The free market is a system of cost-cutting through mass production. Profits rise as costs fall and prices fall. The difference is volume.
The most famous model is Henry Ford's auto assembly system. Now it has come to medicine a century after it came to auto manufacturing.
A friend of mine had knee replacement surgery three years ago.
The physician said it would take 81 minutes. It did . . . exactly. That means that the operation was capable of being mass produced. One man did five a day.
[One doctor completed five gall bladder surgeries a day.] Each surgery cost the patients many thousands of dollars.
Anything this routine can be routinized even more.
This is coming to a hospital near you. Medicare will force it by cutting payments to physicians for routine surgery. Heart bypass surgery is routine.
After about 20 years of assembly line surgery will come the next step: robots--just like in the auto industry. It may not take that long.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
New Facial Bones In 12 Weeks What this
means it's hard to tell, but it looks like jaw, nose, and facial bones can be
created from your fat tissue. Promising I suppose.
Ora
Burger is a representative with the Israeli firm, Bonus BioGroup. This is essentially a press
release on their new findings. No word on when it will be available, to
whom, at what price, or at what levels of efficiency. Their experimental
trials show that their product can regenerate facial bones. Does that
mean all bones of the face? Good question. That certainly was an
implication, but we'll have to wait and see. The raw material for the
bone is extracted from a patient's fat tissue. A full, whole bone is
created in 12 weeks after embedding the fat tissue into a solution, a bone that
is strong and hard and functional. A longer study into extremity bones is
now planned. So there's hope. Always a long ways off I guess for
people who could benefit.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Apples Keep Tumors Away
Apples have quercetin in them. Onions have more quercetin and fewer sugars, which might make onions a better food. But hold on. Check out this Bill Sardi brief on the health benefits of apples.
Yes, an apple a day keeps the tumors away, so says a recent study. [Daily Mail UK Sept 28, 2016; Public Health Nutrition Oct 2016] And the health benefits of apples don’t stop there. Apple peel provide indigestible components in the upper digestive tract that reach the large intestine intact and are then converted by gut bacteria to active compounds that reduce risk for chronic diseases. [Nutrients May 2015] Apple extracts have been demonstrated to promote endogenous stem cell regeneration. [Nutrition Research Sept 2016] Apple peel polyphenols are therapeutic for inflammatory bowel disease. [Clinical Science Sept 14, 2016] Apple pectin, available as a dietary supplement, produces a profound healthy effect upon obese lab rats. [Biomedical Pharmacotherapy Aug 23, 2016] Apple peel powder has been shown to improve joint function in a human study. [Journal Medicinal Food Nov 2014]
My favorite apples are probably Fuji Apples, but I also like Granny Smith Apples. Any apple with fewer sugars are the ones I like. I once had a fantastic apple from Oak Glen in the hills over Yucaipa.
Digestion I thought that this was a good illustration of how things work. This comes from the YouTube channel, Drink Up!
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Obamacare: A Nixon Legacy?
Dr. Gary North reviewed this video. Parts of it he likes.
The segment on Nixon is terrific. The tapes reveal the connection with Edgar Kaiser. The key fact is this: Nixon heard about this plan on February 17, 1971. He then had a speech written for him, which he delivered on national TV the next day. The video reported this, but did not mention it. It is clear that Kaiser and Ehrlichman had the whole package ready to go. Nixon approved it without having read it or even thinking through the implications. This was the #1 source of HMO's in U.S. history. Nixon had given no thought to the whole program. It changed American medicine.
He definitely likes the video but doesn't have high hopes for it.
The video was posted in 2014. The video as of this week had 96 views. It took two years to get this. Maybe there is another posting of this video online with more views, but with under 100 views in two years, this project was a failure. I have rarely seen any YouTube video with so few views.
We need lots of videos like this one. But they take lots of time to produce. There is no guarantee that anyone will view them.
Then there is this fact. They change nothing. Ever.
There is no one better in assessing government programs than Gary North. He understands Congress. He worked inside its bowels for a few years under Ron Paul. This point here is not so much hopeless as much as it is practical.
Voters cannot get Congress to repeal a bad program. Congress will only make it worse. We never see repeal -- only "repeal with replacement." Once there is a constituency for a program, it's forever.
In other words, don't waste your time on federal activism or federal legislation. His antidote?
There is only one way to kill a program: the bankruptcy of the federal government. They all must go down together. It is politically impossible to kill them once they become law.
It's coming. So he says. Though Dr. North did admit that he finds national politics entertaining.
I love national politics. It's a three-ring circus: Senate, House, and White House.
The big economic issues are never addressed, such as:
