I tried to write about things that concern me but the posts come out long, winded and accompanied by pompous titles. I will instead try to write shorter posts appropriately titled “What Grinds My Gear-skiy”.

A recent article in Consumer Reports discussed how some Americans are getting too much health care and, contrary to popular belief, that’s not necessarily a good thing. A massive study called Dartmouth Atlas Project documented the distribution of health care resources in the country and how it relates to the quality of life and life expectancy in the elderly patients. The conclusion is that aggressive medical treatment does not help people live longer, sometimes just the opposite. The choice is to either live your final years as happily as you can, or spend them waiting in line for multiple doctor’s appointments and various tests. Either way you’ll die about the same time but the first route may be more dignified and not like this:

Jean Callahan, a social worker and attorney with the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York City public-interest group, became the court-appointed guardian for a 90-year-old bedridden woman so completely unresponsive that Callahan never even found out whether she spoke English. She had a feeding tube, but her stomach could not process the food. Both feet and lower legs had gangrene. The woman’s doctors “brought us into the case to consent to the amputation of one of her legs, but because the hospital considered the surgery to be life sustaining, we didn’t really have the legal power to say no,” Callahan says. “It was obvious to everyone around her that she was dying, but when we attempted to have her moved to hospice, the doctor said, ‘No, I don’t think she’s ready.’ They eventually amputated both of her legs, and she continued to get aggressive treatment, including intravenous antibiotics. In the end, she died of an infection.”

According to the research, the intensity of care depends highly on the number of specialists in the area and not on the seriousness of your condition. If you live in the locality with a high population of proctologists there is a big chance you are going to accidentally back into one of their probing fingers even if you didn’t need it. In the areas with too many heart surgeons you have a higher chance to get a bypass. Luckily both Kansas and Missouri are spending below average so the population here is less likely to be inundated with unnecessary tests and procedures.

What grinds my gear-skiy is that my father who was a regular underpaid doctor could diagnose a patient with little more than a stethoscope, blood pressure check, regular blood and urine tests, palpation and x-rays, and he was accurate. Nowadays, a doctor will sit across the room from the patient and prescribe thousands of dollars worth of testing for what could be just a pulled muscle, without approaching the patient. All I can say is don’t go to the doctor uniformed, or you may be treated to death.

This ground my gear-skiy. Read the article.