Letters to the Editor
FredrickBernanke
Published Letters: 170 Editor's Choice: 8
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@dlmk1950
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Businesses, including but limited to WalMart, don't operate on the concept of doing good for others. I agree.
But often businesses--and other enterprises--wind up doing good for others even though that was not their primary motivation.
Are the for-profit sickness enterprises, otherwise know as hospitals, private clinics, free-standing ER's, etc. motivated by doing good for others? Are quickie oil changes? No, but almost inadvertently they do (good for others.)
One change I would like to see made is for the media to stop calling the medical industry the "Health Care" industry and call it what it actually is: the "Sickness Care" industry.
Virtually any innovation that impinges on the physician-monopoly is sickness care is a positive development.
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Treeple
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My first point refers to both insured and uninsured people. I think you illustrate the point well when you mention your personal experience with friends being surprised that you didn't consult a physician when you had the flu. My personal belief is that the "public" has been conditioned to seek medical care nowadays for ailments that people a generation or two ago (30 years?) considered trifling.
It might even make sense for the sickness industry to charge more for a visit for someone with a cold than someone with a broken arm!
I did not read the article in The Atlantic, but arguing that having fewer MD's would lower sickness care costs is ridiculous on its face. Think of a world with only Shell and Exxon gas stations.
Increase the supply of providers and prices for the service will fall...look at attorneys, for example.
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@Mormandoctor
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Will a drop-in clinic practitioner take the time to do the right thing, even at the risk of alienating a paying customer? Or will they do the easy quick "solution" of writing that prescription for Augmentin and keeping the customer satisfied?"
The question you pose is certainly a valid one. But it does not apply exclusively to a drip-in clinic practitioner, it applies to all practitioners. And it's not apparent to me that the drop-in guy is predisposed the behave differently from any other practitioner.
[Note to you, Doctor: My father was a GP in NYC, so long ago that he made house calls and frequently took his 6-yr-old son, me, along with him. He would not have prescribed Augmentin unless it was unquestionably indicated. But even back them, most of his contemporaries would have, I'm afraid.]
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@Dr_Dredd
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Very interesting. Thanks for the information.
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Treeple
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Regarding The Atlantic's article point 1:
Doctors are able to congregate in densely populated urban areas and effectively set the price level for their services because the number of doctors is restricted. More doctors would mean that per force, some of them would be trickling out to the hinterlands, and those choosing to stay in urban areas would be forced to compete--pricewise--for their consumers. More doctors must lead to lower per capita earnings per doctor---not high on the AMA's agenda, I'm sure.
On the second point in the article, I have no allusions that having more doctors will materially affect the welfare of patients; it will just make sickness care cheaper, which is apparently what The Atlantic article argues.
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@R. K. Parikh, MD
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for writing this article...My father (an MD) would have tipped his cap--if he wore one--to you.
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@lister
[Read the article: Wal-Mart can be good for your health]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sir, I meant no offense to those who are in need of sickness care.
Knock-on-wood, one of the few things that I have had luck with in life is health.
I also had a father (and quite a few other family members) who were or are MD's, and from their guidance I have made it a practice--no pun intended--to avoid doctors as best I can. I learned about avoiding lawyers on my own.
Please accept my apologies if I offended you personally in any way.
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Plagiarism Accusations;Words that Inspire;Advertising Slogans...and H's Desperation
[Read the article: Clinton attacks Obama for focusing on rhetoric, Obama gets long-winded]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The preposterous allegation of plagiarism against Obama is just another indication of the lack of ammunition the Clinton campaign has to go "negative" against this guy.
Here's plagiarism: Obama delivers, word for word, the Gettysburg Address without attribution to Lincoln. He basks in the glory of those words, his silence implying they were his own.
The case(s) cited by Clinton, Inc. refer to a speech given by an ally of Barack's in which the only notable phrases quoted were those of others. The original speech by the MA Governor was being used as a defense and brilliant refutation of the latest Clinton advertising agency "speeches vs. solutions" ploy.
Language is as essential to human being as water is to fish being.
Barack should stand up before his next audience as say: "I have been accused of making speeches that are too inspiring, of using words in a manner that make people feel good about the future. The following words are not mine; they were written on train ride from Washington DC to Gettysburg PA by a man trying to save his country. [Then read the Gettysburg Address.]
Then, "Those words did not offer specific, detailed solutions; they were not written by an advertising copywriter...but they are words that inspired a nation in 1864(?) and still inspire nations today. I am not ashamed to speak of hope; to see brightness ahead for our country, And I also humbly acknowledge my inferior use of words to the man who wrote that short speech: Abraham Lincoln."
Nixon tried a variation of the "speeches versus solutions" tactic against JFK in 1960. It failed then, and Clinton's use of this inexplicable tactic today speaks more to her efficacy in using the "bully pulpit" than it does to Obama's vacuity of substance. If Super-Wonk Nixon couldn't derail Kennedy, Hillary's chances of success with this tactic are nearly zero.
By its very nature as a patent advertising slogan "speeches versus solutions" highlights the contrived, bordering on pathetic, nature of both Hillary, Bill and their campaign.