There are no ‘human rights’. They are just made up human constructs. We needn’t place healthcare into some imaginary construct ‘above’ us. Some absolute, separate from human silliness, selfishness, and folly. We simply must define certain non- negotiable responsibilities to our societies - one being that reducing avoidable human suffering and death through proper healthcare for everyone is more important than money.
i had no idea the SensMed cmt sections got like this! thought i was the only one? </3. now i see the truth: all cmt sections are the same. & thr is a beauty in that. _JC
This is unscientific, incoherent, coercive, pseudo-political gobbledygook. Reads like it was written by an MBA. It is internally inconsistent; compares forced treatments, from incentive misaligned actors, & Osler's "good clinical decision-makers use uncertainty to weigh the relative benefits for each patient."; says things like "even the courts" [!!] - courts have no medical background! Thr poor judgments are notorious, for that very reason.
Right to access care, & choose one's medical team, & exercise bodily autonomy is the *chief & only* right, for anything else to matter (cf Adam's introduction, you monster! Demon! Foul thing from the darkest pit!) The reason it must be framed as a "right" is to give the individual protection from people. like. you.
I do not even want to hear your (likely paternal & unhinged) views on opiates & pain control. & I'm sorry if you've been sued a lot: But maybe give putting pts 1st a try? see how that goes? You need to re-read those philosophers.
& review both vaccines & applied medico legal hx, & call me in the morning. Thanks for writing. _JC
Sure, if you so say. I'm sorry you were unable to provide any evidence for your assertions about the data. But should you ever find any, I'll be "happy" to take a look. It's been a fun discussion, and no harm, no foul. I sincerely wish you the best, especially when AI takes over both our jobs! 😳
Before we even get to determining "what healthcare people have a right to" we should first consider whether or not it should be thought of as a right at all. In fact, there are reasons it is not already considered and provided as a right!
I cannot speak to other countries, but in the U.S. we enjoy 10 basic rights and none of them involve a right to healthcare (however you define it). It is, to my mind, axiomatic that if you insist that something is a right, then you also have an obligation to provide it which means you must make the wherewithal in terms of personnel and equipment and medicines, etc., the gamut, available. You also have to qualify what constitutes that healthcare. So, for instance, I'm aging and my self-esteem goes down because my face is now wrinkly. Am I entitled to a face lift so that my mental health will be better? The absurdity in this demonstrates but one why that healthcare cannot be a "right" in the way we define rights in this country. Even the U.N.'s 30 Human Rights agreement is full of rights that cannot be provided for all peoples everywhere. They are in some measure just a list of "would-be-nices" and "shoulds" providing no means of effecting said nices and shoulds.
We don't include in our Bill of Rights things such as food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education and others because that would of necessity place all of them within the purvue of the government and this would ultimately erode the freedoms and rights of the people as per the Bill's original intent and purpose. (Note: Government run education has not been shown to result in a net positive in the U.S. We lag behind many countries in basic education.)
We have the right to life and liberty and to the pursuit of our own happiness, according to our Bill of Rights. Even the right to "life" as given in that specific Constitutional Amendment does not ensure the right to healthcare.
My argument, in essence, is simply that what you decree as a right, you must be able to provide, and you must be able to provide to a standard that fulfills that right's expressed intent for being a right.
As a consequence of declaring healthcare a right we have to want, accept and build or create government hospitals, government pharmacies, government doctors, government nurses, government health equipment and supplies, and all the rest of what is required to deliver standardized quality health care to all, equally.
Extrapolating all of this out and comparing to other country's health care models, the unworkability of it is readily seen. The poor won't get better care, taxing the rich more won't provide sufficient funding, and the middle class will suffer most because the tax burden will inevitably fall on them. At the very least, whatever healthcare you thus provide will inevitably suffer drastically in lowered quality and availability (as it does anywhere government runs and delivers it).
I always thought we have a right to health by adopting best practices in taking care of ourselves. Should we need medical attention for whatever may happen to us, we are responsible for planning for that eventuality. Either have enough wealth to compensate for our care or make a bet via insurance to pay for that care. None of us has a right to require services from others.
Asking government to provide any personal benefit is fundamentally anti-freedom. When they do, the care is often substandard, not always but mostly. There is no incentive for non-elected government staff to actually service anybody. For medical care, government facilities can be good or bad. Ask any VA or IHS person about care, it varies.
We do have an obligation as a society to care for those who are not able to care for themselves. Notably the quality of that care will be marginal at best given the incentives for adequacy. If we accept care must be delivered to everybody we quickly discover that demand is infinite but supply is finite. It can never work. Combinations can work. In the UK there are always private fee-based facilities and private doctors often retired NHS doctors can be reasonable alternatives to delays in the NHS.
On point! We live in a time where if you want to get healthcare you should be able to. Now, the payment for such services? There's the rub. Nobody has the right to make other people pay for their healthcare. Thank you for discerning this all-to-often overlooked detail.
Hmmm, the author has muddied and muddled a few disparate concepts here.
Sure, medicine and therapeutics is imprecise. We are guided by RCT and extrapolate the average effect on average patients, onto a very specific Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith. And I’d say the vast majority of therapeutic decisions runs in areas where there are not specific RCT results to definitively guide decision making. So in those senses, we are not dealing with absolutes and the cut and dried, and that is where the art of medicine is required.
But that should not preclude or exclude the concept of medicine, or at least the access thereto, as a right. For me, the debate would not be about whether access to medicine should be a right; rather, it would be a question of the access to how much of it. If you crash into a post, I believe it reasonable for you to expect society to help in your time of need. But if your double chin bothers you, I’m not so sure you should expect a right to have that redressed. So it would be a question of a right to “necessary care”, and what constitutes “necessary”.
