Cancer Gets a Moonshot and STDs Get No Shot at All

We are all responsible for this failure regarding the STD epidemic. After the smoke clears from all of the politicians and activists who are promoting their own reason for the STD epidemic, there are many reasons.


Those who promote their cause are delaying actions that would address the causes - and are helping to spread STDs.

This will be more of a listing than a blog, but people need to understand how we are all responsible for the STD failures of our nation. 

25 Reasons Why We Fail in STDs

1. We have not grasped that resistant organisms require steady changes in the treatments. 

2. Some drugs that could treat STDs more effectively are not available or are too costly. 

Drug companies have also required so much for some drugs that budgets are shot to deal with many areas - such as STDs. As demand goes up, prices also go up, fewer are treated, and demand goes up. This is a death spiral

4. Public health spending is half what it should be and austerity focus has long prevented more spending. Also organized medicine separated from public health a few decades back. 

5. Austerity focus at the county and state and national level has elected more political leaders, but has resulted in a number of direct and indirect contributors to the STD and other epidemics. Counties have been doing all that they can to minimize health care costs.

6. Traditional health care eats up 3 trillion dollars leaving very little for basic services, mental health, primary care, public health, STDs, etc.

7. Coordinate local efforts to break the sex, prostitution, drug, STD, drug and human trafficking connections

8. Yes it is true that political games have resulted in impairments of women's health, but where is the emphasis on men's health?

 9. College health care is incapable of the many STD, mental health, and other challenges.

 10. The nation continues to waste billions on fraud, abuse, ebola preparedness, etc.

 11. Primary care in the nation is being destroyed by low payment and accelerating cost of regulation.

12. Drug companies create shortages of drugs and charge too much to allow much care.

13.  Lab companies charge too much for STD tests such that the tests are less available, 

14. Clinics that treat STDs some of the time are bare budget and lab results for STD tests are too slow

15. The technology tools to address the epidemic are held up by profiteering

16. The STD stream of resistant organisms coming from other nations is not being addressed (jobs, college, technical training). 

17. Care is increasingly inconvenient for the purpose of STD care.

18. Screening guidelines have been relaxed and fewer women are screened for much of anything.



19. People have sex - obvious, but important to understand

20. Sex tends to be private, controversial, and poorly discussed

21. Sexual body parts are private and poorly discussed

22. Teens don't talk much

23. Married people and families don't talk enough. Breakdowns of family and marriage and essential communication promote epidemics.

24. A decent program could have substantially reduced syphilis - but when levels are lower the attention is minimized along with dollars for screening and treatment, allowing a return.

25. And what do we do about intolerance and discrimination - which is why our nation fails to support public health, STD treatment, primary care, mental health, and more of the basics?

What should be done?

  • Double public health spending and primary care spending and take this spending design out of the hands of politicians and out of the hands of traditional government agencies that have marginalized these basics while sending dollars to highly specialized care.
  • Declare a public emergency and force drug and lab corporations to cooperate at a reasonable margin, cut deals for longer patents, and do whatever is necessary to lower costs for emergent treatment applications. 
  • Double mental health spending, especially with regard to drug abuse
  • Establish walk in STD treatment at urgent cares and primary care offices paid at higher rates to incent rapid, convenient services. Pharmacies could also participate in testing and treatment.
  • Consider studies of one time patient incentives paid when those who positive for STDs test negative at follow up.
  • Needle sharing programs
  • People could access testing online with deliveries of testing and followup and recommendations for treatment. 
  • Target STDs to eliminate where feasible with savings of hundreds of billions later for billions invested now efficiently and effectively - the STD Moonshot
  • Consider genetic testing and tracing of organisms but only in a way that facilitates treatment (not spending so much that it impairs treatment or the workforce to do treatment)



The Quality of Outpatient Care Delivered to Adults in the United States, 2002 to 2013

The Devaluation of The Doctor and Its Effect on The American People by Dr. Alaina George

Value Is Also Low Cost and Good Outcomes - Commentary by Alan Morgan: For a model of efficiency, quality care, look at performance of rural hospitals

Medicaid As Savior or Betrayer of Access

Selling and Swelling a Bigger HITECH Bubble

Six Degrees of Discrimination By Health Care Payment Design

Most Visited Early Blogs

Three Dimensions of Non-Primary Care vs Zero Growth in Primary Care 

Finance-me-cratic Constants in the Bureaucratic Universe 

Meeting Primary Care Needs in the Last Half of the 21st Century

Exploring the Health Consequences of Disease Focus  

Basic Health Access: Does Primary Care Experience Matter?


Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care 

is the most shocking and inhumane.

Martin Luther King, Jr. 


Robert C. Bowman, M.D.        Robert.Bowman@DignityHealth.org

The blogs represent the opinion of the blogger alone.
Copyright 2016

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