Liberal Talk Radio

I saw Sicko recently, and I’ve also had a couple of minor health problems (a bum ankle, a bad leg) which have led to my spending more time than I’d like in the doctor’s office.  So — as you know if you’ve been listening to our show — health care’s been on my mind quite a bit lately.

There’s a lot that’s broken in our health care system, and not just the things we all know too well (e.g., is it too much to ask that my doctor know at least as much as I do about the human body?  … thanks, doc, for ’splainin’ to me what the Achilles tendon is … very helpful [/sarcasm]).

I’ll leave explication of the bigger issues to Michael Moore, but here’s something that strikes me as lunacy — treating people with infectious disease in the same facility in which people with non-infectious problems are treated.  I ask you: on what planet does it make sense to take people who are sick with colds, flu, etc., have them leave the effective quarantine of their residences, and then have them congregate in a central location surrounded by people who are basically healthy?

Imagine someone with a highly contagious form of TB deciding it’s time to see the doctor.  This person leaves her home, gets on the bus [cough, cough], walks through the front door of the doctor’s office (likely to be a large-ish HMO facility or county hospital or the like [cough, cough]), past people waiting with things like broken bones, pre-natal care appointments, checkups, and non-contagious diseases like cancer [cough, cough], and into the confined space of the examing room [cough, cough] that will soon be used to see one of the non-contagious patients.

It makes far more sense — at least, from the perspective of providing the highest quality care and minimizing the risks to other patients — to treat such patients in their homes.

Seriously — bring back house calls.