Health Care Update

A perennial favorite on this blog is the subject of healthcare in the Empire, both because of its potential to bring citizens to financial and physical ruin, as well as its symbolic meaning of the gradual decline of the Imperial US. To this end, the current picture is remarkably unpretty....doctors are now encouraged by insurance companies to report patients omissions, i.e., to spy and tattle on their own patients, the better to report increased quarterly profits by the corporation. To their credit, the doctors are resistant to this violation of doctor/patient privelege, but Chaos must ask, is there really any privacy left, after all? No insurance is obtainable without a complete disrobing and naked display of one's medical conditons, past and present.

On a more abstract note comes this piece on a seemingly simple remedy for many hospital errors, which in turn lead to more sickness and death. Are you ready? It's....a checklist! That's right; some ICU specialist figured out a few years ago that this actually does work. The interesting part comes at the end, when we find out that no, the US is quite resistant to changing this complex system simply because it works (and it flies in the face of the ego-centric doctors' sense of infallibility...) and that some other countries are implementing it with significant results. A lengthy article, but worth the read, for symbolic reasons as well.