Is Help on the Way?  No.

   But You Can Go Get It Yourself. 

 

With all of the various ways pop culture affects how we think about the health care delivery system, in my opinion it is impossible to discuss a personal, balanced health care plan in a dispassionate, rational and scientific way in almost any public setting.  Barry Bonds (of San Francisco Giants fame) spends virtually an entire normal professional baseball career as a record breaking base stealer and then comes out after one off-season with massive biceps and new found home run hitting ability. Anyone applying reasonable logic would conclude that he, and many other professional athletes in a number of different sports, use cocktails of synthetic, unnatural, anabolic steroids and growth hormone, EPO and testosterone in amounts on the order of 10 times of normal. Yet the general public, aided by the politically correct media, conclude that hormone replacement therapy in general is somehow unnatural and immoral.

 

The relatively old drug pseudoephedrine is a highly effective decongestant for use in the treatment of the common cold and hay fever. It is generic and very inexpensive to manufacture. For a time it was available over-the-counter in full dose tablet bottles of 100 that could take care of a low income family of four's periodic needs for a year or two. Because the drug can be easily converted into methamphetamine in home labs, the government intimidated retailers into giving up selling it. The drug companies then came up with patented, more expensive, less effective, prone to side effects replacements. The consuming public ends up paying more for less thanks to the government protecting us from ourselves and the bad guys selling us illegal drugs we will abuse.

 

Around the height of the pop culture popularity of feminism, we were treated to the spectacle of actress Margot Kidder (Lois Lane, Superman) testifying before Congress that we would have less war were it not for all the testosterone circulating in the bodies of our military leaders. How a B-movie actress with bipolar disorder becomes a multidisciplinary expert is an example of political correctness at its most ridiculous. Yet, incredibly, passionate public presentations such as this help to worm the irrational thought behind them in to the public consciousness. And the result is that hormone replacement therapy for men that could have far-reaching effect on the prevention of major disease is stunted and suppressed. This while at the same time HRT for Ms. Kidder’s gender is doled out without blood level tests at such a rate that the synthetic hormone Premarin becomes at one point the most commonly prescribed medication in the United States. Then when a study shows that this synthetic estrogen hormone made from pregnant horse urine combined with synthetic progesterone in a single pill causes cancer, the American medical establishment concludes that all estrogen replacement therapy, whether natural or synthetic, is bad and should be discontinued. And California has now deemed bio-identical Progesterone to be a carcinogen and requires labeling as such. Now the majority of online vitamin and supplement vendors will not ship Progesterone cream to California customers.

 

These are but a few of the ponderous number of examples of the medical establishment's dismal failure to be dispassionate and rational in the analysis and understanding of our health care system, even when multiple scientific studies are right in front of them. Sadly, faced with the overwhelming burden of a of a bloated, bureucratic culture, your doctor is never going to act in your best interest if it is outside the dictated standard. My ex-wife, who has been in the thick of healthcare delivery for 40 years, has a saying she uses regularly with friends regarding the health care system when they ask her for advice. “Nobody cares as much about you as you.” The United States is a great country that is arguably responsible for more miraculously wonderful medical advancements than any other country on earth. Nevertheless, it is my strongly held belief that each of us should take hold of and manage our own health care. It is most seriously a matter of life and death.