The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    VA FOR ALL (THE HARD WAY)

    By jollyroger on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 2:54pm |

    The V.A. is preparing to back up the health care system.

     

    More than once I have advocated for expansion of the Veterans Administration to become our National Health Service.

     

    It appears that thanks to the current plague pandemic the VA is on track to this 'finale,  but the implicit arrival at the realization that health care cannot intelligently be a profit driven enterprise is going to be a hard learned lesson.

    Comments

    The VA Medical School might be a good idea right about now, too.  If it had opened when Obamacare was proposed the graduates would have been doctors for five years now.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 2:57pm

    Except that in the present they will probably have their hands full just taking care of those they are already charged with caring for? I.E., got any extra ventilators sitting around they aren't already using for vets?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 3:43pm

    P.S. It doesn't really look like our favorite model is handling things that well so far either. I must admit that the downside making your whole health care system totally dependent on the government, how well it is funded and how prepared it is for things like epidemics will depend upon the politics of any one period:

    NHS missing 10,000 nurses since Brexit as Europeans avoid moving to the UK.

    There are now 43,000 unfilled nursing jobs in England, 3,600 in ­Scotland and 1,600 in Wales. https://t.co/9TL2RDnSID

    — Patrick606 (@Pat_O_Tuathail) March 15, 2020

    It's disgraceful that private healthcare companies are making a profit out of the coronavirus.

    The beds should be used by the NHS. Rent-free.https://t.co/WguRF8Y2Mj

    — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 15, 2020

    Italy has had a pretty good system; it's now decimated.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 4:08pm

    It is, beyond peradventure, an abomination and a stench in the nostrils of the Lord, to contemplate the ruin that sheer perverse small minded tribalism has wrought on the British NHS.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 5:15pm

    Apparently we only have 3,186 ICU beds in the entire state of NY?

    This is getting real personal for me, one of my nearest and dearest is 70 yrs. old, looks under 60, is quite healthy overall (beat prostate cancer 5 yrs. ago and never looked back) but has used a jolt of advair for "weak lung function" every morning for decades quite successfully. Say goodbye now?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 6:16pm

    ETA the whole thing about Vit C and cold amelioration (as measured by duration of symptoms from onset to full remission) was the crucial necessity of early commencement of the high dose vitamiin C therapy which had been found to shorten colds and lessen the severity of symptoms.

    The relationship between vitamin C dosage and its effects on the duration of the common cold symptoms may extend to 6-8 grams per day.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170330115246.htm 

     

    That said, if you slam 5 grams a day while the contagion rages, you will always be at the level you'd leap to if you suspected you were coming down with a cold.

     

    This may expose me to accusations of practicing medicine while acting as a Youtube influencer, but inasmuch as we are, after all, talking about a coronavirus which we know has cousins that can be more successfully fought when the sovereign  anti inflammatory properties of vitamin c have been enlisted, it could not hurt to temporarily go to heroic daily levels (say, five grams).  The more so as I have seen an ACTUAL doctor recommend zinc lozenges, for the same demonstrated anti cold virus action as that for whicch they are sold, viz, slowing the replication of the pathogen.

     

    It all being a matter of balance between the trenches and the artillery, we can nibble at the trench edges, as it were.


    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 3:32am

    I saw the zinc lozenge thing recommended by a couple of docs I respect too. Said the way it works is discouraging viruses from going down your throat, causes a hostile environment for them. (Hence the way it seems to work if you do it in time when you have just that nasal/sinus inkling of a cold coming on, plus your immune system, of course.)


    by artappraiser on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 5:08am

    Overall, I think you are still thinking inside the box as if the old world still existed. It doesn't. It's every fucking hand on deck right now, the entire spectrum of what we've got, capitalist to communist. VA system is just one teeny tiny little cog in the scheme of things, can't do much of anything without everyone else in the world. I.E., we may well end up with the start of a "universal basic income" right quicker than anyone ever thought, just have a different name. The world's economy is at a standstill and there isn't enough of the right stuff to buy, beg or steal. Time for big corps to really become persons, just like Romney said. They got to take care of their people or they will go kaput, there is no consumer economy without consumers....if nobody's working, no masks get made...look at Italy, a situation like that that simply cannot continue...


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 7:00pm

    I will admit that the VA of my imagination is about ten-15 years old, at which time in multiple studies they had outcomes that surpassed all other providers by a very robust margin, partly because they had then pioneered serious integration of their data platforms before anyone else was doing so sucessfully.

     

    They have gotten starved as a consequence of Obama's signature on the squestration budget rider to the debt limit extention of 2010.

     

     


    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 3:18am

    The V.A. is included in this state secret:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 03/15/2020 - 7:50pm

    We  have enough for everyone who is  rich enough for us to want to save them, or young enough to have useful labor left.

     

    I am  (perhaps against interest..) unable to contain my amusement at the quip designating Coronavirus "The Boomer Remover"


    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 3:20am

    So far in Italy not to the boomers yet, just Il Duce babies:

     


    by artappraiser on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 5:12am

    yeah ventilators are the new gold in Europe:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 5:14am

    They have thee nerve to classify public health stats.

     

    On the income thing, it is no doubt a real force majeure towards the de facto MMT we have going at the fed and the need for fully paid sick leave to iincentivize self quarantining (with an intelligent bias towards calling the close ones in favor of staying home...)/


    by jollyroger on Mon, 03/16/2020 - 3:38am

    Italy's decided to send in the newbies early to cover


    by artappraiser on Tue, 03/17/2020 - 3:50am

    Robbing Peter to pay Paul and maybe not working at all--the nasty little secret of M4all or single payer in a situation like this:



    by artappraiser on Tue, 03/17/2020 - 4:29am

    actually, he finally did:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/21/2020 - 9:28pm

    though apparently Macron threats helped:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/21/2020 - 9:32pm