I’m not sure what the examples of vaccines or abortion add, apart from being red meat to trigger people. There are many “rights” that are arbitrary, and/or have arbitrary limits. You can vote, but you have to be a certain age. You can swing your arm about, until you hit someone else’s nose. You are free to speak, but not free to libel. No rights are absolute. And those limits can be (though I suppose not always) rather arbitrary. The need to draw a line around certain rights does not preclude them being such.
Vaccines are low-lying fruit for those conformed by the narrative, who haven't opened their eye blinds and asked a few questions to see if what they were told is true. When I was studying immunology, there was a 1973 quote by Dr Robert Good from a conference, where he said he sat in the front row of class and wrote everything down in morocco bound note books, and then he said,
"When I opened them again, and studied them 10 years after so carefully completing them, I was astonished to find that they were almost entirely filled with lies. Except for a few descriptions such as well-established anatomy, everything that seemed so orderly and beautiful with the rather comprehensive treatment I had given it for one moment in history, had changed, grown, and been reordered by the scholarship of the intervening ten years. That is why it is so important so frequently to take stock as we have done in this conference, and to consider what has been happening in the research laboratories and in our thinking on so many subjects."
The problem is, that far too few doctors take stock.
OK, I understand that everything offered as "health care" is not beneficial. I certainly don't feel people should be forced to partake of it. And of course -- of course! -- the burden of not having health care falls unequally on the poor.
But Jesus H. Christ! That's exactly WHY you need to answer a few basic questions:
If I do not have a right to health care, then who should decide whether I deserve it or not? The open market? Maybe a deputy sheriff of the private market, stationed somewhere in the insurance company that covers me (this year)? That's how things look at present in NW Indiana and the rest of the US. Those who can't pay are deprived of care most folks would consider essential -- while those who can pay can often get even the most unnecessary or harmful care.
Are you OK with that, Dr. Joshi? If so, how much do you think I should pay, in order to qualify as "deserving"? What's your cutoff?
Or if you reject that all-American approach, well, maybe you think these decisions should be made by my "betters" -- a council of wise and thoughtful experts. Who are they, exactly? And by the way, Dr. Joshi, if health care is not YOUR right, then who would you put in charge of deciding whether you deserve it or not? Who are YOUR "betters"?
Sorry for the tone. But I work at a small law firm that represents injured workers, and I have spent the last few days trying in vain to obtain basic medical care for a very disabled and very broke guy in Northwest Indiana. As a result I find the "thoughtful" tone of this post somewhere between hypocritical, and downright obscene.
I had this discussion with someone previous to the CoVid pandemic. They argued that health care is a right. I argued that the problem with looking at it as a right is the idea that you have to be given it.
If someone doesn't want to get cancer treatment, they can refuse to get it if they want. It's not something that I would necessarily decide, but people should be allowed to refuse treatment if they want. So it can't be a right to receive health care.
This doesn't mean that people shouldn't have access to it. I live in a country where health care is paid for by the government and I generally support this. But I don't want the government requiring people to be given health care if they don't want it.
Waiving your rights is usually not a good thing. For the most part having a right is designed to avoid being taken advantage of, usually by people who want to do things you don’t want them to do. So again, medicine itself can’t be a right.
I'm astonished at both the prevarication of thinking, and lack of science in this post.
Paragraphs three and four, which paint everything with a broad brush, are eye-blindingly wrong in every way possible. Vaccines either work or they don't. End of. And to couch the issue any other way is scientifically and intellectually dishonest. Perhaps the writer is fragile because of current covid controversy, and for the sake of his job, wants to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds?
Unfortunately the prevaricating tenor continues throughout the rest. The issue is actually very simple.
Quoting theologians is logical and right. As a christian, the whole basis of my decision to be a christian rests on the God-given right to choose to believe, or to choose not to believe. I choose to believe, and made that choice both on understanding, and knowing. Your constitution is also predicated on the same God-given individual right, spiritually and in society, though somehow, that has been smudged off .....
Similarly, as far as I'm concerned, the only "right" that matters to me with regard to medicine, is that the doctor is totally truthful, gives me all the known and reliable scientific information in relation to the vagaries that I present and the problem at hand, and is prepared to discuss it with me, so that I can make my own informed choices as to what I want to allow with regard to my body.
That applies to everything. Medical procedures and especially vaccines.
No doctor, or medical organisation, has any "right" to dictate what I do, or why I do it, or don't do it.
The last three years should have illuminated this core concept to all doctors with great clarity - that nothing in medicine should be about the control of people.
For years, I've been grappling with the concept of healthcare as a right. As a practicing physician for over two decades, the question I often ask is: what is "healthcare"? What does that term encircle? How can we deem something a right if we can't fully define it? If "healthcare" is a "right," does that mean every human being on Earth is entitled to all aspects of healthcare, without exception? Should every person have unrestricted, (and free!) access to physicians, the most advanced imaging, the latest surgical procedures, and any medication?
Given these considerations, I don't view healthcare as a right but rather as a goal. By considering some basic level of healthcare as a societal goal, members of society can determine what marginal level of "healthcare" should be universally available and at what cost. This may vary across regions or groups. If healthcare were a right, it would, by definition, have to be equally available to all at no cost. However, providing healthcare incurs costs – someone must pay those costs. If it is considered a right, healthcare workers would essentially be required to provide it without charge, effectively becoming slaves. In contrast, fundamental rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness don't impose costs on third parties.
