1. Featured
Article: The neuropathology of the
brains of ex-N.F.L. players
Offensive Play: How different are dogfighting and football?
by Malcolm
Gladwell, New Yorker, October
19, 2009
An offensive lineman can't do
his job without "using his head," one veteran says, but
neuropathologists examining the brains of ex-N.F.L. players have found
trauma-related degeneration.
www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell
One evening
in August, Kyle Turley was at a bar in Nashville with his wife and some
friends. It was one of the countless little places in the city that play live
music. He'd ordered a beer, but was just sipping it, because he was driving
home. He had eaten an hour and a half earlier. Suddenly, he felt a sensation of
heat. He was light-headed, and began to sweat. He had been having episodes like
that with increasing frequency during the past year—headaches, nausea. One
month, he had vertigo every day, bouts in which he felt as if he were stuck to
a wall. But this was worse. He asked his wife if he could sit on her stool for
a moment. The warmup band was still playing, and he remembers saying, "I'm
just going to take a nap right here until the next band comes on." Then he
was lying on the floor, and someone was standing over him. "The guy was
freaking out," Turley recalled. "He was saying, 'Damn, man, I
couldn't find a pulse,' and my wife said, 'No, no. You were breathing.' I'm,
like, 'What? What?' "
They picked
him up. "We went out in the parking lot, and I just lost it," Turley
went on. "I started puking everywhere. I couldn't stop. I got in the car,
still puking. My wife, she was really scared, because I had never passed out
like that before, and I started becoming really paranoid. I went into a panic.
We get to the emergency room. I started to lose control. My limbs were shaking,
and I couldn't speak. I was conscious, but I couldn't speak the words I wanted
to say."
Turley is
six feet five. He is thirty-four years old, with a square jaw and blue eyes.
For nine years, before he retired, in 2007, he was an offensive lineman in the
National Football League. He knew all the stories about former football
players. Mike Webster, the longtime Pittsburgh Steeler and one of the greatest
players in N.F.L. history, ended his life a recluse, sleeping on the floor of
the Pittsburgh Amtrak station. Another former Pittsburgh Steeler, Terry Long,
drifted into chaos and killed himself four years ago by drinking antifreeze.
Andre Waters, a former defensive back for the Philadelphia Eagles, sank into
depression and pleaded with his girlfriend—"I need help, somebody help
me"—before shooting himself in the head. There were men with aching knees and
backs and hands, from all those years of playing football. But their real
problem was with their heads, the one part of their body that got hit over and
over again.
"Lately,
I've tried to break it down," Turley said. "I remember, every season,
multiple occasions where I'd hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed,
and they wouldn't come uncrossed for a full series of plays. You are just out
there, trying to hit the guy in the middle, because there are three of them.
You don't remember much. There are the cases where you hit a guy and you'd get
into a collision where everything goes off. You're dazed. And there are
the others where you are involved in a big, long drive. You start on your own
five-yard line, and drive all the way down the field—fifteen, eighteen plays in
a row sometimes. Every play: collision, collision, collision. By the time you
get to the other end of the field, you're seeing spots. You feel like you are
going to black out. Literally, these white explosions—boom, boom,
boom—lights getting dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.
"Then,
there was the time when I got knocked unconscious. That was in St. Louis, in
2003. My wife said that I was out a minute or two on the field. But I was gone
for about four hours after that. It was the last play of the third quarter. We
were playing the Packers. I got hit in the back of the head. I saw it on film a
little while afterward. I was running downfield, made a block on a guy. We fell
to the ground. A guy was chasing the play, a little guy, a defensive back, and
he jumped over me as I was coming up, and he kneed me right in the back of the
head. Boom!
"They
sat me down on the bench. I remember Marshall Faulk coming up and joking with
me, because he knew that I was messed up. That's what happens in the N.F.L:
'Oooh. You got effed up. Oooh.' The trainer came up to me and said, 'Kyle,
let's take you to the locker room.' I remember looking up at a clock, and there
was only a minute and a half left in the game—and I had no idea that much time
had elapsed. I showered and took all my gear off. I was sitting at my locker. I
don't remember anything. When I came back, after being hospitalized, the guys
were joking with me because Georgia Frontiere"—then the team's
owner—"came in the locker room, and they said I was butt-ass naked and I
gave her a big hug. They were dying laughing, and I was, like, 'Are you
serious? I did that?' . . .
In August of
2007, one of the highest-paid players in professional football, the quarterback
Michael Vick, pleaded guilty to involvement in a dogfighting ring. The police
raided one of his properties, a farm outside Richmond, Virginia, and found the
bodies of dead dogs buried on the premises, along with evidence that some of
the animals there had been tortured and electrocuted. Vick was suspended from
football. He was sentenced to twenty-three months in prison. The dogs on his
farm were seized by the court, and the most damaged were sent to an animal
sanctuary in Utah for rehabilitation. When Vick applied for reinstatement to the
National Football League, this summer, he was asked to undergo psychiatric
testing. He then met with the commissioner of the league, Roger Goodell, for
four and a half hours, so that Goodell could be sure that he was genuinely
remorseful. . .
Goodell's job
entails dealing with players who have used drugs, driven drunk and killed
people, fired handguns in night clubs, and consorted with thugs and accused
murderers. But he clearly felt what many Americans felt as well—that
dogfighting was a moral offense of a different order.
Here is a
description of a dogfight given by the sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig
Forsyth in "The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dogfights," an article
they published some years ago in the journal Deviant Behavior. The fight
took place in Louisiana between a local dog, Black, owned by a man named L.G.,
and Snow, whose owner, Rick, had come from Arizona:
To
read the graphic details of this dog fight . . .
*
* * * *
2. In the News: Whither the Conscience Clause?
Pulling the Plug on the Conscience Clause by Wesley J. Smith FIRST THINGS, December 2009
Over the past fifty years, the purposes and practices
of medicine have changed radically. Where medical ethics was once
life-affirming, today's treatments and medical procedures increasingly involve
the legal taking of human life. The litany is familiar: More than one million
pregnancies are extinguished each year in the United States, thousands
late-term. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and, as
this is written, Montana via a court ruling (currently on appeal to the state
supreme court). One day, doctors may be authorized to kill patients with active
euthanasia, as they do already in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
The trend toward accepting the termination of some
human lives as a normal part of medicine is accelerating. For example, ten or
twenty years from now, the physician's tools may include embryonic stem cells
or products obtained from cloned embryos and fetuses gestated for that purpose,
making physicians who provide such treatments complicit in the life destruction
required to obtain the modalities. Medical and bioethics journals energetically
advocate a redefinition of death to include a diagnosis of persistent
vegetative state so that these living patients—redefined as dead—may be used
for organ harvesting and medical experimentation. More radical bioethicists
and mental-health professionals even suggest that patients suffering from BIID
(body-integrity identity disorder), a terrible compulsion to become an amputee,
should be treated by having healthy limbs removed, just as transsexuals today
receive surgical sexual reassignment.
