X-Message-Number: 5062
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #5053 - #5055
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 12:29:15 -0700 (PDT)

Hi!

As many on the net know, I had a brain tumor 6 years ago. I'm still around.
I strongly suspect a relation between the fact that I was treated at UCSF
Hospital and the fact that I have survived. 

I do agree with Mike's assessment on the basis of what I've seen. Besides
becoming more activist patients (or having our relatives, who are not patients,
become so) it may help to maintain some kind of quality ranking of hospitals
and doctors. Hospitals would be moderately easy to follow; doctors, as 
a closed profession, aren't so easy --- though if I understand it some states
are or have already instituted systems by which "civilians" (those who are
not doctors) can also sit on the boards which judge doctors for malpractice,
etc.

One uncomfortable fact which Mike does not mention, and which bears on all
of us, is simply that the funds available to pay for treatment ARE limited.
I would still like qualified people (ie. doctors and their particular patients)
to decide what can be afforded and what cannot. But we WILL find that we must
make a choice. (I'd just want it to be MY choice, not some administrator's).

In fact, when my brain tumor had been treated, and the possibilities for 
further treatment had been explained to me, I was seriously considering whether
to spend the required money beyond my medical insurance or to refuse treatment
and make arrangements to be suspended. I never had to make that choice, THEN.
I've been quite lucky. But such choices may very well come to everyone on
Cryonet. Even medical insurance does not cover payment of indefinitely large
amounts of money. Just how far will you go with your own funds? 

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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