Suppose there are no doctors, or only a handful in your town, state, or country? Must we compel people to become doctors to satisfy this "right"? Viewing healthcare as a "goal" rather than a "right" allows it to be prioritized within the hierarchy of other societal goals and facilitates decisions regarding incentives and trade-offs to achieve it.
The language is the problem, as the term "right" carries implications that may be unattainable in the real world of constraints and tradeoffs. It also creates an ever-growing and unrealistic sense of entitlement in the populace, spawning a mismatch between expectations and reality. However, this doesn't undermine the significance of healthcare as a vital, and perhaps one of the most important, societal goals.
yes, idiot. "healthcare" is a "right," does that mean every human being on Earth is entitled to all aspects of healthcare, without exception. every person best have unrestricted, (and free!) access to physicians, the most advanced imaging, the latest surgical procedures, and any medication.
that is what we are striving for. lets hope it goes betr than some of the other 'rights'. children of physicians are just the worst, before thr first mi & minus meditation. [HOT TIP!!]: you arent just meant to sit still w your eyes closed. Go vote for biden then, you evil prxck. or trump. not a genuine analytical, compassionate thought in that over rote learning filled fat melon.
give up your money & access, then "reflect" on if "right" is the correct frame. dxcknuget. the con is that the constraints are as gr8 as they are: they are not. _JC
The term "right" certainly seems to upset a lot of people. Maybe we can strive towards universal healthcare as a "societal goal," as you say. Many Western European nations are shocked that the U.S. does not consider it as a basic human right. Something about our culture....
I don't think it's as simple as that. In the country I live in, healthcare is considered a right because it's taxpayer funded "socialist" medicine. However, in practice it doesn't work like that. Pretty much the only way to land up in the system here, is if you are sick enough to require an ambulance, or if you are an oppressed minority. But even if you are an oppressed minority, and land up in the system, you must understand the art of patience, because from the time of admission, to the time of getting the tests you need done, can take weeks. Which is ludicrous, because you take up bed space using taxpayers money hand over fist, while eating food that is almost inedible, just because the system has inadequate ability to DO the tests and staff are overworked.
And if you are lucky enough to get the tests you need done, and are discharged being told to get an "urgent" follow-up, you find that your "urgent" appointment letter tells you that the waiting list is 42 weeks long.
The last three years has also disemboweled the medical system, because money has been spent everywhere except the medical system, and the medical system has disemboweled itself through concurring with mandates, so has hemorrhaged staff.
Worse, the system is so bad we can't even analyse vaccine safety properly - those keeping their finger on the real pulse, have all seen the interviews with nurses sacked for reporting side effects, many of whom said that it had to be done OUT of work hours because to report a case took a long time, and often you would be timed out of the database before you were finished giving the required information. On top of that was the directive to NOT report side effects. Again, we have all seen interviews with provaccine people with serious side effects who tell why their injuries were never reported.
Then you go onto pubmed and read all the peer reviewed studies based on VAERS (in my country, SMARS) and the European database Vigilinks, saying that in relation to the doses given, the serious side effects are irrelevant and the vaccines are wonderful.
As the mother-in-law of someone who had a serious reaction, and watched the gaslighting from the system, and outright refusal to even do the tests which would have confirmed myocarditis, and listening to the callousness of the staff deflecting all possibility of causation, I was disgusted. There was one cardiologist who was concerned and ordered the correct tests, only to be over-ruled from above.
This country is literally swarming with similar stories, so the people on the ground know that they have no rights in the system, either with potential diagnosis validation, treatment or anything else.
Therefore to even use the term "right", when that right is supposedly there, is a mockery of the word.
And therein lies the catch-22 for the medical system. They have made a mockery of themselves, and in the process the level of public trust is at rock bottom.
Some of us hold out hope for sanity in places like this, but the trouble is that doctors like Vinay are essentially sidelined and ignored, and while we would like sensible medicine, the concept appears to be a mirage at ground zero.
What country do you live in? Mr. Google didn't come up with anything when I Googled SMARS. I know different countries do universal health care differently, and it's never easy. (1st link) If we could learn from each other, maybe we could create a "good" system, as I doubt we can ever have a "perfect" system. As for waiting lines, I've been on them, even here in the good old U.S.A, even with good insurance. Those without insurance here either don't go to the doctor at all until it's too late, or they go to the ER for. non-emergencies, making ER's more dangerous for all of us because they're overcrowded. I'm so sorry about your son-in-law, and I hope he's better now. Here in the U.S. healthcare providers are required to report adverse events to VAERS, but patients can do so, too. When the vaccines first came out, you could even download an app to report AE's. Of course, when you give millions and millions of vaccines, there will be some adverse events afterwards that are coincidence, since people get sick and die every day. The VAERS data helps them determine if indeed the incidence of an AE is above the baseline of what is "typical." That can vary by demographic. I'm not sure what VAERS-based studies you are talking about specifically, but IMO, the article in the 2nd link below is very straightforward and honest in their analysis and description of the vaccine side effects. No vaccine, or for that matter, medication or surgery, is without risk, and always requires a risk/benefit analysis. For a vaccine, you have to consider the risk of a serious AE from the vaccine, vs the risk of serious harm from infection, and that can vary by age and comorbidities. That's kind of a side-track off of the issue of "rights." Anyway, thanks for your insight into medicine in your country, wherever that may be. We have great docs and technology here in the U.S., but lots of people with no access to care, and worse health outcomes on average than any other developed nation. There are lots of reasons for that, not just one, and Vinay often points out the millions of dollars spent on onco-drugs that increase lifespan by only a few months.
