Health Care

Ending the Wal-Mart Subsidy

This entry was posted in Economics Health Care on by

Toward the end of a discussion of Wal-Mart’s profits and its worker’s wages Donald Johnson, posting at Body and Soul, makes an important point:

Reductio ad absurdums aside, maybe it is possible that there’s a multiplier effect of some kind here, but it apparently involves government social programs stepping in to take care of Wal-Mart’s inadequately-paid workers. So again, should the government go into the business of picking out efficient businesses and subsidizing them, or should it give health benefits to everyone?

Well, it should do neither.
First, if folks are choosing to stay employed at a low wage operation like Wal-Mart because, inter alia, the sum of their wages plus health maintenance provided by Medicaid disincents them to find more remunerative work then end the subsidy. You and I should not be supporting Wal-Mart’s low wages via tax supported health maintenance programs.
Second, Wal-Mart is not the only business receiving this wage subsidy they just happen to be the large easy target. Others are both small and large. In addition, there are plenty of other business subsidies many of which are much more direct such as sugar price supports, import restrictions, tarriffs, etc.
Third, government should not be taking the fruits of your or my labor and using it to subsidize either directly or indirectly any business using any criteria.
So let’s stop it now: no more sugar subsidies, no more tarriffs, no more Medicaid, real free trade, and so on.
Surely all those highly paid K-street folks who now make their living persuading our elected represrentatives their minions that their business should be subsidized with money that would be better used buying food, shoes and health care for our families can find useful work elsewhere at a wage appropriate to their productivity.

Setting Off the Scanners

This entry was posted in Health Care Technology War on Terrorism on by

The radioactive element used in some medical imaging may stop you from flying:

Certain medical scans can render people radioactive enough to trigger false security alarms at airports for up to a month, a Lancet article warns…

Thallium is apparently one of the worst culprits.
The article suggests that you get an information card from your physician if you are planning to travel subsquent to having one of these tests.
Of course, having one of these medical information cards in hand would give your average terrorist another tool to help avoid detection. So I expect the TSA and analogous agencies will be recommending, if not insisting, that if you are planning to that you do not undergo radioactive imaging x days before the flight (x being the number of days the element used in your test will cause security alarms).
Via MedGaget.

What To Do When…

This entry was posted in Health Care on by

….you die.
Well, most folks get stowed away 6 feet under in a box. Some visit an oven and end up blowing in the wind, sitting on a mantle or perhaps stashed in the closet. I haven’t thought about this often and when I have the right thing always seemed to be to get buried without the box…a return to the earth kind of thing.
There is another option which is worth giving some thought to:

It’s one of the most personal choices someone can make — deciding to give one’s body to medical science. As part of a series on the end of life and the gift of teaching, NPR’s Melissa Block talks to people who have have offered to become body donors.

Yes, take the organ donor idea one step further and donate your entire body. You can still do the ash, box or return to the earth thing when you are done teaching.
Something to think about and to incorporate into your living will (hmmm,…I’d better get one of those done!)