[HSF] Robert Jarvik {OT}

[Tea Acuff]

Glad that you asked the question, Hal. The responses are colorful. However, you and I would be short term boxers since we usually lead with our chins. Maybe so did Ali, but he was (usually) quick enough to move it.  Sounds like you are getting what you pay for with Lipitor, Hal. What's wrong with that? Sell your Beemer if you have to.
 
Pointing out the economic motivation behind actions is not, at least in those same terms, a contradiction but a mechanism. Kind of like arguing that mitral valve repair is not really helping the failing heart because it doesn't really make the heart contract better as it only unloads it. 
 
Pointing out a logical inconsistency on an argument of continuum (whom is making unfair money) is like asking "when should you stop beating your wife?" A bigger context is more likely to add the relevant mechanisms or back to the economic point. In this sense, Bill, these questions are always relevant as you well know.
 
A nice discussion of some of these above effects is in the third chapter of Porter and Teisberg's Redefining Health Care, "How Reform Went Wrong". This chapter is a short history of the economics of modern US health care. The rise in direct advertising has moved through the different entities, insurance, plans, hospitals, providers, and industry as costs have been shifted by "cost" based (and usually zero sum) valuation of medical care. It is a partial (and incomplete)  re-correction due to a lack of information based valuation. Reducing information and options is unlikely to be a "valuable solution."  There may be something better out (in?) there than Lipitor. Be careful what one wishes for. Ethanol may be as hard on the environment as it on us for those trying to focus on my meaning.
 
As one with (presumably and presumptuously) better information, however, it is humorous (being a lover of satire) to see the many ironies in Jarvik's plea. Then again aided from my wife's viewpoint, it more interesting to see a doctor acting like an actor than an actor acting like a doctor. (Hopefully everyone is acting, and no one is "doctoring" the information.)  
 
;)
tea
 
 
 
 


 
----- Original Message ----
From: "Hgrmd at aol.com" <Hgrmd at aol.com>
To: OpenHeart-L at lists.hsforum.com
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 4:45:29 PM
Subject: [HSF] Robert Jarvik {OT}


Is it just me, or does it annoy anyone else that Robert Jarvik, PhD  
shamelessly shills on TV for Lipitor?  With these commercials, it  appears to me that, 
besides being a genius biomedical engineer, he is trying to  portray himself 
as some sort of cardiologist.  You don't ever see him  with "patients", but 
you do see him supposedly opining to what appear to be ever  attentive 
"residents".  I think these direct to consumer pharmaceutical  advertisements are 
totally out of control and a huge waste of health care  dollars (who do you think 
ultimately pays for those stupid commercials?).
Hal



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