OT
You forgot a list of other Bushism no-spending gems:
- not paying for wigs for female cancer victims
- not paying for infertility for women, but ironically paying for viagra for men
- not paying to have a bump removed on a woman's face because insurance would declare it 'cosmetic' while removing the same type of bump from the face of a man (because no one would accuse the removal of a bump from a guy to be cosmetic so it must be medically needed)
- not allowing women to breast pump
- not paying for female related medical treatments: lupus anitobody, etc etc
- not paying for medical research on typically female related items such as thyroid, ovarian cancer, lupus, etc
- not paying for a women to re-enter the hospital after childbirth
- not paying for research to determine the more proper dosage amounts for epi for women (this is the stuff dentists too often give that can make small-framed people's heart speed up if given the dose of a 250 lb man.
The list goes on and on . . .
After Doerr's wife got breast cancer, Silicon Valley women thought (briefly) that capitalism would improve a small bit by including SOME biotech funding towards women medical products. Several of us took a look at the VC funding for biotech/medical last year in Silly Valley and while there were MANY male-oriented medical topics being funded, there were ZERO women-oriented medical topics funded. This is what happens when 95% of your VCs are men - they only fund what they can relate to - people thought we'd see an improvement in what gender-based medical items got funded in the VC community after Doerr's wife got ill, but the short-term improvement was much too brief. One of the women looking at the list said, what about funding women incontinence (I think this means bladder leakage that happens to women after childbirth that's apparently very common. She said it was common enough to for the markplace to be fundable, yet there was zilch.)
Btw, a friend of mine had a thyroid issue.
Her American doctor said her symptoms could be because she has some type of anxiety problem. Nevermind that she doesn't get rattled by things and is easy-going. (Typical fall-back for American doctors when they don't know how to diagnose women is to blame their heads.) She went back to him again, but then he said, it's probably her heart. (Nevermind the fact she has great skin color and no other sign of heart issues.) She finally got sick of American doctors that told her it was her mind and heart, so she went to a foreign doctor and he immediately recognized the symptoms: her thyroid was making her heart speed up and a simple blood test diagnosed this.
Another story: of our employees that live in Palo Alto, 100% of them have been wrongly overprescribed Rx 100% of their visits by the doctors at PA clinic. People now get their advice from foreign doctors. Geez, one of them I just did a google on what they had and told him, your symptom looks like it's from this drug - and it was. Patients should really have a medical website they can search for things like Rx issues.
At Intel, the employees simply pay online websites to talk to foreign doctors for advice rather than deal with HMOs and the like. It's probably an illegal service that is being sold (i.e. not approved by FDA?) but they get quicker and better advice by email that's more thorough than what American doctors are able to do (not because American doctors aren't good but because the system doesn't permit them to spend time.) This isn't Intel sponsored - Intel employees just work around an inept medical system and instead are paying cash (rather than using insurance) to foreign doctors via online sites instead of going to American doctors.
For example, unlike PA clinic (where you pay ~$65/year to email your already overly busy doctor), they will instead pay $25 per incident to get some good advice from a foreign doctor. That's the way to go. They have the time for you. American doctors don't because they are not permitted to give patients time since the health industry is operated by MBAs.
Btw, since 25% of all MBAs are repordtly men, expect nearly ZERO funding towards female medical issues. Go to a socialist country sometime, and you'll be surprised at the higher level of focus they have on women gender medical issues. Truly ten years ahead of the USA in gender-based medical prevention. They even have it on the radio. And it's women that are in CHARGE of the system. It's not women working UNDER a male-dominated MBA medical system.
Regards,
Amy J |
