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curious2
2015 Oct 1, 2:21am
curious2 - Did you see this piece earlier this year?
I hadn't seen that, but there has been very interesting work establishing links between intestinal bacteria and mood, and an experimental device to manage intestinal bacteria and thus treat depression. (Of course, Obamneycare would tax the device, to subsidize the SSRI prescriptions...)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19085093/
Despite extensive research, the current theories on serotonergic dysfunctions and cortisol hypersecretion do not provide sufficient explanations for the nature of depression. Rational treatments aimed at causal factors of depression are not available yet. With the currently available antidepressant drugs, which mainly target serotonin, less than two thirds of depressed patients achieve remission. There is now evidence that inflammatory and neurodegenerative (I&ND) processes play an important role in depression and that enhanced neurodegeneration in depression may-at least partly-be caused by inflammatory processes. Multiple inflammatory-cytokines, oxygen radical damage, tryptophan catabolites-and neurodegenerative biomarkers have been established in patients with depression and these...
When you climb into bed for the night, is your bedroom "littered" with dim light from streetlights, passing traffic, a computer, night-light or television set? Even if the light is so dim that you can easily sleep through it, light pollution can prompt biological changes that have a very significant, and potentially serious, impact on your physical and mental health. Obvious examples would be the glow that can be seen from miles outside of a big city, or the absence of stars in the night sky if you live in an urban environment. More subtle examples of light pollution are...
I thought the motley crue jackets article much funnier.
A new study from Harvard University found that men who wear Mötley Crüe denim jackets on a regular basis showed staggering levels of testosterone and sexual prowess.
Back to the thread topic it sure seems there is little interest in actually curing anything as there is in stringing people along be it Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, ADHD etc. Between the advertising, sale of drugs, insurance premiums, health care related stock there is way too much money at stake to want anyone to actually be cured and be done with the system.
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Is this an evil decision made for us, by the profiteers side of the trade, or is it the market based reaction to the reality of present day human actions?
Most all of the diseases you referenced (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, ADHD lol), aren't mysterious viral infections. They are the terms we use to describe conditions that arise from malnutrition and (poor) lifestyle choices.
If the government and education systems would just quit with their propaganda and misinformation wrt nutrition, and instead doled out good information, then people would at least be armed with the information they need to make the dietary and lifestyle choices that would pretty much erase the need for all of our "healthcare" systems bullshit. And costs could align to reflect
Back to the thread topic it sure seems there is little interest in actually curing anything as there is in stringing people along be it Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, ADHD etc. Between the advertising, sale of drugs, insurance premiums, health care related stock there is way too much money at stake to want anyone to actually be cured and be done with the system.
Then explain why cure rates and treatment times are basically the same in other countries where there is public health care paid with tax money and no profits to be had. Advertising, sale of drugs, insurance premiums, health care related stock, and most expensive of all billing, with profits and markups at every step drives the price through the roof in the US. But I don't see very many differences in the treatment regime in other countries. Doctors use the same surgeries, treatments, equipment, and drugs everywhere. Other countries will give up earlier on truly terminal illnesses, but that's more societal than anything. People most places want to die quietly without prolonging the process. In the US family and patients insist all too often "do everything" no matter how uncomfortable or intrusive to prolong dying a short time instead of just going to hospice and being comfortable as possible.
There is a difference in screening, the US screens more, much more especially cancer. But the overall result isn't much different. Here's a couple pretty good articles discussing the issue. https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/cancer-care-in-the-u-s-versus-europe/ http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2012/12/worlds-cancer-care.html
If the government and education systems would just quit with their propaganda and misinformation wrt nutrition, and instead doled out good information, then people would at least be armed with the information they need to make the dietary and lifestyle choices that would pretty much erase the need for all of our "healthcare" systems bullshit. And costs could align to reflect
Like people have been educated for 60 years about the dangers of smoking? How many people still make the lifestyle choice to smoke anyway? The 400lb bubba's eating at mcd's 6 meals a day aren't going to make any dietary or lifestyle choice no matter what you tell them. You're dreaming.
The government indoctrinated generations to believe that a healthful diet meant avoiding animal fats, and getting your TWELVE servings a day of breads and cereals.
