Mercurial » Health

Health care as a right

Camilo — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:02:15 +0000

All the heated debates about healthcare vary radically on the position they take to human life.
Framed as socialism, a battle that the Democrats willingly lost, healthcare for all is unwinnable. Framed as another freedom that this country gives its inhabitants, would it win in another round?

The point is relevant: a proper instituted healthcare would free people from the tyranny of lousy jobs, and take away the specter of bankruptcy. It would likely foster the idea of social mobility, and enhance competition; it will give people confidence in their pursuits, and take away the fear that is strangling competition, innovation and social discussion in this country.

Healthcare is not a divine right, argue its opponents. Well, neither are free speech or gun ownership. These were wrestled away from an elite that held everybody at bay through these limitations. People were not important, nobility was: this is the same situation that we see these days in healthcare.

How is that healthcare impeding mobility? Insurances make fiefdoms of employers, leaving all those that dare to leave in an impoverished state, open to tragedy and catastrophe without any cover. Insurance maintains that middle ages subjugation of the serf to the feudal lord, exacting half their salary, demanding complete subjugation, imposing random payments on sick individuals, and limiting the extent to which they can run, otherwise they lose their insurance.

These insurances trap the worker in a place from which they can not escape: They have to endure stupid bosses, dysfunctional office politics, incompetent superiors and psychopath values, simply because there is no other option if they want to go on their own. By limiting these workers to their current workplace we cap innovation and kill new ideas. If nobody dares to move nobody will dare to create, to push forward, to design the new America!

There is a hidden effect to this pernicious stagnation, and it is social immobility. A person trapped in a second rate job, with leadership the results of cliques and unwarranted privilege, will never access a better environment, will never reach that place when they can create a better tool, a better service, a new and important idea. The whole value of their existence, just like in pre-Revolution France, is decided by middle managers, the family of the owner of the company, or the general incompetence of an unlearned group. The person is a slave to others, and a serf of the owners. There is no freedom.

Health care is no divine right – is a citizen’s right in those countries that have demanded it: France, Italy, England, Switzerland, Canada. It is a given for international competitiveness, as China knows. It is a prerequisite for world pre-eminence, as any country with a better system than the USA knows and has experienced.

Did you k now that Mexico, India, Israel and Canada are medical tourism destinations? Companies and people have found that is outrageously expensive to get health care in the USA, so now we are also outsourcing our health, looking for foreign surgeons and widening even more the difference between rich and poor, using health now as another privilege denied those that are not nobility.

Health care is as much a right as any other one that the founding fathers bothered to write. Profiteering from providing that health care is, however, not.

We don’t need no stinkin’ doctors

Camilo — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:54:16 +0000

Physicians are soo web 1.0. As web 2.0 people, we go to Medgle.

You might be careful, though: I was trying the symptoms for inebriation, and the results included “head injury” and “myocardial infarction.” But it also suggested “Drugs and toxins”, so it might be OK.

Do not use in emergencies.

UPDATE: So it is not new news. I found about medgle at medgadget and at O’Reilly Radar.

Brains after the war

Camilo — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:00:51 +0000

A report from the American Academy of Neurology has found that Gulf War I veterans with several health symptoms have differences in their brain structure from those with less ysmptoms:

Researchers found that two areas of the brain involved in thinking and memory were significantly smaller in the veterans with a high number of symptoms than in the veterans with fewer symptoms. The overall cortex was five percent smaller in those with more symptoms, and the rostral anterior cingulated gyrus was six percent smaller.

PTSD or chemical agents?

Dance and fitness

Camilo — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 18:07:23 +0000

Dance and fitness
Even though the general tone of this article irks me in an indescribable way, it carries a ton of truth: dancing will save your life:

Drumming and dancing brought profound benefits to individual human bodies, but it also created widespread participation throughout the community. There are no try-outs or eliminations in community dance, no competition and no pressure to win. Everyone gets invited to the dance; everyone moves. The process is fundamentally inclusive.
The dance-drum culture also obliterates the age-segregation model that we take for granted in modern PE and sport. In a West African village, anyone can dance at any stage of life. If you can stand up, you can participate. Even if you can’t stand up, you can play a shaker. There’s no anxiety about “age-appropriate developmental standards.” You won’t see grandstands for parent spectating or separate facilities for different age groups. It’s all one community in motion.

I like the various themes present here: first, dancing is mainly a social event, and an inclusive one at that: old and young dance together, to the same music, on the same floor, all together. Second, that social event overcomes competition: you are there to dance and enjoy, and share that time with others. Third, It is an amazing indicator of fitness and appeal: the best dancers are also fit, attractive and agile.
Dancing has also been compared to training for fighting, and when you see martial arts experts, you see in them the same elegance and body awareness that dancers have – often, we will be able to identify the former by their movements in the dance floor.

