Featured Article: America’s
Privileged Class
We're No. 1 -- In Public
Employee Pay
Andrew
G. Biggs National
Review,
August 12, 2013
Pay
for state and local government employees has gotten a great deal of
publicity. Lost in the press attention, however, is that federal
employee compensation remains a problem, too, and new data again
indicate that Washington, D.C., may be overpaying for the 2 million
workers it employs, says Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute.
In
a 2011 paper with Jason Richwine, Biggs concluded that federal
workers receive salaries and benefits around 37 percent higher than
do private sector workers with similar levels of education and
experience. A study by the Congressional Budget Office, using
slightly different methods, showed a smaller wage premium for
federal workers, but still reached a qualitatively similar
conclusion: Federal workers receive pay and benefits 16 percent
above private-sector levels. Read
more . . .
Data
from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) allows Biggs to compare how U.S. federal government employees
are paid relative to central government employees in 18 other
countries.
The
OECD analyzed the salaries, benefits and paid leave for government
employees; the combined value of these three categories equals total
compensation. The OECD looked at four main categories of public
employees:
Senior
management.
Middle
management.
Professionals.
The OECD examined two specific professional positions,
statisticians and economists/policy analysts.
Secretarial
staff. This category is made up of two groups, senior/executive
secretaries and office secretaries/general office clerks.
The
key factor is benefits:
U.S.
federal employees don't merely receive more generous benefits than
do private-sector workers; they receive much more generous benefits
than do public employees in most other developed countries.
The OECD
data show that U.S. federal employees' total benefits add up to 37
percent of their wages, compared with 16 percent for central
government employees in Australia, 25 percent in the Netherlands
and Belgium, 27 percent in Great Britain, and 23 percent across the
OECD as a whole.
Source:
Andrew G. Biggs, "We're
No. 1 -- In Public-Employee Pay,"
National Review, August 12, 2013.
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* * * *
In
the News: The
Supreme Court Ruling: Putting religion into a Civil Right
Paradigm.
Upholding
Marriage: God’s Plan and Gift
A
statement by the Rev. Bart Day, executive director, Office of
National Mission
OFFICIAL
STATEMENTS, PRESSROOM
June
26, 2013
Today
the Supreme Court issued its ruling, striking down Section 3 of the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), allowing for federal benefits for
legally married gay couples and potentially allowing for gay
marriage in all of California with regard to Proposition 8. Though
the ruling is not a surprise, we are saddened for our nation, even
as we call our fellow Christians to faithfulness and prayer. Read
more . . .
As
Christians, we believe and confess that God Himself instituted
marriage as the life-long union of one man and one woman.
Same-sex unions are contrary to God’s will, and gay marriage
is, in the eyes of God, no marriage at all. As Christians, we
proclaim this truth, no matter what the courts or legislatures may
say. We are called not to popularity but to truth. Therefore,
we call on our fellow Christians to be faithful first to God’s
Word, knowing that another court is ultimately supreme.
Marriage
is a fundamental building block of society, binding parents to their
offspring. Every child benefits from the nurture of a mother
and the leadership of a father. While having one mother is a
blessing, having two mothers or two fathers is confusing for the
child and detrimental to her well-being. The divorce culture
has done great harm to the institution of marriage as well, and The
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) has and will continue to
respond to that heartache with Christ’s comfort while
simultaneously working to restore a culture where marriage is
upheld.
While
this occasion reminds us that Scripture calls homosexuality sinful
(see Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:24–27), the Bible also says
plainly that those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness,”
that is to say, those who repent and show genuine sorrow over their
sin, are forgiven and loved by Christ.
And
so as Christ’s Church, we forgive and love too, following His
lead with compassion and humility. We forgive and love because
we are all sinners in need of His grace and mercy; because no matter
the sin, we have all rebelled against our Creator and fallen prey to
unbelief; because He has justified us by grace through faith, freely
given and joyfully received (Rom. 3:23–24); because Christ has
reconciled us to the Father; because He has declared us righteous
and we are.
In
love, we will continue to teach marriage according to God’s
plan and gift. We will continue to proclaim marriage as a picture of
Christ’s love for His bride, the church. And we will
continue to be a place of forgiveness, mercy and healing for all
people, even as we will continue to proclaim God’s truth in
love. As we move forward, we offer up our prayers for the
nation and particularly for marriage, family and children.
Rev. Bart Day, executive
director
LCMS Office of National Mission
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*
* * * *
International Medicine:
The
Cost of “Free Health Care” in Canada
August
16, 2013
Canadians
often misunderstand the true cost of their public health care
system. This occurs partly because Canadians do not incur direct
expenses for their use of health care and partly because Canadians
cannot readily determine the value of their contribution to public
health care insurance, say Nadeem
Esmail and Milagros Palacios of the Fraser Institute.
Read
more . . .
In
2013, the estimated average payment for public health care insurance
will range from $3,387 to $11,381 for Canadian families, depending
on the type of family.
For the
average Canadian family, between 2003 and 2013 the cost of public
health care insurance increased more than 1.5 times faster than the
cost of shelter and clothing, more than twice as fast as food, and
nearly 1.5 times faster than average income.
The 10
percent of Canadian families with the lowest incomes will pay an
average of about $482 for public health care insurance in 2013.
The 10
percent of Canadian families who earn an average income of $56,596
will pay an average of $5,364 for public health care insurance,
while those families that are among the top 10 percent of income
earners in Canada will pay about $35,309.
One
reason why Canadians don't know the true cost of health care is
because physician and hospital services covered by tax-funded health
care insurance are free at the point of use. This situation leads
many to grossly underestimate the actual cost of the health care
delivered. One often hears people speaking of "free"
health care in Canada, which is a statement that entirely ignores
the substantial taxpayer-funded cost of the health care system.
For
example, health spending numbers are often presented in aggregate,
resulting in figures so large they are almost meaningless.
For
instance, approximately $135 billion in Canadian tax dollars were
estimated to have been spent on publicly funded health care in
2012.
It is
more informative to measure the cost of the country's health care
system in per capita dollars: the $135 billion spent equates to
approximately $3,870 per Canadian.
This
would be the cost of the public health care insurance plan if every
Canadian resident paid an equal share. Canadians certainly do not
pay equal tax amounts each year, however. Indeed, some Canadians are
children and dependents and are not taxpayers.
Source:
Nadeem Esmail and Milagros Palacios, "The
Price of Public Health Care Insurance,"
Fraser Institute, July 2013.
