1

When SinglePayerCare is fully implemented we will be microchipped and the chip will communicate our lifesigns to Big Mama via our Obamaphone.

Criswell predicts!

2 Having dived into the fever swamps of Politico/MDNBC/Kos/, et. al,
It is no surprise.

Having friends and co-workers who are Doctors - they are disgusted and truly re-thinking their profession.

3 Next thing you'll be telling me is that choco rations haven't been increased from 30 grammes to 20 grammes...

4 "less one-on-one time with their doctor," My doctor answers email on Sat. nights, diagnosed my pneumonia over the phone, and offers excellent care that way. I don't want to waste 2 hours of my time in a waiting room for every skin rash I have. I bet your brother is one of those guys who doesn't use on-line banking or the ATM "I want a real cashier to talk to dammit!"

5 I didn't mean that as some real dig at your brother, that was supposed to be a joke. Re-reading it, not so sure it was obvious at all.

6 If you follow Karl at market-ticker.org, you know that the single biggest issue is the various market distortions created by government intervention in the medical market which have consistently driven up costs 8-9% for the last three decades. That rate is likely to resume after the doubling or tripling caused by Obamacare.

Not that it can possibly continue. Also, since government spending 'providing' health care has to increase by at least as much just to maintain itself, it will melt everything else down even if bullshit keeps all the other markets afloat for the next decade.

7 Re-reading the last thread, Can we not stop shitting on each other and enjoy what was a good thing just one time?  Rand Paul was excellent and got under the skin of our enemies.

When was the last time a R had some balls like this?

8 If you follow Karl at market-ticker.org, you know that the single biggest issue is... Posted by: Methos Karl Denniger is the wonderful chap that wrote a series of posts cursing the TEA party solely because they didn't suck his cock. I'd note that Denniger is a cockbiting RuPaul fan except for the fact that he doesn't like RuPaul.

9 Your brother's message reads like a junior high girl who got dumped right before the big dance.  It is so overwrought that any message it may have held gets lost in the format. 

10 KBDaBear ‏@kbdabear

#FeatsRandPaulDoes Rand Paul melts drones .. WITH HIS MIND!KBDaBear ‏@kbdabear

11 Thanks for your valuable input, LostHusker. It really advances the conversation.

12 Karl Denniger is the wonderful chap that wrote a series of posts cursing the TEA party solely because they didn't suck his cock.

He and a couple of buddies sent tea bags to congress back during TARP and he has the mistaken notion that the Tea Party rallies sparked by Sanitelli were somehow his baby. So when they turned out to be basically the GOP base, his ego got the best of him. He had rose colored glasses when it came to the occupoopers, too, since they were half right (the banks are in fact screwing us silly) but couldn't acknowledge that they were part of the dems' base (priviliged stupid white college grads). So yeah, he has shortcomings in perceiving people, in that he's too hopeful.

His analysis of the numbers are just straight math. With no mercy given to the idiocy of "what's politically possible." That part of his argument is unassailable.

13 I always like post ONT updates. No offense to the morons, but I have never liked the ONT and it's strange inscestuous groupies.

14 Neat. Since I hate people, this seems good to me. Propaganda notwithstanding.

15 Also: that doctor's shit's fucked up and he throws like a girl.

16 It's funny, I used to be very involved in the field of reverse mortgages. There were nutty liberals telling us all the time that reverse mortgages were just a plot by the Raygun Republicans to make all the old people use up the equity in their houses so the government could cut Social Security and Medicare. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

17
Pimping obamcare without mentioning obamacare, shocking coming from nbc.

18 13 I always like post ONT updates. No offense to the morons, but I have never liked the ONT and it's strange inscestuous groupies. Posted by: Eaton Cox at March 07, 2013 01:26 AM (+wxCD) To each, his own.

19 Rockmom,

Except this guy is hooked up with several companies that stand to profit from this kind of stuff.

Always with the hidden agendas. And if two hidden agendas are mutually beneficial and a willing media is willing to carry your water while failing to diclose your own interests? Well, then there you go.

http://tinyurl.com/b4j5ch3

20 Didn't watch the 9 minutes and couldn't read (make heads or tails of your brothers crap). But if it means I can skype a doc in India for $50 (no insurance claim) for basically the same diagnoses I'm all in since I only will see a NP until I'm dieing here anyways. I have a BP machine,thermometer and scale which is all they do before telling the doc your symptoms.

