Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz

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Suggested Answers to the 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.]


Question 1

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

Answer 1

We were already painfully aware of this.

However, our author as an initial “teaser” (p. 2) states that the U.S. percentage of GDP devoted to healthcare is “more than twice the average of developed countries”!!!

Question 2

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

Answer 2

The last time we looked at this (2009 statistics), American healthcare costs associated with the final illness and the final months of life were the overwhelming majority of MEDICARE COSTS.

However, Medicare costs in 2009 were only 5.3% of GDP (or about a third of total U.S. healthcare costs).

Question 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”?

Answer 3

Yes.

Question 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)?

Answer 4

Yes.

Question 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?

Answer 5

Our 1/9/2013 meeting focused on “Assisted Suicide.” At the meeting, Lori Noda (one of our three regular attendees at that time who were Assistant Utah Attorneys General) said at the meeting concerning suicide in Japan, the country of Lori’s ancestors, and other Eastern cultures --

(A) Suicide is quite common in Japan and other Eastern cultures, and it is viewed as the proper thing to do when one’s honor is involved.

(B) When a person becomes old and believes s/he has become a burden to others, it would be considered honorable to commit suicide.

(C) 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.

(D) Japanese and members of other Eastern cultures cannot fathom why there is such a fuss in the West about suicide.

Question 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?

Answer 6

(A) Yes.
(B) Yes.

Question 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?7

Answer 7

Yes.

Question 8

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

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

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

Answer 9

Yes.

Question 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 merely 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?

Answer 10

Yes.

Question 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?

Answer 11

BTW, although we were already painfully aware of the poor rankings of the U.S. in virtually EVERY CATEGORY of civilization INCLUDING MEDICAL MEASUREMENTS, our author (p. 247) happens to mention that the United Nation’s World Health Organization ranks “the health system performance” of the U.S. as only 37th in the world!!!

Since the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which is an organization of all of the world’s economically-developed nations, has only 35 members, the World Health Organization’s ranking of the U.S. health system as 37th in the world MEANS THAT THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO THIRD-WORLD COUNTRIES that rank ahead of the United States!!!

The primary reason???

As we have studied many times, the U.S. government has continually reported over the last 60 years that 30% of the U.S. population IS ILLITERATE as defined by the inability “to read the warning label on a can of rat poison”!!!

[Hence, our continual references to what we have termed “America’s 30% Permanent 'Untouchable' Under-Caste.”]

Indeed, in our 6/17/2015 e-mail campaign to Pope Francis imploring him to make American poverty an issue during his then-impending first visit to the U.S., the e-mails referenced the facts that --

UNICEF reports that the percentage of U.S. children living in poverty is --

(A) More than double the rate of any other industrialized country;
(B) Triple the rate of child poverty in Germany, Austria and France; and
(C) Quadruple the rate of child poverty in such countries as Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, the Netherlands and Finland.

SO WHY IS THERE ANY GREAT MYSTERY THAT FOR EVERY MEASURE OF CIVILIZATION, AMERICA’S “30% PERMANENT 'UNTOUCHABLE' UNDER-CASTE” VIRTUALLY GUARANTEES THE U.S. WILL RANK DEAD LAST???

Question 12

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

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 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?

Answer 13

(A) Yes.
(B) Yes and, indeed, the issue of “health tourists” figured in the recent “Brexit” vote.

Question 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?

Answer 14

Yes.

Question 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?

Answer 15

God only knows!!!

Question 16

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

Answer 16

Of course!!!

Question 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?

Answer 17

Absolutely!!!

Question 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)?

Answer 18

Presumably!!!

BTW, doing so would be similar to “no fault auto insurance” which was adopted a half-century ago by about half of the states in the U.S., and by such other “common law” jurisdictions as Canada and Australia.

[“No fault auto insurance” means that a policy-holder (and her/his passengers) are not only reimbursed by the policy-holder’s own insurance company without proof of fault, but also restricted in the right to seek recovery through the civil-justice system for losses caused by other parties.]

The reason for “no fault auto insurance” was the tremendous number of lawyers and judicial resources that were being squandered in determining for EVERY ACCIDENT which driver was at fault and, accordingly, which insurance company would be liable.

And studies have shown that there is “rough justice” despite eliminating the HORRENDOUS WASTE of the auto-accident-liability “tort bar” because reckless drivers tend to have more accidents and/or citations for moving violations -- as a result of which they soon face higher auto-insurance premiums and/or loss of their driver licenses.

And other civilized countries have demonstrated that “cashiering” incompetent doctors without the HORRENDOUS WASTE of a “medical tort bar” is just as effective as the way reckless drivers are eliminated under “no fault auto insurance”!!!

Question 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?

Answer 19

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

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