gastroenterology

How the Corporate System Perpetuates the Current Health Care Crisis

Americans have spent an ever-growing portion of their paychecks on health care and for the most part gotten less for their money, forcing millions into the ranks of the uninsured or personal bankruptcy. One out of every four adults in the U.S. has problems getting access to and paying for health care, according to a study led by Harvard researchers. Although poor and uninsured Americans have the biggest problem, some 28 million people with insurance do not get the care they think they need, or have problems paying medical bills.

There’s something like $50 billion a year in profit extracted from the health care system, and that’s only about one-sixth as much as the bureaucratic costs of actually extracting that profit. In fact, we spend each year about $320 billion or $340 billion on useless bureaucratic work in order to apportion the right to health care according to ability to pay, enforce inequality in care, and enforce the collection of profit by insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, the drug industry–a whole panoply of players. It’s the bureaucracy to enforce inequality and extract profits that drives up the cost, and then, to a lesser extent, the profits themselves.

Corporate interests themselves may play a role. For employers, rising health care costs are a cost of production. Hence, some may be motivated to support national health insurance even against their interest in being able to deny health care to striking workers, low-wage workers and so on.

Bill Clinton became president partly because he promised to do something about rising health care costs. Although Clinton’s chances of reforming the US health care system looked quite good at first, the effort soon ran aground. Since then a combination of factors–the unwillingness of other politicians to confront the insurance and other lobbies that so successfully frustrated the Clinton effort, a temporary remission in the growth of health care spending as HMOs briefly managed to limit cost increases, and the general distraction of a nation focused first on the gloriousness of getting rich, then on terrorism–have kept health care off the top of the agenda. Read the rest of this entry »

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Gastroenterology – A Gut Reaction

The digestive system is a complex system that involves the process of taking food into the body, and turning it into a digestible form that can then be assimilated into the body to supply the necessary nutrients for functionality and good health.

Food is taken into the body through the mouth where it’s broken down by a combination of proper chewing and natural body fluids produced in the mouth. The broken down food is then passed through the esophagus into the stomach where it is combined with digestive enzymes that further break down the matter into digestible form. Then nutrients from the food are absorbed into the body through the small intestine. Stretched out, the average small intestine is about 22 feet long, and the large intestine is about 5 feet long. That’s a lot of geography. The residue, called fecal matter, is then passed through the small intestine into the large intestine to the rectum where it is eliminated by the body as waste or feces. Constipation can occur if there isn’t enough liquid intake to moisten the feces as the passes through the large intestine.

This process involves other vital organs such the pancreas, which is located beneath the stomach where it connects to the small intestine through the duodenum. The pancreas produces insulin and glucomen; digestive enzymes and hormones that help breakdown carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The liver, a major player in metabolism, aids in the breakdown of small and complex molecules. Most commonly, the liver is known to detoxify the body when alcohol is introduced into the body but, It also produces bile, which emulsifies fats and neutralizes acids in partly digested food. The gall bladder stores bile secretions from the liver. Read the rest of this entry »

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Gastroenterology – Solutions To A Bad Stomach

Gastroenterology is the study of the digestive system and diseases affecting this system. More specifically, specialists in this field study ailments of the gastrointestinal tract. This tract from the mouth to the anus includes organs such as, the esophagus, stomach, gall bladder, liver, small intestine, and colon. Patients with diseases such as Cholera, Appendicitis, and liver failure may be referred to a Gastroenterologist for diagnoses and treatment.

Historically, physicians have been studying gastroenterology since the 18th century when it was discovered that there are gastric juices in the stomach that aid digestion. Since then, the field has improved using a number of standard procedures and tools to prevent, treat, and diagnose everything from a case of bad gas to gall stones, or even Hepatitis.

A patient experiencing chronic abdominal pain or frequent bouts of nausea might see a gastroenterologist to have an endoscopy, one of the most common procedures to help diagnose gastrointestinal tract disease. Although this routine, outpatient procedure is not technically surgery, having an endoscopy does require some pre-surgical preparations. A long, thin, flexible tube with a light source and a camera at the end, is placed inside the mouth and slowly guided down the esophagus and through the GI tract. This way, a specialist can have a clearer, unobstructed view of the patients’ gastrointestinal tract. Patients can expect to be heavily sedated, and must not eat 8 hours prior to having the exam. In addition to giving the physician a closer view of the GI tract to help diagnose certain issues, an endoscope can also remove foreign objects or polyps, take tissue samples, and treat bleeding. Read the rest of this entry »

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