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Canadian
Medicare does not give timely access to healthcare, it only gives
access to a waiting list.
--Canadian
Supreme Court Decision 2005
SCC 35, [2005]
1 S.C.R. 791
http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html
*
* * * *
Medicare: Is
ObamaCare Paving the Way for Universal Poor Quality HealthCare?
Sally
Pipes
August
14, 2013
Suffering
from illness or injury? Good thing you're not British. U.K. police
recently investigated the deaths of 300 patients at one hospital.
The suspected cause is? Neglect. That could never happen in America,
right? On the contrary. ObamaCare's new insurance exchanges and
expansion of Medicaid represent the building blocks of a
British-style, government-run health care system in this country,
says Sally C. Pipes, president, CEO and Taube Fellow in Health Care
Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
If
that system metastasizes, rationed care and subpar health outcomes
will follow. Read
more . . .
Less
than four in 10 Americans say they support "single-payer"
health care.
But the
idea remains a hobbyhorse for many Democrats. A single-payer bill
has been introduced in Congress every year since 2003.
Vermont
Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) recently signed a single-payer bill into
law. And former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D) is pushing for a
citywide single-payer system as part of his campaign for New York
City mayor.
Initiatives
like these could lead to a piecemeal government takeover of the
health care system. Consider ObamaCare's health insurance exchanges,
which are scheduled to open for enrollment on October 1. Each was
intended to be a state-run marketplace offering affordable coverage
options. The exchanges haven't unfolded as planned.
Just 17
states are operating their own exchanges.
Seven
states asked for federal help running their exchanges, and 27 left
the task to the feds altogether.
So the
federal government will soon effectively control the individual and
small-group insurance markets in more than half the states.
Those
markets won't function properly if people don't enroll. That outcome
is looking increasingly likely. The exchanges are designed to take
premiums from the young and healthy, who typically consume less
care, to subsidize coverage for the aged. The individual mandate was
designed to force these young folks to participate. But if they
ignore the mandate, the exchanges will crumble.
Without
young people's premiums to cover costs for older people, the
insurance prices will skyrocket. The federal government may feel
compelled to reduce premiums, or simply insure everyone directly.
Add
the 13 million new Medicaid enrollees to the nearly 63 million
people already enrolled and the 50 million people on Medicare, and
more than 40 percent of the country will be on publicly financed
insurance.
Source:
Sally C. Pipes, "Is
ObamaCare Paving the Way for Single-Payer System?"
San Diego Union Tribune, August 1, 2013.
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Government is not the
solution to our problems, government is the problem.
-
Ronald Reagan
*
* * * *
Medical Gluttony:
Social
Security Disability Insurance Costs More than Medicare
By
Tad DeHaven, the Cato Institute, August
6, 2013
Social
Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is one of the largest federal
programs; it is also one of the most troubled. The program's
expenditures have doubled over the last decade, reaching an
estimated $144 billion this year. Spending has risen so rapidly that
SSDI's trust fund is projected to be depleted just three years from
now, says Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the Cato Institute.
SSDI
was originally created as a modest safety net aimed at severely
disabled workers who were close to retirement age, but Congress has
expanded benefit levels over the decades and eligibility standards
have been greatly liberalized.
The
result is that people capable of working are instead opting for the
disability rolls when confronted with employment challenges.
Once
on the disability rolls, experience shows that individuals are
likely to remain there, which is bad for the individuals, taxpayers
and the economy. Read
more . . .
The
process for determining eligibility for disability insurance
benefits has become a bureaucratic nightmare.
Applicants
often pursue a lengthy and litigious appeals process if their
initial applications are denied.
And
there is a growing reliance on subjective considerations in
evaluating claims, which has exacerbated the difficult task of
determining whether an individual is truly "disabled."
Specialty
law firms working on a contingency fee basis have taken advantage
of the complex system and its inconsistencies to reap a financial
bonanza at taxpayer expense.
SSDI
has become financially unsustainable and economically damaging, and
policymakers should pursue major spending cuts to the program. They
should also explore the potential to transition responsibility for
disability insurance from the government to the private sector.
If
Americans are not becoming less able to work because of health
problems, why are the disability rolls increasing? Economists David
Autor and Mark Duggan note that "the rapid growth of Disability
Insurance does not appear to be explained by a true rise in the
incidence of disabling illness, but rather by policies that
increased the subjectivity and permeability of the disability
screening process." Similarly, economist Richard Burkhauser
calls the explosion in the number of people gaining federal
disability benefits a "policy-driven epidemic."
Source:
Tad DeHaven, "The
Rising Cost of Social Security Disability Insurance,"
Cato Institute, August 6, 2013.
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Medical
Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
It
Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on Every
Service.
*
* * * *
Medical Myths: Obama
Care: The Truth; The Lies
Health
Care: A new survey shows that ObamaCare is less popular with the
uninsured than with the public. How is this even possible?
The
January Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll shows that
just 24% of the uninsured approve of ObamaCare.
That’s down from 40% the month before the reform
officially launched in October, and it’s a full 10 points
below the public’s overall favorable rating.
Incredibly,
more than twice as many uninsured say they’re worse off
because of ObamaCare than say it’s helped. What’s more,
just 7% of the uninsured say they tried to get coverage through an
ObamaCare exchange. Nearly 60% say they hadn’t done anything
to get coverage over the previous six months.
Read more . . .
Given
that Democrats claimed to have specifically tailored it to help the
uninsured, these results make absolutely no sense.
Could
it be that Democrats grossly misunderstood the population they were
trying to help? Or had they’d been peddling lies about the
uninsured population for so long — as a way to sell “universal
health care” — that they’d come to believe their
own propaganda?
It’s
more likely the latter of the two. Despite the endlessly repeated
mantra about 40-plus million uninsured, data have shown for decades
the actual ranks of the uninsured were much smaller, and the
population less helpless, than Democrats routinely claimed.
As
IBD reported, 42% of the uninsured are either non-citizens, eligible
for Medicaid, or actually enrolled in Medicaid. Another big chunk
earns more than $75,000 a year. And the vast majority of those who
lose insurance get it back within a year, about half within months.
Plus,
various surveys find that only a tiny fraction — just 5% in
the Kaiser survey — say they don’t have insurance
because of poor health or age.
But
admitting that the real uninsured problem is narrow would have
undermined the Democrats’ goal of “comprehensive”
health reform. So they routinely withheld such facts — as did
the mainstream press, which is equally as enthusiastic about
nationalized health care.
These
facts help explain the relative indifference among the uninsured to
ObamaCare. So far, only about 11% of those who signed up have been
uninsured, although nobody knows for how long. The vast majority
were just trying to continue coverage they had before ObamaCare came
along.
Why
should the uninsured bother? Other than threatening a modest tax
penalty, ObamaCare gives them little reason to buy coverage. In
fact, it practically begs them not to.
First,
the plans are far too expensive, thanks to ObamaCare’s
regulations, taxes, and benefit mandates. And the subsidies phase
out quickly enough that many lower-middle class families will still
find they can’t or don’t want to pay the costs.
Second,
it won’t take long for those currently uninsured to realize
that they are better off putting off the purchase, since ObamaCare
guarantees they can get coverage after they get sick, and at
subsidized rates.
And
third, the law deliberately hamstrings the IRS’s ability to
collect the tax penalty, making it a nearly worthless motivational
tool.
Ironically,
if the uninsured don’t show up at the exchanges, ObamaCare
will expose the Democrats’ big lie about them. Then, perhaps,
the nation could get busy enacting targeted, market-based health
reforms that actually make insurance more affordable, more portable,
and more attractive to those who don’t buy it today.
Investor’s
Business Daily . . .
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Medical
Myths originate when someone else pays the medical bills.
Myths
disappear when Patients pay Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments
on Every Service.
*
* * * *
Overheard in the Medical
Staff Lounge: Should
Nancy Pelosi be prosecuted for malfeasance?
Dr
Rosen: Is Obama
Care in full swing now?
Dr. Milton: What
is most amazing to me is how it even got to here. Didn’t
Congress do due diligence on it?
Dr. Yancy: They
haven’t even found one congressman or senator that’s
admitted to having read the entire 2000 pages before voting.
Dr. Dave: Congress
never does due diligence or we wouldn’t have so many
unintended consequences after a bill is passed into law.
Dr. Ruth: I
couldn’t believe that Nancy Pelosi admitted that she needed to
have the bill passed so she could read it?
Dr. Yancy: Well
I guess she didn’t want to waste her time if it didn’t
pass? She must be one busy lady.
Dr. Rosen: But
don’t we elect our representatives with the obligation to
thoroughly research any measure before they make it the law of the
land and force the citizenry to obey that law? Is it not Malfeasance
in office not to even know the details of any bill that is passed?
Isn’t that a prosecutable offense and grounds for impeachment?
Dr. Patricia: Rosen,
you really make your point very clear about malfeasance. I just
thought she was another incompetent member of congress. Yes, I think
she should be prosecuted.
Dr. Joseph: Even
though I’m retired, it pains me to see what’s happening
to my profession. I think Nancy Pelosi demonstrates medical
Illiteracy and incompetence.
Dr. Milton: You
got that right, Joe. And so does our HMO which treats us as if we
haven’t even graduated from Medical School with the mundane
things they force us to do. One month they want us to give them the
cholesterol levels of all our patients, and in a referral practice,
the patients that also see a Cardiologist will have their lipids
check by them. Since, we may not have that test in our file, they
eliminated our quality incentive. One month they wanted us to bring
in all our females of a certain age to bring their pap smears
up-to-date. Well, most women resent such a focus, especially since
they usually have a gynecologist that does their pelvic exam. Since
our nurse practitioner died, we don’t do pelvic exams in our
office. So we lose out on a significant financial incentive for a
decrease in Quality of Care when there has been no decrease in QC.
We tried to so some of that secretarial mapping for them one month,
and after two afternoons of useless work, very few of our patients
responded by getting the lab work or exam our HMO demanded.
Dr. Ruth: Since
we are not involved in the HMO manipulation of care, are we talking
about significant dollars?
Dr. Milton: At
the last HMO meeting, I saw some of my colleagues that were reaping
up to $15,000 in incentives per quarter for doing all that
secretarial research for them.
Dr. Rosen: I
think many doctors are not good business people and will have an
employee available to do just that not realizing that the employee
costs may exceed the incentive which in turn is not related to any
discernable quality of care issues.
Dr. Dave: When
will doctors cease being Pawns of the Medical Illiterate?
Dr. Milton: Not
in our lifetime! They are too afraid of retribution. Abusive Peer
Review by competing colleagues or Medicare Prosecution for using the
wrong codes.
Dr.
Rosen:
That reminds me to warn all physicians to get out of Medicare and
all government programs by October 2015 when the new ICD 10 codes
will be implemented. Looking at the number of doctors prosecuted
with the last change in codes, going from 16,000 to 64,000 in
October 2015, almost any interpretation, whether ICD or CPT, could
easily be interpreted as an error and subject to retribution,
whether the Graveyard known as the National Data Bank or even a
prison term. What a way to end one’s professional career.
Dr. Milton:
The doctors that feel they are protected by being a hospital
foundation employee will be very surprise. The hospital will be
protected, even when using the highest paying codes. But they still
will use Abusive Peer Review. Several were reference in this
Newsletter.
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The
Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Opinions Are Heard.
*
* * * *
Voices
of Medicine: A
Physician summarizes Obamacare in just one sentence.
Dr.
Barbara Bellar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbFrAAV3-o&feature=youtu.be
Read
more . . .
We
are gifted with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and
fined if we don’t; which purportedly covers at least 10
million more people without adding a single new Doctor; but provides
for 16,000 new IRS agents; written by a committee whose chairman
says he doesn’t understand it; passed by a Congress that
hasn’t read it and signed by a President who smokes; with
funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his
taxes; for which we will be taxed for 4 years before any benefits
take effect; by a government that has already bankrupted social
security and Medicare; all to be overseen by a surgeon general who’s
obese; and financed by a country that’s broke.
What
on earth could possibly go wrong?
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VOM
Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and
Writing about
*
* * * *
Book Review: A
Tale of Two Steve’s
Sonoma
Medicine
CURRENT BOOKS
By
Rick Flinders, MD
Steve
Jobs,
by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, 656 pages.
Perhaps
the first clue
to how much Steve Jobs thought of himself is his choice of
biographer: Walter Isaacson, the same man who wrote biographies of
Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. Did Jobs consider himself in
the same league, innovatively and historically, as these two? Yes,
he almost certainly did. Perhaps the ultimate measure of his
grandiose audacity is that he was probably right.
