{"id":646,"date":"2012-03-15T12:18:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T17:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=646"},"modified":"2012-03-15T13:46:52","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T18:46:52","slug":"is-the-problem-not-enough-medicine-or-too-much-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=646","title":{"rendered":"Is the problem not enough medicine or too much medicine?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NYTimes identified <a href=\" http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/02\/28\/opinion\/overdiagnosis-as-a-flaw-in-health-care.html\">overdiagnosis<\/a> as a flaw in our health care. We don\u2019t usually think about this issue, but the easiest medical response to any general complaint (I\u2019m tired, achy, run down or the like) is to run a test (profit-making) and follow a standard procedure (profit-making) \u00a0in response to test results.<!--more--> People are always looking for ways to make the sale, and since no one has perfect health, it\u2019s an easy sell. \u00a0First generate fear with some \u201cabnormal\u201d or \u201cborderline\u201d results and then heroically provide an answer &#8212; typically a best-selling wildly-overpriced pill. Cost &#8212; don\u2019t worry, we\u2019ll find something paid for by your insurance. And what if you don\u2019t have insurance? Well, that\u2019s your fault. \u00a0Pay the money you\u2019ve been saving instead of buying insurance.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">JUST SAY NO.<\/span> If I\u2019m cut or broken, they get a chance to patch me up, but that\u2019s it. My recent Facebook post on this article was the following: \u00a0\u00a0I remember an occasion as a child when I witnessed a curmudgeonly old family friend saying he avoided doctors and pills. He grew his own vegetables, ran the Boston marathon annually, and lived into his 90\u2019s. It seemed amusing then. Now I sort of idolize him. I could say something very similar about my grandfather, except unfortunately he didn\u2019t live in Boston, but fortunately he was still chasing the girls (to the embarrassment of my aunts) into his 90\u2019s. Maybe that\u2019s what did him in prematurely (he didn\u2019t make it to 100), but that\u2019s okay under those circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NYTimes identified overdiagnosis as a flaw in our health care. We don\u2019t usually think about this issue, but the easiest medical response to any general complaint (I\u2019m tired, achy, run down or the like) is to run a test (profit-making) and follow a standard procedure (profit-making) \u00a0in response to test results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-humor","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}