The ongoing transformation in the methods and ethics
of medicine raises profound moral questions for doctors, nurses, pharmacists,
and others who believe in the traditional virtues of Hippocratic medicine that
proscribe abortion and assisted suicide and compel physicians to "do no
harm." To date, this hasn't been much of a problem, as society generally
accommodates medical conscientious objection. The assisted-suicide laws of
Oregon and Washington, for example, permit doctors to refuse to participate in
hastening patient deaths. Similarly, no doctor in the United States is forced
to perform abortions. Indeed, when New York mayor Michael Bloomberg sought to
increase accessibility to abortion by requiring that all residents in
obstetrics and gynecology in New York's public hospitals receive training in
pregnancy termination, the law specifically allowed doctors with religious or
moral objections to opt out through a conscience clause.
This comity permits all who possess the requisite
talent and intelligence to pursue medical careers without compromising their
fundamental moral beliefs. But that may be about to change. Tolerance toward
dissenters of what might be called the "new medicine" is quickly
eroding. Courts, policymakers, media leaders—even the elites of organized
medicine—increasingly assert that patient rights and respect for patients'
choices should trump the consciences of medical professionals. Indeed, the time
may soon arrive when doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will be compelled to
take, or be complicit in the taking of, human life, regardless of their strong
religious or moral objections thereto.
A recent article published by bioethicist Jacob Appel
provides a glimpse of the emerging rationale behind the coming coercion. As the
Montana Supreme Court pondered whether to affirm a trial judge's ruling
creating a state constitutional right to assisted suicide, Appel opined that
justices should not only validate the "right to die" but also, in
effect, establish a physician's duty to kill, predicated on the medical
monopoly possessed by licensed practitioners. "Much as the government has
been willing to impose duties on radio stations (e.g., indecency codes,
equal-time rules) that would be impermissible if applied to newspapers,"
Appel wrote, "Montana might reasonably consider requiring physicians, in
return for the privilege of a medical license, to prescribe medication to the
dying without regard to the patient's intent." Should the court not thus
guarantee access to assisted suicide, it would be merely creating "a
theoretical right to die that cannot be meaningfully exercised."
Indeed, forcing medical professionals to participate
in the taking of human life is already advancing into the justifiable stage. In
Washington, a pharmacy chain refused to carry an abortifacient contraceptive
that violated the religious views of its owners. A trial judge ruled that the
owners were protected in making this decision by the First Amendment. But in Stormans
Inc. v. Salecky, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision,
ruling that a state regulation that all legal prescriptions be filled was
enforceable against the company because it was a law of general applicability
and did not target religion.
In a decision that should chill the blood of everyone
who believes in religious freedom, the court stated: "That the new rules
prohibit all improper reasons for refusal to dispense medication . . . suggests
that the purpose of the new rules was not to eliminate religious objections to
delivery of lawful medicines but to eliminate all objections that do not ensure
patient health, safety, and access to medication. Thus, the rules do not target
practices because of their religious motivation." And since pharmacists
are not among the medical professionals allowed by Washington's law to refuse
participation in assisted suicide, Stormans would also seem to compel
dispensing lethal prescriptions for legally qualified patients even though the
drugs are expressly intended to kill.
It isn't just the courts. Many of the most notable
professional medical organizations are also hostile to protecting medical
conscience rights. In 2007, for example, the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists (ACOG) published an ethics-committee opinion denying its
members the right of conscience against abortion:
Although respect for conscience is important,
conscientious refusals should be limited if they constitute an imposition of
religious and moral beliefs on patients. . . . Physicians and other healthcare
providers have the duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers
if they do not feel they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive
services that patients request. . . . Providers with moral or religious
objections should either practice in proximity to individuals who share their
views or ensure that referral processes are in place. In an emergency in which
referral is not possible or might negatively impact a patient's physical or
mental health, providers have an obligation to provide medically indicated
requested care.
If this view is ever mandated legally, every
obstetrician and gynecologist in America will be required either to perform abortions
or to be complicit in them by finding a willing doctor for the patient. And
don't think that can't happen. A law enacted last year in Victoria, Australia
(the Abortion Law Reform Act of 2008) imposes that very legal duty on every
doctor. The law states:
If a woman requests a registered health practitioner
to advise on a proposed abortion, or to perform, direct, authorize, or
supervise an abortion for that woman, and the practitioner has a conscientious
objection to abortion, the practitioner must—(a) inform the woman that the
practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion; and (b) refer the woman
to another registered health practitioner in the same regulated health
profession who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection
to abortion.
Recent California legislation for what could be called
euthanasia by the back door attempted to incorporate the same approach. As
originally written, AB 2747 would have granted terminally ill patients—defined
in the bill as persons having one year or less to live—the right to demand
"palliative sedation" from their doctors. The bill was subversive on
two fronts. First, it redefined a proper and ethical palliative technique, in
which a patient who is near death, and whose suffering cannot otherwise be
alleviated, is put into an artificial coma until natural death from the disease
occurs. But as originally written, the bill redefined, as a method of killing,
"the use of sedative medications to relieve extreme suffering by making
the patient unaware and unconscious, while artificial food and hydration are
withheld, during the progression of the disease, leading to the death of the
patient." In other words, the bill sought to legalize active euthanasia
via sedation and dehydration.
Second, it would have granted patients with a year or
less to live the right to be sedated and dehydrated on demand. And it
wouldn't matter whether the physician didn't believe that the patient's
symptoms warranted sedation or whether he or she objected morally to killing
the patient: Physicians asked by qualified patients to be terminally sedated
would have had the duty to comply or refer. (The bill ultimately passed without
these objectionable provisions and without the improper definition of
palliative sedation.)
Here's another example of intolerance of medical
conscience: In the waning days of the Bush Administration, the Department of
Health and Human Services issued a rule preventing employment discrimination
against medical professionals who refuse to perform a medical service because
it violates their religious or moral beliefs. Based on the decibel level of the
opposition, one would have thought that Roe v. Wade had been overturned.
