sarge wrote: I can really go off on the Unholy Triumvirate in this country (the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical community). There was a time when a doctor would seek the cause of a condition and treat it. Now, they band together in an assembly line, crank through the poor, the aged, and the innocent, and roll chemistry at the symptoms with no intent of seeking or treating the cause. Keep 'em on the hook until they die or are destitute, hopefully at the same time.
You left out the legalists.
Unfortunately in many ways you are totally correct regarding the lack of intent to cure - they'd much rather reduce your ailment to a chronic state and put you on as many pills or shots that it takes to keep you there forever. The war on cancer was abandoned for this very scenario -- it's too hard to cure, so we'll stop fighting and give you a pill every day that makes money for everybody..... Sad thing is that it's also a failed paradigm based upon what superficially was hailed as a great advance in research - "molecular targets". On the surface a very attractive concept until you realize it can't actually deliver cures. It does deliver a lot of funding and publications and clinical trial "successes", but nothing more than reduction of disease to a static state as an arm of money making business.
This is one of the reasons I'll be retiring in the near future. It's hard to keep my silence and gorge in place while these self-serving "researchers" around me hand out awards and slap each other on the back celebrating more worthless published achievements when they could be trying to do something worthwhile instead of making more lines on their resumes and more pages in a journal that no one will read 3 years from now.
There was a time when a doctor worthy of the name could set a kid's arm. Now the GP sends him to an ortho who sets it and casts it, then off to a physical therapy group all the while rolling obscenely priced chemistry which turns the kid into some sort of Mr. Hyde for life because the parent was too over-awed by parchment to question these thieves who then bill insurance companies in funny-money which is never really exchanged unless it can be taken from the poor ****** in court after the insurance company abandons him or her.
See legalist..........
It is fun however to ask questions of the MD or whatever when you are at their office that reveals that you just might know more than they do about what's in vial.
Now we have this truly hideous government participation in the USA that no-one understands but the Triumvirate certainly lobbied to be worded to their great advantage which now allows the insurance industry to latch on the federal tit as well.
Hardly anything recent or new, and has been fully active for decades. Just seeing a bit more of this demon peeking out from behind the curtain.....
Meanwhile, "ask your doctor about so-and-suchae for your moderate-to-severe psoriasis. Most insurance plans will accept the cost for a little while then you can pay the some-thousands of dollars per refill yourself, contract hepatitis, leukemia, or lymphoma if you live long enough because your immune system will be severely compromised (your doctor will be happy to treat the symptoms of these effects on a scheduled assembly-line basis; co-pay's expected before services rendered), but when you die your skin will look marvelous."
I do find that a risk of death to cure (?) - more likely just treat forever
my toenail fungus just a little over the top. They really need to ban all those medications advertisements.
Generally not useful in medical applications, although that is not 100% true, 
