This puts a whole new spin on what could happen with Medicare For All (Single Payer), eh? It’s also amazing that a publically funded news outlet will come out and say that this is bad
More People Can Access Surgery. That’s Great For Them, Awful For The Planet
Add surgeries to the list of human activities making the climate hotter and more volatile.
“Surgical, obstetric, and anaesthesia care is one of the major contributors to climate change within the health sector,” according to an article published this month in The Lancet scientific journal by doctors and researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They worry that the climate impact of current surgical practices will get worse as lifesaving procedures become accessible to the 5 billion people around the world, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, who currently can’t get them.
“We do need to get more people surgical care,” says Dr. Aaron Bernstein, co-author of the article and interim director of the Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. “But if we do it in a model that has been developed in rich countries, it will break the climate — and we can’t afford that.”
So, I guess we’ll have to do surgeries like they do in 3rd world shitholes from now-on, eh?
The article zeroes in on surgical care because it’s the most energy- and waste-intensive specialty in health care. Operating rooms can consume three to six times more energy per square foot than elsewhere in a hospital, according to another Lancet study. That’s because heating, ventilation and air conditioning in operating rooms run on high even when no patients are in them. The article says that if hospitals ventilated operating rooms only when they were occupied, this would significantly reduce energy consumption. (snip)
Bernstein says it’s “absolutely” possible to increase access to surgical care without “breaking the climate,” despite challenges. For example, biomedical devices should be labeled with their energy-efficiency ratings, like refrigerators and TVs are, Wilburn suggests.
Tell you what: let’s practice this on Believers in anthropogenic climate change, especially the grand high poobahs. Oh, and we can start with the people at the Lancet. They’re good with, right?
“Sometimes wealthy countries tend to think that our approach is best,” Sheehan says, “when oftentimes, there is something to be learned from countries that are working with [fewer] resources.”
Right, right, because we’d all rather practice medicine like in 3rd world shitholes, right?
