About Health Care...

Whoops, too late:



The first 5 links all have consequences for health care, regardless of which side of the aisle you're on. As I wrote in a discussion about Marvel Comics and politics recently, everybody likes to dress up bread-and-butter issues as the Defining Moment Of Our Time, and there can only be Winners and Losers, all of which makes good politics, none of which is relevant to effective policy.

The last links are indicative as well:
- if Black patients are more likely to suffer post-surgery complications, does this transcend class as well? Are upper-class blacks more likely than all whites to suffer post-surgery complications? What color are their doctors in these cases? Once again, the next questions are never answered because our medical infrastructure gets in the way of our medicine.
- Bird flu is always a "Meh" story until it happens to you. Having seen the extent of the fraud, waste and abuse of emergency preparedness training and funds during the previous 8 years, does anybody know if we're prepared for another epidemic? With crazies on the left and the right calling vaccination the new antichrist, do you think any of the poorly informed are getting flu shots? Are they listening to the television when it says "stay at home?" Will Wal-Mart actually close its doors if we have to quarantine people, or will it demand that its workers show up and its doors stay open until things get much, much worse?

And even though a lot of us can work from home, the majority of us cannot...