Few
individuals have altered and shaped the fabric of our daily lives
more than Steve Jobs. We’re talking here of an impact on the
scale of people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Look around and
you’ll see, within arm’s reach, products of his creation
that literally touch everything we do. The laptop. The cell phone.
How we listen to music. How we communicate.
Jobs
didn’t do this alone. But as he stood at the convergence of
information technology and the creative arts, during an historic
moment as transformative as the industrial revolution, he more than
any other gave expression to the products of information technology
that have become embedded into our daily lives. Read
more . . .
How
did he do this? And who was the man who did it? The answers, as
revealed in Abramson’s biography through hundreds of hours of
interviews with the people who knew him, are predictably
complicated.
Jobs
had a ferocious, even obsessive, will
that could drive him to the exclusion of everything else, including
reality. Those who worked with him all speak familiarly of what came
to be called “Steve’s reality distortion field.”
Often if a fact or situation interfered with his vision, he simply
wouldn’t acknowledge its existence. This became a double-edged
sword. On the one hand it led him to achievements others in the
industry considered “impossible,” such as wresting
control of recorded music from Sony and repackaging it as iTunes. On
the other, it allowed him to deny and virtually abandon his daughter
born in 1978, curious behavior for a father who resented his own
biological parents for putting him up for adoption at birth.
As
with most genius, there comes idiosyncrasy. Jobs’ creations
all bore the same signature characteristics. They were elegant,
durable and extraordinarily functional. But he went beyond that.
They had to be aesthetically pleasing inside the locked compartments
that were never visible to consumers. Even the machinery with which
they were manufactured had to be of a certain color and decor.
.
. . He once defended his disdain of focus groups by saying they were
irrelevant: “People don’t really know what they want
until I show them.”
The
mark of Jobs’ personality
persists in all his creations. Every Apple product is a “closed
system.” No hardware may be added. No screwdriver can take it
apart. . .
To
work for Jobs was a mixed blessing. At meetings he could rant, cry,
berate and belittle employees publicly, sometimes all at once. His
intensity was legendary. He would sometimes hold a person in an
unnerving gaze, without blinking, for several minutes at a time. To
employees he was often not merely rude or dismissive, but cruel.
Curiously, he carried Yogananda’s Autobiography
of a Yogi
with him most of the time, and he reread the book once a year. It is
said, by those who knew Yogananda, that he could enter a room and
fill it with calm. It is also said, by those who knew Jobs, that he
could enter a room and fill it with ego.
And
yet, those who did work for Jobs are in almost unanimous agreement:
“Without Steve we could never have risen to our best work, and
would have never accomplished what we did.” For me, a baby
boomer, the book is not just the story of a fascinating
contemporary, but a fascinating story of our contemporary history.
My
favorite parts are of the early Steve Jobs. While seniors in high
school, Jobs and his wonk friend Steve Wozniak posted
computer-generated banners all over campus one afternoon saying,
“Remember: Tomorrow is Bring-Your-Pet-to-School Day.”
The following day such a menagerie of diverse and squabbling
creatures descended on the unsuspecting campus that classes were
cancelled, students sent home, and Jobs and Wozniak were suspended.
The
two became inseparable. As Jobs recalls, Wozniak was “the
first guy I ever met who knew more electronics than me.” Their
first collaboration was the Blue Box, a device that replicated the
tones that routed signals on the entire AT&T network, and
allowed users to make long-distance calls anywhere in the world for
free. The two friends once called the Vatican from a phone booth.
Wozniak pretended to be Henry Kissinger and asked to speak to the
pope. What began as pranks, however, became the template for an
enduring partnership. Wozniak was the gentle wizard, coming up with
inventions he was happy to give away. Jobs would figure out how to
make them into a user-friendly package, market them, and make
millions.
Jobs
attended Reed College
in Portland. He dropped out during the first semester, but he
remained there for the next 18 months, auditing courses in Japanese
calligraphy and Zen meditation. It was there that he acquired the
aesthetic style that shaped all his future creations. The multiple
fonts that were part of the graphic interface for the very first
Apple computers, for example, Jobs attributes directly to his
studies and experiences in Portland. The fonts became standard in
the industry.
I
find an inherent irony in Jobs’ life and legacy. He was a Zen
Buddhist, dedicated to the philosophy and practice of being fully
focused in the ever-present moment of here and now. The irony is
that he created a technology that virtually guarantees nearly
constant distraction in the hands and ears and lives of an entire
generation. The average 20-year-old checks his or her handheld
device for new messages every 27 seconds. Watch a group of high
school students at a table in Starbucks “engaged” in
conversation, for example, and see how often their eyes and
attention are diverted from the one who is speaking to the palms of
their hands.
How
many young people are attuned to the sounds of their immediate
environs or the world around them? Compare this group to the number
sealed off from the world by earphones, and carried by sound to
anywhere but the here and now. I was recently blind-sided by a young
cyclist who turned, not in front of my car, but into my car. As he
bounced off my passenger side door and sped away, I noticed the
signature white earplugs that rendered him oblivious to surrounding
traffic and the rest of the world. . .
Here’s
a guy who goes to Reed College, drops out, takes LSD, studies
calligraphy, travels to India, practices Zen, and then returns to
the Bay Area to found a company that revolutionizes the practical
use of information technology and becomes the richest company in the
world. Ultimate poster child of the sixties?
To
Steve the genius, I say, “Kudos. You were a master at putting
together ideas, art and technology in ways that invented the future.
You were living proof of your own motto: The people who are crazy
enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
To
Steve the jerk, I say, “Why’d you have to be so mean?”
Dr.
Flinders, a hospitalist who teaches in the Santa Rosa Family
Medicine Residency, serves on the SCMA Editorial Board.
Email:
flinder@sutterhealth.org
Notis Brevis: My
daughter found Steve’s confirmation record at Trinity Lutheran
Church in Palo Alto. She emailed him. He replied that was about the
time he lost his faith and became a Buddhist.
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book review is found at. . .
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*
* * * *
Hippocrates
& His Kin: The
fee-for-service model is not what broke the system
Healthcare
Executives Network
Grace
Cleaves
• The
Forbes article describes this ironic paradigm: we needed our docs to
be excellent clinicians and we trained them to do that. Now we need
them to be business savvy change leaders. We didn't train them to do
that. We wanted them to know how many bones were in our hands, not
how to read a P&L. We ask a lot of our physicians, including
urging the transition to embrace leading and entrepreneurship in
their set of tools.