"That meddlesome regulation encouraging healthcare workers to obstruct
needed treatment considered offensive," Barbara Coombs Lee, the head of
Compassion and Choices, railed on her blog, "allows ideologues in health
care to place their own dogmatic beliefs above all." Protecting the
consciences of dissenting medical professions is "dangerous," she
wrote, because "it's like a big doggy treat for healthcare bulldogs who
would love to sink their teeth into other people's healthcare decisions."
It wasn't just overt true believers like Lee. Even
before the final rule was published in the Federal Register, Hillary
Clinton and Patty Murray introduced a bill to prevent the rule from going into
effect. Immediately following its promulgation, Connecticut—joined by
California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, and Rhode Island, and
supported by the ACLU—filed suit to enjoin the regulation from being enforced.
One of the Obama administration's first public acts was to file in the Federal
Register a notice of its intent to rescind the Bush conscience regulation.
Newspaper editorial pages throughout the nation
exploded, opening another front against the rule. The New York Times
called it an "awful regulation" and a "parting gift to the far
right." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch went so far as to state:
"Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists choose professions that put patients'
rights first. If they foresee that priority becoming problematic for them, they
should choose another profession." In other words, physicians and other
medical professionals who want to adhere to the traditional Hippocratic ethic
should be persona non grata in medicine—an astonishing assertion.
·
Society is approaching a
crucial crossroads. It seems clear that the drive to include death-inducing
techniques as legal and legitimate methods of medical care will only accelerate
in the coming years. If doctors and other medical professionals are forced to
participate in these new approaches or get out of health care, it will mark the
end of the principles contained in the Hippocratic Oath as viable ethical
protections for both patients and medical professionals. . .
It is a sad day when medical professionals and
facilities have to be protected legally from coerced participation in
life-terminating medical procedures. But there is no denying the direction in
which the scientific and moral currents are flowing. With ethical views in
society and medicine growing increasingly polyglot, with the sanctity of human
life increasingly under a cloud in the medical context, and given the
establishment's marked hostility toward medical professionals who adhere to the
traditional Hippocratic maxims, conscience clauses may be the only shelter
protecting traditional morality in medicine.
Wesley J. Smith, award-winning author and Senior Fellow in Bioethics
and Human Rights at the Discovery Institute, is a consultant for the
International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide and for the Center
for Bioethics and Culture. His blog, Secondhand Smoke, is available on,
First Things Online
*
* * * *
3. International Medicine: Delay in
Cancer Diagnosis is Tragic in the UK!
Late cancer diagnosis kills
10,000 a year according to government tsar
Denis Campbell The Guardian, UK, November 29,
2009
Up to 10,000 people die
needlessly of cancer every year because their
condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government's
director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for
preventable deaths.
Earlier detection of
symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in England a year, Prof Mike
Richards will reveal this week. The higher figure is nearly twice his previous
calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.
Richards has revised up
his estimate after studying the three deadliest forms of the disease ‑
lung, bowel and breast cancer ‑ which together kill almost 63,000 people
a year.
"These delays in
patients presenting with symptoms and cancer being diagnosed at a late stage
inevitably cost lives. The situation is unacceptable," Richards told the
Guardian. . .
Britain is poor by
international standards at diagnosing cancer. Richards's findings will add
urgency to the NHS's efforts to improve early
diagnosis. . .
Experts say early
diagnosis can be the difference between a patient living for a short or long time
or deciding whether they need surgery, such as a mastectomy, or not because
quick access to surgery, drugs or radiotherapy greatly improves chances of
survival.
In an article in the
forthcoming British Journal of Cancer, which is published by Cancer Research
UK, Richards will say: "Efforts now need to be directed at promoting early
diagnosis for the very large number (over 90%) of cancer patients who are
diagnosed as a result of their symptoms, rather than by screening.
"The National
Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative [NAEDI] has been established to
co-ordinate and drive efforts in this area. The size of the prize is large –
potentially 5,000 to 10,000 deaths that occur within five years of diagnosis
could be avoided every year."
Richards reached his
conclusions after analysing one-year survival rates for the three cancers in
England and comparing them with those in other European countries in the late
1990s. Previously he had looked at the number of patients who were still alive
five years after diagnosis.
One-year survival is now
thought to be a much better indicator of whether diagnosis was early or late.
The study focused on
Britain's three biggest cancer killers: lung, which killed 34,589 people in
2007; colon (16,087); and breast (12,082). They account for 40% of the 155,484
cancer deaths in the UK in 2007 and, Richards found, about half of all the
deaths that could have been avoided if diagnosis was as good as the best-
performing European countries.
Richards found that
"late diagnosis was almost certainly a major contributor to poor survival
in England for all three cancers", but also identified low rates of
surgical intervention being received by cancer patients as another key reason
for poor survival rates. . .
"It's wrong to
blame GPs for all these deaths, as there are many factors involved, including
patients not recognising symptoms of cancer and not talking to their GP about
them, especially middle-aged men. But I'm sure that we could all at times be
more alert to symptoms and investigate and refer patients quicker," he
added.
Sara Hiom, director of
health information at Cancer Research UK, said GPs faced a difficult task in
spotting cancer: "Despite cancer being a common disease, the average GP
will only see one case of each of the four biggest cancers each year.
"Many of the
symptoms that could be cancer turn out to be something less serious, but it's
best to get things like unusual lumps, changes to moles, unusual bleeding or
changes to bowel motions checked by a GP."
Early diagnosis usually
means that treatment is more effective and milder for the patient, added Hiom.
Katherine Murphy,
director of the Patients' Association, said: "Some patients are diagnosed
with cancer when they have presented with the same symptoms six months earlier.
"Patients will
sometimes tell us that they had been going to see their GP for six to nine
months with, say, a pain in their stomach and were told to go to the pharmacy
and buy an over the counter medicine [and later are found to have
cancer]."
NHS does not give timely
access to healthcare, it only gives access to a waiting list.
It's the same story the
world over for Socialized Medicine.
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
*
* * * *
4. Medicare: Spending on nearly all Federal Benefit Programs grows relentlessly.
Health Costs and History WSJ, REVIEW & OUTLOOK, OCTOBER 20, 2009
Government programs always exceed their spending estimates.
Washington
has just run a $1.4 trillion budget deficit for fiscal 2009, even as we are
told a new health-care entitlement will reduce red ink by $81 billion over 10
years. To believe that fantastic claim, you have to ignore everything we know
about Washington and the history of government health-care programs. For the
record, we decided to take a look at how previous federal forecasts matched
what later happened. It isn't pretty.
