lol

My general practitioner was a Rand fan.. Had many conversations with him about the current medical situation. I can tell you, when they are forced to take medical insurance that isn't going to pay them, they will shrug. How else will they pay the outrageous malpractice insurance.

For some there is a need for treatments and surgery like joint replacement, heart surgery and cancer treatments. things like that will need highly trained medical staff and a hospital type setting.

Which one?

Recall that the founder of Mulligan's Valley was a still-robust man. The first residents were in fact pioneers. Pioneers self-diagnose, self-treat, and self-manage. They have to.

Rand did not say specifically when John Galt managed to recruit THomas Hendrix, M.D. Who then had to go from being a neurosurgeon to a general practitioner in a trice.

I hold the degree of Doctor of Medicine. I haven't used it in many years, and I trained in pathology and laboratory medicine. Nevertheless, in me you have one familiar enough with human anatomy to know how to train others in emergency first response, and to manage "hurry cases" and other kinds of pioneering accidents.

The next question is what reward I might expect. During the Depression and earlier, country doctors received their fees in kind. Roof shingles, laying hens, fresh farm produce, that sort of thing.

And with my earlier training in chemistry, I am sure I could learn the procedure for extracting opium from the poppy. To take only the one example mentioned.

But I won't boast of being able to handle everything forever. If John Galt needs to send a substitute to recruit the next Doctor Hendrix, I'm there.

http://www.tolfa.us/L13.htm

The deadly CRIS

Cranio
Rectal
Inversion
Syndrome

I doubt that I would join a "gulch" unless things had gotten so bad that hospitals didn't exist any more.

Only partly. Mostly it is due to a new management team that doesn't know their front side from their back side.

Her readiness to leave no doubt being driven in large part by Obamacare mandates

We might attract a General Practitioner and or a PA, but would probably have to contract somehow with an outside hospital in a way that keeps medical records off-line. But it's doable.

I'm married to one. :)
In any event should need go beyond the individuals control they seek to hire others, unless of course a doctor or nurse would wish to provide service of their own volition.

Yes, of course. The question was partly personal, but more Gulch-wide. I was hoping to get what ideas other people had about how it might work, or what they themselves might do.

I'd like to have a nurse [who might teach first aid in her spare time!] around the place. I'd probably contribute to her salary. An herbalist? acupuncturist? dentist?

I would expect people to take care of themselves using whatever meds they determined they needed. After that, if the situation warranted, or they felt the situation was beyond their ability to handle, they'd seek more professional assistance and would pay for it themselves. Value for Value.

The two choices are buy them or make them. You can turn to Nature for pain killers. I found these two sites on the subject on cures found in nature.You can probably try them out, carefully, before you shrug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of...

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26136767/ns/he...

Real Life Medical Professionals. The Gulch will have many volunteers, I suspect.
We should have classes to train many of us to assist the pros, too.

My wife will be the Gulch nurse. She told me just this morning how ready she is to quit her current job at our local hospital.

One of the Gulchers is a fairly young female doctor, but I forgot her name.

I plan on bringing a very large supply of medications for my personal use. As for pharmaceuticals production, I could do that, but probably won't. I certainly can put together the process flowsheet for making such pharmaceuticals quite quickly.

Individuals can stock up on medical supplies to "self prescribe". Assuming proper storage, most medicines are fully effective well beyond their expiration dates.

As to the hands on medical care. Individuals can find reference materials to help for low level diagnosis and treatment. But there is no substitute for a trained doctor for serious problems.

Outside of modern civilization, even if its nothing more than a hiking trip in the wild, things that are normally minor can become life or death issues.

Despite comments about camping which resulted in the title "Mrs. Gatsby" [which I often wear proudly, BTW], there is one area on which no one has touched - medical care. Not "wellness checks" or a prescription for an antibiotic for an infection, but care for catastrophic incidents or chronic conditions.

That is not what I WON'T give up, it is what I CAN'T give up. I am what is termed a "chronic pain patient" - what that means is that I got one of those spines on which the warranty runs out early, and I take narcotics every single day.

As I think about shrugging [in the go somewhere else sense] I have researched opium poppies, and the process of obtaining the narcotic from the plant is not difficult, just need a good chemist or even someone who can follow directions exactly.

So my case is covered, at least to my satisfaction, but I know there are other people with other problems who should consider how to deal with them.

addition: This is also why I long ago decided if the SSI came for me I'd make them kill me before they took me - cold turkey withdrawal overseen by very unsympathetic men IS a death sentence and I am not sure I wouldn't surrender. I can at least follow the example of the William Wallace in Braveheart.