Jane’s family is suffering from plagues of biblical-lite proportions. Her teenage son is unruly and easily distracted. Her daughter has menstrual cramps, is 12 pounds overweight and shy. Her husband sleeps fitfully and has occasional heartburn and irregularity—not to mention that his libido is falling and his cholesterol rising. As for Jane, her menopause generates more heat than a blowtorch. Her… return to article
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Reader Comments (2)Page 1 of 1 pages“Although there is a diagnosis, pill or surgical treatment for each of their ills”
Or they could just eat right and exercise. But i guess society somehow prohibits this (hmmm, even for people with “white privilege? shocking!). . .
“enticed by sexually fulfilled couples”
There is no reason most couples should not be sexually fulfilled. Again, the above prescription *eat right, exercise regularly) could benefit millions (even black folks, perhaps), if only the big drug companies and the government allowed it. . .
“Or a definition of normality that diagnoses 15 percent of 16-year-old boys with attention deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADHD)”
Too many parents want the easy way out. Boys by nature are not particularly compliant, but require lots of parental oversight and discipline. It is a tough job, one that too many parents have abdicated.
Or heck, lets just blame big pharma, advertising and the government (especially if we are black)! After all, then we can watch some tv and crash on the couch.
Posted by wolf on Dec 20, 2007 at 8:55 PM The entire health care system in the United States is a wreck, which is about to become a pile-up of unimaginable proportions as more Boomers inundate the system. While we should certainly be concerned with prescription drug costs and the highway robbery for which they have a get out of jail free card (because in the Medicare D bill, there is a specific provision that prevents the US Govt., the number one consumer of pharmaceuticals, from adjudicating price controls), the crises in the general availability of health care is perhaps a more pressing issue. Alas, the day draws near when some unfortunate doctor will be the first to be forced to make an explicit decision regarding the rationing of medical care based upon the most obvious and rational calculation, namely, the potential quality of life, future productivity, and likelyhood of meaningful recovery. Given this formula, it stands to reason that the critically injured 25 year old with a high likelyhood of recovery assuming that she receives adequate care, say in the ICU, would logically take the bed of a 85 year old patient about whom there is no question that death is imminent.
One of the greatest travesties of Big Pharma’s ability to dictate prices and monopolize critical medications, is that some portion of this younger population may very well find itself facing life-threatening situations simply because of its inability to receive preventive treatments. One aspect of such treatments, of course, may very well be access to cutting edge pharmaceutical innovations, which prove to be prohibitively expensive. This is not a problem facing only the 45 million uninsured Americans. The same difficulty is proliferating among the insured population as employers are placing more and more of the burden of insurance upon employees, particularly in the form of skyrocketing deductibility figures. Frankly, many are no better off with a $1,000 or $500 deductible than the 1 in 7 with no assistance at all.
Ultimately, it is up to us, you and I, to see that the system is changed. For the current crisis in health care is nothing more than a symptom of a much more serious, because infinitely more ubiquitous threat: the abject failure of political leadership in this country. And let us not excuse ourselves. Until the citizens—one wonders if such a concept even remains operative except in the most shallow sense of one who demands rights, without accepting responsibilities—of this country hold our leaders accountable, for the funding of their campaigns, the legislative agendas they pursue, and their failure to uphold their responsibility not to throw us under the bus of monied interests, we are just as guilty as our “leaders.”
Our television sets, fancy cars, and over mortgaged houses will not assist our efforts in any way whatsoever, neither will our knee-jerk throwing off of the blame for social ills onto illegal “aliens.” Those who refuse to take the initiative to demand change receive what they deserve, the rest of us have always known anyway that “life simply is not fair.”
Posted by RBG7 on Dec 26, 2007 at 5:47 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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