Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

The politics of pain

The Institute of Medicine stands outside the government, offering independent advice to both the decision-makers in government and the public. As a nonprofit, its mission is to improve the quality of the healthcare services by providing detailed policy suggestions based on the best available evidence. This July, it published a highly critical report on the continuing refusal of the medical profession to accept comparative effectiveness research. This is work to discover which treatments are the most effective. At present, we are left to guess which treatments offer the best outcomes for each illness or disorder with little effort made to collect evidence on safety and quality. Hence, at one end of the scale, we can go years without knowing a particular drug or surgical procedure is ineffective. Or we can find ourselves participating in unofficial trials where doctors talk patients into off-label experiments with drugs.

Unfortunately, this is all part of the general lack of accountability within the healthcare services. The present culture allows the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors to dictate the treatment standards based on what generates the most profit for them. The idea such people would actively seek evidence to show whether their cherished treatments were medically effective is a nonstarter. There’s no willingness to engineer a learning environment where everyone tries to improve. Rather everyone wants to avoid any liability for errors of judgement and mistakes. Imagine the litigation if it emerged that doctors had for years been advising we agree to ineffective treatments.

Until there’s a major change in the culture, we will have to look with envy at the approach of the Europeans in the pain management field. As a symptom of our problems, the words “pain management clinic” in Florida and certain other states usually indicates a borderline illegal operation to sell pills. We should modify all aspects of the current service. The first reforms should affect the health insurance industry and the public bodies like Medicaid and Medicare. At present, these administrators and business people simply pay out on the bills submitted by the hospitals, clinics and doctors. Since the taxpayers fund the entitlement systems and the rest of us with money pay ever higher premiums, there’s no pressure on insurers to demand value for money. They are not there to guarantee good quality care for their insured. All they do is pay out on the bills and pocket the rest as profit. (more…)

Porn industry and ED drugs

Let’s admit it, nearly all men watch porn. There’s nothing strange about it because visual representation of sex is very arousing for the male eye, in contrast to the emotional aspect of it that most women tend to. The porn industry is a multi billion business with hundreds of studios all over the globe and tens of thousands of titles produced every year. Porn movie development is less complicated, costly and time consuming as mainstream film production. A typical pron movie is shot during one day with actors sometimes being required to have sex several time during the shoot. When you realize it and take a look at the intense action on the screen there’s only place for wonder how come male performers are able to pull it all off in front of the camera. Well, of course, there are certain secrets of the trade and it turns out that Viagra is one of them.

Male porn performers are usually paid times less than female performers because the entire industry is focused on actresses. Rarely does a male actor get an exclusive contract with a good salary. Usually the paycheck is quite average, especially for the effort you have to give. All in all, no matter how good and pleasant sex may be when it turns into a 9 to 5 job with several sex acts every day, it turns into a real challenge that not many men can actually accept. It’s no longer a matter of when you want to do it, it’s a matter of doing it right all the time. And no wonder that under such pressure many men often face problems with erections. You can’t be 100% hard all the time on snap when the director asks you to. The female actress isn’t always your type, there are dozens of people on the set watching you and you could get more sleep yesterday. So when the camera starts rolling there’s a high risk of erection fading away. (more…)