Healthcare Update — 02-04-2013

Chinese man runs out of money to pay for dialysis. Government “insurance” only pays half the costs of treatment (keep that in mind, Affordable Care Act supporters). Then human ingenuity kicks in. The man builds himself a dialysis machine out of used and discarded medical equipment, mixes his own dialysis fluid, and has been dialyzing himself … and it has been keeping him alive for 13 years. Doctors hearing about his unorthodox methods warned him about the risk of serious infection and “long-term complications” because he wasn’t using sterile water to make his dialysis fluid. Something tells me that if the complications were that likely, they probably would have happened in the past 13 years. After getting outed in the media, the Chinese government then offered to provide him with assistance to pay for his treatment. He’s reluctant to take the government up on its offer. I wonder what would happen to this patient if he was in the US. Hat tip to @MedicalQuack Just call them “assault” bacteria when you describe how they kill people – our legislators and the media will jump all over that. We can’t let ourselves become complacent over drug-resistant bacteria. Interesting point … once doctors become employees, does their incentive to fill their schedule with patients decrease? Will they want to stay late in the office to see an urgent patient? Will they go on strikes and leave patients without health care? See how access to care decreases as the paradigm...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs