Episode 27: Mary Dell, MD (Medical Detective)

This episode promises to meander somewhat.

I've decided to give myself an MD after my name.  That's right, Mary Dell, MD.

NO!  Not Medical Doctor--believe it or not, this isn't about my ego, and I don't pretend to know a fraction of what physicians and other health professionals know.  I've been interested in a few very specific health conditions, since they have affected members of my family, and since I became a smorgasbord of chronic disease myself.  I don't want their jobs.  I don't like dealing with blood and guts.  I like research, on anything at all, really, but since these medical problems keep plaguing me and folks I know (like all of us), that's what I'm researching these days.  And, heck, I'm a bona fide medical librarian, so I know how to do it.

No, just call me Mary Dell, MD, for Medical Detective. And this is the Mary Dell Mystery Disease show.  MD MD, MD--

Will that get me hired to consult for House?  Ha.

Episode 26: Down the Rabbit Hole Yet Again aka Health Care Due Diligence

Health care due diligence.

Has a nice ring to it.

We patients, the so-called "consumers" of health care, expect due diligence when we entrust our bodies and minds to that system.

But that's not what the term refers to.  No, "due diligence" is an accounting term, a requirement to investigate a potential investment before recommending it to clients.  If you are an investment banker, that is.  And you know how concerned they have been about our welfare over the past, say, oh, twenty years. These shills for the megarich are selling our flesh on the open market, while the megarich buy personal physicians and specialists who come to their homes or live there, sort of like modern-day Rasputins.

And the rest of us are relegated to a system built on corruption. I don't mean the health professionals and researchers and all of those who, with integrity, are working to make lives better for their fellow human beings.

I'm talking about the ones who are exercising their due diligence.  You know, them.

"'The best sort of due diligence process begins with a game plan [or strategy], and it proceeds along that game plan, only changing as dynamics of the due diligence changes or as [new issues] are discovered,' says Mr. Van Demark," one of the principals in the investment firm quoted in an article online (URL below).

I'm glad to know our physical and mental anguish is bandied about on the market as a game. Gives me extreme confidence in the system, let me tell you.