Let's start with the claim that a more pervasive federal
role will restrain costs and thus make health care more affordable. We know
that over the past four decades precisely the opposite has occurred. Prior to
the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health-care inflation ran
slightly faster than overall inflation. In the years since, medical inflation
has climbed 2.3 times faster than cost increases elsewhere in the economy. Much
of this reflects advances in technology and expensive treatments, but the
contrast does contradict the claim of government as a benign cost saver.
![[1healthcosts]](./Dec809_files/image002.jpg)
Next let's
examine the record of Congressional forecasters in predicting costs. Start with
Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor. The House Ways and
Means Committee estimated that its first-year costs would be $238 million.
Instead it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing.
Thanks in
part to expansions promoted by California's Henry Waxman, a principal author of
the current House bill, Medicaid now costs 37 times more than it did when it
was launched—after adjusting for inflation. Its current cost is $251 billion,
up 24.7% or $50 billion in fiscal 2009 alone, and that's before the health-care
bill covers millions of new beneficiaries.
Medicare has
a similar record. In 1965, Congressional budgeters said that it would cost $12
billion in 1990. Its actual cost that year was $90 billion. Whoops. The
hospitalization program alone was supposed to cost $9 billion but wound up
costing $67 billion. These aren't small forecasting errors. The rate of
increase in Medicare spending has outpaced overall inflation in nearly every
year (up 9.8% in 2009), so a program that began at $4 billion now costs $428
billion . . .
The lesson
here is that spending on nearly all federal benefit programs grows relentlessly
once they are established. This history won't stop Democrats bent on ramming
their entitlement into law. But every Member who votes for it is guaranteeing
larger deficits and higher taxes far into the future. Count on it.
Read
the entire WSJ Editorial . . .
Government is not the solution to our
problems, government is the problem.
-
Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5. Medical Gluttony: Mr. Obama's Health Care Reform -
Mega Gluttony
Peggy Noonan
writes in her column last week: Mr. Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs
over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The
common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong - he can't afford
to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind
him, vow to fight another day and move on.
The radical
wisdom in this country that the $1.7 trillion we spend on health care is
gluttonous is an unbelievable understatement should Obama have his way and add
$trillions more. That type of national medical gluttony will be lethal for not
only health care, but for individual freedom and for our country. It cannot
survive this huge increase in debt.
Obama didn't get
any of the three goals he sought in his recent Asian tour. The Chinese stiffed
him as he bowed so low he could almost lick "Emperor Akihito's shoes."
Maybe the Emperor's smile indicated that he knows that they own so much
of the United States Debt that they could just call all the notes in and own
our entire country without ever firing a shot or launching a missile. Will we
be able to be as proud of our country when we are the Chinese States of America
and our Capital is Beijing?
With Mr. Obama's
approval ratings now lower in his first year than Mr. Bush's in his fifth year,
we should have enough time to get a health program organized before he becomes
a mature leader. However, radical lies don't die easily when they are repeated
so often.
We've heard some
respectable physicians, including Dr. Andrew Weil, mention such lies as 47
million Americans are uninsured. That these misconceptions are so often spoken
by even physicians who should know better, they must be challenged on a daily
or more frequent basis.
That 47 million
wasn't even true in 1965. Since then, we have Medicaid to cover all poor people
in this country. Since then, we have Medicare that covers everyone over 65 and
so we don't have any seniors uncovered. Medicare disability covers all disabled
of any age and thus we have no disabled Americans without health care. Since
then, we have veteran's benefits that cover all retired and disable veterans of
all wars. Thus, we have no veterans who lack coverage. With such a triple net,
there is no one that is poor, disabled or retired, and no disabled vet or
senior citizen that is uncovered. The people uncovered today are a totally
different population from those uncovered in 1965. The uncovered today make
over $50,000, many over $75,000, and now there are a significant number making
$100,000, that chooses not to have coverage. How can we say that someone making
$4,000 a month is too poor to purchase a basic $400-a-month hospital surgical
plan? Sure the many stories abound. Last week, there was a story of a
physician's son who lacked coverage. We should not even be interested in
covering people who make $4000 to $6000 a month and choose not to purchase a
basic high-end policy.
It has become
apparent that many people on Medicaid, when asked if they were covered by
insurance, said they don't have insurance since they do not perceive Medicaid
as health insurance. When we try to refer a Medicaid patient for surgery, the
patient immediately asks if we know a surgeon that will accept Medicaid. They
know it's hard to get into a doctors office. And Mr. Obama wants to shove
another 25 million Americans into Medicaid and call it coverage?
Many physicians
no longer accept Medicare because of meager reimbursements. And Mr. Obama wants
to rape the Medicare till of some $460 million for his other programs. Is he
totally out of touch with reality? Everyone thinks he's smoking cigarettes, but
I wonder what he is really smoking?
It is important
that all responsible Americans, whenever they hear the 47 million number, reply
with the above facts and then forgive those for their anti-American attitudes
and respect for freedom.
On listening to
the Audio Book "House of Cards," the story of the Bear Stearns
collapse, it was interesting to hear the multi-millionaires and billionaires,
who in their better days sat around the country clubs talking about their
parents coming from Eastern Europe so poor that they did not have any coins in
their pocket and had to sweep floors or sell papers before they could purchase
their first meal. They had very little sympathy for those who were so lazy and
felt they were above this type of work. I have many patients from Eastern
Europe who are very appreciative of living in humble surroundings with a TV and
car, things their parents never had. Have we forgotten the opportunity of
living in this country, where any poor person can become wealthy by keeping his
nose to the grindstone?
Let's start by
teaching our children, our family and friends not to accept a free lunch. Look
what happened to Hillsdale when their students accepted government funds. It
cost their Alumni $Hundreds of million. Government largess will bankrupt you.
Be sure to subscribe
to HealthPlanUSA to
join this dialogue on a regular basis.
Medical Gluttony thrives in Government and Health
Insurance Programs.
It Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and
Co-payments on Every Service.
*
* * * *
6. Medical Myths: Why spend ourselves out of business just
to re-invent the wheel?
Myth 11. There are 46
million or more Americans without "health care." July 24th, 2009
No one, to our knowledge, has actually come up with
an estimate of the number of residents in America, legal or illegal, who are
denied life-saving medical care—if indeed there are any. Even accusations of
violating EMTALA—the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which
requires screening and stabilization of any patient presenting to an emergency
room—are apparently rare.
The 46 million are the "uninsured." They
lack "coverage," not care.
The Institute of Medicine and the Kaiser Commission
on Medicaid and the Uninsured have published widely cited 2002
reports concluding that uninsured people have worse health than insured people.
