliated with Medicare. I tell patients who are Medicare age with certain conditions in the interests of full disclosure that
I’m not a Medicare registered doctor but their condition might be covered, in case they want to go somewhere else and go that route.
The problem with alternative medicine is that a lot of it is nonsense, not all of it, but a lot of it. And it’s hard to parse the data when it exists. But on the other hand, much of mainstream medicine is incorrect as well, as we are seeing with Covid management and in other areas.
If you have questions, ask your doctor. Just be nice. Most of us want to help our patients. You can always get a second opinion if you don’t feel comfortable with the answers.
On the other hand, I’ve recently had patients with life threatening malignancies tell me I had no idea what I was talking about after I had a biopsy report confirming the suspected diagnosis , and refusing referral to an oncologist. Oncologists tell me they get this frequently, and people with treatable lesions and potential long term survival refusing treatment. This is one of the very deleterious side effects of the low trust environment we are living in.
Yes sir, agree completely. Fortunately my wife was able to get connected with a world renowned MD from Europe who pursued homeopathy as a sub specialty. He was our alternative primary care physician for 25+ years. We had the best of both worlds. His first go to for treatment was homeopathy but would also prescribe antibiotics as necessary depending on the situation.
Yes. It would be desirable to implement an alternative parallel economy not subject to political whim. That may not be possible within the United States.
I'm a librarian, go ahead and ask me about ideological capture in my profession. But before you do, I and my few like-minded colleagues have to attend to our cellar samizdat printing press and HAM radio in our isolated cabin in Northern Ontario in order to question placing Blow-Job How To Books in the kids' section of the library. Be right back...
I hear you. I recently retired from a Library system in southern AZ. Full woke, anti-racist bullshit, indoctrinated staff (with a few exceptions) run by a peak white liberal female administration. I raised my voice a number of times, didn't do much good, people are happily complying with the tenets of the new religion. So glad I am not working there anymore and I am a gay guy btw.
The local library staff is still 75% masked in my town in northern NJ. At this point, I think it's less about "keeping safe" (managing untreated anxiety disorders) than it is showing loyalty to a worldview. You know, like an armband.
I feel this on a visceral level and in a so-called deep red state. 🙄 I am eternally thankful for the exactly two colleagues I have here who keep me semi-sane. One of them turned me on to Arlene Quaratiello's No Shushing Now Substack recently. Highly recommend for some library commentary minus the gag reflex, if you're not already familiar.
I’ve seen the ideological capture firsthand at the local library some of my grandkids use. The displays of suggested books to read are often truly awful. Likewise what can pop-up doing a computer search under innocuous words such as cheerleading. My 7 year old granddaughter has gone to a cheer camp the last 2 summers so I thought we’d try to find her a book about that she could enjoy reading. The first hit was some book about a transgender “girl” and her battle to find acceptance.
You’ll have to go to a used bookstore and find pre-2000 books for children. My kids are pretty old and even we had to do that. Our moms had saved a bunch of Weekly Reader books so we had those, too.
Just subscribed. have 3 children under 12, and this has been on my mind -- all of mine are voracious readers. I'm almost at the point of banning any book from the house published after 1970.
Don't blame you a bit. You'd think that keeping kids' noses out of phones and in books would be a better play these days but you'd be wrong. Here's an example of the kind of fare offered to 8 year olds:
Now do the library world's behavior during covid. I tried to put up with it for a year, then I just couldn't work for the public library system anymore. I lost even basic respect for all the people. They made their supposedly noble mission to help people and get them free information look like a sick joke.
Commissar archipelago. Mengele would be proud of modern American doctors. I wouldn’t trust my life with anyone who went to med school over the past decade.
As renowned ICU Dr Paul Marik of the FLCCC now recommends “stay away from the hospital”. Because he is a critical thinking individual that was destroyed by AMA for treating individuals w/covid he’s now acutely aware that the entire medical industry - medical schools, research, professional organizations, etc etc are fraudulent & owned by big pharma. Next on the list is big food.
The recent Tucker interview with Dr. Kory also of flccc was excellent. The doctor is a good & honest communicator who’s been on the same awakening journey the last 4 years as most of us. A real fighter.
I’ve been in health care a long time. Things really started to change when residency programs restructured the work week so no one worked more than 40 hours. There was such a line in the sand between the surgeons I worked with who worked crazy long hours and those who never saw an hour of overtime. I know it’s anecdotal, but the MD’s that were pampered were not dependable and would cancel a case because they had a hang nail.
You can’t be a surgeon if you can’t work when you are tired. Sure there’s a limit, but the reality is if you limit somebody to a 60 hour work week with time limited shifts as a resident, what are they going to do in the real world where they may have to work straight through the night and keep their schedule the next day? The data justifying this stuff was misinterpreted and emanated in large part from the Libby Zion case.
The learning curve has shifted because of the rules that were implemented because of this case. A lot of docs finishing residency are 1-2 years behind where their more exhausted, but more experienced predecessors were at the same juncture.
Remembering friends who watched their three year-old's face droop on one side while she was sitting at the dinner table. Ambulance, ER, MRI, diagnosis of a tumor shutting off the blood supply to her brain. The neurosurgeon drove in at two o'clock in the morning. "But I'm too tiiiiired!"
There were several times as a resident that I didn’t go home for 2-3 days. On the vascular service as an intern I spent 5 days at the hospital because we had ruptured aortas come in every night for 4 nights consecutively. When you’re 26 you can do that stuff.
The one silver lining for me since Covid is the way I have taken charge of my own healthcare. We have forgotten the tradition, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I would add one other observation we can now make; doctors do not provide healthcare, they provide MEDICAL care, which is not the same thing.
There is a reason people complain they rarely ask about diet, sleep, water consumption and all the rest. Improving Vitamin D levels would have mitigated much of the supposed threat of Covid or any other respiratory virus, to give just one inexpensive example most seem ignorant about.
"There is a reason people complain they rarely ask about diet, sleep, water consumption and all the rest."
Because people are rarely willing to change these things. If they were, the Western world would not be experiencing 70+% of the population being overweight or obese.