That is actually a guaranteed recipe for diabetes, hypertension, depression etc.
If they came out now and owned this, and instead educated the citizenry that going to the doctor is more harmful than helpful, snd that a healthful diet consists of smallish amounts of food in general, but more importantly, that which actually constitutes food (fish and animal fats and proteins along with fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables) the market place would at least stand a chance to be occupied by an informed citizenry.
Why do they call ADHD, ADHD, and not Crystal Meth deficiency syndrome? Being that the lone treatment for ADHD is a script for pharma grade crystal meth?
If one's depression isn't bad enough,the best therapy is to read patrick.net. lmao
Electric shock therapy works but the side effect is forgetting your name and how to boil a cup of water...
Heraclitusstudent
2015 Oct 1, 11:29am
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes."
Fake quote attributed to Freud going viral.
. As much as I would like to even remotely believe the drug companies are sincere - I can't. Researchers and scientists I have some faith in and if - and who will ever know for sure - if someone has found something that would "cure" one of these conditions and or diseases - my general distrust of big pharma is that they would have or would take steps to prevent this from interfering with the profit machine. Better to dribble something out every now and then to keep the "hope" alive and the money rolling in. Money in is still money in - the bigger fool theory just works better in this country and a complicit Washington doesn't help.
That's massively paranoid. Especially since almost all the actual research is done in universities with public funding. Do you really believe that researchers, both the phd's and the postbac's doing all the work, using grant money and public funding have discovered a "cure" for something that is being suppressed by big pharma? Pretty doubtful, the only way to 2 people can keep a secret is if 1 of them is dead.
Cure rates may be very similar and I did catch we have the edge in the over 65 category.
You avoided my question. If you really believe medicine in the US has little interest in curing people but strings people along to make additional profits why are the treatments the same everywhere that there isn't profit involved?
The rise of A.D.H.D. diagnoses and prescriptions for stimulants over the years coincided with a remarkably successful two-decade campaign by pharmaceutical companies to publicize the syndrome and promote the pills to doctors, educators and parents.
Yep of course they did. Which is why drug companies should have never been allowed to advertise to consumers.
Where does this document a conspiracy of drugs that work being held back in order to make profit on other drugs? It talks about rushing things to market without looking at the risks properly.
Does this work for you, it's from the 28th of Sept, 2015? "How Patent Law Can Block Even Lifesaving Drugs" Hillary Rodham Clinton’s prescription drug policy proposal, released last week, would hold drug manufacturers accountable to their level of investment in research. But there are some potentially valuable drugs we’ll never get drug companies to invest in — those that cannot be patented.
By granting temporary monopolies to innovators, the patent system is widely credited with protecting and promoting innovation. But when it comes to pharmaceuticals, it may be preventing valuable therapies from coming to market.
I really don't see your point. You can't have it both ways. Either all drug research has to be government, which would hardly be nirvana, or big pharma pursues what is profitable. They aren't holding back anything, they made a business choice not to pursue it. That's not unique to pharma, it happens in all industries. Are drug companies abusing patent law and drug pricing in the USA, certainly. Do I think patent law should be reformed. Absolutely. Is it some kind of huge conspiracy, no way. Until campaign finance is reformed, like the 12th of never, nothing is going to happen to fix the situation no matter who holds office.
Why would countries that use taxpayer money with no profit involved under extreme budget pressure use the same strung out treatments rather than using whatever mythical shorter treatment that you believe exists?
Please show me where I said anything about "shorter treatments", mythical and otherwise - those are your words, not mine.
There will always be some profit regardless of what price is paid for the drug, treatment regimen etc. Do you think Doctors Without Borders is running all of the hospitals in Canada, Korea, Japan, etc. ? Please provide a list of all countries providing all these treatments where no profit is involved and lets not go into the free costs given out in ER.s etc. Finding an outlier isn't that difficult - the original post and what I am talking is the mainstream world.
Your exact words were treatment is being strung out. Strung out from what? If there is a longer then there has to be a shorter. The question STILL stands. Why wouldn't public health systems using taxpayer money on tight budgets use the shorter treatments?