The Vox article has rose coloured glasses. My family has members in three countries with socialised medicine. NZ / UK / Australia. None of those systems work well, and are particular excoriating if you happen to have refused the covid vaccine.
NZ is rapidly descending towards a banana republic status. Most of the really good doctors here leave, for more fertile pastures, which leaves us with the few who choose to stay and the majority who don't have the acumen to be headhunted.
UK's NHS has gone seriously down the tube and Australia is now a total lottery.
In all three countries, attitudes towards those who use their rights to decline EUA vaccines, are atrocious.
It's not really a side-track off the issue of rights, in the sense that if someond has their rights removed and are forced ( mandated ) to have the vaccine, surely they have the "right" have unexpected result reported, and also that the system that mandated the injection against their will, should pick up the responsibility and the bill, to attempt to put the pieces of their health back together again.
Except that in the case of the covid mRNA vaccines, it would seem that is almost a near impossible task, because contrary to the current narrative, heart damage caused by myocarditis cannot be reversed and will over time reveal itself yet again.
I'm also going through the recent pubmed articles on autopsies, which should be a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks that the narrative about these vaccines being "safe" is a pig in a poke.
The reason that I subscribe to this substack is that I have read many articles by Dr. Prasad and Dr. Mandrola, and also listened to many of their podcasts. They impress me as highly intelligent, knowledgeable, analytical, wise, and honest. I trust what they say completely. They are not against the Covid vaccine with some exceptions, but they are against mandates. Their message is not simple, easy, black and white, as in "Either the vaccine works or it doesn't." or "Either the vaccine is safe or it's not." People want such easy answers, but real life isn't like that. Mandrola and Prasad are nuanced and thorough, and that's what I appreciate most about them. Here's what they have to say on the Covid vaccine:
Also, in terms of a vaccine, yes, they either work or they don't.
The 31 March 2023 population of our country according to stats NZ was 5,199,100.
Never vaccinated 12+ year olds total just over 600,000. The data may be higher than that, because the system was able to be manipulated, and a lot of people were registered as vaccinated who were not.
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do....
But according to Ministry of Health data:
Covid vaccination rate for primary series in 12+ years old is 89.3%
In order for both to survive they have to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. it's quite possible to be accurately erudite on certain facets of medicine and utterly ignorant on others.
Perhaps both of them should go through the substack posts here, from 16th February to now. and spend some time absorbing the implications of this, knowing that this work has now been replicated in Japan and Germany as well:
I spend much of my life on Pubmed, and there are TONS of studies which use VAERS and VIGILINK as proof that the infection is more dangerous than the vaccine.
I'm just going through a wodge of them all right now, as part of a fully referenced document to go to a select committee...
No study that uses VAERS data as a true and accurate record of the number of side effects, can give an accurate assessment of the risks and benefits, when we know that worldwide, doctors won't report all reactions, and that if they were report every case, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to complete clinical work on the floor. Obviously some are reported, but the irony is that a lot of them end up being reported by the people themselves, because the doctors won't do it.
And there is another issue too, and that is that even today, a lot of doctors still have no idea about VAERS. It seems that many people's heads are under a rock, so you don't need to tell them not to report something, which is very convenient.
We all know that the vaccine reaction reporting rate has always been a total crock, not just in the USA. You can't even compare old vaccines with new ones because right from the start, under-reporting has been a key issue for every vaccine in existence.
An anecdote: Reaching school age, I had a severe vitamin D deficiency resulting in pes planus, pectus excavatum, genu varum , fibrous dysplasia, malformed vertebrae, scoliosis, and kyphosis. (Of note: vitamin D fortification of milk following pasteurization was not required where I was raised) I was prescribed orthotic inserts for my flat feet for 7 years. At age 14 I visited a specialist with the complaint that despite orthotics my feet were still flat. To my bewilderment the physician stated: “At this point your feet are flat because you have been wearing inserts. The muscles and tendons holding together your feet have atrophied. On your way out there is a dumpster: toss the inserts and the shoes.”
Moral of the story: a perfectly educated and compassionate doctor prescribed orthotics, a perfectly skilled craftsperson fabricated flawless orthotics and a well organized insurance scheme funded the whole venture and all of it was the opposite of what was needed.
Following this experience I tossed the shoes and reformed my view of life, health, medicine, education and professional advisors.
Since then I have been a carpenter for 20 years and a nurse for 14. I know beyond doubt, if I feel my back, it’s not a lack of pain medication, it’s just that I got lazy over the winter and didn’t do enough squats with enough weight.
The podiatrist mentioned above saved my life and by extension a couple of others as well.
There are no ‘human rights’. They are just made up human constructs. We needn’t place healthcare into some imaginary construct ‘above’ us. Some absolute, separate from human silliness, selfishness, and folly. We simply must define certain non- negotiable responsibilities to our societies - one being that reducing avoidable human suffering and death through proper healthcare for everyone is more important than money.
Catholic Saint, Theology and Philosophy Master Thomas Aquinas officially cited in Sensible Medicine!
I already loved the group, but know it's like chocolate on the top of the cake.
wow.
i had no idea the SensMed cmt sections got like this! thought i was the only one? </3. now i see the truth: all cmt sections are the same. & thr is a beauty in that. _JC
Terrible. Just awful. An awful piece, by a likely bad person. Who is also fat. _JC
This is unscientific, incoherent, coercive, pseudo-political gobbledygook. Reads like it was written by an MBA. It is internally inconsistent; compares forced treatments, from incentive misaligned actors, & Osler's "good clinical decision-makers use uncertainty to weigh the relative benefits for each patient."; says things like "even the courts" [!!] - courts have no medical background! Thr poor judgments are notorious, for that very reason.