George
Burns
• The
fee-for-service model is not what broke the system, it is just a
coincidence.
What
broke the system was time and the economic downturn. A medical
practice or a hospital etc is a business and should be run like one
in order to survive. However, medical practitioners are not business
people and cannot run a business.
Many
practices were started in boom times when money was easily available
and at low interest rates. HMO were dishing out money under the
capitation model. The money was good.
But
then the VC money dried up (HMO failures, New Century bankruptcy
etc) and the insurers started reigning in those whose capitation
balances had become unmanageable etc. There was a brief pause with
Medicare Part D, but after a while the trend continued. Then came
the economic downturn, and after 5+ years of it, medical practices
etc are facing the same difficulties that are facing all other small
businesses. There is no rational reason to think that medical
practices are not small businesses.
* * * * *
Arlen
Meyers, MD, MBA
• To
thrive, doctors need to practice Othercare. That means:
1.
Leading change
2.
Manage their practices efficiently and effectively
3.
Adopting an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset
4.
Using non-face-to face and alternative care delivery models using
digital health technologies
5.
Consolidating to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and the
elimination of fee for service medicine
There
is increasing pressure on medical schools to teach this stuff.
Otherwise they are teaching their graduates to fight the last war
with blanks in their rifles before sending them over the top.
*
* * * *
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read more HHK . . .
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read more HMC . . .
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Hippocrates
and His Kin / Hippocrates Modern Colleagues
The Challenges of
Yesteryear, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
*
* * * *
Restoring
Accountability in Medical Practice, HealthCare, Government and
Society:
The
National Center for Policy Analysis,
John C Goodman, PhD,
President, who along with Gerald
L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick wrote Lives
at Risk, issues
a weekly Health
Policy Digest, a
health summary of the full NCPA
daily report. You may log on at www.ncpa.org
and register to receive one or more of these reports.
Pacific
Research Institute, (www.pacificresearch.org)
Sally C Pipes,
President and CEO, John R Graham, Director of Health Care Studies,
publish a monthly
Health Policy Prescription newsletter, which is very timely to our
current health care situation. You may signup to receive their
newsletters via email by clicking on the email
tab or
directly access their health
care blog.
The
Mercatus Center at
George Mason University (www.mercatus.org)
is a strong advocate for accountability in government. Maurice
McTigue, QSO, a
Distinguished Visiting Scholar, a former member of Parliament and
cabinet minister in New Zealand, is now director of the Mercatus
Center's Government Accountability Project. Join
the Mercatus Center for Excellence in Government.
To
read the rest of this column, please go to
www.medicaltuesday.net/org.asp.
The
National Association of Health Underwriters, www.NAHU.org.
The
NAHU's Vision Statement: Every American will have access to private
sector solutions for health, financial and retirement security and
the services of insurance professionals. There are numerous
important issues listed on the opening page. Be sure to scan their
professional journal, Health
Insurance Underwriters
(HIU), for articles of importance in the Health Insurance
MarketPlace. The HIU
magazine, with Jim Hostetler as the executive editor, covers
technology, legislation and product news - everything that affects
how health insurance professionals do business.
The
Galen Institute, Grace-Marie Turner President and Founder, has
a weekly Health
Policy Newsletter
sent every Friday to which you may subscribe by logging on at
www.galen.org.
A study of purchasers of Health Savings Accounts shows that the new
health care financing arrangements are appealing to those who
previously were shut out of the insurance market, to families, to
older Americans, and to workers of all income levels.
Greg
Scandlen, an expert
in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), has embarked on a new mission:
Consumers for Health Care Choices (CHCC). Read the initial series
of his newsletter, Consumers
Power Reports.
Become
a member
of CHCC, The voice
of the health care consumer.
Be sure to read Prescription
for change:
Employers, insurers, providers, and the government have all taken
their turn at trying to fix American Health Care. Now it's the
Consumers turn. Greg has joined the Heartland Institute, where
current newsletters can be found.
The
Heartland Institute, www.heartland.org,
Joseph Bast, President, publishes the Health Care News and the
Heartlander. You may sign
up for
their health care email newsletter. Read the late Conrad F Meier on
What
is Free-Market Health Care?.
The
Foundation for Economic Education,
www.fee.org,
has been publishing The
Freeman - Ideas On Liberty,
Freedom's Magazine, for over 50 years, with Lawrence
W Reed, President,
and Sheldon Richman
as editor. Having bound copies of this running treatise on
free-market economics for over 40 years, I still take pleasure in
the relevant articles by Leonard Read and others who have devoted
their lives to the cause of liberty. I have a patient who has read
this journal since it was a mimeographed newsletter fifty years
ago. Be sure to read the current lesson on Economic Education.
The
Council for Affordable Health Insurance, www.cahi.org/index.asp,
founded by Greg
Scandlen in 1991, where he served as CEO for five years, is an
association of insurance companies, actuarial firms, legislative
consultants, physicians and insurance agents. Their mission is to
develop and promote free-market solutions to America's health-care
challenges by enabling a robust and competitive health insurance
market that will achieve and maintain access to affordable,
high-quality health care for all Americans. "The belief that
more medical care means better medical care is deeply entrenched .
. . Our study suggests that perhaps a third of medical spending is
now devoted to services that don't appear to improve health or the
quality of care–and may even make things worse."
The
Independence Institute,
www.i2i.org,
is a free-market think-tank in Golden, Colorado, that has a Health
Care Policy Center,
with Linda
Gorman as Director.
Be sure to sign
up for
the monthly Health
Care Policy Center Newsletter.
Martin
Masse,
Director of Publications at the Montreal Economic Institute, is the
publisher of the webzine:
Le Quebecois Libre.
Please log on at www.quebecoislibre.org/apmasse.htm
to review his free-market based articles, some of which will allow
you to brush up on your French. You may also register to receive
copies of their webzine on a regular basis.
The
Fraser Institute, an
independent public policy organization, focuses on the role
competitive markets play in providing for the economic and social
well being of all Canadians. Canadians celebrated Tax Freedom Day
on June 28, the date they stopped paying taxes and started working
for themselves. Log on at www.fraserinstitute.ca
for an overview of the extensive research articles that are
available. You may want to go directly to their health
research section.
The
Heritage Foundation,
www.heritage.org/,
founded in 1973, is a research and educational institute whose
mission was to formulate and promote public policies based on the
principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual
freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense.