21 Pimping obamcare without mentioning obamacare, shocking coming from nbc.

Propaganda isn't going to change anyone's insurance bill come the fall.

22 I got 2 minutes into it, heard some old (40+ year) old person trying to inform me about technology and immediately was wondering when she was going to go into a spiel about how incredible the technology behind "Skype" is.

So I didn't read it as propaganda piece but ignorance piece.

Isn't that the same thing anyways?

23 Wheelman,

Not really the same, but I can see how propaganda can seem like ignorance because it's usually full of lies and half-truths.

24 His analysis of the numbers are just straight math. With no mercy given to the idiocy of "what's politically possible." That part of his argument is unassailable. Posted by: Methos If only that was the end of his disparaging of the TEA party movement i'd have little truck with him. "Aber NEIN!" as they say in German. No, he took the time and bandwidth to curse those that turned out to support a movement for smaller government in the streets. One group of average citizens that has supported a greatly reduced role for the Fed Reserve. But no. That's not good enough for Herr Denninger. Sorry. There's a difference between, "Hey, that's what I was saying!" and " FUCK YOU TEABAGGERZZZZ!!!"

25 Implanted medical devices that transmit data are already being looked at for hacking.  Anyway night all.

26 Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 07, 2013 01:53 AM (fMgJk)

I pretty much covered that in the first paragraph.

27 But doctors are mostly useless and stupid. I've fired like eight of them. If you find one that actually listens and doesn't just shunt you off on a statistical standard without checking half of what they need to and warehouse you and hope it all works out, keep 'em. It kind of depends on your condition, of course.

28 google glasses and all kinds of boogeymen!

29 thought we were boycotting NBC. so why am i reading a story linked to nbc news. and a quick shout out to Rand Paul. he knocked it out today, and I loved seeing Cruz, Rubio, and the growing cast of characters watching his back. inspirational, really. i feel slightly less pessimistic about the road ahead.

30

I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.

31 ANY wireless technology is vulnerable to Big Brother oversight. With most medical records now stored digitally, our privacy's screwed anyway if the government really wants to snoop on us.
These little in-office diagnostic tools don't have to grease the slippery slope to totalitarianism. The ones I saw could just as easily dramatically reduce the cost of many diagnoses in a free market. I think the government's market interventions are doing a pretty good job all by themselves of destroying the autonomy and privacy of the doctors and patients.

32 Most of this isn't the app, it's the device attached to the iphone that allows the relevant measurements, the app goes with that.  So, thanks, medical device tax in Obamacare.

33 Pacemakers and internal defibrillators can be controlled wirelessly, with the right software and frequencies. Second look at tinfoil clothing?

34

Good post, Warden. (failure to comply with the NBC boycott notwithstanding).

Too bad that the typical consumer will probably never be sophisticated enough to catch this underhanded propaganda but still worth pointing it out to as many as possible.

35

Well, we need to know what it is that we don’t know. I’ve spent nearly twelve years developing ‘wireless medicine’ and have discovered many things. Doctors do not limit their practice to what they know; had they done so, many doctors would still be prescribing leeches and blood letting.

 

Wireless medicine allows doctors to actually measure the patientÂ’s response to treatment, whether surgical or drug based. Sure, the patient can be dragged into the clinic for hours of measurements, but an implanted wireless device can track physiological responses second by second for days on end.  With animals in cages, they can even track visual recordings synchronized with physiological responses.

 

Then, there are those doctors who spend countless hours analyzing this wireless data and the health of the patients. Is that the same doctor that made the original diagnosis, the surgery or the drug regimen? Eat your heart out; there are only 24 hours in a day.

 

There is no magic here, only workman like performance by many individuals who specialize in particular fields. Want a miracle? Learn how to pray; and you better well be sincere.

 

IÂ’ve been very impressed by the medical communityÂ’s ability to convey information from medicineÂ’s frontier to its frontline practitioners, but I always keep in mind the wide range required for the general practitioner versus the narrow focus of the specialist.

36 Like others, this sword has two edges. These new technologies really do have the potential to empower patients to monitor their own vitals and play a larger role in their own health care; they really can make medicine better and cheaper. They also potentially offer more Big Brother opportunities, but Big Brother has plenty of those already. (Why should wireless medical gadgets be a unique Big Brother risk?) The real scandal is the massive interference of the state with health care. An EKG that was an expensive piece of equipment back in the day can be a cheap gadget these days; your phone is a powerful computer with a high-resolution color display and responsive touchscreen, so you can just use it to analyze and display the EKG data. But the government will regulate and tax anything called a medical device, so these devices will cost more than strictly necessary. And the FDA will cause red tape delays. I read that while health care is getting more expensive, that plastic surgery actually has gotten cheaper over time. I view this as hard evidence that government intervention really does raise the cost of health care. (The high cost of malpractice insurance doesn't help either, but that would apply equally to plastic surgery so it doesn't by itself explain the difference.)