The IOM guesstimates that 18,000 people a year die for lack of insurance—an
impressive sound bite that "has no factual basis," writes
Greg Scandlen.
In the actual report, the number 18,000 occurs only
once, in Appendix D, with a description of the convoluted method for
calculating it—extrapolating from one questionable estimate from one study.
Scandlen observes that neither IOM nor Kaiser did
any original research, but simply compiled previous studies. These identify a
correlation between lack of insurance and poor health, but cannot determine
whether one is caused by the other, or both are caused by some other factor.
In the U.S. 37% of people with below-average income
reported that they were in fair or poor health, while only 9% of people with
above-average income said the same. A similar disparity is seen in the UK, New
Zealand, Canada, and Australia, despite their "universal coverage."
People in lower income groups are more likely to be
uninsured, but only 18 of the 164 separate studies made any effort to control
for income. The Medicaid population, being low income and well-insured, could
serve as a control group. In 61% of the 31 studies that identify three populations
(privately insured, uninsured, and Medicaid), Medicaid recipients appeared to
do as badly or worse than the uninsured in receiving medical services or
maintaining good health. In many cases, they have worse outcomes than the
uninsured. This is consistent with other information suggesting that income is
a much better predictor of health than is insurance status (ibid.).
Smoking and education level were other confounding
variables that the IOM failed to consider (David Hogberg, American Spectator
9/22/09).
While the increasing number of uninsured is
presented as a crisis, the proportion of Americans without health coverage has
changed little in the past decade. The increase in number is owing to
immigration and population growth, writes Devon Herrick.
In 2006, 15.5% of Americans were uninsured, compared
with 16.2% in 1997.
Of the claimed 46 million uninsured, 12.6 million
(27%) are immigrants, either legal or illegal. Up to 14 million (30%) are
eligible for government insurance, but haven't bothered to enroll. They can
sign up the instant they need medical attention.
The percentage of low-income people (<$25,000/yr)
without insurance actually decreased 24% over the past 10 years. The highest
rate of increase in uninsured status, 90%, was in families with incomes over
$75,000, who presumably could have bought insurance if they considered it worth
the price.
Insurance "coverage" is not the same thing
as medical care. It is not necessarily the best way to pay for medical
care—although it probably is the most expensive. And there is no actual
evidence, only inference from uncontrolled observational studies, that
increasing the level of insurance coverage improves health outcomes. If
expanding coverage means restricting care, the opposite could occur.
Additional information:
"The Uninsured: Reframing the Issue," AAPS News, November
2004.
"The Coverage Trap," AAPS News, May 2004.
"Down with 'Health Plans'!" AAPS News, January 2004.
"'Covering' the Uninsured: the Wrong Goal," AAPS News,
April 2003.
"'Giving' and Taking," AAPS News, January 1992.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at
12:02 am and is filed under health care reform, mythbusters,
uninsured.
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www.aapsonline.org/newsoftheday/00369
Responses to "Myth 11"
Willard Lyons says:
The system is NOT BROKEN! If one of the problems is
catastrophic illness or trauma, address that problem and arrange to provide
accordingly. If there are other issues that need modification, address them in
a methodical manner.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!
Most people are not unhappy with their health care, especially seniors.
Why spend ourselves out of business just to re-invent the wheel?
John T Neilson, MD, FACP says:
July
24, 2009 at 10:48 am
Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
The essence of politics, especially the current administration.
Lyska Emerson, MD says:
July
24, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I sent this link to my congressman. We must look at
the objective data lest we make critical decisions based upon propaganda. I
suggest others pass this along to their congressmen.
Medical Myths originate when
someone else pays the medical bills.
Myths disappear when
Patients pay Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on Every Service.
*
* * * *
7. Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: The Courtesies
in Consultations
Dr. Rosen: When we see a
patient in consultation, the chances are greater than not that we'll see a lot
of inappropriate care.
Dr. Edwards: This is one way
that consultants elevate the level of care with their consultative opinions.
Dr. Paul: I see this so
frequently that I report it to the Medicine Committee.
Dr. Rosen: And what is the
immediate result?
Dr. Paul: You get rid of bad
doctors.
Dr. Rosen: Shouldn't the consult provide greater
expertise and improve patient care?
Dr. Paul: But so many of the
patients I see in consultation have been so badly mismanaged that those doctors
should lose their license.
Dr. Edwards: Would you say
half?
Dr. Paul: I think close to
that.
Dr. Edwards: So you're saying
that half of the doctors you work with are marginal and give poor care?
Dr. Paul: Maybe I overstated
the situation. But a large number of doctors are incompetent.
Dr. Milton: Would you feel
that maybe a third of doctors are incompetent?
Dr. Paul: That might be a
little closer.
Dr. Milton: So you think that
perhaps a third of doctors should lose their license to practice?
Dr. Paul: That would
certainly improve the level of care in this country.
Dr. Milton: You think that
the level of care in this country is below that of other countries?
Dr. Paul: I didn't say that.
But in most countries the doctors are so closely regulated that no one deviates
too far from the norm.
Dr. Edwards: So you think we
need more regulation in this country?
Dr. Paul: That would improve
the level of care, don't you think?
Dr. Edwards: So you think to
get rid of 300,000 of the 900,000 doctors in this country would improve care?
Dr. Paul: Certainly. Don't
you agree?
Dr. Edwards: Not really. I
think that would actually lower the level of care.
Dr. Paul: How so?
Dr. Edwards: First, there
would be far fewer consultations and the poor care would go unnoticed.
Secondly, we may not have enough doctors left to provide appropriate care. And
thirdly, doctors would not take any risk to save lives. There would be no
heroic physicians anymore. It would be safer to just let the patient die.
Dr. Paul: But in the chart
review by the Peer Review committee, just letting a patient die would come to
the committee's attention and they might rule it was an unnecessary death.
Dr. Milton: But an
unnecessary passive death is easier to justify than an active death during high
activity.
Dr. Rosen: Managing dying has
become somewhat of an art in recent years.
Dr. Ruth: How could that possibly be the art of medicine?
Dr. Rosen: I saw a patient brought into the ER in full code.
This treating doctor arrived while the code was in progress. He calmly examined
the patient, albeit briefly, reviewed the chart quickly and determined that not
only was the patient having a myocardial infarction, but he also had pneumonia,
although it was probably an aspiration.
Dr. Ruth: In other words, death was inevitable. Why didn't he
just let him die?
Dr. Rosen: This physician was streetwise in the workings of the
hospital medicine committee and knew in retrospect things look markedly
different than during the heat of the resuscitation activity. He had
experienced a patient with unexpected pneumonia that had not received
antibiotics and he was criticized for not treating it even though with the
rapid turn of events it would not have helped.
