Many years ago, China pioneered the idea of "barefoot doctors": cheap physicians with a bagful of the most commonly prescribed medicines, providing a low-cost service to the many. This blog thinks the days of glitzy steel-and chrome offices and hot and cold running secretaries are numbered; the model of the future is the pavement stall and the home garage.
(htp: Jesse)
3 comments:
If you're ill, you're very very ill, but if you're not then going to bed with hot drinks and sympathy and an aspirin before sleeping will mend you within a week.
Trouble is, how do you tell the difference? If I feel ill I want to be taken seriously but not be seriously ill.
That's the point. The 'traditional' Chinese remedies were cobbled together by Mao because the goverment couldn't pay for actual Western evidence-based medicine for the masses. The truly hilarious thing is that the West started buying into the same phony swindle, and often pay a much higher margin than for the other medicine.
Ivan Illich quoted research that showed that a limited number (perhaps 200) of out-of-patent medicines, certainly enough to get into a doctor's Gladstone bag, would deal with the vast majority of cases. I understand that the drug companies keep coming up with new variants, partly in order to enjoy the higher margins associated with patented products.
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