gdp's Comments

Change.gov : Join the Discussion: Former Sen. Daschle responds on health care | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Trans

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 05:10:27 +0000

Preventive care is important. As is a healthy lifestyle with proper diet and exercise. And proper education. I agree with you that far. However, I'm not so ready to back unlicensed "nutritionalists" with little or no accountability. A lot of the "vitamins" and supplements out there are junk with no quality control, no oversight, and little or no reliable evidence. Vitamins in general aren't the answer. A basic multivitamin is a good idea. Can't hurt, and may provide some things that you'd otherwise be missing. But there are those who support regimens of megadoses of vitamins, hundreds of times the RDA. "It's a vitamin, so it has to be good for you. And if a little is good, more must be better." Simple arguments, but not ones borne out by the actual research. At best, the excess is filtered out of your system (giving your kidneys that much work). At worst, they can be highly toxic. (Vitamin C, for example, is rather acidic. Overdoses can do serious harm.) Beyond that, we don't really understand vitamins. We know that some of them are necessary for healthy function, but we don't know what else might be needed. It's too hard to isolate a single chemical out of an entire daily diet. And whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables, contain more chemicals than we can analyze... more importantly, we don't know how those chemicals interact. If you extract a single chemical from the food, will it work the same as it would in combination with some of the others? The bulk of the reliable evidence, or so I've heard from a number of sources, suggests that you're best off with a single multivitamin pill and a balanced and varied diet. Doing that much can make us all healtheir. Going beyond that is most likely a waste of money.

Change.gov : Join the Discussion: Former Sen. Daschle responds on health care | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Trans

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 04:37:23 +0000

(I'll email a copy of this to the address you list...) Comment reply notifications should arrive at the email address you provided to IntenseDebate.com. If you're not getting them, there are a couple of things you can do. 1. Double-check that the address listed is correct. (Typos happen...) 2. Check your spam folder to make sure the messages weren't filtered out. 3. Add notifications@intensedebatemail.com to your "safe senders" whitelist. 4. If all that doesn't work, try using a different address. (If you don't have one, there are plenty of good free providers out there. I've had good luck with Inbox.com, Hushmail.com, AIM.com, and several others over the years.) Some email providers will block messages from certain senders wholesale, without giving you a chance to see them. Switching to a different address can sometimes make the critical difference.

Change.gov : Join the Discussion: Former Sen. Daschle responds on health care | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Trans

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 04:27:34 +0000

It depends on who the volunteers are and what they're doing. CPR training can save many lives. The Heimlich is an even simpler life-saving emergency procedure. Similarly, taking the time to properly educate people about preventive care, basic first aid, and other things which can be done with a minimum of training can go a long ways to improve health and take pressure off the health care system at large. Furthermore, if qualified professionals wish to volunteer their time to help those who can't pay, we'd all benefit. Providing encouragement for them to do so and an organized structure to help them do so would not be a bad thing. It could help get treatment to those who might not otherwise get it... And it could take some of the burden off our overcrowded and grossly misused emergency rooms.

Change.gov : Join the Discussion: Former Sen. Daschle responds on health care | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Trans

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 00:55:15 +0000

Not necessarily. It depends on how the records are stored. Networks can be set up so that no data depends on any single computer. Data can be decentralized and backed up. Moreover, flash memory does not require power. I've seen 1GB USB flash drives in a vending machine at my local library. Heck, I've seen them given out as marketing freebies. You could carry a lifetime's worth of records in your wallet or on a keychain, with no need to worry about a power outage. There are security issues, of course, but there are solutions to that. New ones coming out all the time. And, ultimately, no security is perfect. And the information in those records could easily be the difference between life or death in an emergency. Could even prevent life-threatening mistakes and oversights by making sure the doctor is aware of possible counter-indications before deciding on treatment.

Change.gov : Join the Discussion: Former Sen. Daschle responds on health care | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Trans

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 00:37:22 +0000

There's a crucial factor that seems to be absent in the discussion: taking care of our doctors. They're not mentioned in the video. The words "doctor" and "doctors" are very small in the word cloud. It's not something I hear much about outside of here, either. The fact is, though, that the health care system can't work if our doctors aren't able to practice, and practice effectively. We need to look out for their interests. As things stand, the insurance companies are in control. They decide what they'll pay for and what they won't. They decide how much they'll pay for every line item. Too often, they decide to pay at - or even below! - cost. If a doctor doesn't like that, well, he can choose not to be in the company's network - in which case he'll lose most, if not all, of the patients who use it. And thanks to company lobbyists, it's now illegal for doctors to "unionize." If one doctor even mentions to another how much Company A pays him for giving a flu shot, he's breaking federal law. On the other side of things, the incredible settlements being awarded for "pain and suffering" in malpractice suits have driven up the cost of malpractice insurance. Doctors, especially the ones in crucial and hazardous fields like obstetrics, can barely afford to pay their premiums. When you get to the point where a doctor can't afford to practice because the pittance he gets from his patients' insurance companies isn't enough to cover what he needs to pay his own premiums, you know there's something seriously wrong. The ones who can afford to practice are still hard-pressed. They're being forced to make up their income in volume, seeing more patients per day... and thus having less time for each patient. Quality of care goes down, made worse by rising stress and fatigue levels. That can only result in greater risk of malpractice - something that hurts everyone. It needs to change. Please, protect patient rights. Help make sure that patients can afford to get the treatment they need. Fix that, for all our sakes. But while you're doing that, don't forget to help our doctors, too. Make sure that they can give us the care we need. Quality care. With the ability to decide how to treat us, without having to part a sea of red tape, without being second-guessed by bureaucrats who have never even met the patient. Finally... thank you for reading this. Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for giving us voice and hope. Paul