Dr. Ruth: So what did he do to turn the tables?
Dr. Rosen: He gave the patient the cardiac medications IV, gave
him antibiotics IV, gave him steroids IV, and even though his circulation was
so poor that none of it may have reached his heart, the chart a few weeks later
during review will show that all problems were adequately treated.
Dr. Ruth: Doesn't the Peer Review committee take such things
into account?
Dr. Milton: There other dynamics working.
Dr. Ruth: Such as?
Dr. Milton: What if the reviewer doesn't like the doctor being
reviewed and sees this as an opportunity to get rid of this bit of competition.
He might be rather aggressive in his criticism so that the other committee
members would not want the tables turned on them and so they stay quiet.
Dr. Ruth: Do you think this is a significant problem?
Dr. Rosen: This is so significant that there has been a case
brought before the United States Supreme Court recently to rule on Abusive Peer
Review. The stats are rather impressive.
Dr. Milton: The cost to society of eliminating one doctor, where
society has invested a quarter million dollars on his education, is far greater
than losing a tradesman who learned his skills "On The Job," built an
inadequate house, lost his carpenter's permit but can more easily find another
trade.
Sham Peer Review: A
National Epidemic
Model
Resolutions for Sham Peer Review
The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Opinions Are
Heard.
*
* * * *
8. Voices of Medicine: A Review of Local and Regional
Medical Journals and Articles
Orange
County Medical Association: Finding the Right Place, By OCMA Staff
Dr. Patch Adams stated that
physicians should never suffer burn-out if we focus on the giving of ourselves
to assist others to restored health and a sense of well-being. Yet I struggle.
The privilege to care for others outweighs any other
consideration in the healing arts.
In
May, the idealistic clown Patch Adams, MD, spoke at the Pri-Med conference in
Anaheim. In his speech on "The Joy of Caring," he mesmerized the
audience with a compelling message: The privilege to care for others outweighs
any other consideration in the healing arts.
There
stood Dr. Adams--clown, political activist, humanitarian and advocate for
peace--with the same academic credentials as me, but on a very different course
in life. He eschews the trappings of "American success," claiming he
owned no possessions, carried no insurance (health, life or liability) and
proudly avoided technology. He denies any specific religious belief, but
gathers around him people dedicated to caring for the poor in more than 66
countries afflicted by war, famine and natural disaster. Speaking without notes
or a PowerPoint presentation, he enthralled the physicians for an hour that
seemed only a few minutes long. For the first time in my 35 years of attending
scientific medical meetings, a presenter received a standing ovation.
Dr.
Adams stated that physicians should never suffer burn-out if we focus on the
giving of ourselves to assist others to restored health and a sense of
well-being. Yet, I struggle. I believe I am not alone in facing the difficult
choice of a path between total altruism and self-indulgence. In my generation,
the epitome of selflessness is Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And my award for
self-centeredness goes to Paris Hilton. We must all ask ourselves: Where in that
wide swing of the pendulum do I fall?
Here's
another example of a struggle I face as I try to determine where I fit. Let's
look at a recent story from Toronto, which dispels the myth of the great
Canadian health plan. John, a man in his mid-60s, presents to his physician
with neurological changes consistent with a cerebral neoplasm. His doctor
referred him for a diagnostic MRI, which was estimated to take a minimum of
four months. Through a different referral, John travels to Buffalo, N.Y.-a
one-hour drive-and obtains an MRI brain scan confirming the malignant tumor.
John returns back to his Canadian physician for a referral for surgery. Again,
the neurosurgical consultation is estimated to take four months to occur. So
John goes back to Buffalo the next week and undergoes surgery to biopsy and
de-bulk the tumor. He returns to his Canadian physician with his biopsy and a
request for radiation therapy. Guess what? Again there's a four-month wait
list. He returns to Buffalo for the needed radiation treatment.
This
story depicts the type of healthcare delays that Ted Kennedy's favorite
approach will result in for Americans. Sen. Kennedy suffered the same disease
as John, but not the same delay in care. Within hours of a seizure, Sen.
Kennedy obtained a diagnosis and a well-organized treatment plan. In the United
States, even if you aren't Sen. Kennedy-and even if you are an uninsured
migrant worker-if you show up in an emergency room with a seizure, you'd
receive better treatment than John did as an average Canadian citizen. I
personally know that Canadian physicians are compassionate, but they are
hampered by bureaucracy imposed by a national healthcare system that is,
ironically, meant to address the inequalities in care between the rich and the
poor. I could not practice in an environment where delays in diagnosis and
treatment became accepted as a way of life.
Referring
to the words of Viktor Frankel, the Austrian psychotherapist who survived the
Auschwitz death camp, Dr. Adams said that in even the worst conditions of
existence we can all choose our own ways. I struggle. Can we choose our own way
if a system prevents choice? A single-payer, no-choice system, dictated by
bureaucracy, scares me because of its lack of compassion. . .
VOM
Is Where Doctors' Thinking is Crystallized into Writing.
*
* * * *
9. Book Review: Global Warming
State of Fear - by Michael Crichton, MD,
HarperCollins , New York , © 2004, 672 pp, $25.95, Avon PB $7.99,
ISBN-13-978-0-06-101573-1, Harper Audio, 16 CDs, 18 ½ hours, Performed by
George Wilson, $49.95.
There is
something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -Mark Twain
Within any
important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss. -George Orwell
"In late 2003, at the Sustainable Earth Summit
conference in Johannesburg, the Pacific island nation of Vanutu announced that it
was preparing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency of the
United States over global warming. Vanutu stood only a few feet above sea
level, and the island's eight thousand inhabitants were in danger of having to
evacuate their country because of rising sea levels caused by global warming.
The United States, the largest economy in the world, was also the largest
emitter of carbon dioxide and therefore the largest contributor to global
warming."
In Paris, a young physicist performs an oceanographic
experiment for a beautiful visitor - then dies mysteriously after a romantic
tryst with her.
In London's warehouse district below the Tower Bridge,
an American picks up a shipment but does not fail to note two posters on a
wall. One says "Save the Earth" and beneath it, "It's the Only
Home We Have." The other says "Save the Earth" and beneath that,
"There's Nowhere Else to Go." After a
struggle to load the 700-pound box, he becomes suspicious, sensing that he is
being watched. No sooner does he become wary than a woman accosts him and
attempts to strangle him. He takes off down the street. The woman tells a
warehouse attendant, "Go back to work. You did a good job. I never saw
you. You never saw me. Now go." The hapless American, however, succumbs to
a mysterious paralysis and dies suddenly in the street as the woman drives the
Van away with the "merchandise."
