Sigh. First the actual news:
Shortage of cancer doctors in coming years
Well actually that's not news; that's a prediction. But you get the point. Now aside from the ominous tidings (that you can get the gist of from the headline) they have to try to throw in a little blame for "W":
"Bajorin said another part of the problem is a funding squeeze the Bush administration has put on the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health and a key funder in the cancer field." (links in original)
I'm no Bush fan, but damn. They could at least use something actually relevant - like "Bush's tax cuts did not go far enough & thus less than an ideal amount of private funds were available for donation to charitable organizations (which have much less overhead than government run medical institutions) " or "Bush's continued approval of the quasi-socialized medical system in this country is showing yet again undesirable effects"
& the main point which the article seems to get wrong: Cutting funding for a medical organization put together by the same group of folks who gave us the ultra efficient DMV is a bad thing? Not that a government run health care facility would ever be mismanaged...
If you haven't noticed them over on the right side of the page then here are the links to The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation & St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. They should have much lower overhead, less bureaucracy & more of a desire to get things done than a government run org would (from what I've seen of the orgs in question).
& if you've ever had an experience with hospitalization you'll probably find this as laughable as I did:
"I think the medical oncologist of the future is going to be more of a team leader and spend more time directing a care delivery team and maybe less time in face-to-face encounters with a single patient,' Goldstein added."
Less time with the patient? Well I guess those two minute sessions every morning can be taxing on a doc. Besides, the other med pros that take up the doc's slack are usually nicer, more informative (as well as better informed much of the time) & (this is the important part) accessible more than once a day for 2 minute segments. Not that I don't think highly of docs or anything...
But as I keep saying I am but a minor caliber (mostly) gun blogger. Go read the article. & if you have any discretionary funds drop by Susan G Komen's site or St. Jude's site & drop a few coins in their respective jars.
Posted by Publicola at March 14, 2007 05:10 AM | TrackBack