Right to access care, & choose one's medical team, & exercise bodily autonomy is the *chief & only* right, for anything else to matter (cf Adam's introduction, you monster! Demon! Foul thing from the darkest pit!) The reason it must be framed as a "right" is to give the individual protection from people. like. you.
I do not even want to hear your (likely paternal & unhinged) views on opiates & pain control. & I'm sorry if you've been sued a lot: But maybe give putting pts 1st a try? see how that goes? You need to re-read those philosophers.
& review both vaccines & applied medico legal hx, & call me in the morning. Thanks for writing. _JC
Sure, if you so say. I'm sorry you were unable to provide any evidence for your assertions about the data. But should you ever find any, I'll be "happy" to take a look. It's been a fun discussion, and no harm, no foul. I sincerely wish you the best, especially when AI takes over both our jobs! 😳
Before we even get to determining "what healthcare people have a right to" we should first consider whether or not it should be thought of as a right at all. In fact, there are reasons it is not already considered and provided as a right!
I cannot speak to other countries, but in the U.S. we enjoy 10 basic rights and none of them involve a right to healthcare (however you define it). It is, to my mind, axiomatic that if you insist that something is a right, then you also have an obligation to provide it which means you must make the wherewithal in terms of personnel and equipment and medicines, etc., the gamut, available. You also have to qualify what constitutes that healthcare. So, for instance, I'm aging and my self-esteem goes down because my face is now wrinkly. Am I entitled to a face lift so that my mental health will be better? The absurdity in this demonstrates but one why that healthcare cannot be a "right" in the way we define rights in this country. Even the U.N.'s 30 Human Rights agreement is full of rights that cannot be provided for all peoples everywhere. They are in some measure just a list of "would-be-nices" and "shoulds" providing no means of effecting said nices and shoulds.
We don't include in our Bill of Rights things such as food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education and others because that would of necessity place all of them within the purvue of the government and this would ultimately erode the freedoms and rights of the people as per the Bill's original intent and purpose. (Note: Government run education has not been shown to result in a net positive in the U.S. We lag behind many countries in basic education.)
We have the right to life and liberty and to the pursuit of our own happiness, according to our Bill of Rights. Even the right to "life" as given in that specific Constitutional Amendment does not ensure the right to healthcare.
My argument, in essence, is simply that what you decree as a right, you must be able to provide, and you must be able to provide to a standard that fulfills that right's expressed intent for being a right.
As a consequence of declaring healthcare a right we have to want, accept and build or create government hospitals, government pharmacies, government doctors, government nurses, government health equipment and supplies, and all the rest of what is required to deliver standardized quality health care to all, equally.
Extrapolating all of this out and comparing to other country's health care models, the unworkability of it is readily seen. The poor won't get better care, taxing the rich more won't provide sufficient funding, and the middle class will suffer most because the tax burden will inevitably fall on them. At the very least, whatever healthcare you thus provide will inevitably suffer drastically in lowered quality and availability (as it does anywhere government runs and delivers it).
I always thought we have a right to health by adopting best practices in taking care of ourselves. Should we need medical attention for whatever may happen to us, we are responsible for planning for that eventuality. Either have enough wealth to compensate for our care or make a bet via insurance to pay for that care. None of us has a right to require services from others.
Asking government to provide any personal benefit is fundamentally anti-freedom. When they do, the care is often substandard, not always but mostly. There is no incentive for non-elected government staff to actually service anybody. For medical care, government facilities can be good or bad. Ask any VA or IHS person about care, it varies.
We do have an obligation as a society to care for those who are not able to care for themselves. Notably the quality of that care will be marginal at best given the incentives for adequacy. If we accept care must be delivered to everybody we quickly discover that demand is infinite but supply is finite. It can never work. Combinations can work. In the UK there are always private fee-based facilities and private doctors often retired NHS doctors can be reasonable alternatives to delays in the NHS.
Everyone should have access to healthcare. What bugs me is when they say that Medical Insurance is a right.
On point! We live in a time where if you want to get healthcare you should be able to. Now, the payment for such services? There's the rub. Nobody has the right to make other people pay for their healthcare. Thank you for discerning this all-to-often overlooked detail.
Hmmm, the author has muddied and muddled a few disparate concepts here.
Sure, medicine and therapeutics is imprecise. We are guided by RCT and extrapolate the average effect on average patients, onto a very specific Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith. And I’d say the vast majority of therapeutic decisions runs in areas where there are not specific RCT results to definitively guide decision making. So in those senses, we are not dealing with absolutes and the cut and dried, and that is where the art of medicine is required.
But that should not preclude or exclude the concept of medicine, or at least the access thereto, as a right. For me, the debate would not be about whether access to medicine should be a right; rather, it would be a question of the access to how much of it. If you crash into a post, I believe it reasonable for you to expect society to help in your time of need. But if your double chin bothers you, I’m not so sure you should expect a right to have that redressed. So it would be a question of a right to “necessary care”, and what constitutes “necessary”.