In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer
purchases, for an unspecified purpose, deadly hypersonic cavitation technology,
built to his specification that is capable of toppling mountains with sound.
After business has been concluded, his contact drives him to the airport.
Unfortunately he leaves his cell phone behind.
In Vancouver, a businessman leases a small research
submarine for use in the waters off New Guinea.
At the International Data Environmental Consortium
(The IDEC): In a small brick building adjacent to a University in Tokyo, which
bears the University's Coat of Arms – leading the casual observer to assume an
association, but which is totally independent, a network of servers equipped
with multilevel quad-check honeynets is at work. The
nets are established in both business and academic domains, which enable them
to track backward from servers to user with an 87 percent success rate.
"The National Environmental Resource Fund, an
American activist group, announced that it would join forces with Vanutu in the
lawsuit, which was expected to be filed in the summer of 2004. It was rumored
that wealthy philanthropist Gorge Morton, who frequently backed environmental
causes, would personally finance the suit, expected to cost more than $8
million. Since the suit would ultimately be heard by the sympathetic Ninth
Circuit in San Francisco, the litigation was awaited with some
anticipation."
In Los Angeles, George Morton begins checking some of
the data on global warming and finds conflicting scientific information. He
finishes a bottle of Vodka in his private jet on his way to San Francisco to
accept the National Environmental Resource Fund [NERF] award and gains the
courage during his acceptance speech to urge more time for study. He is
physically pushed off the stage. Having downed a few more Vodkas during the
course of his meal, he leaves the building, weaves past his waiting limousine,
and slips behind the wheel of his recently purchased Ferrari. Despite the
urgings of his lawyer not to drive, George speeds away. Shortly after crossing
the Golden Gate Bridge, the car crashes, leaving a mangled mound of steel, but
the body of George Morton has disappeared.
In Antarctica, where the ice is getting thicker every
year, an intelligence agent and members of his team race across glaciers in an
attempt to put all the puzzling pieces together and prevent what will doubtless
be a global catastrophe producing the largest iceberg in history. However, his
partners who have been following his lead vehicle slide into a deep crevasse.
"But the law suit is never filed." Why was
the Vanutu suit, which was to have been funded by George Morton, dropped?
Thus begins "State of
Fear" an exciting and provocative techno-thriller. Author Michael Crichton
who has given us a number of medical thrillers and the television series ER unravels
the reasons while revealing some impressive research on the scientific pros and
cons of global warming.
The novel is not politically
correct and thus the reviews from the media were predictable. Or as David Kipen at the SF Chronicle states,
"Unless I'm mistaken, State of Fear is the first thriller in
history whose goals are to convince you that there's really nothing to be
afraid of, and then to scare you to death about it." . . .
The 16 CD audio version performed by George Wilson
is very well done. For physicians who drive between hospitals and their office,
it's an easy way to brush up on how political science works. In fact, it packs
a more powerful punch than silent reading.
But be sure you do not have a tight schedule. Several
times during the past month after parking, I was unable to cease listening,
open the door to my car, and meet my time constraints. One evening on my way
home, I phoned my wife, "Would you mind if I drive to San Francisco and
back? I just can't turn off George Wilson and Michael Crichton."
To read the entire book
review . . .
To read more book
reviews . . .
To read book
reviews topically . . .
*
* * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: There are no political
solutions - especially in healthcare.
Political Problems
There are no political solutions; there are only
rearrangements of problems. - after
David Mamet in November
Won't that keep politicos busy for at least a lifetime?
The Radical Message hasn't changed since 1965 even
though the uninsured are a totally different class of people.
Since 1965, we've added Medicare so everyone over 65
is covered. We've added Medicaid so all poor people are covered with insurance.
We've added Social Security Disability so all Disabled Americans of any age are
covered. We've added coverage for all retired and disable veterans. No one can
fall through this tripled layer health net.
All poor people are covered. The percentage of
low-income people, those making less that $25,000 without insurance continues
to decrease. The highest rate of increase in uninsured status, 90%, was in
families with incomes over $75,000.
The radicals are now misleading Americans when the
uninsured has shifted from the poor and aged to well off Americans. They're not
interested in healthcare coverage for people in need; they are only interested
in controlling people that willfully avoid insurance that they can afford.
Where are those 47 million?
There is no data on who the 47 million people without
insurance are that PEW allegedly found. When they asked people on Medicaid if
they had insurance, they replied NO. They don't consider themselves as having
insurance. Probably because they have such difficulty finding a doctor or
hospital that welcomes them.
And Obama wants to put another 25 million people into Medicaid?
Medicare Coverage
Medicare reimbursement continues to plunge so
Medicare recipients are also having trouble finding a doctor. And Obama wants
to remove $40 million from Medicare funding?
That should produce a real crisis in American Medicine.
The next Congress will be different.
Should the Obama-Pelosi bill pass, that should
change the party affiliation of the next Congress. But that won't change much
because the other party hasn't been able to get their act together for some
time.
It looks like it's crucial for medicine to get out of politics to avoid
Medical Armageddon.
Hacking into climatologists computers spoils the
foil.
Hacking into computers of the global warming scientists
revealed up to 13-year-old drafts portraying climate skeptics on an ice floe.
There were also email exchanges of using a statistical "trick" in a
chart to show a recent sharp warming trend. "This is not a smoking gun,
this is a mushroom cloud," said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who
has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in
the hacked documents. "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of
warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," Kevin
Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
said.
It is unfortunate that so many scientists have political agendas now
rather than scientific agendas.
Presidential Faults
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government,
but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president - whom
I a good liberal, considered a monster - were little different from those of a
president whom I revered. Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole
the election in Florida, Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush ousted a CIA agent;
Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied
about this military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book
written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the
Mafia. Oh. -David Mamet.
Oh! Isn't any president trustworthy anymore?
The only country that's not divided is totalitarian.
-David Mamet
"Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal': An
Election-Season Essay," by David Mamet published in The Village Voice in March 2008. November, he wrote in the essay, is, in fact, a play about politics.
Father to son as they look to the financial tower
with a $13 trillion national debt clock at the top - My son, we're imprisoned
for life without the possibility of parole. -Stahler, Columbus Dispatch
And some folks think that's more humane than capital punishment?
*
* * * *
11. Organizations Restoring Accountability in 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. This month, read the informative article: Being uninsured
is like being unemployed -- it happens to lots of people for brief periods,
says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright fellow with the
National Center for Policy Analysis...