They know that you are unlikely to eat three cups of vegies a day, switch off your smartphone and go to bed with a book, to drink a glass of water with every meal and go for a 30-60' walk every day. So they just shrug sadly and prescribe you metformim or a statin - they know you'll probably take a pill, at least.
The 2023 Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt is a "fat positivity" advocate, and the conversation in the media is whether doctors should even bring up the topic of weight.
The essence of it is that the person knows they're a fat slob, they know it's their fault, and they don't want to confront that. So if the doctor brings it up, they leave and go to another doctor who'll prescribe them a pill.
Neither the various medical associations, the media nor society generally will back up a doctor who tells people to lose weight.
I get all that. But that is a failure of the medical fraternity. There is sound scientific fact behind the advice to lose weight. The links just demonstrate this is not a system that can survive. We saw that through Covid. The medical professionals were beyond parody and are losing their place in society.
The British Medical Association now views racism as one of the biggest public health threats. More important than rising obesity. An absolute farce and we must call them out every time they make these kind of announcements.
It is not a failure of the medical fraternity if people are unwilling to take their advice. Doctors are not holding you down and forcing Twinkies down your gaping drooling maw, nor are they appearing at your door to stop you going out for a walk.
Things like overprescription of antibiotics leading to resistance bacteria, and overprescription of opioids leading to addiction, and iatrogenic deaths due to misdiagnosis and unnecessary procedures, these can all be blamed on medical types.
But it's not their fault if you're a fat bastard. It's yours.
My feeling to a “T.” My friend is a retired anesthesiologist and he says that the pediatric med school education just keeps moving farther and farther left. They all want their disgusting tentacles on our kids. And the children’s books out there! Fiendish librarian nailed it.
American hospitals were the "killing fields" of 2020-2023, and some still haven't admitted their error. Mostly it's follow the money, but many docs and nurses are ideologically and morally corrupt with no clue about the nature of science. They were taught to be mind-numb robots spewing a certain brand of medical knowledge (again, follow the money). Unfortunately, many run-of-the-mill Americans have been gaslighted (gaslit ?), even most of my conservative Christian friends and family. There are glimmers of light that will cleanse this epidemic of insanity , but we are in a sad, and evil, state of affairs.
Bingo. Hospitals are run by administrators and not doctors. Focus is on the bottom line and not quality healthcare. The federal government financially incentivized the hospitals to treat “Covid” patients and the more extreme treatment (can you say ventilator?) the higher the payout.
Yes, you nailed it. The level of ignorance and corruption is astounding, but don't forget the lawyers and judges who are complicit in not allowing families the "right to try" alternatives such as ivermectin, etc. We are living in a banana republic run by imbeciles. Money & power, says it all.
When I chose my "nom de Substack", Finem Respice, I took its literal meaning as "consider the end", but also as "consider the consequences". Or "what could go wrong?". People choosing the left are literally (i.e. non-pejorative) ignorant, even if they are doctors.
I never took Latin, but there is a Latin phrase (or aphorism) to speak the truth for every situation. E.g. Cui bono? De gustibus non disputandem... etc.
“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.”
― George Orwell
You are seeing a splitting of society. Yes there is a leftest default, and that is bad. But no red pilled person is getting blue pilled, (though opposite is true but very slowly).
As you said in an earlier article, "at some point people stop eating shit." There are die hards, but fewer are clapping and playing along, and fewer with them
It is interesting to go to comedy shows in blue america. Audience is loaded with blue haired liberals, some shows STILL require masks (as a form of lets make sure we got the good people in).
The comedians STILL make un vaccinated jokes, Trump, LBTQ etc. they ALL bomb.)
Wanna hear the joke that got the biggest (but positive) response from liberals?! (out of hundreds, and by far)
"Why do we keep naming teams after Native Americans? It is not like they have a winning record."
There is something in this. I suspect it is fantasy-based versus reality-based.
Those who attend to a fictional model in their head, like Net Zero or absolute equality, don't live in reality. The fiction is too attractive. If they dip into it enough real life with all its warts is much less satisfying.
Like porn addicts who struggle with real women the fantasy is more convenient.
The widespread malpractice committed and endorsed by almost every practicing physician in the country over the last four years was terrible.
But even setting that aside, the collapse of private practice and growth of “health systems” has meant the replacement of good medical treatment with good business models. It isn’t about the patient’s needs or the doctor’s ability, it’s about pre-packaged solutions with a one-size-fits-all approach and pushing as many drugs as they can get away with.
I used to have a lot of respect, admiration and trust in the medical profession. Maybe it was warranted at one time, but it’s completely gone now.
It's so much easier to agree than disagree as so many are apt to do. The deitification of George Floyd and identification with “mostly peaceful” protesters is so easy and even easier to vilify January 6 trespassers, no matter how nonviolent. That’s how many, otherwise rational, folks blindly followed the vilification of the Jews in Germany. The penalty for going against the ruling narrative, in both cases, was and is shunning by your employer, your neighbors and even your “friends”. This is the virus of our time, and it has infected every profession and is promoted by our “venerable” academic and government institutions. Early treatment protocols for Covid are still being denied even after the pandemic is over. Life insurance companies are seeing excess deaths of young people that correlate with “vaccinations” that are more akin to gene therapies. Fasten your seatbelts, because the mind and opinion control will only increase in this critical election year.
‘Attacks On Me, Quite Frankly, Are Attacks On Science’
The possible day credible science and calling yourself a scientist died. That guy is an idiot, a goon. A political hack at best, a tyrant at worst. What's the difference?
Is it just me or did anyone else have an overwhelming urge to kick little Ms "White Coats for Black Lives" right in the gut?
I'm actually surprised the leftist law firm allowed a photo of those high-T SEALS, they are just going to make every other man feel weak and impotent. That is mean.
I even see the leftism at our Veterinary hospitals. Rainbow flags on the doors. Social Media posts by some doctors about COVID & wearing masks (during the lockdowns).
Does this phenomena point to a different human tendency other than true political views? The desire, the need to fit it. To be with the in-crowd. Most of my life the left were the 'disagreeable' types. Protesting, burning flags, yelling unpopular slogans, wearing odd clothes, etc.
