So we have all been hearing about Obama’s plans to hopefully “fix” our health care problems. I won’t go too deep into my thoughts other than one itsy bitsy idea I have that maybe SOMEONE could look into a little deeper. The emergency room is HIGHLY ABUSED!

Think of the money that could be saved if parents would no longer bring in their babies for diaper rashes! Or how about the grown man who came to the er at 3am with an earache, and he hadn’t even tried tylenol yet. Or the grown woman that called about her “cold” and I tried to convince her to wait just 24 hours until one of the clinics opened up. I told her that the er is an awfully expensive place to go for a cold, with her response being “it’s ok, I have medicaid”. In other words, it’s ok….you are going to pay for my er visit.

The er definitely has its place…fractures, lacerations, traumas, you name it. But there are soooo many er visits that are inappropriate. I would say more than 50% as just a guess. Did you know that it costs at least $250 just to turn on the lights in the er when you go there. That doesn’t include ANY supplies that I may use or tests that I may order.

Yes there are supposedly programs in place to help curb er abuse but they aren’t nearly effective enough. How to fix this I DO NOT KNOW. But, I do know there is soooo much money to be saved…

And, the problem is that I haven’t heard or read anything in detail yet about Obama’s ideas about this.

SWINE FLU

Unless you live under a rock somewhere you are probably just as tired of hearing about swine flu (or H1N1 to be politically correct). Being in medicine whenever I hear of things like this starting up anywhere in the world I think…oh boy, here it comes. It is inevitable that patients are going to come a’running thinking they have it.

Don’t get me wrong here…I know it is a serious illness. But I am frustrated because people seem to forget that EVERY winter tens of thousands of persons in the US get the usual influenza and thousands die of it in the US EVERY winter.

But, here we are in full panic mode. I mean, geesh…the WHO upped their level to a five yesterday with six being the highest! I got four emails yesterday from Medical Reserve Corps (of which I belong)-all talking about things that we (the MRC) may need to do if we are to be deployed. Where would they deploy me to? My gosh-would I just go somewhere to teach people to cover their mouth when they cough and wash their hands?!

And, then last night I read about the poor pigs in Egypt…they killed them all! Can you believe that?! And…..NOOOOOO, there is absolutely positively NO relation to eating pork. I wrote an article for our local paper yesterday about the swine flu and that is how I ended it…poor piggies.

Strange thing:

I have two friends who claim to never have had a brain freeze. This shocks me-I thought everyone had brain freezes, especially with those icee thingys!