I’m not sure what the examples of vaccines or abortion add, apart from being red meat to trigger people. There are many “rights” that are arbitrary, and/or have arbitrary limits. You can vote, but you have to be a certain age. You can swing your arm about, until you hit someone else’s nose. You are free to speak, but not free to libel. No rights are absolute. And those limits can be (though I suppose not always) rather arbitrary. The need to draw a line around certain rights does not preclude them being such.
yes, a terrible writer (& i suspect bad person? tho also the type to read the cmts. but not learn anything, so it hardly matrs.) _JC
Vaccines are low-lying fruit for those conformed by the narrative, who haven't opened their eye blinds and asked a few questions to see if what they were told is true. When I was studying immunology, there was a 1973 quote by Dr Robert Good from a conference, where he said he sat in the front row of class and wrote everything down in morocco bound note books, and then he said,
"When I opened them again, and studied them 10 years after so carefully completing them, I was astonished to find that they were almost entirely filled with lies. Except for a few descriptions such as well-established anatomy, everything that seemed so orderly and beautiful with the rather comprehensive treatment I had given it for one moment in history, had changed, grown, and been reordered by the scholarship of the intervening ten years. That is why it is so important so frequently to take stock as we have done in this conference, and to consider what has been happening in the research laboratories and in our thinking on so many subjects."
The problem is, that far too few doctors take stock.
Read “Turtles All the Way Down” and then get back to us about the net benefit to society of most vaccines.
And learn from other doctors who did their own research and discovered that both history and medical school lied to them:
https://odysee.com/@drsuzanneh:f/smallpoxillusionsautismone:9
OK, I understand that everything offered as "health care" is not beneficial. I certainly don't feel people should be forced to partake of it. And of course -- of course! -- the burden of not having health care falls unequally on the poor.
But Jesus H. Christ! That's exactly WHY you need to answer a few basic questions:
If I do not have a right to health care, then who should decide whether I deserve it or not? The open market? Maybe a deputy sheriff of the private market, stationed somewhere in the insurance company that covers me (this year)? That's how things look at present in NW Indiana and the rest of the US. Those who can't pay are deprived of care most folks would consider essential -- while those who can pay can often get even the most unnecessary or harmful care.
Are you OK with that, Dr. Joshi? If so, how much do you think I should pay, in order to qualify as "deserving"? What's your cutoff?
Or if you reject that all-American approach, well, maybe you think these decisions should be made by my "betters" -- a council of wise and thoughtful experts. Who are they, exactly? And by the way, Dr. Joshi, if health care is not YOUR right, then who would you put in charge of deciding whether you deserve it or not? Who are YOUR "betters"?
Sorry for the tone. But I work at a small law firm that represents injured workers, and I have spent the last few days trying in vain to obtain basic medical care for a very disabled and very broke guy in Northwest Indiana. As a result I find the "thoughtful" tone of this post somewhere between hypocritical, and downright obscene.
And perhaps the lack of understanding, because of never walking in the shoes of your clients, and people at the butt end of thoughtlessness.
I had this discussion with someone previous to the CoVid pandemic. They argued that health care is a right. I argued that the problem with looking at it as a right is the idea that you have to be given it.
If someone doesn't want to get cancer treatment, they can refuse to get it if they want. It's not something that I would necessarily decide, but people should be allowed to refuse treatment if they want. So it can't be a right to receive health care.
This doesn't mean that people shouldn't have access to it. I live in a country where health care is paid for by the government and I generally support this. But I don't want the government requiring people to be given health care if they don't want it.
pl waive thr rights all the time. whr are you pl getting this?
watch more law and order. _JC
Waiving your rights is usually not a good thing. For the most part having a right is designed to avoid being taken advantage of, usually by people who want to do things you don’t want them to do. So again, medicine itself can’t be a right.
I'm astonished at both the prevarication of thinking, and lack of science in this post.
Paragraphs three and four, which paint everything with a broad brush, are eye-blindingly wrong in every way possible. Vaccines either work or they don't. End of. And to couch the issue any other way is scientifically and intellectually dishonest. Perhaps the writer is fragile because of current covid controversy, and for the sake of his job, wants to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds?
Unfortunately the prevaricating tenor continues throughout the rest. The issue is actually very simple.
Quoting theologians is logical and right. As a christian, the whole basis of my decision to be a christian rests on the God-given right to choose to believe, or to choose not to believe. I choose to believe, and made that choice both on understanding, and knowing. Your constitution is also predicated on the same God-given individual right, spiritually and in society, though somehow, that has been smudged off .....
Similarly, as far as I'm concerned, the only "right" that matters to me with regard to medicine, is that the doctor is totally truthful, gives me all the known and reliable scientific information in relation to the vagaries that I present and the problem at hand, and is prepared to discuss it with me, so that I can make my own informed choices as to what I want to allow with regard to my body.
That applies to everything. Medical procedures and especially vaccines.
No doctor, or medical organisation, has any "right" to dictate what I do, or why I do it, or don't do it.
The last three years should have illuminated this core concept to all doctors with great clarity - that nothing in medicine should be about the control of people.
Spot on.
Actually, look up the facts on life expectancy in the US. Homicides committed by young men on young men
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2900567/
https://photos.app.goo.gl/bBeqQcwueKwWP7Lx6
https://ourworldindata.org/us-life-expectancy-low.
For years, I've been grappling with the concept of healthcare as a right. As a practicing physician for over two decades, the question I often ask is: what is "healthcare"? What does that term encircle? How can we deem something a right if we can't fully define it? If "healthcare" is a "right," does that mean every human being on Earth is entitled to all aspects of healthcare, without exception? Should every person have unrestricted, (and free!) access to physicians, the most advanced imaging, the latest surgical procedures, and any medication?
Given these considerations, I don't view healthcare as a right but rather as a goal. By considering some basic level of healthcare as a societal goal, members of society can determine what marginal level of "healthcare" should be universally available and at what cost. This may vary across regions or groups. If healthcare were a right, it would, by definition, have to be equally available to all at no cost. However, providing healthcare incurs costs – someone must pay those costs. If it is considered a right, healthcare workers would essentially be required to provide it without charge, effectively becoming slaves. In contrast, fundamental rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness don't impose costs on third parties.