Today leftism is SOP. It has gone corporate. Mainstream.
When we look at the Big 5, men are usually more disagreeable than women (don't know the exact stats, but broadly speaking). Since leftism is now mainstream and the surge in 'girl bosses' in all industries does not bode well for a turn in corporate leftism any time in the near future.
I wonder how many other 'SEAL turned lawyer Browns' will pull a John Galt from the corporate life? That may be the only method going forward--to leave the corporate gigs husks of subpar mediocrity employing 90% women.
Precisely this. Importantly what I suspect will happen is the corporate environments will feminize further and be understood as feminine environments. We can rely on the radfems to view this as a win, despite the fact it will alienate the very group corporations need to compete in a non-feminized world i.e. high-T men. They will be elsewhere.
As Camille Paglia reminds the ladies from time to time women are unsuited to hierarchical environments where things need to get done. You can get away with it in talking shops like Congress or the WEF, but not in places where actual goals must be met. As she says, if women had ran the world in the past we would all be living in mud huts.
An absence of men will look like The View except in business suits. Nothing will work, but there will be much noise.
I reject the blanket assertion you make and suspect Paglia would too. She objected to the misandry that labels masculine imperatives bad. It doesn’t follow that all masculine instincts are great and all feminine ones harmful. What if we could combine the best of both worlds instead of the worst? Instead you perpetuate the black and white good/bad thinking that got us into this fix.
I'm not sure I agree with this at all. Many corporate environments are being adapted to accommodate women exclusively, with no regard for men at all. Many are tired of this pandering and for what? What do we gain except headaches?
There is no combining in the world of commerce; no best of both worlds. Kill or be killed. The previous formulation worked so well they had to abuse the legal system to change it to get more women in. The rest of the world isn't bothering and will take us to the cleaners.
Kill or be killed is not a model for civilization. It isn’t even a good model for business. It produces people like Mitt Romney who kill viable concerns and feed off the carcasses because there’s more profit that way. Civilization requires agreements between people that can be honored or enforced when not. Win win arrangements are better than kill or be killed. I don’t think the bleeding edge of masculinity is any less harmful than capture by female sensibility. Your argument basically amounts to excessive femininity bad, excessive masculinity good. Fine for you maybe but not the world I want. And I’d venture to guess than there are many men and many women who don’t resemble your caricature.
We are discussing corporate environments. Known for their ruthlessness. Not civilization in general. Civilization does indeed benefit from balance, and one way is to let men be men and women be women, for them to embrace a complimentary balance, like a marriage for instance.
But in commerce, in capitalism, it is dog eat dog. And that requires certain qualities to compete, such as competitive hierarchies men excel at. As noted, the rest of the world is catching up and it isn't running job quotas for women.
I almost wrote 'in the junk', but didn't want to fully display my unhinged disdain for these types. I remember this time of the year. Two weeks prior to Floyd these same clowns would have said you're killing Grandma to assemble outside. Still makes my blood boil 4 years later.
About hospitals, i've seen one of the most respected doctors get fired from the best hospital in my country for disagreeing that covid was serious. I'm glad the guy had a lot of savings from his 25 year long career. Imagine 25 years as a clinician at a top hospital and you're fired over your professional opinion because it doesn't signal the "correct politics". They don't want competence, they want loyalty to the their lunacy.
It will come a point when they will realize they can't have both.
Apparently, the famous Flexner Report, written in 1910 and sponsored by Carnegie and Rockefeller, viewed the medical system, doctors, as political and societal tools. Respected authority figures to influence the "underlings" who sought their help. The aim even back then was technocracy, a centralized system to lead eventually to a world government.
If all of these fields are captured or bullied into submission, doctors, lawyers, teachers, unions, academia, big business, 99% of uni-party government reps and civil servants, entertainment, art,
that just makes us who are out of the cool kids group that much more courageous and our responsibility to defend what is true, right and honorable that much more important..
Woke leftism doesnt just take over hospitals and law firms. It’s taking over engineering, too. Projects which I worked on years ago which would be overseen by a competent municipal manager with a reasonable budget, are now directed by young (mostly) female activists, and these people don’t know what “budget” means. That is, until they go to the bank and get denied for loans. Then they simply turn to the taxpayer with massive municipal tax increases, because problems are only ever solved with more money, and more government management. This is all so they can pay tributes to their gods of “climate change” and “circular economies” and “zero waste”, which make up massive proportions of project cost and provide zero taxpayer benefit. But it does give all the young Mao’ists the warm and fuzzies down in their tummies.
Why I have dumped allopathic docs and am attended to by an Integrated now. Since starting this path 2 years ago, my osteoporosis scans have improved by 40% and my cholesterol is "exceptionally healthy" for the first time since my 20s (I am now 60).
This issue is a problem. Chris is correct about the dichotomization that occurred with the structural economic and regulatory changes that have taken place in healthcare since the introduction of Medicare. There are a goodly number of books about healthcare economics from dissenting voices including Scott Atlas, MD and others, but the gist of the issue is that since the 1960's and the injection of government payment into the healthcare equation, there has been progressive consolidation in allopathic ( meaning not alternative) healthcare in terms of corporate takeovers and buyouts and the inevitable enmeshment of the government agencies with the big corporations - hospital systems, health care insurers, big pharma. This has been no accident. Those of us who can recall the 1990's, besides parachute pants, remember Hillary's ill fated attempt at Hillary Care, which was basically what Obama got done with a questionable assist from the SCOTUS to enact Obamacare. The goal at one level is consolidate and incentivize the industry into a manageable ( for the government ) number of large players through regulatory and financial mechanisms. While they tell you they want to save you money, they don't really care about costs. They keep going up rapidly. And after all it's not their money. It's your money. So the cost savings argument made by the socialized medicine crowd is a misdirection play. At that point, you can do many things to the industry. You can mandate behavioral changes through carrots and mostly sticks. If a doctor rolls his eyes or sighs because a nurse or somebody at the corporate healthcare facilty screws up, and that doctor is a little too independent, they can force him/her into disciplinary proceedings. There is a draconian process with very little if any due process. If they want to make your life miserable, they can do it. The process is the punishment. So the doctors are disincentivized from sticking up for themselves or their patients when it conflicts with the corporation's objectives. They have them by the short hairs. We have also seen the state medical boards and specialty certification boards bully doctors during COVID for standing up for truth in science and questioning the dominant narrative. Thus we end up with a semi-seamless integration between the government and big healthcare. The formula is pretty simple. They buy off the big guys and they punish the small guys. In this way healthcare was a canary in the coalmine for other sectors of the economy.