37 Too bad that the typical consumer will probably never be sophisticated enough to catch this underhanded propaganda but still worth pointing it out to as many as possible. Posted by: original signed at March 07, 2013 02:41 AM (3tvCS) This is the larger problem. To even sort of keep up with people try to scam you, you have to make it a lifestyle. And those whom most people trusted to do this job for them, journalists, have utterly betrayed this trust. (This is a "useful simplification," in some cases the trust lies in others, in a few cases the trust has not been betrayed.) It's a thorny one, all right.

38 Is Rand sstill going? If so, he isn't a man...he is a machine! I hope Obama has had his blood pressure spike!

39 Your brother was 100% correct. 

Look at all the PSA's we are get bombarded with every day ... there is always a between the lines agenda favoring the Leftist pov.

Folks go all wobbly over the SPCA (for example), failing to understand it is a 501(c)(3) law enforcement agency (in many states) representing the radical Leftist view of PETA etc.  They use their power to attack average American citizens as well successful farmers and other businesses.

Folks unknowingly give money to the SPCA to bankroll this Leftist organization.

It is a very sophisticated version of Soviet propaganda, so people miss it.  But whether it is breast cancer, tobacco use, DWI/DUI, animals, the environment etc etc etc, it is propaganda.

And the implicit kicker is always the same:  if you raise an objection to the means or to the proportion or to the "facts," then you are in favor breast cancer or cruelty to animals or whatever.

So we absorb the propaganda in silence.

40

I live in liberal land CT and I see it all the time, I learned that over ten years ago when I discovered the media was lying to me on a full time basis.

 

Now when I see a news article my first thought is what ISN'T being told to us? Thank good for the internet as usually I see news days before it shows up in the local paper or idiot box and can compare what is being said to what I saw days ago.

 

Sometimes its stunning, other times subtle but almost always there.

 

41 "thank god" sorry, coffee not kicking yet.

42

I still don't see why everyone is getting all bent out of shape over this. 

I'd like to not prick my finger in order to test my blood sugar every day, and whether the doctor reads it wirelessly or I hand him a booklet with the numbers written down, it's still going into a computer and then to anyone who will give the hospital 10 cents for everyone's data.  I would like to go to the doctor's office and get one bill, and not 7 different bills from the doctor, the doctor's office, several test labs, and some others who seem to be the same people.   As for the doctor being connected to a company that's going to make money off this...good for him and good for the company. And good for his lobbyists who got him his goverment kickback and propaganda fix.

Is Obamacare bad for the country? Yes.  Is this propaganda for Obamacare? Only in the way that any medical story is presented to drive an agenda, but that's every word out of a newsman or politicians mouth.

also...I don't agree with the liar part, but the kook seems to fit.
"The Law of Exclamation
"The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters."
i.e. THIS!!!! is the sign of the liar/kook."

43 You guys missed the obvious. This was a 9-minute advertisement for General Electric, parent company of NBC. Oh, and doctor's aren't required to disclose any financial incentives they may be receiving from General Electric to pimp GE, parent company of NBC.

44 This back handed stuff is why I won't be an organ donor. Either keep me alive and fix what ails me, or let me go. Don't keep me alive just to harvest my organs, and put preservative in my veins to keep me fresh.

45 This was a 9-minute advertisement for General Electric, parent company of NBC. someguy at March 07, 2013 06:23 AM (8XRrT) Ding! Ding! Ding! Thread winner! GE writes a EMR (electronic med records) product. Our group has had a perfectly usable EMR that we created since 1994 (and update as needed). Our EMR however does not fit the "criteria" to be considered an EMR by the government, which has mandated that we purchase and EMR. You know whose EMR fits those criteria? You know who is overrepresented on the government advisory committee that picks the "criteria?" Let me play Jeopardy music while you think about your answer. But government health care is going to fix everything because it's so free of profit motive and all.

