I’m not particularly scared of the dentist but dental work can be a source of anxiety. Novocain shots are painful and a dentists’ drill reverberating through your skull is not pleasant despite your jaw being numb. Back when I was an accountant I worked a block from Baylor Dental College, which I used for some dental care. Much of the work was done by an instructor, while the student watched. At one point prior to a procedure, the student thought my blood pressure too high and insisted I get it checked by my primary care physician. My doctor said it was fine and told me it’s quite common for patients’ blood pressure to rise while in a medical office where practitioners often wear white coats. That was the first time I heard about what he called “white coat syndrome.”
Category: Direct Primary Care
Wednesday Links
- Richard Hanania, Tyler Cowen and Scott Sumner on a libertarian approach to Covid.
- Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Obamacare open enrollment.
- Here’s why that matters.
- The Ministry of Truth is back. HT: Tyler
- The Good Nurse is about a man who may have killed 400 patients.
- Arizona woman is arrested for feeding the needy.
Union CA Ballot Initiative would Harm Patients it Purports to Protect
For the third time in five years the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West is sponsoring a ballot initiative to impose strict regulations on dialysis centers in California. The union has tried and failed to organize dialysis workers in the past. This initiative seeming has nothing directly about unionizing workers but that is assumed to be the goal. California has 650 dialysis facilities serving 80,000 patients:
Dr. Bryan Wong is a Bay Area nephrologist… and other opponents of the measure have said Proposition 29 is less about what’s written on the ballot and more about an underlying effort by SEIU-UHW to organize dialysis clinic workers.
What Kids are Learning in School
A survey of recent high school graduates finds that:
62 percent reported either being taught in class or hearing from an adult in school that “America is a systemically racist country,” 69 percent reported being taught or hearing that “white people have white privilege,” 57 percent reported being taught or hearing that “white people have unconscious biases that negatively affect non-white people,” and 67 percent reported being taught or hearing that “America is built on stolen land.”