So the corporate and academic physicians who are employed by large systems and incentivized financially and in other ways by the systems adopt the ideology promulgated by the system. If they don't, they keep their mouth shut. Failing that, they get the message to quit or get fired for being a pimple on the ass of the hospital system. This is identical to the big corporate law firms, and academia in general.
So in private practice where I live, many docs are conservatives. But we are a minority. It's uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, because even if we are not employees, we are subject to hospital bylaws and threats from government and insurance companies. There are plenty of levers that these entities can pull if they want to which will drop you in the shit. This is a significant reason for me to practice with as little exposure to the system as possible.
Just like many lay people I talk to, I no longer trust many of my colleagues to do the right thing under duress. I no longer trust the results of a lot of research that has come out or the pharmaceutical industry, or the orthodox medical structure ( although I've thought them to be a bunch of ponces for as long as I can remember). Medical schools are indoctrinating DEI crap into the students. And the schools absolutely do not want original thinkers. They want to produce a uniform product. It's a scary situation. The political evolution and capture of US healthcare is shameful because it has resulted in dead and injured patients, and a total DISREGARD for real science and independent inquiry. On the patient side, suffice it to say that you need to be your own advocate. The other massive problem is that the cost structure, again like everything the Feds do, is totally unsustainable. It's ridiculously expensive to get sick or buy medications. The system will collapse at some point. I don't know when, but it's not possible to continue like this. We either end up like Canada or the UK, which suck btw, and go broke more slowly while denying care, or go bankrupt. Cash pay, which seems anachronistic, may turn out to be the most efficient and honest way to buy healthcare. Everything is transparent and if a genuine marketplace emerges, costs would come down. Don't hold your breath.
"Cash pay, which seems anachronistic, may turn out to be the most efficient and honest way to buy healthcare."
Have been doing as much of this as possible.
It's how we buy other things. We know the price before we buy it and agree to it. If we don't want to buy it for whatever reason, we don't buy it. Healthcare should work the same way.
Knowing the price is something corporate/government medicine doesn’t want you to know.
I’m having some thyroid issues and had to get some biopsies done the other day. Not one person in the office could tell me what the cost for all this is going to be. They’ve signs up that copay, deductibles etc. are due at the time of service, but they just let me waltz out the door without paying anything or saying bupkis, despite my asking. I did double check again that they are an in-network provider and was told I wouldn’t even have been scheduled for all the latest round of fun if I wasn’t. Somehow I’m not reassured.
Is anyone else running into this new way of trying to squeeze more out of you now, which has already happened to me and my husband and our daughter? You go to place for a procedure/exam/scan, what have you, and find out AFTERWARDS via your insurance company that so and so, who worked on you or did at least part of the procedure is NOT in the network and so you owe extra money for what they did.
How in the holy hell am I supposed to know that ahead of time? And why isn’t everyone working at AT an in-network office or hospital or clinic by default in-network as well? I’m old enough to know this was not something that in days past ever used to happen. But it would appear to be a growing issue.
So we’re supposed to quiz the anesthesiologists and technicians and lab people as to their status with our insurance? I’ve asked ahead of time before and never have I gotten a straight answer as the people doing stuff in a medical setting seem to themselves be ignorant of their own in or out of network status. They’re just doing their job.
This same Endocrinolgy office has a lab in-house, but no one at their front office could tell me if their lab is in or out of network. We’ve been caught in that trap before too. My insurance company couldn’t answer this question either. I was actually told the only way to know was get the labs done there and see what the bill/EOB came back with.
It’s a suckers game and the customer is piggy in the middle all the time.
Correct. It’s frustrating, and nobody that you interface with usually knows the answer. The doctors usually don’t know because they hand it off to their billing company. It’s analogous to buying a car and the dealership saying we don’t know how much the car costs today, but drive it home and we’ll send you a bill in six weeks ( or six months!).
Usually( but not always) the doctor’s office manager will know how whatever common procedure’s billing will work out for a given insurance company, if you can get to talk to them ahead of time. But the root of the problem is the insurance company that makes it as hard as possible for the doctor to get paid, and the hospital systems that bill absurd amounts for the use of their facilities.
In the cash world you just get a hard price and pay the bill. Some people can do that. Most can’t. In my own situation buying insurance, the insurance for the family costs me $25K for the year. We have a high deductible so a lot of the minor stuff comes out of that and the whole thing feels like a giant rip off. If I had a crystal ball and knew no disasters were coming, or was rich enough to self-insure(a nice racket if you do it right) I wouldn’t buy insurance. Because I could invest all that money and make a lot more, which could then go back into the economy from my account rather than from the insurance company’s CEO’s account.
Thanks for the response. I’m just so frustrated right now. When you’re anxious over the outcome of biopsies to begin with, the last thing you want to be stressing over is the “surprise!” mystery bill I suspect we will be getting. In a better world none of this would be the tangled mess it is. I hope you’ll be able to find a way forward for a better outcome with your insurance needs.
I don’t know how they did your biopsy. Most thyroid lesions will get a needle biopsy under local anesthesia with ultrasound guidance. Shouldn’t be ultra -expensive, but your definition of expensive and kind may differ. Some may require an open biopsy. The “good news” about thyroid lesions is that most biopsies are benign. And if they aren’t benign, most thyroid cancers do not prove life threatening and can be removed. There are exceptions to what I just wrote and bad lesions.
Yes. Concierge medicine; a very good idea.
