breast enhancement. A needless drain on the medical system?

The Invisible Pink Unicorn strikes again!

Good thing I saved it
Here in British Columbia we seem to be suffering from an acute shortage of hospital beds. Recently a man mauled by a grizzly bear was refused admittance to all of BC’s major hospitals and finally admitted to a hospital outside the province, after more than an hours delay. This topic about bed shortages and waiting lists is in the news quite a bit lately.

This prompted my daughter, ** chic_soccer19** to assert to me what is the problem or perhaps the solution as follows

I think she has a point. Even in the United States, I’m sure that the education for plastic surgeons is significantly subsidized by the public purse. Are we as a society hurting ourselves by placing such an emphaisis on appearance to the detriment of serious health issues?

my 11 year old daughter and I eagerly await your replies.

What sort of plastic surgery are you condemning ? Is your complaint restricted to nose and boob jobs only, or to all types of elective cosmetic surgery ?

Well, the kind of plastic surgeons your daughter is thinking of wouldn’t generally be in an emergency room anyhow. Plastic surgeons do perform reconstructive surgery, and I would imagine sometimes they do this under emergency circumstances, but I believe your daughter is thinking of elective procedures, which would be performed by an entirely different kind of plastic surgeon. We have ALL kinds of doctors who specialize: dermatologists, podiatrists, gastroenterologists, cardiologists, and so forth – and again, these are not really emergency room doctors. Having one plastic surgeon more or less probably has no effect whatsoever on emergency procedures OR lack of bed space in hospitals. However, it seems to me that your daughter’s heart is in the right place, and she’s got her own priorities sorted out just fine :slight_smile:

I am not sure how much, if any, of a doctor’s education is subsidized by the government in the US, but I do not think the public health is threatened by plastic surgeons and their patients running amok. You may want to look at other possible causes.

In the U.S., most cosmetic procedures are performed in outpatient surgery centers, not hospitals. I highly doubt that elective cosmetic procedures have any impact whatsoever on the ability of an emergency patient to receive plastic surgery.

The way I read this, the assertion is that too much hospital space is taken up by people wanting elective procedures so that those who need medical attention are left waiting. I don’t know if this is true or not, but since hospitals are businesses, I expect decisions are made based on income rather than merely humanitarian reasons.

Personally, I have no patience with vanity, and if my husband had been denied admission when his gallbladder was infected because the last bed was taken for someone’s tummy tuck, I’d be hacked off big time. What to do? I don’t know - establish elective hospitals separate from critical care hospitals?

It all comes down to the dollars, doesn’t it?

In the UK, I don’t ungenerally agree with getting unnecessary cosmetic surgery on the NHS, especially for something that isn’t out of the ordinary. Breasts come in all shapes and sizes, and small ones don’t cause you health problems.

Large ones can do - so if a woman has terrible back pain and has done everything else diet and exercise-wise, I wouldn’t mind my tax money going towards her operation.

I also don’t mind someone disfigured - either from birth or through accident/disease - having reconstructive surgery. Laser tattoo removal I would not include in this though. If you got tats and changed your mind - your tough shit. If you got tats underage and were “too young” to know what you were doing - your tough shit. Get a job and save up for it.

I do agree with women like my mother having reconstruction after a masectomy for breast cancer for several reasons:
(a) they’ve suffered enough and it’s a compassionate thing to do
(b) being severely “unbalanced” isn’t natural, and can cause back problems
© often the operation is carried out at the same time as the masectomy, so it’s less work than doing it from scratch

I do agree with people - especially children - with abnormally jug-ears or huge/bumpy noses getting corrective surgery, especially where teasing is affecting their mental health.

You can hide small breasts - you can wear a padded bra. You can’t hide a huge nose unless you wear a burqa.

I also don’t like the implication of people getting free elective operations and suing the health service years later because it turns out such procedures weren’t 100% safe.

I would say that the shortage of doctors has more to do with Canada’s nationalized health system (lack of free market forces) then boob jobs.

Just my humble O