-- However,
since they supported the socialistic health plan instituted by Mitt
Romney in Massachusetts, which is replaying the Medicare excessive
increases in its first two years, and was used by some as a
justification for the Obama plan, they have lost sight of their
mission and we will no longer feature them as a freedom loving
institution and have canceled our contributions. Supporting RINOs
such as Romney or Christie will always do more harm than good.
The
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Lew
Rockwell, President,
is a rich source of free-market materials, probably the best daily
course in economics we've seen. If you read these essays on a daily
basis, it would probably be equivalent to taking Economics 11 and
51 in college. Please log on at www.mises.org
to obtain the foundation's daily reports. You may also log on to
Lew's premier
free-market site
to read some of his lectures to medical groups. Learn how state
medicine subsidizes illness
or to find out why anyone would want to be an MD
today.
CATO.
The Cato Institute (www.cato.org)
was founded in 1977, by Edward H. Crane, with Charles Koch of Koch
Industries. It is a nonprofit public policy research foundation
headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute is named for Cato's
Letters, a series of pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical
foundation for the American Revolution. The Mission: The Cato
Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate
to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of
limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. Ed
Crane reminds us that the framers of the Constitution designed to
protect our liberty through a system of federalism and divided
powers so that most of the governance would be at the state level
where abuse of power would be limited by the citizens' ability to
choose among 13 (and now 50) different systems of state government.
Thus, we could all seek our favorite moral turpitude and live in
our comfort zone recognizing our differences and still be proud of
our unity as Americans. Michael
F. Cannon is the Cato Institute's Director of Health Policy
Studies.
Read his bio, articles and books at
www.cato.org/people/cannon.html.
The
Ethan Allen Institute,
www.ethanallen.org/index2.html,
is one of some 41 similar but independent state organizations
associated with the State Policy Network (SPN). The mission is to
put into practice the fundamentals of a free society: individual
liberty, private property, competitive free enterprise, limited and
frugal government, strong local communities, personal
responsibility, and expanded opportunity for human endeavor.
The
Free State Project,
with a goal of Liberty
in Our Lifetime,
http://freestateproject.org/,
is
an agreement among 20,000
pro-liberty activists to move to New
Hampshire,
where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the
creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is
the protection of life, liberty, and property. The success of the
Project would likely entail reductions in taxation and regulation,
reforms at all levels of government to expand individual rights and
free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism,
demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and
the world. [It is indeed a tragedy that the burden of government in
the U.S., a freedom society for its first 150 years, is so great
that people want to escape to a state solely for the purpose of
reducing that oppression. We hope this gives each of us an impetus
to restore freedom from government intrusion in our own state.]
The
St. Croix Review,
a bimonthly journal of ideas, recognizes that the world is very
dangerous. Conservatives are staunch defenders of the homeland. But
as Russell Kirk believed, wartime allows the federal government to
grow at a frightful pace. We expect government to win the wars we
engage, and we expect that our borders be guarded. But St. Croix
feels the impulses of the Administration and Congress are often
misguided. The politicians of both parties in Washington overreach
so that we see with disgust the explosion of earmarks and
perpetually increasing spending on programs that have nothing to do
with winning the war. There is too much power given to
Washington. Even in wartime, we have to push for limited government
- while giving the government the necessary tools to win the war.
To read a variety of articles in this arena, please go to
www.stcroixreview.com.
Hillsdale
College,
the premier small liberal arts college in southern Michigan with
about 1,200 students, was founded in 1844 with the mission of
"educating for liberty." It is proud of its principled
refusal to accept any federal funds, even in the form of student
grants and loans, and of its historic policy of non-discrimination
and equal opportunity. The price of freedom is never cheap. While
schools throughout the nation are bowing to an unconstitutional
federal mandate that schools must adopt a Constitution Day
curriculum each September 17th
or lose federal funds, Hillsdale students take a semester-long
course on the Constitution restoring civics education and
developing a civics textbook, a Constitution Reader.
You may log on at www.hillsdale.edu
to register for the annual weeklong von Mises Seminars, held every
February, or their famous Shavano Institute. Congratulations to
Hillsdale for its national rankings in the USNews College rankings.
Changes in the Carnegie classifications, along with Hillsdale's
continuing rise to national prominence, prompted the Foundation to
move the College from the regional to the national liberal arts
college classification. Please log on and register to receive
Imprimis,
their national speech digest that reaches more than one million
readers each month. This month, read ? Choose
recent issues.
The last ten years of Imprimis
are archived.
John
and Alieta Eck, MDs,
for their first-century solution to twenty-first century needs.
With 46 million people in this country uninsured, we need an
innovative solution apart from the place of employment and apart
from the government. To read the rest of the story, go to
www.zhcenter.org
and check out their history, mission statement, newsletter, and a
host of other information
Medi-Share
Medi-Share is based
on the biblical principles of caring for and sharing in one
another's burdens (as outlined in Galatians 6:2). And as such,
adhering to biblical principles of health and lifestyle are
important requirements for membership in Medi-Share.
This is not insurance. Read
more . . .
PATMOS
EmergiClinic -
where Robert Berry,
MD, an emergency
physician and internist, practices. To read his story and the
background for naming his clinic PATMOS EmergiClinic - the island
where John was exiled and an acronym for "payment at time of
service," go to www.patmosemergiclinic.com/
To read more on Dr Berry, please click on the various topics at his
website. To review How
to Start a Third-Party Free Medical Practice . . .
PRIVATE
NEUROLOGY is
a Third-Party-Free Practice in Derby, NY with
Larry
Huntoon, MD, PhD, FANN.
(http://home.earthlink.net/~doctorlrhuntoon/)
Dr Huntoon does not allow any HMO or government interference in
your medical care. "Since I am not forced to use CPT codes and
ICD-9 codes (coding numbers required on claim forms) in our
practice, I have been able to keep our fee structure very simple."
I have no interest in "playing games" so as to "run
up the bill." My goal is to provide competent, compassionate,
ethical care at a price that patients can afford. Private
Neurology also
guarantees that medical records in our office are kept totally
private and confidential - in accordance with the Oath of
Hippocrates. Since I am a non-covered entity under HIPAA, your
medical records are safe from the increased risk of disclosure
under HIPAA law.