Concierge medicine is often cheaper than insured bc cash docs don’t have to hire billing companies, people to negotiate with insurance & Medicare, people to help patients navigate insurance issues, etc. A couple of my friends have gone cash-only and it’s great. Some have money pools for the indigent. You just have to ask.
How does one find these type of practices? I’ve tried on my own before and not had much success. I did find one place in the big sprawling suburban area we live in now after exiting CA, and they only took patients under 65.
NanaW, I am a doctor myself and don’t know how to find them. (I mainly avoid going to the doctor.) It’s word of mouth around here. One day a colleague will come in and announce he’s going cash only. Next thing you know the practice is filled up!
One problem with finding a non-employed doctor is that the current pool of doctors isn’t very enterprising or creative, and can’t run a business. It’s better that way for The System.
If you can find a concierge doc, they don’t have to comply with government electronic health records regulations so your information isn’t mined by big health systems. They also (coming soon!!) won’t have to lecture you about climate change and DEI. I’m not kidding, the current medical literature suggests that that is coming down the pipeline.
Thank you again for the helpful tips. I’ll have to see if my daughter-in-law or sister-in-law knows of anyone out here that isn’t part of the beast system medical care. I don’t even know if we could afford concierge care. But I’d like some options for sure.
I do my best to avoid doctor visits myself. But they won’t even refill some prescriptions I’ve been taking for years without a visit at least annually since we moved and had to start from scratch trying to even find replacements for all those I actually trusted because they took care of me long before the madness ramped up. God only knows what things may look like down the road. I imagine you won’t be able to get care if you haven’t been a good little slave of the state. You’ve a lot of fortitude to be able to stick it out as a doctor yourself.
Can’t wait to be lectured to by wet behind the ears leftist apparatchiks!
Yes, Concierge medicine, but also you can also buy lab tests, radiology studies, surgical services , medications. And often get a much better price than if it goes through insurance.
Where does one find such services?
Your comment disappeared. Dang it
When I post from my phone I frequently fat finger it and need to edit. The only way to do it via phone if I miss an error is to copy the post, delete it and repost it corrected.
Generally speaking practices and hospitals will give you a cash self pay price if you ask them for it. You may be able to negotiate as well. It’s usually a lot less than the insurance price. If they know you have insurance they will try to get you to go that route because it’s often more lucrative for them, but not always. So you may not want to tell them you have insurance when you start shopping around. You aren’t legally obligated to use your insurance for services. It’s very common to be able to get radiology studies for discounted cash prices at outpatient imaging centers. Of course you need to know the exact type of study you want to get, so usually your doctor has to be involved as you will need an order for the study. Labs are also providing self pay pricing for common lab studies on their website sites, like quest for example. As noted above in another post, concierge medical practices don’t take insurance for services. You basically put the doctor on a self pay retainer. Hope that answers your question.
Thx buddy. Good stuff
Nothing like saying I got cash, now, right here.
“be your own advocate”. YES! Fortunately I have a spouse who questions and researches everything and has been deeply involved with “alternative” medicine since 1994 after many failed encounters with the system for one of our children.
I will turn 65 in May and have been amazed (sadly to say) how efficient the system has been in working to get me transitioned to Medicare (who says there isn’t efficiency in healthcare, lol). I am hoping to stay out of the system for as long as possible.
Sadly, one can no longer assume that the “medical professional” you interact with even knows their head from a hole in the ground. I had a recent experience with an ENT (at least that is what he represented himself to be) who misdiagnosed my ear infection for just ear wax. Saw him three times in the course of 30 days and the diagnosis was the same each time. On the third visit I was discussing with him about having a cough, congestion and runny nose and could any of that be affecting what I was experiencing with my ears. He said (and this is the Gods honest truth) that whatever was happening with my sinuses had no affect on my ears. What a revelation that his specialty was just three random body parts strung together and were not connected with each other in any way.
Needless to say I never returned to him. My best case take on him is that he just wanted to add me to his recurring revenue stream and take my co pay. Worse case, he’s a total quack.
The problem is that as a lay person it’s hard to know the ins and outs of any profession. And even the best doctors don’t get it right 100% of the time. Your case sounds pretty basic, as in any doctor with the faintest knowledge of basic primary care should have had some reasonable idea of possible causes including an ear infection , so I’m not sure what that person was thinking. Getting a Medicare card is a good idea, especially if you have a catastrophic illness. That doesn’t mean you are obligated to use Medicare for everything. You can still pay for stuff out of pocket. I’m not affiliated with Medicare. I tell patients who are Medicare age with certain conditions in the interests of full disclosure that
I’m not a Medicare registered doctor but their condition might be covered, in case they want to go somewhere else and go that route.
The problem with alternative medicine is that a lot of it is nonsense, not all of it, but a lot of it. And it’s hard to parse the data when it exists. But on the other hand, much of mainstream medicine is incorrect as well, as we are seeing with Covid management and in other areas.
If you have questions, ask your doctor. Just be nice. Most of us want to help our patients. You can always get a second opinion if you don’t feel comfortable with the answers.
On the other hand, I’ve recently had patients with life threatening malignancies tell me I had no idea what I was talking about after I had a biopsy report confirming the suspected diagnosis , and refusing referral to an oncologist. Oncologists tell me they get this frequently, and people with treatable lesions and potential long term survival refusing treatment. This is one of the very deleterious side effects of the low trust environment we are living in.
Yes sir, agree completely. Fortunately my wife was able to get connected with a world renowned MD from Europe who pursued homeopathy as a sub specialty. He was our alternative primary care physician for 25+ years. We had the best of both worlds. His first go to for treatment was homeopathy but would also prescribe antibiotics as necessary depending on the situation.
Yes. It would be desirable to implement an alternative parallel economy not subject to political whim. That may not be possible within the United States.
I'm a librarian, go ahead and ask me about ideological capture in my profession. But before you do, I and my few like-minded colleagues have to attend to our cellar samizdat printing press and HAM radio in our isolated cabin in Northern Ontario in order to question placing Blow-Job How To Books in the kids' section of the library. Be right back...
