Short term thinking will doom us all, if we don’t get a handle on it. Sure, a company has to make enough to keep going, but screwing over the future to juice this quarter’s earnings got us nowhere good.
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Thread about NC Republicans lying about the schedule and abusing 9/11 commemoration in order to try to force through a vetoed budget bill without Medicaid expansion:
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Ridiculous. You’d think the money would be there to keep them on, and rotate them with the clinicians who are overworked and exhausted (with extra training if necessary). But I guess clinicians in the US are mostly owned by private equity firms.
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Yeah, that’s the thing. For all the money we pump into this clusterfuck of a system, it’s never anywhere it needs to be.
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I think the system is working as designed. Unfortunately, capitalism has become a death cult, and it’s working out just fine for the people who consider themselves to be the only ones who matter. The rest of us are just soylent green to them.
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The free market is apparently wasteful.
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Interesting. My brief scan of the data suggests that the US spends the most and has among the fewest doctors per person among the richest countries.
I wonder if there’s a connection. /s
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I want to be Celia Lovsky when I grow up!
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Okay, so my skin has been breaking out worse and worse. I have a referral to see an out-of-network dermatologist.
Should I (a) try to schedule the appointment, or (b) try to find an in-network dermatologist, and if so, HOW? And (c ) if I do find an in-network dermatologist, should I ask my doctor for a referral? And (d) who the hell thought this mess was a good idea?
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Here is another inactive thread I would like to bring back. Consider it a new “Healthcare PSAs and BSAs” type thingy!
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I will very occasionally close a thread for one reason or another, but by default they won’t close automatically. Feel free to revive any thread you’d like.
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Increases in emergency department visits
CDC looked at NSSP data for the percent of pneumonia-associated emergency department (ED) visits with a Mycoplasma-related diagnostic code.
From March 31, 2024 through the week ending October 5, 2024, these emergency department visits increased from:
- All ages: 0.5% to 2.1%
- 2–4-year-olds: 1.0% to 7.2%
- 5–17-year-olds: 3.6% to 7.4%
M. pneumoniae diagnoses reached a peak at 10.7% for the 2–4-year-old and 9.8% for 5–17-year-old age groups in August 2024.
The increase in 2–4-year-olds is notable because these infections have historically been thought to affect school-age more than younger children.
Biggest take home from this is that mycoplasma pneumonia (AKA “Walking Pneumonia”) is pretty mild, looks pretty much like a long-lasting viral pneumonitis, and will get better if you muscle through it. BUT it can be treated with a short course of azithromycin with rapid resolution of symptoms. More of an FYI than a warning, but be aware. Most of us are not big on antibiotics for viral-looking things, but you are likely to be offered an antibiotic right now than usual because of this.
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Infuriating medical insurance interaction today. Patient with long standing neck pain getting worse despite PT. I order an MRI to evaluate for disk disease. Insurance approves, MRI is done. 3 weeks later, insurance company retroactively denies the scan and family is stuck with nearly $4k bill. Why? They decided they needed notes from a chiropractor first. The family had seen one 6 months earlier, and had not thought these notes were needed. Neither did I. But here we are. God, I hate insurance!
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