46 Meh. In my experience, medical informatics on a large scale is usually about twenty years behind what's possible. I work at two (2) hospitals. I have at least eight passwords for the various electronic record-keeping systems used. None communicate with one another. Even if I were enthused about the possibilities at the forefront of medical technology, such things wouldn't actually get disseminated to rank-and-file physicians within the decade. Warden, let me guess your brother's "single greatest current issue in USA medicine today." 1. The fact that 75% of US health care costs (12% of US GDP, ~$1.8 trillion annually, 150% GDP of continent of Africa) is predicated on patient behavior, most notably tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and obesity, and nothing can really be effectively done about it, either medically (doctors can participate in damage control, but we can't force behavior change so we can't cure the disease) or legislatively. 2. The almost-complete disconnect between 1) the payer for medical services and the receiver of medical services, and 2) the freedom to make choices that adversely affect your health and the responsibility to either pay for the poor outcome, rely on charity (non-federal government) care, or die for free, at no cost to the taxpayer. 3. PPACA (Obamacare) and its untenable bureaucratic mandates driving physicians out of medicine and preventing the smart kids from entering the field in the first place. Am I right? Did I get close?

47 The future of medicine is going to be very automated, very much along the lines of a phone app informing doctors. For example, sleep studies costing $2,000 for an in patient analysis are replaced by an app for less than $200, and the app works every night. The ultrasound and ekg components of this speak to massive cost reductions, and the information remains private between you and your physician until insurance or govt say otherwise, same as if you went to an office for the same test. I think this is a great advance.

BTW, the piece mentioned now Merck had this guy fired because he outed  their toxic drug Vioxx. The enemy, my friends, is big pharma. Read the book, Bad Pharma.

48 What about all the EKG Technicians who will lose their well paying jobs? Are they gonna flip burgers or draw unlimited unemployment after their careers go the way of hemp farming?

49 Went to the dentist yesterday with a broken tooth. The doc said I required a cap as the break was at a critical place. He moved this camera gizmo over the tooth and viola, a color 3D rendition of the tooth appeard on the monitor. He manipulated the pic twice and sent it to the crown fabrication "printer" We walked over to it and it amazingly in 10 minutes a perfect crown was milled out from a block of color matched polymer. He popped it on and it fit like a glove. Time of visit-1.5 hours. In the past, I would have to come back after they made a mold, put on a temporary cap and sent it out to have the crown made. Overall cost was cheaper then the old way.

50 My favorite is the GE ad for electronic medical records that airs during Meet the Press. Little rich child recuperates in a fancy ski chalet, his broken leg successfully treated only because the Aspen emergency room had internet access to his medical records back home in Beverly Hills.

Because, clearly, no doctor could correctly set a broken bone in a cast without understanding little Brad's aromatherapy history or Ritalin dosages.

And that "skiing accident" might be a cover for a pattern of violent child abuse, after all.

51 As a physician AND a software engineer my radar is always up for this kind of crap. It's a commercial for GE, of course, but it's mostly a "feel good" propaganda piece that assures you that Better Times are Just Around The Corner. The reality is going to suck for a long time, but if you'll just hang in there all those craft-built standards-free medical record systems will magically make everything all better. The fact that your doctor only gets seven insurance-company-approved minutes to talk with you? Fixed. The fact that the average age of his nurse is now nearing 55 and the new ones are coming from shorter and shorter training programs? Fixed. The fact that the person who gives you the most time and attention is likely to be a high school graduate medical assistant? All fixed by GE and their magic fucking wireless toy. Available to you sometime between next year and forever, but I wouldn't hold your breath for next year. Whee!

52 The main issue is what's not being said. 

NBC's TV "news" time costs millions of dollars to produce every minute.  They chose to use that extremely costly time to run a story ... about an app.

The effect here is to cause people to imagine how rosy and clean and cool and chic and hip the future of medical care is. 

It's as cool as your iPhone. 

It's you and your funky friends down at the coffee shop, where everyone has perfect teeth and a loft filled with aesthetically-pleasing furniture.

Maybe Lena Dunham can write a scene into one of the upcoming episodes of Girls where one of the main characters has a medical problem, and a semi-ex-boyfriend uses his Obamacare iPhone app to get in touch with a doctor, thereby impressing the semi-ex-girlfriend, so she agrees to start sleeping with him again ... and then they all have to talk about how they feel about that ...

The media is all Fantasyland. All the time.

53

Not gonna lie.

 

I saw something entirely different here.

Public health is becoming the new road to heaven for the left.  We must make people healthier even if they don't want it!

And these devices will be the whip by which that's done.  So make it sound rosy and good on the show, without realizing that the end go will be to strap one of these things to you and berate you for having your blood sugar spike after you have a soda.