I hear you. I recently retired from a Library system in southern AZ. Full woke, anti-racist bullshit, indoctrinated staff (with a few exceptions) run by a peak white liberal female administration. I raised my voice a number of times, didn't do much good, people are happily complying with the tenets of the new religion. So glad I am not working there anymore and I am a gay guy btw.
I feel you, fiendish.
Dittos.
The local library staff is still 75% masked in my town in northern NJ. At this point, I think it's less about "keeping safe" (managing untreated anxiety disorders) than it is showing loyalty to a worldview. You know, like an armband.
I feel this on a visceral level and in a so-called deep red state. 🙄 I am eternally thankful for the exactly two colleagues I have here who keep me semi-sane. One of them turned me on to Arlene Quaratiello's No Shushing Now Substack recently. Highly recommend for some library commentary minus the gag reflex, if you're not already familiar.
I’ve seen the ideological capture firsthand at the local library some of my grandkids use. The displays of suggested books to read are often truly awful. Likewise what can pop-up doing a computer search under innocuous words such as cheerleading. My 7 year old granddaughter has gone to a cheer camp the last 2 summers so I thought we’d try to find her a book about that she could enjoy reading. The first hit was some book about a transgender “girl” and her battle to find acceptance.
We left without any cheer that day.
You’ll have to go to a used bookstore and find pre-2000 books for children. My kids are pretty old and even we had to do that. Our moms had saved a bunch of Weekly Reader books so we had those, too.
A good friend of mine started a Substack recently for this very reason. Give it a follow!
https://open.substack.com/pub/awakenedreviews/p/why-im-reviewing-juvenile-fiction?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=l72y0
Just subscribed. have 3 children under 12, and this has been on my mind -- all of mine are voracious readers. I'm almost at the point of banning any book from the house published after 1970.
Don't blame you a bit. You'd think that keeping kids' noses out of phones and in books would be a better play these days but you'd be wrong. Here's an example of the kind of fare offered to 8 year olds:
https://www.amazon.com/Camp-QUILTBAG-Nicole-Melleby/dp/1643752669
With a little reader engagement, her Substack could be something of a clearinghouse. Doesn't have to be all on her.
Will check it out. Thanks for the link!
Now do the library world's behavior during covid. I tried to put up with it for a year, then I just couldn't work for the public library system anymore. I lost even basic respect for all the people. They made their supposedly noble mission to help people and get them free information look like a sick joke.
Commissar archipelago. Mengele would be proud of modern American doctors. I wouldn’t trust my life with anyone who went to med school over the past decade.
As renowned ICU Dr Paul Marik of the FLCCC now recommends “stay away from the hospital”. Because he is a critical thinking individual that was destroyed by AMA for treating individuals w/covid he’s now acutely aware that the entire medical industry - medical schools, research, professional organizations, etc etc are fraudulent & owned by big pharma. Next on the list is big food.
The recent Tucker interview with Dr. Kory also of flccc was excellent. The doctor is a good & honest communicator who’s been on the same awakening journey the last 4 years as most of us. A real fighter.
Blechh if anyone knows about the dangers of staying in a hospital, it’s certainly the ICU guy
Btw very few physicians are actually members of the AMA
Hospitals are no place for sick people. Very dangerous!
Yes but they call the shots & can go after your medical license.
Foreign doctors still attend medical schools with academic standards and no DEI. There are plenty of them in the US of A.
Had surgery recently and was very glad to see my surgeon was trained in Israel.
I’ve been in health care a long time. Things really started to change when residency programs restructured the work week so no one worked more than 40 hours. There was such a line in the sand between the surgeons I worked with who worked crazy long hours and those who never saw an hour of overtime. I know it’s anecdotal, but the MD’s that were pampered were not dependable and would cancel a case because they had a hang nail.
You can’t be a surgeon if you can’t work when you are tired. Sure there’s a limit, but the reality is if you limit somebody to a 60 hour work week with time limited shifts as a resident, what are they going to do in the real world where they may have to work straight through the night and keep their schedule the next day? The data justifying this stuff was misinterpreted and emanated in large part from the Libby Zion case.
https://conciergemedicinemd.com/october-4-1984-libby-zion-the-day-medicine-changed-forever/
The learning curve has shifted because of the rules that were implemented because of this case. A lot of docs finishing residency are 1-2 years behind where their more exhausted, but more experienced predecessors were at the same juncture.
Remembering friends who watched their three year-old's face droop on one side while she was sitting at the dinner table. Ambulance, ER, MRI, diagnosis of a tumor shutting off the blood supply to her brain. The neurosurgeon drove in at two o'clock in the morning. "But I'm too tiiiiired!"
I hope the kid did ok.
There were several times as a resident that I didn’t go home for 2-3 days. On the vascular service as an intern I spent 5 days at the hospital because we had ruptured aortas come in every night for 4 nights consecutively. When you’re 26 you can do that stuff.
Haven't heard from them in a while, but last I heard she was healthy and happy.
The one silver lining for me since Covid is the way I have taken charge of my own healthcare. We have forgotten the tradition, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I would add one other observation we can now make; doctors do not provide healthcare, they provide MEDICAL care, which is not the same thing.
There is a reason people complain they rarely ask about diet, sleep, water consumption and all the rest. Improving Vitamin D levels would have mitigated much of the supposed threat of Covid or any other respiratory virus, to give just one inexpensive example most seem ignorant about.
"There is a reason people complain they rarely ask about diet, sleep, water consumption and all the rest."
Because people are rarely willing to change these things. If they were, the Western world would not be experiencing 70+% of the population being overweight or obese.
They know that you are unlikely to eat three cups of vegies a day, switch off your smartphone and go to bed with a book, to drink a glass of water with every meal and go for a 30-60' walk every day. So they just shrug sadly and prescribe you metformim or a statin - they know you'll probably take a pill, at least.
I'm sure many are lazy. But the doctors are little better. Their job is to examine the problem and few do.
The 2023 Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt is a "fat positivity" advocate, and the conversation in the media is whether doctors should even bring up the topic of weight.
The essence of it is that the person knows they're a fat slob, they know it's their fault, and they don't want to confront that. So if the doctor brings it up, they leave and go to another doctor who'll prescribe them a pill.
