A paradox to ponder
And it's not from the Pirates of Penzance
Here’s something that caught my eye today: the country with the highest proportion of people who regularly attend medical check-ups (South Korea)…
… has the lowest percentage of people who are satisfied with their health:
It’s almost as if hanging out with doctors more, and presumably getting more tests, and accumulating diagnoses and prescriptions, decreases people’s perceptions that they’re healthy. But that couldn’t be right, could it? Could it?
What other relationships and associations can you spot?
The entire medical system is so dicey. We have to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt and realize this entire scam we call healthcare is rigged against us, not for us. I know there are some good docs, etc., who try, but they are hamstrung by the system they work in.
Here's a little true horror story : In the early 2000s I went for a routine checkup and my GP called in a panic after seeing my labs saying my liver panels were off the charts and he couldn't figure out how this could be since he saw no symptoms in me that would have been obvious to him in the exam. But he sent me to a gastroenterologist who put me through miles of tests and a liver biopsy and proclaimed I had Hep C. I was promptly enrolled in a new 6 month medication program from Roche called "Pegasys". It was hugely expensive, came with a black box booklet a half inch thick about all the terrible side effects and I was taught to inject myself with this crap on a regular basis. I was also given Ribavirin to lower my immune system (which became a permanent lowering) so the Pegasys would "work" and put on Celexa for depression since suicide and aggression were major side effects.
It made me horribly sick and after 3 months of treatment I demanded to be tested for Hep C again which the Dr. refused to do and harangued me on the phone. Telling me I was going to die and other horrible things. I just quit anyway. I went back to the pharmacy to refill the Celexa since I knew it was bad news just to quit it cold turkey and the pharmacist took me aside and whispered that for some reason unknown to them, I was being given 10mg of Celexa instead of the 30mg the prescription was written for by special instructions from the Dr. Needless to say this was all freaking me out. I quit Celexa cold turkey and it was a horror show.
A few weeks later I tried to commit suicide, unsuccessfully, by the grace of God.
About a year later ten doctors were indicted for conducting illegal drug trials for Roche with Pegasys. The gastro I had been treated by was one of the indicted doctors.
I had excellent heath insurance via Blue Cross that had paid for the entire thing. The cost of this medication was around 2,000/month and that's just the medication.
I wanted to sue but everyone around me kept saying, "Oh, no. Don't do that. It'll go on your record and you'll look bad."
True story. Watch out.
Well, I did not see a doctor for 30+ years until I got captured over the covid period. Since then I have not been able to escape, with escalating health issues. I had no faith in the system before I got captured, and my assessment of the system has continued to decline. The more you see, the more you realise the system is collapsing, and even if you actually believe in what they are delivering, a lot of the time they are unable to deliver in a timely and skillful manner. And the more you see, the more you realise that medicine itself has not advanced in the last 30 years and that what they are delivering is designed to destroy, not to restore good health. I now have two friendly GPs, and the more I see them at work the more I realise that, within the constraints they are forced to operate, and with the lack of support around them, they cannot possibly help me.