•
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. Just released: How Federal Health "Reform" Will Devastate
California's Budget
Capital Ideas By:
John R. Graham 12.2.2009
•
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. This month, treat yourself to
an article Not
What They Had in Mind: A History of Policies that Produced the Financial Crisis
of 2008.
•
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. This month,
you might focus on The
2,074-page health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
unveiled Wednesday is a maze of complexity and duplicity and deceit. It would
spend $848 billion over 10 years to provide new subsidies for health coverage,
increase taxes by $486 billion, and allegedly cut spending by $491 billion. All
the while, it pretends to use this massive government expansion to cut the
deficit.
•
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?. This month, be sure to read: In a new Policy Study for The Heartland Institute,
Peter Ferrara demystifies the several health care overhaul bills pending in the
U.S. House and Senate, explaining how the measures would result in less health
care for consumers and higher taxes for all ... and offering a
patient-empowering alternative plan.
•
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 House That Uncle Sam
Built By Steven Horwitz & Peter Boettke The Great
Recession (or the Great Hangover) that began in 2008 did not have to happen.
Its causes and consequences are not mysterious. Indeed, this particular and
very painful episode affirms what the best nonpartisan economists have tried to
tell our politicians and policy-makers for decades, namely, that the more they
try to inflate and direct the economy, the more damage the rest of us will
suffer sooner or later.
•
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. You may want to obtain the book: Aiming
for Liberty: The Past, Present, And Future of Freedom and Self-Defense.
•
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. This month, read Illiberal
Belief # 28: Governments Can Create Jobs. In pushing for and signing a near-trillion-dollar stimulus bill in
February, Obama explicitly accepted the
notion that governments can create jobs. But every
dollar spent on stimulating the economy is a
dollar taken away from taxpayers. By BRADLEY DOUCET
•
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 is 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. The Center for Health Policy Studies supports
and does extensive research on health care policy that is readily
available at their site. -- 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, they have lost site of
their mission and we will no longer feature them as a freedom loving
institution but as a socialistic institution and have canceled our contributions.
•
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. Be sure to read Why Some People Are Poorer by Henry Hazlitt: Throughout history, until about the middle of the
18th century, mass poverty was nearly everywhere the normal condition of man.
Then capital accumulation and a series of major inventions ushered in the
Industrial Revolution. In spite of occasional setbacks, economic progress
became accelerative. Today, in the United States, in Canada, in nearly all of
Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, mass poverty has been practically
eliminated. It has either been conquered or is in process of being conquered by
a progressive capitalism. Mass poverty is still found in most of Latin America,
most of Asia, and most of Africa. 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. This month, read the Latest Watergate Fiasco: Climate Scientists
Subverted Peer Review [Also] The more we learn about the purloined e-mails
from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, the more it
resembles Watergate
•
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 Professor
Victor Davis Hanson speaking:
I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular
challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that
war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to
genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our
brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients -
these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution
theorists - human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change -
and I submit to you that human nature is a constant - then war will always be
with us. www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp.
The last ten years of Imprimis are archived.
* * * * *
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Del Meyer, MD, Editor & Founder
6945 Fair Oaks Blvd, Ste A-2, Carmichael, CA 95608
Politicians
believe they can intervene and fix the health care sector of the economy as if
it were an engine in need of a tune-up. - Gerry
Smedinghoff
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easy questions and you'll have a hard life, ask yourself the hard questions and
you'll have an easier life!" - Peter Thomson: U.K. strategist on business and personal growth
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In Memoriam
Earl Cooley, smokejumper, died on November 9th, aged 98
From The Economist print edition Nov 26th 2009
SEEN from the height of
a passenger jet, the mountains of Idaho and western Montana look like the grey,
wrinkled hide of a dinosaur. Closer up, from a twin-engine aircraft, those
wrinkles become thousands of conifers marching over the steep and broken
ground. Closer still—"My God! My chute's not opening! Something's
wrong!"—that's a spruce you're plunging into, your tardy parachute lines
tangling round your neck and your flailing legs kicking off branches a hundred
feet above the ground. Luckily, you're alive. Luckier still, you have a rope in
your trouser pocket that lets you rappel down from the tree. And you haven't
even got to the fire yet.
Such was Earl Cooley's
introduction, on July 12th 1940 when he was 28, to the completely new science
of smokejumping. After years spent trying to douse the forest fires of
America's West from aircraft—labouring skywards with water stowed in
five-gallon cans and beer barrels—this was the first attempt to parachute
firefighters to blazes too remote to reach by road. In the 22 years Mr Cooley
was to spend doing it, it was also his closest call. He reflected later that if
the spruce had not saved him, the smokejumping programme itself would not have
survived—let alone become the success it is today, with 1,432 jumps made for
the Forest Service last year. Back then, too many people thought it crazy. . .
Hunting the fire
The jumpers were
firefighters first and foremost: young men impatient to get to a fire. Like
hunters, they aimed to "catch" it before it went "over the
hill", or before it blew up from a spot fire to a raging "project
fire" over 50 acres or more. . .
His expertise often gave
him the job of spotter in a plane. He had to read wind speed, direction and
drift; assess, from the speed of the lumbering Ford Trimotor aircraft and his watch,
the size of the fire; find, and mark with streamers, a suitable place to drop
that was free of "snags" (dead trees), felled logs, stumps or
boulders; check every inch of kit and harness, every buckle and strap and pin,
and then tap each man on the left leg to make him jump. Mr Cooley was not just
a trainer of men (including quivering Mennonites and Quakers, conscientious
objectors, who were sent to become smokejumpers during the second world war).
He also felt responsible for seeing that they returned. . .
On This Date in History - December 8
On this date in 65 B.C., Horace, the great
Latin Poet, was born. He is the one person who has long since become an
institution to countless generations that have had occasion to study his work.
One line that has stood the test of time is, "It is when I am struggling
to be brief that I become unintelligible."
On this date in
1886, a group of labor unions meeting in Columbus, Ohio, organized the American
Federation of Labor (AFL)
After Leonard and
Thelma Spinrad
MOVIE
EXPLAINING SOCIALIZED MEDICINE TO COUNTER MICHAEL MOORE's SiCKO
Logan Clements, a pro-liberty filmmaker in Los Angeles, seeks
funding for a movie exposing the truth about socialized medicine. Clements is
the former publisher of "American Venture" magazine who made news in
2005 for a property rights project against eminent domain called the "Lost
Liberty Hotel."
For more information visit www.sickandsickermovie.com or
email logan@freestarmovie.com.