Neither the various medical associations, the media nor society generally will back up a doctor who tells people to lose weight.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-14/should-gps-bring-up-a-patients-weight-in-consultations/102598856
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/10/obese-patients-weight-shamed-doctors-nurses
https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/fat-shaming-by-doctors-family-classmates-global-health-problem-studies/7e7779c5-de45-49b0-aeee-a47cd6305c6b
https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/health-impacts-of-weight-stigma-and-fatphobia/11728522
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-11/fat-stigma-australia-discrimination-laws-and-health-campaigns/8697572
I get all that. But that is a failure of the medical fraternity. There is sound scientific fact behind the advice to lose weight. The links just demonstrate this is not a system that can survive. We saw that through Covid. The medical professionals were beyond parody and are losing their place in society.
The British Medical Association now views racism as one of the biggest public health threats. More important than rising obesity. An absolute farce and we must call them out every time they make these kind of announcements.
It is not a failure of the medical fraternity if people are unwilling to take their advice. Doctors are not holding you down and forcing Twinkies down your gaping drooling maw, nor are they appearing at your door to stop you going out for a walk.
Things like overprescription of antibiotics leading to resistance bacteria, and overprescription of opioids leading to addiction, and iatrogenic deaths due to misdiagnosis and unnecessary procedures, these can all be blamed on medical types.
But it's not their fault if you're a fat bastard. It's yours.
Obesity was one of the top, if not leading, co morbidity conditions during the C19 scam.
You know, "Commissar Archipelago" is a pretty good title for a "Survivor"-type show.
My feeling to a “T.” My friend is a retired anesthesiologist and he says that the pediatric med school education just keeps moving farther and farther left. They all want their disgusting tentacles on our kids. And the children’s books out there! Fiendish librarian nailed it.
American hospitals were the "killing fields" of 2020-2023, and some still haven't admitted their error. Mostly it's follow the money, but many docs and nurses are ideologically and morally corrupt with no clue about the nature of science. They were taught to be mind-numb robots spewing a certain brand of medical knowledge (again, follow the money). Unfortunately, many run-of-the-mill Americans have been gaslighted (gaslit ?), even most of my conservative Christian friends and family. There are glimmers of light that will cleanse this epidemic of insanity , but we are in a sad, and evil, state of affairs.
Bingo. Hospitals are run by administrators and not doctors. Focus is on the bottom line and not quality healthcare. The federal government financially incentivized the hospitals to treat “Covid” patients and the more extreme treatment (can you say ventilator?) the higher the payout.
Yes, you nailed it. The level of ignorance and corruption is astounding, but don't forget the lawyers and judges who are complicit in not allowing families the "right to try" alternatives such as ivermectin, etc. We are living in a banana republic run by imbeciles. Money & power, says it all.
Lots of hands baking the Covid scam cake. But, you know, "they did the best they could"! Evil bastards.
When I chose my "nom de Substack", Finem Respice, I took its literal meaning as "consider the end", but also as "consider the consequences". Or "what could go wrong?". People choosing the left are literally (i.e. non-pejorative) ignorant, even if they are doctors.
Clever. I was wondering what the story was behind your handle
I never took Latin, but there is a Latin phrase (or aphorism) to speak the truth for every situation. E.g. Cui bono? De gustibus non disputandem... etc.
Semper ubi sub ubi?
The only thing I remember from high school Latin!
😂
“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.”
― George Orwell
You are seeing a splitting of society. Yes there is a leftest default, and that is bad. But no red pilled person is getting blue pilled, (though opposite is true but very slowly).
As you said in an earlier article, "at some point people stop eating shit." There are die hards, but fewer are clapping and playing along, and fewer with them
It is interesting to go to comedy shows in blue america. Audience is loaded with blue haired liberals, some shows STILL require masks (as a form of lets make sure we got the good people in).
The comedians STILL make un vaccinated jokes, Trump, LBTQ etc. they ALL bomb.)
Wanna hear the joke that got the biggest (but positive) response from liberals?! (out of hundreds, and by far)
"Why do we keep naming teams after Native Americans? It is not like they have a winning record."
You are seeing homosapiens speciation in real time.
TDS is the equivalent of separating old world monkeys by mountains or sea.
There is something in this. I suspect it is fantasy-based versus reality-based.
Those who attend to a fictional model in their head, like Net Zero or absolute equality, don't live in reality. The fiction is too attractive. If they dip into it enough real life with all its warts is much less satisfying.
Like porn addicts who struggle with real women the fantasy is more convenient.
Watch Guttfeld for some comedic sanity.
Funny how these doctors can diagnose looooong covid with any symptoms...but they can't diagnose their own terminal case of looooong TDS.
The reality that it’s really ‘long vax’ & not ‘long COVID’ creating health issues is finally making its way into more msm discussion. https://open.substack.com/pub/merylnass/p/long-vax-breaks-in-to-mainstream?r=nl3ud&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The widespread malpractice committed and endorsed by almost every practicing physician in the country over the last four years was terrible.
But even setting that aside, the collapse of private practice and growth of “health systems” has meant the replacement of good medical treatment with good business models. It isn’t about the patient’s needs or the doctor’s ability, it’s about pre-packaged solutions with a one-size-fits-all approach and pushing as many drugs as they can get away with.
I used to have a lot of respect, admiration and trust in the medical profession. Maybe it was warranted at one time, but it’s completely gone now.
It's so much easier to agree than disagree as so many are apt to do. The deitification of George Floyd and identification with “mostly peaceful” protesters is so easy and even easier to vilify January 6 trespassers, no matter how nonviolent. That’s how many, otherwise rational, folks blindly followed the vilification of the Jews in Germany. The penalty for going against the ruling narrative, in both cases, was and is shunning by your employer, your neighbors and even your “friends”. This is the virus of our time, and it has infected every profession and is promoted by our “venerable” academic and government institutions. Early treatment protocols for Covid are still being denied even after the pandemic is over. Life insurance companies are seeing excess deaths of young people that correlate with “vaccinations” that are more akin to gene therapies. Fasten your seatbelts, because the mind and opinion control will only increase in this critical election year.