FIRM:
Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine, Lin
Zinser, JD, Founder, www.westandfirm.org,
researches and
studies the work of scholars and policy experts in the areas of
health care, law, philosophy, and economics to inform and to foster
public debate on the causes and potential solutions of rising costs
of health care and health insurance. Read Lin
Zinser’s view on today’s health care problem:
In today’s
proposals for sweeping changes in the field of medicine, the term
“socialized medicine” is never used. Instead we hear
demands for “universal,” “mandatory,”
“singlepayer,” and/or “comprehensive”
systems. These demands aim to force one healthcare plan (sometimes
with options) onto all Americans; it is a plan under which all
medical services are paid for, and thus controlled, by government
agencies. Sometimes, proponents call this “nationalized
financing” or “nationalized health insurance.” In
a more honest day, it was called socialized medicine.
Michael
J. Harris, MD -
www.northernurology.com
- an active member in the American Urological Association,
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Societe'
Internationale D'Urologie, has an active cash'n carry practice in
urology in Traverse City, Michigan. He has no contracts, no
Medicare, Medicaid, no HIPAA, just patient care. Dr Harris is
nationally recognized for his medical care system reform
initiatives. To understand that Medical Bureaucrats and
Administrators are basically Medical Illiterates telling the
experts how to practice medicine, be sure to savor his article on
"Administrativectomy:
The Cure For Toxic Bureaucratosis."
David
J Gibson, MD, Consulting Partner of Illumination Medical, Inc.
has made important contributions to the free Medical MarketPlace in
speeches and writings. His series of articles in Sacramento
Medicine
can be found at www.ssvms.org.
To read his "Lessons from the Past," go to
www.ssvms.org/articles/0403gibson.asp.
For additional articles, such as the cost of Single Payer, go to
www.healthplanusa.net/DGSinglePayer.htm;
for Health Care Inflation, go to
www.healthplanusa.net/DGHealthCareInflation.htm.
Dr
Richard B Willner,
President, Center
Peer Review Justice Inc,
states: We are a group of healthcare doctors -- physicians,
podiatrists, dentists, osteopaths -- who have experienced and/or
witnessed the tragedy of the perversion of medical peer review by
malice and bad faith. We have seen the statutory immunity, which is
provided to our "peers" for the purposes of quality
assurance and credentialing, used as cover to allow those "peers"
to ruin careers and reputations to further their own, usually
monetary agenda of destroying the competition. We are dedicated to
the exposure, conviction, and sanction of any and all doctors, and
affiliated hospitals, HMOs, medical boards, and other such
institutions, which would use peer review as a weapon to unfairly
destroy other professionals. Read the rest of the story, as well as
a wealth of information, at www.peerreview.org.
Semmelweis
Society International, Verner S. Waite MD, FACS, Founder; Henry
Butler MD, FACS, President; Ralph Bard MD, JD, Vice President; W.
Hinnant MD, JD, Secretary-Treasurer; is
named after
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, MD (1818-1865),
an obstetrician who has been hailed as the savior of mothers. He
noted maternal mortality of 25-30 percent in the obstetrical clinic
in Vienna. He also noted that the first division of the clinic run
by medical students had a death rate 2-3 times as high as the
second division run by midwives. He also noticed that medical
students came from the dissecting room to the maternity ward. He
ordered the students to wash their hands in a solution of
chlorinated lime before each examination. The maternal mortality
dropped, and by 1848, no women died in childbirth in his division.
He lost his appointment the following year and was unable to obtain
a teaching appointment. Although ahead of his peers, he was not
accepted by them. When Dr Verner Waite received similar treatment
from a hospital, he organized the Semmelweis Society with his own
funds using Dr Semmelweis as a model: To read the article he wrote
at my request for Sacramento Medicine when I was editor in 1994,
see www.delmeyer.net/HMCPeerRev.htm.
To see Attorney Sharon Kime's response, as well as the California
Medical Board response, see www.delmeyer.net/HMCPeerRev.htm.
Scroll down to read some very interesting letters to the editor
from the Medical Board of California, from a member of the MBC, and
from Deane Hillsman, MD. To view some horror stories of atrocities
against physicians and how organized medicine still treats this
problem, please go to www.semmelweissociety.net.
The
Association of American Physicians & Surgeons
(www.AAPSonline.org),
The Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943, representing
physicians in their struggles against bureaucratic medicine, loss
of medical privacy, and intrusion by the government into the
personal and confidential relationship between patients and their
physicians. Be sure to read News
of the Day in Perspective:
Don't miss the "AAPS
News," written
by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site which provides
valuable information on a monthly basis. Browse the archives of
their official organ, the Journal
of American Physicians and Surgeons,
with Larry Huntoon, MD, PhD, a neurologist in New York, as the
Editor-in-Chief. There are a number of important articles that can
be accessed from the Table
of Contents.
The
AAPS California Chapter
is an unincorporated association made up of members. The Goal of
the AAPS California Chapter is to carry on the activities of the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) on a
statewide basis. This is accomplished by having meetings and
providing communications that support the medical professional
needs and interests of independent physicians in private practice.
To join the AAPS California Chapter, all you need to do is join
national AAPS and be a physician licensed to practice in the State
of California. There is no additional cost or fee to be a member of
the AAPS California State Chapter.
Go
to California Chapter Web Page . . .
Bottom
line: "We are the best deal Physicians can get from a statewide
physician based organization!"
PA-AAPS
is the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Association
of American Physicians and Surgeons
(AAPS),
a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all types
of practices and specialties across the country. Since 1943, AAPS
has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of
Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician
relationship and the practice of private medicine. We welcome all
physicians (M.D. and D.O.) as members. Podiatrists, dentists,
chiropractors and other medical professionals are welcome to join
as professional associate members. Staff members and the public are
welcome as associate members. Medical students are welcome to join
free of charge.
Our
motto, "omnia
pro aegroto"
means "all for
the patient."
*
* * * *
Words
of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In Memoriam, Today in History . . .
Words
of Wisdom
Creativity
has no precedents.
It is
better to create
than to cremate.
Too many
people think they are being creative
when they are just being different.
Human
Creativity
has had its high and low eras in history. The Renaissance was one of
the highest eras because greater creative freedom and increased
support for creative people came together. Amid all the problems of
the modern world, the combination of these same conditions
encourages creativity today. . . These include theaters for the
dramatic and concert arts, museums, professional groups and schools.
. .
