Monthly Archives: September 2007

General

WHOSIS

I was just browsing through the World Health Organization’s Statistical Information System (WHOSIS), Lots of interesting information on how many health care professionals there are in different countries around the world.

Just looking at a high level scan of the United States I would suggest that we would need about 2 doctors per 1,000; 10 nurses per K; 1 dentist per K; 1  pharmicist per K; and 15 others (Lab techs, PAs, therapists, etc) per K to provide basic health care in the US.  The chart below is copied from WHOSIS, the US numbers are all from 2000.

I notice that there are almost as many administrators and support staff in the US system as there are professionals.  That seems to be an awfully big overhead to be carrying.

Given a US population of  300,000,000 (300,000 K) today, we are talking about: 600,000 doctors; 3,000,000 nurses; 300,000 dentists; 300,000 pharmacists and 4,500,000 others.  (8.7 Million Health Care Professionals.) (And that’s without all the administrators/support staff. ) That’s looking at ~ 3% of the population to provide basic health care. I wonder how much the numbers might increase to support an aging population as well?

Continue reading WHOSIS →

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Why?

I was down at the local Drinking Liberally meeting the other night and asked a general question of the group:

“Why should we have a government supported health care plan?”

Hillary’s health plan had just been recently announced.

I asked the question in all seriousness. I have been hearing of most of the presidential candidates proposing various versions of national heath care plans but I don’t remember hearing a discussion of the prerequisite  question: Why have national health care?

Continue reading Why? →

Liberating Thoughts

Change

Just thinking about how to evaluate change.

First you those that aren’t going to change, no matter what. They and theirs have lived on this land forever and they ain’t going nowhere even if it has turned into a dust bowl.

Then you have some people that like where they’re at and they’d rather not move if they don’t have to, but they can see the dust bowl coming so they realize it may be time to pull up stakes.

There are those that keep an eye out for trouble on the horizon so they can get a head start to move on if need be. Are those dust storms on the horizon? Of course, sometimes those specks on the horizon aren’t trouble at all and they moved on for no good reason.

Then you have those that say we’ve been here for a while, we’ve seen what there is to see here, let’s pack up and move over the hill and see what’s there.  Doesn’t matter if the dust bowl is coming or not. It’s just time to move on.

Finally there are those that have never settled down and are forever jumping from one spot to another.  They will be completely oblivious to a dust bowl. For them, there is no change becasue there is nothing to change from.

Hmm, don’t know if I can go anywhere with this.  Need to think some more.

General

Low Flying Clouds

This morning, a gray blanket of clouds covered the Front Range, north and south, as far as the eye could see.  I think a cold front is coming in.

I estimate the cloud ceiling was 14,000 feet, since I couldn’t see the top 110 feet of Pikes Peak.