Suppose there are no doctors, or only a handful in your town, state, or country? Must we compel people to become doctors to satisfy this "right"? Viewing healthcare as a "goal" rather than a "right" allows it to be prioritized within the hierarchy of other societal goals and facilitates decisions regarding incentives and trade-offs to achieve it.
The language is the problem, as the term "right" carries implications that may be unattainable in the real world of constraints and tradeoffs. It also creates an ever-growing and unrealistic sense of entitlement in the populace, spawning a mismatch between expectations and reality. However, this doesn't undermine the significance of healthcare as a vital, and perhaps one of the most important, societal goals.
yes, idiot. "healthcare" is a "right," does that mean every human being on Earth is entitled to all aspects of healthcare, without exception. every person best have unrestricted, (and free!) access to physicians, the most advanced imaging, the latest surgical procedures, and any medication.
that is what we are striving for. lets hope it goes betr than some of the other 'rights'. children of physicians are just the worst, before thr first mi & minus meditation. [HOT TIP!!]: you arent just meant to sit still w your eyes closed. Go vote for biden then, you evil prxck. or trump. not a genuine analytical, compassionate thought in that over rote learning filled fat melon.
give up your money & access, then "reflect" on if "right" is the correct frame. dxcknuget. the con is that the constraints are as gr8 as they are: they are not. _JC
The term "right" certainly seems to upset a lot of people. Maybe we can strive towards universal healthcare as a "societal goal," as you say. Many Western European nations are shocked that the U.S. does not consider it as a basic human right. Something about our culture....
I don't think it's as simple as that. In the country I live in, healthcare is considered a right because it's taxpayer funded "socialist" medicine. However, in practice it doesn't work like that. Pretty much the only way to land up in the system here, is if you are sick enough to require an ambulance, or if you are an oppressed minority. But even if you are an oppressed minority, and land up in the system, you must understand the art of patience, because from the time of admission, to the time of getting the tests you need done, can take weeks. Which is ludicrous, because you take up bed space using taxpayers money hand over fist, while eating food that is almost inedible, just because the system has inadequate ability to DO the tests and staff are overworked.
And if you are lucky enough to get the tests you need done, and are discharged being told to get an "urgent" follow-up, you find that your "urgent" appointment letter tells you that the waiting list is 42 weeks long.
The last three years has also disemboweled the medical system, because money has been spent everywhere except the medical system, and the medical system has disemboweled itself through concurring with mandates, so has hemorrhaged staff.
Worse, the system is so bad we can't even analyse vaccine safety properly - those keeping their finger on the real pulse, have all seen the interviews with nurses sacked for reporting side effects, many of whom said that it had to be done OUT of work hours because to report a case took a long time, and often you would be timed out of the database before you were finished giving the required information. On top of that was the directive to NOT report side effects. Again, we have all seen interviews with provaccine people with serious side effects who tell why their injuries were never reported.
Then you go onto pubmed and read all the peer reviewed studies based on VAERS (in my country, SMARS) and the European database Vigilinks, saying that in relation to the doses given, the serious side effects are irrelevant and the vaccines are wonderful.
As the mother-in-law of someone who had a serious reaction, and watched the gaslighting from the system, and outright refusal to even do the tests which would have confirmed myocarditis, and listening to the callousness of the staff deflecting all possibility of causation, I was disgusted. There was one cardiologist who was concerned and ordered the correct tests, only to be over-ruled from above.
This country is literally swarming with similar stories, so the people on the ground know that they have no rights in the system, either with potential diagnosis validation, treatment or anything else.
Therefore to even use the term "right", when that right is supposedly there, is a mockery of the word.
And therein lies the catch-22 for the medical system. They have made a mockery of themselves, and in the process the level of public trust is at rock bottom.
Some of us hold out hope for sanity in places like this, but the trouble is that doctors like Vinay are essentially sidelined and ignored, and while we would like sensible medicine, the concept appears to be a mirage at ground zero.
What country do you live in? Mr. Google didn't come up with anything when I Googled SMARS. I know different countries do universal health care differently, and it's never easy. (1st link) If we could learn from each other, maybe we could create a "good" system, as I doubt we can ever have a "perfect" system. As for waiting lines, I've been on them, even here in the good old U.S.A, even with good insurance. Those without insurance here either don't go to the doctor at all until it's too late, or they go to the ER for. non-emergencies, making ER's more dangerous for all of us because they're overcrowded. I'm so sorry about your son-in-law, and I hope he's better now. Here in the U.S. healthcare providers are required to report adverse events to VAERS, but patients can do so, too. When the vaccines first came out, you could even download an app to report AE's. Of course, when you give millions and millions of vaccines, there will be some adverse events afterwards that are coincidence, since people get sick and die every day. The VAERS data helps them determine if indeed the incidence of an AE is above the baseline of what is "typical." That can vary by demographic. I'm not sure what VAERS-based studies you are talking about specifically, but IMO, the article in the 2nd link below is very straightforward and honest in their analysis and description of the vaccine side effects. No vaccine, or for that matter, medication or surgery, is without risk, and always requires a risk/benefit analysis. For a vaccine, you have to consider the risk of a serious AE from the vaccine, vs the risk of serious harm from infection, and that can vary by age and comorbidities. That's kind of a side-track off of the issue of "rights." Anyway, thanks for your insight into medicine in your country, wherever that may be. We have great docs and technology here in the U.S., but lots of people with no access to care, and worse health outcomes on average than any other developed nation. There are lots of reasons for that, not just one, and Vinay often points out the millions of dollars spent on onco-drugs that increase lifespan by only a few months.
https://www.vox.com/health-care/2020/1/29/21075388/medicare-for-all-what-countries-have-universal-health-care
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.870599/full
The Vox article has rose coloured glasses. My family has members in three countries with socialised medicine. NZ / UK / Australia. None of those systems work well, and are particular excoriating if you happen to have refused the covid vaccine.
