When it was happening to me, I felt like I had entered some authoritarian parallel universe. I remember reading ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’, and I sort of feel like the point of psychiatric hospitalization is to break down an individual to the the point that they “love Big Brother” (aka: love the system inflicting harm on them) so they then completely prostrate and sedate themselves to no longer oppose even worse abuses.
I’m really sorry to hear about you being victim to such a cruel scheme. If you haven’t already, there’s a podcast called “Doctor Death” about a surgeon in Texas that you might enjoy.
Even my libertarian homophobic dad who fled Communist Poland thinks universal government healthcare is better than our private system bloated by public subsidy. My weeklong hospital stay that I write about is probably the most expensive medical procedure/treatment I have ever had in my life, with my bill (minus insurance) totaling thousands. I read somewhere that the average stay at CLH is seven to ten days with an average bill somewhere over $10k. Even in medical devices, there are many examples of doctors choosing inferior outcome, more side effect prone devices or procedures, simply because insurance reimbursements reward the worse treatment. One I remember is for a vascular stent: you could have one more expensive device that lasts longer and is only a single “procedure”, versus multiple metal stents that corrode inside the body, needing routine replacement and more surgeries, but each metal piece gets to be billed as a procedure. Guess which type of procedure money-hungry vascular surgeons choose for their patients?
I really do want to someday finish my degree and go to grad school as well. Congrats on your son going to Syracuse, it’s one of the best public policy schools in the country from what I know.
The Hippocratic Oath literally includes “Do no harm.” If harm ever does happen, there is also a responsibility to investigate and understand so it can be prevented. Unfortunately it seems in psychiatry that the current “standard of care” involves doing harm and blindly ignoring it. I know most doctors intend good, but once they believe that their opinion is superior to that of the patient, it becomes easy for them to think the ends justify the means.
Thank you Sylvain. I wish the US could have stronger conflict of interest and patient rights laws/enforcement for healthcare. The same way that the system of psychiatry in the Soviet Union was built to maintain Communist social control through the use of force in medicine, I believe that the American system of psychiatry has been intentionally built to perpetuate oligopolistic capitalism and lifelong consumer dependence.
When it was happening to me, I felt like I had entered some authoritarian parallel universe. I remember reading ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’, and I sort of feel like the point of psychiatric hospitalization is to break down an individual to the the point that they “love Big Brother” (aka: love the system inflicting harm on them) so they then completely prostrate and sedate themselves to no longer oppose even worse abuses.
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I’m really sorry to hear about you being victim to such a cruel scheme. If you haven’t already, there’s a podcast called “Doctor Death” about a surgeon in Texas that you might enjoy.
Even my libertarian homophobic dad who fled Communist Poland thinks universal government healthcare is better than our private system bloated by public subsidy. My weeklong hospital stay that I write about is probably the most expensive medical procedure/treatment I have ever had in my life, with my bill (minus insurance) totaling thousands. I read somewhere that the average stay at CLH is seven to ten days with an average bill somewhere over $10k. Even in medical devices, there are many examples of doctors choosing inferior outcome, more side effect prone devices or procedures, simply because insurance reimbursements reward the worse treatment. One I remember is for a vascular stent: you could have one more expensive device that lasts longer and is only a single “procedure”, versus multiple metal stents that corrode inside the body, needing routine replacement and more surgeries, but each metal piece gets to be billed as a procedure. Guess which type of procedure money-hungry vascular surgeons choose for their patients?
I really do want to someday finish my degree and go to grad school as well. Congrats on your son going to Syracuse, it’s one of the best public policy schools in the country from what I know.
Report comment
The Hippocratic Oath literally includes “Do no harm.” If harm ever does happen, there is also a responsibility to investigate and understand so it can be prevented. Unfortunately it seems in psychiatry that the current “standard of care” involves doing harm and blindly ignoring it. I know most doctors intend good, but once they believe that their opinion is superior to that of the patient, it becomes easy for them to think the ends justify the means.
Report comment
Thank you Sylvain. I wish the US could have stronger conflict of interest and patient rights laws/enforcement for healthcare. The same way that the system of psychiatry in the Soviet Union was built to maintain Communist social control through the use of force in medicine, I believe that the American system of psychiatry has been intentionally built to perpetuate oligopolistic capitalism and lifelong consumer dependence.
Report comment