I agree with you on the preventitive care. But in reality, nurses, doctors, mechanics are NOT the same thing. I am sure the guy at Mcdonalds works hellish days as well. But if you can see the difference in putting in the effort to recieve a doctorate degree then you are kidding yourself. I am sorry its different. If it wasnt different then my arse really is the same thing as my elbow.
But its not is it. Nor is an RN the same as an MD the same as a mechanic. 👎 Its a choice. It took me a long time to get here. It wasnt about money. I dont care about what nurses make. I care about PCPs getting paid more to make this failing healthcar system work better. And I hate it when people so casually play off like they dont care what they will be making. Wait till we have kids, cars etc. I bet have the yoke heads in this forum spouting off all the overly typical sentiment will end up in plastics or derm. But hey, I dont see anything wrong with that.
You must have completely misinterpreted what I wrote because that is exactly the point I made. I'm a little tired of those physicians, and not even physicians but some medical students that cry about how much more money someone else makes (and wouldn't you know it's always about nurses for some godforsaken reason!) after all the hard years of work and sex slave pay (which yeah, it is-no doubt about it). Those are the market forces at work shuggah, you may as well argue whether pro athletes, or actors, or hell even the Shamwow guy contribute enough hard work and value to justify their incomes. What premed doesn't know how much hard work and expense it is to go down this road? They all know! If there are a few that didn't take a real, hard look at what they are sacrificing for, or consider they may prefer another career which is "easier" and still pays great- sorry, but whose responsibility is that? By then it is too late to complain about the m'fcking nurses or the shamwow guy's income just being a tad too high for their liking. /end rant
Both articles made some good points, but are not proof that preventive medicine costs more than damage control- (the first article gives brief limited second hand data, and the second article has no data) These articles are also written in the context of healthcare reform (highly partisan, highly politicized issue).
For one thing, preventive medicine needs to be clearly defined, as the articles point out many screening tests and treatments are quite expensive, have low yield, and have their own inherent risks.
Interventions/health care practices what have you- including preventive practices are categorized and ranked by how strong the evidence has shown it to be effective/beneficial.
This helps to develop standards of care and cost-benefit analysis.
The second article points to the tendency to "overdiagnose" that is to say give undue significance to possibly benign abnormalities and then go on to "overtreat" with potentially harmful treatments. It is certainly a logical theory but is there any head to head data on patients with the same medical diagnoses, one group getting treated and the other not? There very well may be, but it isn't referred to. We all know how well that went for the syphilis patients in the Tuskeegee study. Ethics puts some limits on how we prove things in medicine, doesn't it?
Another thing to consider is why as a healthcare society are we pressured to overtest, and overtreat? Maybe that root should be identified. Could it be that our motives are often purely to CYA (Cover your ass?). Ah hellz yes. And why do we do that? Because there is that ever present threat of a lawsuit. And that dynamic has its own special story.
In these articles, it would have been nice to see how and which preventive tests/treatments were itemized as well as the figure representing the cost of not providing preventive care and how that is totaled. I wonder if secondary expenses were considered. Sure, a month in the ICU can rack up a million dollars, but what if that person can never return to work? Cha-ching add another item to the government's cost bill because now we have someone else dependent on social security/disability that could have been avoided. What if that person has dependents, cha- ching , cha-ching.... It adds up doesn't it?
Neither of these articles even touched the subject that we offer treatment to people (that is NOT preventive) who have very little chance to benefit from it, and in fact causes significant suffering. Please don't even ask for examples as there are way to many in my experience and is such a backward disheartening aspect of healthcare.
Without going on further....I will say interesting articles to read, but not by far the final word on the subject.