We've made health and end, rather than a means to good living, and that's a bad thing.

 

My only other thought was some of this was utter bullshit anyway.  We have division of labor in medicine ostensibly to make it more efficient.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Sure the EKG machine is cool (except I'd be curious how often it simply doesn't work due to technical limitations.)  And EKG's are fairly straight forward.

But Ultrasounds are actually pretty hard to do.  Sure they make it look easy, but that's the result of lots of time spent working with them.  I know, I've tried to do ultrasounds (on mice, but the principle remains.) I couldn't get my damn picture to show up right, one of the techs comes in and 3 seconds later *bam* perfect image.  She told me I'd need to spend at least 50 hours training to be proficient at it.  For mice, I don't want to imagine what it is for humans.  Is your doc gonna spend that time not seeing patients? Or would it make more sense to have a tech do it in half the time.

If we're gonna attack the cost of medicine, let's not say "I just saved you a fee by doing this" (which I don't think is really sensible) let's ask "why does a tech taking less than an hour to do this cost $100 fee?"

54 Bartlett and Phinn's take is where I was going with this.

Am I "against" this technology? No. That isn't the point. It's NBC's attempt to distract from the coming Obamacare disaster. I mean, people are going to literally DIE from this shit, but hey! Technology! Look at these gadgets! Health care will be CHEAPER and BETTER than ever!

Uhhhm, no it won't.

55 tsrblke, I like your perspective on it, too.

56 The funny thing they don't note is that .. why would an EKG take a separate fee? Was it substantially harder for you, to do, before doctor? No, the reason it was shuffled off to someone less expensive than you was so that the doctor could see other people.

57 tsrblke, I like your perspective on it, too.

Posted by: Warden at March 07, 2013 08:29 AM (0DlnM)

 

Thanks.

But disclosure, I accidently read 1 line below the fold before I understood what you were doing (but that would have primed me for politics, which I didn't really get from it enough.)

 

Oh, and I study this shit for my degree.  Yeah that.  That's probably a fair disclosure .

58 Update, March 2021:  Mom's insulin implant picked up another virus and won't give her the medicine until she sings the Fruiti Oatie Song in public.   I might have sort of disabled the NortonMedical when i installed that dimmer switch application on her pacemaker.  Meanwhile my job at the factory requires i upload the Happy Worker Ap from the Abiet Macht Frie software suite  which i thought was going to be awful but everything feels pretty goon now, innit?  I barely remember the last four shifts.

59

You are known by the company you keep.

Especially if they are propogandists.

60

I noticed a more critical lie - where he talked about "prescribing" apps instead of medication.

An app does not treat a problem any more than a normal diagnostic test.
Let's assume that everything that was said about using those apps with those tricorder peripherals for the iGadget were absolutely true, and that like in Westworld, nothing can possibly go wrong with patients setting them up correctly, putting them in the right place to monitor or scan themselves, or interfere with the transmissions (talk about giving new meaning to a "dead zone"! And did you see that episode of Homeland with the hacked defribilator as murder weapon?). At the end of all of that, all they are is diagnostic scans. If you have an actual problem you are still going to need to be prescribed something to treat it. Are we expected to be so impressed with running a scan on ourselves and getting the results by video call that we will suddenly not need any medication to treat the problems?

Meanwhile Herr Doktor made it a major point that the medicines being prescribed are all wrong.
Are these magic diagnostic devices that will automatically provide the proper diagnosis where a physician could not?
Will they prevent a doctor from prescribing the wrong medication?
Will they be completely linked and able to give warnings about drug interactions?
Will they be able to give warnings about side effects before the drugs have been prescribed and used?

As for other "incidentals", if this is the absolute "future" of medicine, and if medical care is an entitlement, then everyone will "have" to have their own iGizmo or similar device, plus relevant attachments. Now granted, not everyone is as ornery and techno-averse as me and STILL doesn't have even a basic cellphone, but just how many are going to have to be given away or heavily subsidized so that everyone can be linked in all the time to SkyHealthNet? (And don't even start with the conspiracy theories about SkyHealthNet being able to monitor your diet and activities and restrict your purchases or send "alerts" to get you to exercise. There's no way that could ever happen you silly Epsilon Workers you.)

61 "Are these magic diagnostic devices that will automatically provide the proper diagnosis where a physician could not?" Computers already diagnose certain things better than humans. Computers don't forget about obscure diseases they learned about in med school.