- Body still recovering from last weekend’s pain fest. My doctor shot me up with lidocaine, injecting it straight into these things he calls “trigger points”: tiny muscle knots that everyone has but that have become aggrivagted in my case, and have increased pain receptors, decreased vascularization, and have begun likening themselves to scar tissue. A more permenant/ long lasting treatment might be Botox. Imagine that! By numbing the trigger points for an extended period of time, the muscle spasms would cease, and the entire muscle would be able to let go (in my case, the muscle is the trapezius), allowing me to strengthen the supporting muscles so that, by the time the botox wears off, my trapezius would not become strained. Worth a shot.Aaaaaaaaand – I could tell everyone I was having botox, and funny looks would ensue. heeheee.
- Lab is nice on a rainy, cold, sunday afternoon.
- I’m extremely nervous about what will happen with healthcare. My doc had posted his views on the debaucle in his waiting room, and, because I happen to think he’s a terrific GP with a tightly run ship, I thought I’d share what points I’m agreeing with: 1.) Participation in the program should be optional for practicioners. I agree with this. On the flip side, there’s the argument of “oh gosh, we won’t be able to spread reform and get all those uninsured people healthcare if we don’t force every practicioner to participate.” Let me tell you why I think it’s better to make participation optional at this point: the reforms won’t take effect for years anyways, so it’s kinda pointless to force participation right now anyways. A far greater argument is that forcing participation is the same thing as standardizing medical practices. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to do that, however, usually practices aren’t standardized until it’s been established that they will work. We don’t know if the reforms will work, so it’s a pretty nonsensical and possibly dangerous and wastefull (considering time and money) to force all physicians to adopt these reforms from the get-go. If they work, more physicians will join the program.
Um, I guess that’s all I really feel about that right now.
Back to experimenting.
When you say that “participation in the program should be optional for practitioners,” what, exactly, do you mean by “the program?” I ask because I’m not aware of any reforms that would apply directly to practitioners. They’d apply to insurance providers. Even if the public option gets included, which is by no means a given, I don’t believe doctors would be required to accept that plan. About the only thing I can think of that might apply to practitioners is the computerization of health records, and I can’t really get my dander up too much about making that mandatory.
It’s not the computerized medical records per se that I have a problem with, it’s the government being able to look at my medical records when it’s none of their goddamn buisness. Straight up violation of HIPAA.
OK, now tell me what part of health care reform would make that possible, in a way that wasn’t previously possible?
(I mean, nobody’s talking about repealing HIPAA, or exempting the government from it. OK, not nobody — there are some libertarian types who complain that HIPAA compliance and enforcement drives up medical costs, and that we should therefore weaken or repeal HIPAA, so let me rephrase that to say nobody worth taking seriously is talking about repealing HIPAA.)