An older member of my wife's family has been going through something medically serious for about a month. On July 14th, something wasn't right, they went to the hospital, a "good" hospital, for their problem, then had an emergency in the hospital that may or may not have been related to the original issue. They've been released and readmitted twice and is now getting released again.
Ever since the in-hospital emergency, there have been problems with getting dosages and drug interactions dialed in such that my wife's relative has essentially been unstable the whole time. There is a lack of coordination between the medical team and random doctors who've popped in along the way, it's been a shitshow.
Another component to this saga has been what appears to be tunnel vision on the part of the medical staff (I am including doctors), there seems to be a collective inability to see the big picture. There have been a couple of instances where I've spoken up and then heard after the fact "you were right" about whatever the thing was.
I've been an EMT for 14 years which is plenty long enough to tell you, I know almost nothing about actual medical things. EMTs can do some important interventions in an emergency but a great way to think of the EMT skillset is that everyone gets oxygen and treat what you see. Treat what you see often differs from paramedic and above. One thing that a good EMT (I am mediocre at best if for no other reason than we only run two or three calls a month) should be able to do though is be able to see and reassess the big picture. Not tunnel visioning is something that comes with time, the amount of time it takes might vary, but with my wife's relative, the team has trouble reassessing the big picture.
My wife has said a couple of times since this started, that this motivates her to keep up with the weightlifting and other things we do so that we can avoid the situation her relative is in. I've said countless times here and elsewhere that anything can happen to anyone at any time but taking up the right habits gives us the best shot at avoiding medical situations no one would want to be in.
You don't need me to tell you the healthcare system is in bad shape. For whatever reason, we have regressed from where we were.
Woven in to some extent is the health insurance system which has been broken for a while. Costs were going up dramatically before Obamacare and while the ideal of making health insurance available for everyone is laudable, I think the actual details and implementation of Obamacare has made it much worse.
For the last couple of years. I've been talking about how cheap healthcare.gov plans have been because of much larger subsidies. Barron's wrote about those subsidies being due to expire at the end of the year unless congress takes action. They estimate that premiums, before subsidies, will go up by 15% for 2026 and that if the current subsidies do expire then then 51% of people aged 50-64 would lose their subsidies altogether which in my case would result in more than a doubling of my out of pocket expense for premiums. To clarify, I am not using healthcare.gov for 2025 but I know the numbers from researching last fall.
That so many people have been eligible for subsidies and would be seriously hurt if they go away should tell you the health insurance market simply does not work. With no subsidies, insurance for both of us on healthcare.gov would be north of $2000/mo. It is insane to me that health insurance is now close to the current median monthly mortgage payment.
Shit's broken, yo.
All of this contributes to why I consistently bang the drum about doing all we can to prevent/solve our own health problems. Get on Twitter and follow @mangan150. He finds study after study showing how important body composition and metabolic health are to having successful health outcomes. Lifting weights, reducing consumption of carbs and processed foods and skipping breakfast will prevent or solve a lot of problems while the government supposedly tries (and fails) to figure it out for us. No one will care more about your health outcomes than you.
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