Public Health is the "specialty" (All Hail Specialists) that deals with the population-wide aspects of medicine, such as epidemics, etc.
Public Health has focused on diabetes and obesity of late, and not on real population-wide problems like the childhood diseases, almost all of which are making a comeback, or disease spread by bad sexual practices or injectible narcotics use. The Public Health docs just made a giant FUBAR out of an influenza strain which wouldn't have killed as many as does the ordinary seasonal influenza.
Nope, Public Health gets a "D-" grade, which might be classed as merciful social promotion.
The HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations), one of which I belong to (Providence Portland), are where Public Health is supposed to divide down into medicine which takes care of the individual patient's needs.
So far, so good.
Next, enter medical pressure groups, which advocate for the scarce dollars in public health to be provided to THEIR particular corner of the disease world. We've all seen the PSAs on TeeVee, the pleas to help the poor autistic chilluns, pleas to throw huge dollars at the mentally deficient as if they could be cured, and the Diabetes Industry.
Yes, there's a Diabetes Industry in the medical profession. These industrialists are always looking to puff up their stats, so, in the past twenty years (it's a recent Industry), they have defined acceptable blood-sugar levels downward 25%, added a category of "pre-diabetic" which is meaningless and never existed before, and they sweep everyone with blood sugar of over 110 mg/dl into the ever-ravenous maw of the "Industry".
When you get sucked into the Diabetes Industry's maw, you get a "nag me" tattoo, just like the Jews at Treblinka got tattoos. Your tattoo is in your medical records, and you get on the official Nag List, to be nagged four times a year, such naggings complete with phony statistics, much poking of arms for blood samples, and a professional Nagging Corps of pseudo-docs to put you through classes, etc, dragoon your wife into "cooking light" for you, etc.
Let's look back at how it used to be. Diabetes Mellitis, or Type Two, or "Sugar Spillover diabetes" is when your blood sugar outpaces your insulin production from your pancreas. It might be that you have put on weight, and all those extra fat cells store sugar, so the insulin doesn't go far enough. You might also have a pancreas which is producing poorer-quality insulin for some reason (side effects of other Geezer meds are MY suspect). So, your blood sugar level rises. If the rise is extreme enough, different things in the body begin to fail, but diabetes takes most slowly, if it takes it's victims at all.
The problem is, that each one of us is a different animal. How can the Diabetes Industry say that my 130-average blood sugar level is deadly, or will be deadly to me? They can't, and the fact is, that until the Industry defined Diabetes on a much wider scale, a blood sugar level of 130 mg/dl was considered OK. So, in my case, 20 years ago, I was OK, but now, I'm not? With the same blood sugar levels?
I have ZERO signs of the effects of Diabetes (All Fear Diabetes, Fear It!) in my 66 year old body, other than the numbers which I get nagged about every quarter. My diagnosis is now 20 years old, and I have no ill effects. Think that might be due to the fact that my personal threshold of type-Two diabetes is higher than 130 mg/dl? Could that POSSIBLY be the case, Doc? Of course not, the Doc will tell me, the science is settled, but come back in three months, you might get worse (I'll never get better, Diabetes is "incurable").
Yeah, and I might get shot while having a burger and a beer in my own favorite local, too.
Too farking bad, Docs, I'm not worried about either possibility, but I am getting DAMNED peeved that you are nagging me. especially since I have several REAL medical issues which you are not very interested in handling.
Hint to Nobama: it ain't the Geezers who are dragging down the system, it's the Public Health bureaucrats. Let's slim down Public Health to a few epidemiologists who actually KNOW their shit, and we might save enough money to really PAY for some medicine, and not have to put it on the cuff, like you are getting ready to do.
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