And it is fun.

Storyboard

Camilo — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:45:25 +0000

Create the storyboard to your life, create the possibilities, the dreams, the travels, the knowledge:
Avi Solomon’s advice is as simple as that, to make our relationship with the future we create as compelling and easy to perceive as the very visual result that we intend to achieve.

I can’t get no sleep

Camilo — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 09:23:37 +0000

It is not Faithless, but I haven’t been sleeping well this past week. Good and bad.
Perhaps it had to do with it all being 30 months last Friday, or who knows what, but sleep is seriously avoiding me.
And as a result, I am grumpy, moody, tired and uninterested. I also lack focus, and drift from one conversation to another, from one idea to another: I may see my friends at the bar (BTW, autopassion was awesome) and then jump to other group in the middle of the conversation. I simply can’t care anymore, with all that tiredness on top of me.

It has its rewards, though. There is a simple clarity in seeing the world through the empty field morning that is a complete night awake: ideas and people come without the background of analysis and thought, and all the noise that I inject in every conversation subsides under the animalistic drone of my synapses shutting down. I am free of desires and fantasies, pretty much a coffee induced Zen state that barely lasts for a second, but repeats itself during the whole day, at random intervals, with surprising results.

Another side effect of this insomnia is that working at half speed allows me to barely communicate, thus much better enduring the slowness that accompanies every day, and the inane routine that suffuses every action. I might even start painting, just for the sake of watching it dry.

And on caring less? I talk to the three harpies, and when their attention starts wavering toward shoes and clothes I simply walk away, regardless of the low cut blouse of one of them. Oh I am free! Or I listen to my friends the three graces, and after a hug I will equally vanish, mindless of their profound chatter and senseless noise.

A much cooler name for this brand of insomnia is Phase Shift Disorder, a name evocative of Star Trek transporters gone bad and other science fiction goodness. Imagine me getting into a transporter, a normal human being, and coming out a distorted version, one that you can not identify, a slightly fuzzy thing, similar to what happens when your TV can’t get the signal right, the sound slightly skewed and out of synch, colors all right but a little green could you adjust that vertical please?
That’s what a phase shift disorder would do to you: everybody is sleeping, yet I am driving at three am, unable to go to sleep, just listening to the monotonous hum of the motor, and the occasional light of an incoming car.

This story has no point. It is just a description. Go back to your dream.

Overheard

Camilo — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 09:16:31 +0000

My father had like six strokes; he is a chain smoker. Can I have another cigarette?”

Relax

Camilo — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:31:11 +0000

Stress will kill you, they say, but what they do not tell you is that it will take away your youth and beauty! In highly stressed women, chromosomes aged 10 years in average!:

There was no difference in the telomere length of the two groups, but women in both groups who reported the most stress also had the shortest telomeres. And the effect was so large that it represented nine to 17 years’ worth of cell aging.

So, drop the big city and the complex environment, the absurd paycheck along with the 80 hours week, the rushed race to get to work before Jones and Simms. Simply living happy (by whatever definition) will ensure that you actually meet your grandchildren, and be able to play with them.

And of course, it would also ensure that whatever check you get doesn’t go to pay your medicines. You want to be 85 and only take aspirins, run everyday, and chase pretty young things. Which, by that time, would be a 70 year old woman.

Fish web

Camilo — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 12:06:47 +0000

Are you fish-eater? Go for the lower levels in the trophic chain, or become a thermometer full of mercury

Mahaffey recommends salmon, anchovies and shrimp, which all have “decent amounts” of omega-3 fatty acids and relatively low mercury levels. And she tells consumers to eat less “steak-like” fish. In other words, eating fish that themselves eat lower on the food chain is your best bet.

The best is to consume local, unless your state is particularly poisonous. Or to go completely vegan, but eating tofu turns Amazon jungle into food. Or to go organic, but even so you can get lots of pollutants in your body.

Happy lunch.

Body hack

Camilo — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:33:25 +0000

Just in time for mind hacks, comes this article about hacking your own brain and playing with its body perception:

The experience is uncanny, for you know perfectly well that you’re looking at a disembodied rubber hand, but this doesn’t prevent your brain from assigning sensation to it.

I remember reading about this reaction from patients that had suffered an amputation or stroke, and how it was being used to allow for remapping and therapy.
Significantly enough, the stroke patients were able to recognize their hands when cold water was dropped into their right ears.
Anybody remember this?