First Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

First Short Quiz

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First Short Quiz


We have studied health care and related issues zillions of times over our 11.5 years of existence.

Accordingly, this First Short Quiz “carpes” the “diem” to review some of the important things that we already knew.

[Perhaps it is fortunate that this is our once-a-month 5-week gap between meetings so that we have the luxury of dedicating an entire short quiz to what we already know about the topic of our meeting.]


1. Does America spend a much higher percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) on healthcare than any other economically-developed country?

2. Is the overwhelming majority of American healthcare costs associated with the final illness and the final months of life?

3. Is attempted suicide viewed under English-American common law as an attempted homicide so that assisting in someone else’s suicide makes you guilty of homicide as an “accessory before the fact”?

4. Is English-American common law essentially Roman Catholic Law since English secular courts only came into existence and began gradually replacing ecclesiastical courts about 500 years ago (which was about the same time that “The Church of England” broke with the Vatican over Henry VIII’s many wives)?

5. Do Asian cultures (reflecting Asian religions) believe that if you have become so old that you are a burden to others, it would be considered the “honorable thing to do” to commit suicide, as a result of which (A) suicide is quite common in Japan and other Asian cultures, and (B) when someone commits suicide, it is presumed that honor was the motive and there is ABSOLUTELY NO INQUIRY into whether the suicide’s perception of what honor demanded was appropriate?

6. Was a major theme of Harvard Medical School Prof. and practicing surgeon Atul Gwande in “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” (our focus book for our 1/11/2017 meeting) that American doctors virtually always resort to heroic measures for preserving life without explaining to patients (A) how forlorn are the hopes for success of whatever is about to be attempted, and (B) how terrible will be the “quality of life” if “success” is achieved?

7. Was another major theme of Prof. Gwande that the human body is like an old car and the more that it breaks down and is repaired, the more likely it is that many other things will soon go wrong with it?

8. Were virtually all of the medical doctors in the Old Soviet Union women because it was considered “women’s work”?

9. Because being a medical doctor in the Old Soviet Union was considered “women’s work,” were they paid LESS THAN grade-school teachers?

10. Just like America is the “Free” World’s “chump” for bearing the overwhelming majority of defense costs (5% of American Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) whereas, for example vis-à-vis NATO, only 4 of the other 27 NATO members spend even the mere 2% of their GDP on defense that they promised to do beginning in 2006), is America the world’s “chump” for paying all of the world’s medical research-and-development costs by including in the 2003 legislation creating the Medicare Prescription-Drug Program that Medicare WOULD NOT BE PERMITTED TO BARGAIN with the pharmaceutical companies which, as a result, have been empowered for 14 years to charge whatever they please, and far more than they charge any other customers around the world?

11. Why does the United States routinely rank near the bottom, if not dead last, among the 35 economically-developed OECD member countries in virtually EVERY CATEGORY of civilization, INCLUDING MEDICAL MEASUREMENTS such as infant mortality?

12. Do virtually all other OECD countries have some form of universal healthcare, such as “single-payer” (aka Medicare For All) healthcare?

13. Does England’s “single-payer” (aka Medicare For All) healthcare system (A) cover all costs (including even reimbursement for public transportation to your doctor), (B) for anyone present in the U.K. regardless of citizenship or even tourist status?

14. Did England’s “single-payer” (aka Medicare For All) healthcare system result from World War II when so many hospitals were destroyed and so many records were also destroyed -- so that taking care of everyone (no questions asked) began as a part of patriotism and the war effort?

15. If wealthy Americans refuse to “love their neighbors as themselves” the way citizens of many other civilized countries do by having their governments provide universal healthcare (aka Medicare For All) financed by progressive income taxes, will wealthy Americans at least permit poorer Americans to finance such universal government healthcare WITH A REGRESSIVE GASOLINE TAX the way that the remaining civilized countries do?

16. After all, wouldn’t a gasoline tax, however regressive, also have the virtue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

17. BTW, isn’t a significant cost of healthcare in the U.S. the “tort bar” comprising all the lawyers and all the judicial resources squandered on medical malpractice?

18. Couldn’t malpractice be handled the same way as in other civilized countries with incompetent doctors being “cashiered” and injured patients being compensated appropriately (rather than lavishly, the way many juries are prone to do since they believe that nobody pays for the verdicts they award, a high percentage of which goes to the attorneys)?

19. And, somewhat facetiously but also somewhat seriously, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to re-deploy all of the tort-bar attorneys (whose training, like all attorneys, is to express themselves completely and unambiguously in such a way that there are never two ways to interpret any statement which, of course, would guarantee a lawsuit) to the computer and software industry to write instructions which almost always seem to be written by techies who probably never took a course in English composition and who, because they know what they themselves mean, are unable to comprehend why their instructions are NOT complete and unambiguous?

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