Hits, Hips, Joints, and Nails

A hit, a very palpable hit.

Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet

This hitteth the nail on the head.

John Heywood (1497-1580), Proverbs

January 8, 2012 - A golden rule of writing goes: “If you have a nail to hit, hit it on the head.”

Today I have two nails to hit, if you prefer, two hits to nail.

One, Medicare health costs are not going to go down because the public, current Medicare beneficiaries or beneficiaries to be, will not willingly allow access to high-tech surgeries to be restricted.

This A.M. I met for coffee with 5 other male Medicare recipients. They spoke glowingly of the pain-free outcomes of their joint surgeries. The final score was 6 impaired hips, 4 impaired knees, and 1 impaired shoulder repaired. All agree they would have their joint procedures over again, the surgeries freed them of pain, and Medicare was a wonderful thing.

Two, tomorrow’s health costs will be higher than today's.
Yesterday I spoke via phone with Steve Jacob, a Texas health care journalist who has written a new book Health Care in 2020, with this subtitle “Where Uncertain Reform, Bad Habits, Too Few Doctors, and Skyrocketing Costs Are Taking Us,” Jacobs concluded by 2020, 20 cents of every dollar will be spent on health care, there will not be enough doctors, or nurses, to provide care, 4 of 10 deaths are self-inflicted, and 30% of all medical care is of no benefit to the patient.

When I pressed my coffee mates. they said their problems were not self-inflicted, their pain was not imaginary, their results were imminently satisfactory, and they, not their doctors, influenced them to have the joint procedures done.

Tweet: If you have a bad hip, knee, or shoulder, consider having it fixed to relieve the pain. Chances are, you will become pain-free.