But think how toughened we are becoming. I didn't fall for any of it. You probably didn't either. We are immune to their disease.
Agreed and hopefully our numbers are growing
Speaking as a retired cyclotron physicist, let me say this. Never trust the science.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/06/09/fauci-on-gop-criticism-attacks-on-me-quite-frankly-are-attacks-on-science/
‘Attacks On Me, Quite Frankly, Are Attacks On Science’
The possible day credible science and calling yourself a scientist died. That guy is an idiot, a goon. A political hack at best, a tyrant at worst. What's the difference?
Is it just me or did anyone else have an overwhelming urge to kick little Ms "White Coats for Black Lives" right in the gut?
I'm actually surprised the leftist law firm allowed a photo of those high-T SEALS, they are just going to make every other man feel weak and impotent. That is mean.
I even see the leftism at our Veterinary hospitals. Rainbow flags on the doors. Social Media posts by some doctors about COVID & wearing masks (during the lockdowns).
Does this phenomena point to a different human tendency other than true political views? The desire, the need to fit it. To be with the in-crowd. Most of my life the left were the 'disagreeable' types. Protesting, burning flags, yelling unpopular slogans, wearing odd clothes, etc.
Today leftism is SOP. It has gone corporate. Mainstream.
When we look at the Big 5, men are usually more disagreeable than women (don't know the exact stats, but broadly speaking). Since leftism is now mainstream and the surge in 'girl bosses' in all industries does not bode well for a turn in corporate leftism any time in the near future.
I wonder how many other 'SEAL turned lawyer Browns' will pull a John Galt from the corporate life? That may be the only method going forward--to leave the corporate gigs husks of subpar mediocrity employing 90% women.
bsn
Precisely this. Importantly what I suspect will happen is the corporate environments will feminize further and be understood as feminine environments. We can rely on the radfems to view this as a win, despite the fact it will alienate the very group corporations need to compete in a non-feminized world i.e. high-T men. They will be elsewhere.
As Camille Paglia reminds the ladies from time to time women are unsuited to hierarchical environments where things need to get done. You can get away with it in talking shops like Congress or the WEF, but not in places where actual goals must be met. As she says, if women had ran the world in the past we would all be living in mud huts.
An absence of men will look like The View except in business suits. Nothing will work, but there will be much noise.
I reject the blanket assertion you make and suspect Paglia would too. She objected to the misandry that labels masculine imperatives bad. It doesn’t follow that all masculine instincts are great and all feminine ones harmful. What if we could combine the best of both worlds instead of the worst? Instead you perpetuate the black and white good/bad thinking that got us into this fix.
I'm not sure I agree with this at all. Many corporate environments are being adapted to accommodate women exclusively, with no regard for men at all. Many are tired of this pandering and for what? What do we gain except headaches?
There is no combining in the world of commerce; no best of both worlds. Kill or be killed. The previous formulation worked so well they had to abuse the legal system to change it to get more women in. The rest of the world isn't bothering and will take us to the cleaners.
Kill or be killed is not a model for civilization. It isn’t even a good model for business. It produces people like Mitt Romney who kill viable concerns and feed off the carcasses because there’s more profit that way. Civilization requires agreements between people that can be honored or enforced when not. Win win arrangements are better than kill or be killed. I don’t think the bleeding edge of masculinity is any less harmful than capture by female sensibility. Your argument basically amounts to excessive femininity bad, excessive masculinity good. Fine for you maybe but not the world I want. And I’d venture to guess than there are many men and many women who don’t resemble your caricature.
We are discussing corporate environments. Known for their ruthlessness. Not civilization in general. Civilization does indeed benefit from balance, and one way is to let men be men and women be women, for them to embrace a complimentary balance, like a marriage for instance.
But in commerce, in capitalism, it is dog eat dog. And that requires certain qualities to compete, such as competitive hierarchies men excel at. As noted, the rest of the world is catching up and it isn't running job quotas for women.
I was going for a kick just a little lower in the "soft" parts
I almost wrote 'in the junk', but didn't want to fully display my unhinged disdain for these types. I remember this time of the year. Two weeks prior to Floyd these same clowns would have said you're killing Grandma to assemble outside. Still makes my blood boil 4 years later.
bsn
;]
About hospitals, i've seen one of the most respected doctors get fired from the best hospital in my country for disagreeing that covid was serious. I'm glad the guy had a lot of savings from his 25 year long career. Imagine 25 years as a clinician at a top hospital and you're fired over your professional opinion because it doesn't signal the "correct politics". They don't want competence, they want loyalty to the their lunacy.
It will come a point when they will realize they can't have both.
Apparently, the famous Flexner Report, written in 1910 and sponsored by Carnegie and Rockefeller, viewed the medical system, doctors, as political and societal tools. Respected authority figures to influence the "underlings" who sought their help. The aim even back then was technocracy, a centralized system to lead eventually to a world government.
If all of these fields are captured or bullied into submission, doctors, lawyers, teachers, unions, academia, big business, 99% of uni-party government reps and civil servants, entertainment, art,
that just makes us who are out of the cool kids group that much more courageous and our responsibility to defend what is true, right and honorable that much more important..
And that much more loathed by the NPCs.
Woke leftism doesnt just take over hospitals and law firms. It’s taking over engineering, too. Projects which I worked on years ago which would be overseen by a competent municipal manager with a reasonable budget, are now directed by young (mostly) female activists, and these people don’t know what “budget” means. That is, until they go to the bank and get denied for loans. Then they simply turn to the taxpayer with massive municipal tax increases, because problems are only ever solved with more money, and more government management. This is all so they can pay tributes to their gods of “climate change” and “circular economies” and “zero waste”, which make up massive proportions of project cost and provide zero taxpayer benefit. But it does give all the young Mao’ists the warm and fuzzies down in their tummies.
Another VERY GOOD reason for an apple a day...
Why I have dumped allopathic docs and am attended to by an Integrated now. Since starting this path 2 years ago, my osteoporosis scans have improved by 40% and my cholesterol is "exceptionally healthy" for the first time since my 20s (I am now 60).