NZ is rapidly descending towards a banana republic status. Most of the really good doctors here leave, for more fertile pastures, which leaves us with the few who choose to stay and the majority who don't have the acumen to be headhunted.
UK's NHS has gone seriously down the tube and Australia is now a total lottery.
In all three countries, attitudes towards those who use their rights to decline EUA vaccines, are atrocious.
It's not really a side-track off the issue of rights, in the sense that if someond has their rights removed and are forced ( mandated ) to have the vaccine, surely they have the "right" have unexpected result reported, and also that the system that mandated the injection against their will, should pick up the responsibility and the bill, to attempt to put the pieces of their health back together again.
Except that in the case of the covid mRNA vaccines, it would seem that is almost a near impossible task, because contrary to the current narrative, heart damage caused by myocarditis cannot be reversed and will over time reveal itself yet again.
I'm also going through the recent pubmed articles on autopsies, which should be a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks that the narrative about these vaccines being "safe" is a pig in a poke.
The reason that I subscribe to this substack is that I have read many articles by Dr. Prasad and Dr. Mandrola, and also listened to many of their podcasts. They impress me as highly intelligent, knowledgeable, analytical, wise, and honest. I trust what they say completely. They are not against the Covid vaccine with some exceptions, but they are against mandates. Their message is not simple, easy, black and white, as in "Either the vaccine works or it doesn't." or "Either the vaccine is safe or it's not." People want such easy answers, but real life isn't like that. Mandrola and Prasad are nuanced and thorough, and that's what I appreciate most about them. Here's what they have to say on the Covid vaccine:
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-epidemic-of-diedsuddenly
Also, in terms of a vaccine, yes, they either work or they don't.
The 31 March 2023 population of our country according to stats NZ was 5,199,100.
Never vaccinated 12+ year olds total just over 600,000. The data may be higher than that, because the system was able to be manipulated, and a lot of people were registered as vaccinated who were not.
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do....
But according to Ministry of Health data:
Covid vaccination rate for primary series in 12+ years old is 89.3%
first boosters administered: 2,763,640
second boosters administered 893,157
https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-vaccine-data
Never vaccinated deaths…………………………. 316 From an OIA to me received 15 May 2023..
1 – 2 injection – deaths ………………………….. 217
Fully vaccinated deaths ………………………….. 612
Boostered ………………………………………………. 3,201
TOTAL DEATHS ……………………………………….. 4,346 people.
https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics
The politest explanation of this vaccine failure would be that New Zealanders are being injected with an irrelevant product to now extinct variants.
In order for both to survive they have to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. it's quite possible to be accurately erudite on certain facets of medicine and utterly ignorant on others.
Perhaps both of them should go through the substack posts here, from 16th February to now. and spend some time absorbing the implications of this, knowing that this work has now been replicated in Japan and Germany as well:
https://anandamide.substack.com/archive
New Zealand.
I spend much of my life on Pubmed, and there are TONS of studies which use VAERS and VIGILINK as proof that the infection is more dangerous than the vaccine.
I'm just going through a wodge of them all right now, as part of a fully referenced document to go to a select committee...
No study that uses VAERS data as a true and accurate record of the number of side effects, can give an accurate assessment of the risks and benefits, when we know that worldwide, doctors won't report all reactions, and that if they were report every case, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to complete clinical work on the floor. Obviously some are reported, but the irony is that a lot of them end up being reported by the people themselves, because the doctors won't do it.
And there is another issue too, and that is that even today, a lot of doctors still have no idea about VAERS. It seems that many people's heads are under a rock, so you don't need to tell them not to report something, which is very convenient.
We all know that the vaccine reaction reporting rate has always been a total crock, not just in the USA. You can't even compare old vaccines with new ones because right from the start, under-reporting has been a key issue for every vaccine in existence.
Did you ever read this about USA?
https://healthit.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/docs/publication/r18hs017045-lazarus-final-report-2011.pdf
An anecdote: Reaching school age, I had a severe vitamin D deficiency resulting in pes planus, pectus excavatum, genu varum , fibrous dysplasia, malformed vertebrae, scoliosis, and kyphosis. (Of note: vitamin D fortification of milk following pasteurization was not required where I was raised) I was prescribed orthotic inserts for my flat feet for 7 years. At age 14 I visited a specialist with the complaint that despite orthotics my feet were still flat. To my bewilderment the physician stated: “At this point your feet are flat because you have been wearing inserts. The muscles and tendons holding together your feet have atrophied. On your way out there is a dumpster: toss the inserts and the shoes.”
Moral of the story: a perfectly educated and compassionate doctor prescribed orthotics, a perfectly skilled craftsperson fabricated flawless orthotics and a well organized insurance scheme funded the whole venture and all of it was the opposite of what was needed.
Following this experience I tossed the shoes and reformed my view of life, health, medicine, education and professional advisors.
Since then I have been a carpenter for 20 years and a nurse for 14. I know beyond doubt, if I feel my back, it’s not a lack of pain medication, it’s just that I got lazy over the winter and didn’t do enough squats with enough weight.
The podiatrist mentioned above saved my life and by extension a couple of others as well.