I don't know about korea, but hospitals in Japan by law must be non profit and run by doctors. It is illegal for for profit enterprise to own or operate a hospital. Canadian hospitals ownership resides with community-based not-for-profit corporations, religious organizations, or with municipal governments or universities and must be non-profit.
In the mainstream world public health systems mostly have government or non profit owned hospitals. Primary care doctors can be paid fee for service (not that common), capitation (one lump sum per patient per year) which is fairly common, or can be employees of the government on salary. Specialists are almost always employees of the government on salary.
Sorry to break the news to you, but most of the public health care systems don't have profits. There is an annual budget just like any government department. Many don't even have billing if doctors are employed or on capitation. Those are some of the big reasons they cost half as much. Almost all countries with public health care systems also have a small private system for people who don't want to use the public system and can afford private insurance. That is for profit but is very, very small in most places.
The US is the only country I know of where ER visits are free if you choose not to pay.
If you really want a list of public health care systems google would be a good option.
What if we spend trillions and all we find out is it can't work?
Humans have been spending close to that if not more on wars and that isn't working out so well. Why not give something else a shot ? Please explain why we were able to eradicate polio, measles for all intents and purposes in this country but not much since then.
Sorry, if you can't or won't understand the differences between bacteria/virus illness and chronic/genetic illness than I can't begin to explain it to you.
You keep saying drug prices, treatments etc. are much less expensive in many parts of the world on any basis. So cough up the list of "many" places along with per capita income, cost of living, wages, taxes, etc. and see how it looks then.
In NZ and Australia I paid less in taxes than the US. I paid zero for health insurance, it's public health care. I paid $10-15 for a primary care doctor visit depending on the doctor. Prescriptions ran $1-5 depending on the drug. That's retail price, I did not have a prescription plan since they don't exist. Prescriptions for children under 18 are always free. Seeing a specialist (I saw several specialists over the years) was $0, they are salaried employees. Hospital stays (note the plural) were $0, they are government owned. When I had to go to a regional center for specialized testing the health board paid my airfare, room, taxi, and airport parking. Paperwork for a hospital stay? They asked me for my name and birthdate at the checkin. That's it.
Would you consider that less expensive than the US with looking at per capita income, wages, taxes, etc.? I certainly do. It did and still does look really really good. Especially since I'm back in the US paying full boat US taxes and health care costs for a family of 4. I had the similar types of prices and experiences living in europe, it's not an outlier by any stretch of the imagination.
Sorry, but I'm not going through each public health system one by one. I know how most of them work and what they cost. If you want to know then go read up on them yourself. Cough up the list of places where health care is more expensive than the USA.
"Medical literature has overstated the benefits of talk therapy for depression, in part because studies with poor results have rarely made it into journals, researchers reported Wednesday.
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Doctors have long known that journal articles exaggerate the benefits of antidepressant drugs by about the same amount, and partly for the same reason — a publication bias in favor of encouraging findings.
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Five million to six million Americans receive psychotherapy for depression each year, and many of them also take antidepressant drugs, surveys find.
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The new paper is the latest chapter in a broad retrenchment across science in which researchers are scrutinizing past results to weed out publication bias and other, more deliberate statistical manipulations."
For adult patients, other research has found talking with professional therapists no more effective than talking with a friend. For kids, the most common anti-depressant drugs are ineffective and increase suicidality.
See also: "The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people...."
While purported benefits have been systematically overstated, risks including toxicity have been systematically understated: "SSRIs in pregnancy tied to autism, delays"
Newsweek: "Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong"
The entrenched depression revenue recipients mandated prepayment via subsidized insurance, because that was the surest way to raise prices on disproven modalities. For example, SSRIs are a disproven treatment based on an unproven hypothesis, so they require infinite coverage via mandatory subsidized insurance in order to continue selling.
Meanwhile, vaccines (which have been proven NOT to cause autism) are actually taxed, while SSRIs (which DO cause autism) continue to be subsidized. If you think that is an error, then you should read it again: it is part of a consistent pattern, like the "war on drugs" and countless other policies. At some point, you have to consider, if a policy that fails to achieve its stated goals is consistently and deliberately repeated, then it must be a success by other terms. In particular, it consolidates revenue and power for its authors: the purported beneficiaries are pawns; the real beneficiaries are the patronage networks that write the policies.