Health Literacy

The WaPo is calling it "the silent epidemic". More on the problems with lack of health literacy. Most paperwork is written for those with a college education. Most Americans read at ant 8th grade level. There is no good reason for doctor's paperwork to be so damn complicated. And stupid attempts to ensure patient privacy result in problems like this.

One of these days, the unwashed masses (from the medical profession's snobby perspective) will band together and file a humongous class-action suit against the whole profession because they were never truly informed--at least not in a way they could understand--and deaths and other terrible consequences resulted. The medical profession will be deprived of lots of money and they will deserve it.

(As an aside, while people know and have known the health risks of tobacco, they've received massive awards--although one today was knocked down. Trial attorneys should look at the medical profession as a whole. Every year, more than 100,000 people die from doctor's mistakes. How many of those were because patients were misinformed or not informed at all. Can you imagine any other industry being allowed that track record?)