Health and Society Perceptions

Health and Society Perceptions

We finally reached the permanent plateu of achievement where one can expect just as much if not more incidence of disease from being in a hospital than out. This is an old story about 1 in 25 (4%) people getting a health care-associate infection in hospital. It was featured elsewhere already but we have no idea where the trend went. People having less jobs, and insurance coverage probably avoid getting treatment and when they do are sicker and since the budgets of these institutions are worse by state, local, and federal cutbacks in relation to healthcare and rationalization of Obama care less resources are actually spent on the patient and more on the system (insurance and financial intermediation).

 

But the problem is that as a society there is this stimulus of people getting positive affirmation externally by fitting in to perceived notions of doing well. This impact and the trend it sets up long term by making a measuring stick that is far more nuanced than what one could theoretically achieve or live up to in their environment may force different outcomes. Psychological impact of these things is well a very interesting unknown. Perception sometimes is worth and feels far more important than reality.

 

In some sense I get this odd feeling that in the present, society is set up to harvest health by rationalizing not just within age groups where one could understand that spending money on very young demographic is more favorable for the future than very old, but across groups. There is this rationalization in favor of intermediators whom take larger and larger percentage of the actual funds that used to go to producers of health, either health professionals, device makers, or drug makers. In a way all three of the latter are set up to further the division into the pool of funds that goes to non-providers of health. The doctors pay higher insurance premiums and income taxes, device makers are paying the device tax, and drug makers are mainly hit with longer times for FDA reviews, higher fees, as well as, additional scrutiny and the fecundity of lawsuits foisted upon them.

 

Looking onto the social matters one ponders: What would pushing society towards a somewhat chronically ill state achieve? Long term and short term outcomes are not very bright but if one considers unforeseen events such as decline in nutrition or migrations of people whom introduce differing pathogens into a weak population the likelihood of disaster increasingly goes up. We are in a way edging towards something similar that occurred with the Spanish Flu epidemic but on a much larger scale. Since immune systems for most people would suffer both from lack of psychological well being via social pressure to succeed and the economic impacts of trading down. The cycle of discontent in both these alternating poles could accelerate a potential malady since the verticals across which it would spread would be very wide ranging. Mother Nature does not forgive nor forget the indiscretions of stupidity we are placing upon ourselves by not demanding some sort of accountability in the sphere of medicine, in regards to where is the money spent outside the realm of patient, doctor, and the product(s) used.

 

“Economic Inequality, Income Mobility, and Well-Being: High Social Mobility and Emotional Well-Being” below

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