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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (199847)	5/3/2009 2:24:58 PM
From: damainman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

"health care should teach diet - and the truth is that doctors know very little about healthy eating habits and they can't advise people on what they don't know" Huh? Mounds of data out there- all things in moderation, low fat, rich in fiber etc but that's beside the point. If doctors should somehow meet your standard of knowledge with respect to diet, should eating habits become law? Should we build a database of those who abuse food and install facial recognition software at every fast food joint?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (199847)	5/3/2009 2:38:48 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

so your definition of healthcare is the amount and quality of drugs? I was referring to "medicine" in the broader sense. i think that definition is absurd. a better name would be drug care, not health care. I used the term to refer to the practice of medicine, not drugs. But by either definition, America clearly has the the overall best available anywhere. That's not to say there aren't specific illnesses or treatments that are better in other places. Just that overall, there is no better health care than a person can receive in the US. Admittedly, one who isn't adequately insured will be at a disadvantage. That can be handled reasonably well with minor changes to the system. But overall, there is no better place to be to get the best health care available. Anywhere. health care should teach diet - and the truth is that doctors know very little about healthy eating habits and they can't advise people on what they don't know. I don't disagree. But I'm not sure it is that easy to change people's eating habits. however, a diet that reduced the incidence of diabetes 10-x, or 83%, in a population of 14000 people studied is all but completely unknown within the medical field. they can't tell you what they don't know and our broken health care system has no structure to teach them how learn this stuff! I suspect most physicians understand the issue well. I'm just not sure that's where their time is best used. Were people that interested, independent dietitians would be a booming medical specialty. Not arguing the point, I just doubt it the best use of a physician's capability. Most physicians would refer you to a registered dietitian at a local hospital or somewhere like that if you wanted it. I certainly think if I asked my physician to do so he would. But he is not likely to say, "You need to see a dietitian" unless a person has a pretty serious problem. another example of the gaping hole in the current drug care system is shown with the increasing use of statins, i think it its use has gone up 50+% over the last few years - and there hasn't been a corresponding decrease in heart disease! Well, I sort of agree about this; correlation doesn't imply causation. OTOH, there are other factors, including an increase in obesity which make the statistical evaluation more difficult and more or less invalidates YOUR analysis, as well. In the end, I've decided not to take a statin because there isn't much evidence that the ratio of upside to downside is adequate. If I had a huge cholesterol problem I might see it differently, but mine is borderline so there you go. Medicine is an art and science, but it is also a business. So, you're going to go through periods where clinics promote Dexa scans, ENT docs do too many tonsilectomies, nearly 1/3 of American babies born by C-Section (whether needed or not -- and for vaginal births, episiotomies whether needed or not), and rampant unnecessary nephropexy (from the 50s & before). Treatments although done in good faith, probably aren't necessary in many instances. Medicine is a business. If you want to let government take it over and dictate, "there will be no statins", that's fine. But it may well be that statins save lives. If you don't allow their use, new drugs will not be created, and the health of people all over the world will suffer as a result. We have a system that works pretty well right now. Yes, we need to cut costs, and as a doc on the Health Care thread mentioned, it is probably time for us to consider giving up the idea of eagalitarianism in medicine and to move to a more realistic long-term strategy -- one which insures those at the bottom of the social ladder gets a reasonable level of care, even though they cannot afford the best available.