This recent article in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande speaks to a central issue of the US Healthcare system which is broken at best – the overuse of medicine. And when it comes to your health in this case, more is definitely not better. The states with the most care ranked lowest in quality patient care.

In general surgery the gallbladder is known as the “golden thumb”. A quick, easy surgery that generates massive profits that is usually unneccesary with dietary changes and visceral manipulation to release the tension in the gallbladders compartment.

General surgeons are often asked to see patients with pain from gallstones. If there aren’t any complications—and there usually aren’t—the pain goes away on its own or with pain medication. With instruction on eating a lower-fat diet, most patients experience no further difficulties. But some have recurrent episodes, and need surgery to remove their gallbladder.
Seeing a patient who has had uncomplicated, first-time gallstone pain requires some judgment. A surgeon has to provide reassurance (people are often scared and want to go straight to surgery), some education about gallstone disease and diet, perhaps a prescription for pain; in a few weeks, the surgeon might follow up. But increasingly, I was told, McAllen surgeons simply operate. The patient wasn’t going to moderate her diet, they tell themselves. The pain was just going to come back. And by operating they happen to make an extra seven hundred dollars.

Dr. Jay Parkinson of Hello Health, “Money doesn’t grow on trees. And let’s get this straight. Obama essentially mandates employer provided health insurance. This simply doesn’t make sense for this modern age of freelancing and changing jobs every two to three years.

We should abandon the employer sponsored health insurance. It worked in the 40s and 50s. It no longer works Obama. Our culture changed. It even changed for the out of touch, and soon to be retired (or dead) boomers who designed your handout to the insurance industry reform.

Wouldn’t this money be better spent as an individual in the same way we purchase car insurance? We could decide how to invest our $4 million we spend over our lifetime on healthcare. We could decide how we invest retirement money to ensure we have enough for healthcare.

I’d like to know if a single Gen X or Millenial had a say in this reform. We should be the ones reforming the system, not those who won’t live long enough to feel the pain from their corporate-influenced mistakes. We sure as hell are responsible for your election. And once you got elected, you ignore us and turn it over to the grey hairs. Thanks man.”