Day 16

Blog Entry 13: 12/06/08

First day of the new week started off pretty well. I wasn't as well rested as I could've been due to the incessant buzzing of mosquitos around my head, which lasted all night. It's becoming hotter here during the day, and I'm noticing more mosquitos around that are also larger in size. However, the learning experience of the day was good.
Dr. Tenorio's lecture today was about the communicable disease found in Mexico. The disease that interested me the most was tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is mostly an issue in underdeveloped countries, and it's pretty hard to combat in general. The disease itself isn't caused by a virus or bacteria, but micobacteria, which is why its so hard to kill it with antibiotics. The micobacterium also has a fast rate of mutation and exists in 60 different strains, which complicates things even more. Tuberculosis can occur in ANY organ of the body, and has a variety of unique symptoms depending on the organ and the person in which it infects. What made tuberculosis more of an epidemic is the modernization of travel, people now use plains and can transfer their regional strain of T.B. to other areas of the world, which in turn allows for a diverse array of stains to exist in one location. I remembered, in centro de salud, the endoscopy of the woman who had advanced T.B., and the symptoms aren't fun to look at (granula in the respiratory tract). Most countries now use a antibiotic cocktail to deal with T.B., and if detected early enough their is a good chance of survival. But in developing countries such as Mexico, early detection is uncommon.
Dra. De La Torre, talked about the health care platforms of both candidates in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and the bottom line was that both platforms aren't dealing with the main problem. The main problem that both parties are failing to address is the existence of the current health insurance oligopoly. The oligopoly controls the health care industry by setting prices for procedures in the private sector. So even though Obama wants to set up a federal exchange program that would allow affordable insurance to anyone due to funding by the federal government, patient's still do not have control over how much the procedures will cost in the private sector, and therefore control what procedures the patients have access to. McCain on the other hand wants to retain the current industry of health, and offer tax incentives to lower income families in order to make insurance more affordable, which in reality won't do much if we look at the logistics involved. The tax break is too small to make any meaningful difference, and in fact may be worse because it potentially eliminates employer-based insurance coverage. The nation needs to deal with the phenomenon of a few healthcare insurance companies that control the entire market, meaning that it's expensive due to lack of competition. Not to mention the money that goes into malpractice litigation, and administrative health costs. Bottom line is that our healthcare is system is super inefficient, and that our dollars are lost in administrative costs, corporate health profiteering, and litigation, hopefully the problem gets solved, but neither candidate it willing to do it...sigh.
Reflections...the repercussions of our collapsing health industry, and subsidization from the government results in what's now occurring in our collapsing banking system. In the future, income for doctors will be quite different than it is today. Doctor's today are well off because the system of health worked well in the 1960s-1970s when it was designed, but new economic factors have changed the dynamics of our health industry. Bottom line, being a doctor in the future will definitely not be for the money, which doesn't really change my plans, but it really sucks to know that the reason patients and doctors aren't benefitting from money earned and spent in healthcare can be attributed to the inefficient system of health perpetuated by the greed of these conglomerates.