Some
Recent Postings
In The April Issue:
(There were no MedTues NL in June or July)
Featured
Article:
It’s
a good day for BABIES
In
the News:
ObamaCare
Tax Increases: Onward and Forever Upward
International
Medicine:
Canadian
Health Care
Medicare:
Another
loss of access caused by Obamacare: When will it end?
Medical
Gluttony:
Second
opinions from a second emergency room are costly.
Medical
Myths:
Whistle
Blowers Keep Doctors in Line?
Overheard
in the Medical Staff Lounge:
Don’t
Bill Medicaid Patients. You lose in two ways.
Voices
of Medicine:
Authentic
Medic
- Douglas
Farrago MD, Editor, Creator & Founder
The
Bookshelf:
Love
in the time of Algorithms
Hippocrates
& His Kin:
GOP
senator backs same-sex marriage
Restoring Accountability in
Medicine,
Government and Society
Words
of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In Memoriam, Today in History . . .
In Memoriam
Marc
Rich, king of commodities, died on June 26th, aged 78
The
ECONOMIST | Jul 6th 2013 | From
the print edition
A NEW employee once asked Marc
Rich for advice on trading. He expected, perhaps, “Buy low,
sell high”, or “Think long-term”. Or perhaps,
given Mr Rich’s habit of going to the office at daybreak, “Up
with the lark”. Instead, Mr Rich picked up a knife and ran a
finger across the edge. “As a trader you often walk on the
blade,” he said softly. “Be careful and don’t step
off.”
Few walked it more skilfully
than Mr Rich. Obsessively, he scanned the globe to see crises
coming, wars brewing, shortages looming. He bought before anyone
else did, and was first there when countries began to look round for
oil or zinc or nickel. After the Korean war, as a mere junior trader
at Philipp Brothers in New York, he created a market in mercury,
which the army needed for batteries. The price soared. From the late
1960s, somehow anticipating the Arab oil-export embargo, he began to
create a spot market for oil. Previously, all crude was tied up by
the big companies in inelastic long-term contracts. Starting in
Tunisia, Mr Rich began to buy and sell it for immediate delivery,
like any other commodity. When the embargo bit after 1973 he was
swimming in oil when the majors were struggling, and was able to
sell it at a mark-up of as much as $14 a barrel. Some called that
profiteering. Mr Rich called it a service charge. He could have
demanded more, but that would have been “like taking candy
from a baby”.
A free agent in this
exhilarating new market, he went from strength to strength. Turning
on his insistent, feline charm, he sought out buyers and sellers
while his partner Pinky Green arranged shipping. It was a winning
combination, forged at Philipp Brothers but soon outgrowing it. In
1974 the two of them, peeved that their bonuses were still so small,
left to form Marc Rich + Co. The main office was in Zug in safe,
secret Switzerland, no questions asked.
From there, with cat-like
tread, Mr Rich found his way round any political or moral obstacle.
He sold Soviet oil to apartheid South Africa, despite a UN embargo,
and between 1979 and 1994 made profits of around $2 billion there.
He sent Soviet and Venezuelan oil to Cuba in exchange for sugar,
ignoring America’s ban on trade. He sold on the global market
surplus Iranian oil that had flowed to Israel down a secret
pipeline, and kept the arrangement going seamlessly despite the
Iranian revolution of 1979, another embargo, and the American
hostage crisis. The Iranians respected their contracts, he
explained. They could not sell their oil, so he bought and sold it
for them, using shell companies wherever necessary. Keeping well
below the radar, as he always did, he was soon the world’s
largest independent oil-trader, with a turnover in 1980 of $15
billion.
Then he stepped off the
knife-blade. In 1980-81 he violated America’s domestic
oil-price controls by re-labelling Texas crude from old fields as
new-found, jacking up the price by as much as 400%. He made profits
of $105m and shipped them abroad, avoiding taxes of $48m. Once
federal prosecutors were after him for that, they charged him with
64 other crimes, including racketeering and “trading with the
enemy”. In 1983 he fled to Switzerland with his family, having
also tried to spirit away two trunks of subpoenaed business papers.
The outsider
Thereafter he became a
fugitive, a star of the FBI’s most-wanted list. He
remained—until 1994, when he sold his stake and his company
became the vast, tentacular Glencore—the world’s biggest
trader of metals and minerals, while darting between Spain,
Switzerland and Israel, a citizen of all three. In Marbella or St
Moritz, beside a $9.5m swimming pool or among his Braques and
Picassos, with a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, he reconciled
himself to exile. His father died in America; he had to say kaddish
down the telephone. You cry a little, you move on. . .
In 2001 Bill Clinton pardoned
him, his hand pushed by the Israeli prime minister, the king of
Spain, an ex-head of Mossad and Mr Rich’s ex-wife Denise, who
had given generously to the Clinton library and to Democratic
campaigns. The president later regretted his action, calling it
“terrible politics”. Mr Rich, oblivious to politics,
would have called it good business.
Read
the entire obituary . . .
On
This Month in History - August
On
August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein, a gentle man of peace, wrote a
letter to President Franklin D Roosevelt to urge research on Atomic
energy, which led to the development of the atom bomb, the ultimate
weapon of destruction—or of progress. Except
for the persecution by Nazis, Albert Einstein might never have come
here. Some feel that this is a good day to remember that there is
indeed—or has been—some guiding force which has favored
our land. August 2 may be a good day to remember that.
On
August 2, 1964, the North Vietnamese attacked a U. S. Destroyer in
international waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.
As a result, Congress, a few days later, adopted the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution which gave the President broad powers to use the armed
forces without a declaration of war. This was followed by deeper U.
S. involvement in Vietnam, where over many years the U. S. fought a
bloody and ultimately futile war.
We
have been urged to remember the Alamo and remember the Maine and
remember Pearl Harbor. It may be well for us, on this date, August
2, to remember the Gulf of Tonkin. If we occasionally look back,
perhaps we can also look ahead with much clearer vision.
After
Leonard and Thelma Spinrad
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Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck, the father of socialized medicine in Germany,
recognized in 1861
that a government gained loyalty by making its citizens dependent on
the state by social insurance. Thus socialized
medicine, any single payer initiative, Social Security was born for
the benefit of the state and of a contemptuous disregard for
people’s welfare.
We must also remember that
ObamaCare has nothing to do with appropriate healthcare; it was
similarly projected to gain loyalty by making American citizens
dependent on the government and eliminating their choice and chance
in improving their welfare or quality of healthcare. Socialists know
that once people are enslaved, freedom seems too risky to pursue.