|
MEDICAL TUESDAY . NET |
NEWSLETTER |
|
Community For Better Health Care |
Vol IX, No 20,
Jan 25, 2011 |
In This Issue:
1.
Featured Article:
How the new sciences of human
nature can help make sense of a life.
2.
In
the News: Nice
Call There Bamo by BILL WADDELL
3.
International Medicine: Our health care delusion
4.
Medicare: Repeal and Replace: 10
Necessary Changes
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Emergency Room Visits for
Non Emergent Medical Problems
6.
Medical Myths: The health care reform will
improve health care in the US
7.
Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: The
repeal of ObamaCare
8.
Voices
of Medicine: Fulfilling Our Duty
as Muslim-Americans
9.
The Bookshelf: The
Slippery Slope From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder
10.
Hippocrates
& His Kin: Doctor's scales can make you cry
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
Words of Wisdom,
Recent Postings, In Memoriam . . .
* * * * *
MOVIE BLASTS
OBAMACARE, DOCTORS NEEDED TO SCREEN LOCALLY
A new movie has Canadian doctors, patients, journalists and others
warning Americans about the final destination of ObamaCare. The producer, Logan
Darrow Clements, hopes people will understand that ObamaCare isn't about
reforming health insurance but a complete government takeover of the medical
system. Clements is hoping doctors across American can help him screen the
movie through a revolutionary new distribution system whereby doctors can
become instant distributors. For a flat fee of $500, they can buy a screening
license and show the movie in their community, keeping all ticket revenues. The
process is simple. Doctors can download a high-resolution version of the movie
overnight to their laptop computer. They can then take their laptop anywhere
and connect it to a projector or purchase one at a local office supply store.
Whenever possible, the producer plans to be available for question and answer
sessions after screening by phone or webcam. A personal DVD can be purchased or
a version of the movie can be purchased and instantly downloaded at www.sickandsickermovie.com/. Mr.
Clements can be reached in Los Angeles through his production company Freestar
Movie, LLC at 310-795-2509.
* * * * *
1. Featured Article: How the new sciences of human
nature can help make sense of a life.
The New Yorker | Annals of Psychology |
Social Animal
by David Brooks
Researchers have made strides in
understanding the human mind, filling the hole left by the atrophy of theology
and philosophy.
. . . Occasionally,
you meet a young, rising member of this [Composure Class] at the
gelato store, as he hovers indecisively over the cloudberry and
ginger-pomegranate selections, and you notice that his superhuman equilibrium
is marred by an anxiety. Many members of this class, like many Americans
generally, have a vague sense that their lives have been distorted by a giant
cultural bias. They live in a society that prizes the development of career
skills but is inarticulate when it comes to the things that matter most. The
young achievers are tutored in every soccer technique and calculus problem, but
when it comes to their most important decisions—whom to marry and whom to
befriend, what to love and what to despise—they are on their own. Nor, for all
their striving, do they understand the qualities that lead to the highest
achievement. Intelligence, academic performance, and prestigious schools don't
correlate well with fulfillment, or even with outstanding accomplishment. The
traits that do make a difference are poorly understood, and can't be taught in
a classroom, no matter what the tuition: the ability to understand and inspire
people; to read situations and discern the underlying patterns; to build
trusting relationships; to recognize and correct one's shortcomings; to imagine
alternate futures. In short, these achievers have a sense that they are
shallower than they need to be.
Help comes from the strangest places. We are living in the middle of a
revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists,
neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made
great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from
being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world
where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a better grasp of
emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and
social bonding, precisely those things about which our culture has least to
say. Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and
philosophy.
A core finding
of this work is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious
thinking. The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our
environment. But the unconscious mind gives us other, more supple ways. The
cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective
on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure
reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over
abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q. It allows us to tell a different sort
of success story, an inner story to go along with the conventional surface one.
To give a
sense of how this inner story goes, let's consider a young member of the
Composure Class, though of course the lessons apply to members of all classes.
I'll call him Harold. His inner-mind training began before birth. Even when he
was in the womb, Harold was listening for his mother's voice, and being molded
by it. French babies cry differently from babies who've heard German in the
womb, because they've absorbed French intonations before birth. Fetuses who
have been read "The Cat in the Hat" while in the womb suck
rhythmically when they hear it again after birth, because they recognize the
rhythm of the poetry.
As a newborn,
Harold, like all babies, was connecting with his mother. He gazed at her. He
mimicked. His brain was wired by her love (the more a rat pup is licked and
groomed by its mother, the more synaptic connections it has). Harold's mother,
in return, read his moods. A conversation developed between them, based on
touch, gaze, smell, rhythm, and imitation. When Harold was about eleven months
old, his mother realized that she knew him better than she'd ever known
anybody, even though they'd never exchanged a word. . .
Read
the entire article from the New Yorker, January 17, 2011, issue . . .
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* * * * *
2. In the News: Nice Call
There Bamo by
BILL WADDELL, 22 Jan 2011
Barack Obama appointed GE's Jeff Immelt to head up his advisory panel to
create jobs. No doubt Immelt knows how to do it. GE's employment is
up by 36% since he was named boss back in 2000. Next time,
however, Obama might want to think about putting someone in charge who
creates jobs in this country.
Immelt takes over at GE in 2000: 131,000
USA jobs, 92,000 Jobs in other countries.
Immelt at GE today: 134,000
USA jobs, 171,000 Jobs in other countries.
Comments
I wish politicians on both sides of the aisle would give up on the notion that
they "create jobs." That's self-important BS, unless they mean their
own bloated Congressional staffs or the regulatory and government jobs they
create.
Only in politics can you take actions that kill jobs
and then claim that you're working to create jobs.
Posted by: Mark Graban | 23 January 2011 at 08:29 AM
I understand that you disagree with the
President's choice. I agree with you on that. But tell us why you headed your
article with the name "Bamo?"
--Chet
Because it seemed to appropriately reflect
how little respect I have for the man.
Appointing the head of the company that is
(1) the poster child for trashing American manufacturing having killed over
100,000 jobs, but (2) spends more on lobbying than any other American company
reflects just how little respect Obama deserves.
Note that I am not scorning the office of
the Presidency of the United States - just the mockery this particular man has
made of that office.
Read
more at Evolving Excellence
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* * * * *
3. International Medicine: Our health care delusion
By Ken MacQueen | MacLeans.com | Tuesday,
January 25, 2011
One study ranked Canada
dead last in timeliness and quality care
A distraught 41-year-old man from West Kelowna,
B.C., arrived at the emergency department of Kelowna General Hospital on the
night of Dec. 28. "He was broken mentally," his wife later told the
local Daily Courier. "He wanted help." By her account, he waited 90
minutes without seeing a doctor, minor by today's emergency room standards.
Kelowna RCMP put the wait at just 45 minutes. Regardless, he snapped, warning
staff that he'd drive his truck into the hospital if he didn't get treatment.
When threats didn't get results, he stormed out and returned at the wheel of
his Chevy Blazer. As promised, he smashed through the ER's double doors,
narrowly missing two elderly people (one assumes they were elderly before
their wait in emergency) and came to a halt in a hospital hallway.
Police arrived to find him waiting co-operatively
in his truck. The bed he was assigned that night was in the RCMP detachment
cell; he faces several charges including dangerous operation of a motor
vehicle. While his strategy was extreme, his cry for attention resonates with
many who've had the misfortune to trade germs and waste time in one of Canada's
overstressed emergency wards.
It's a Canadian conceit
that ours is one of the best public health care systems in the world, a
defining characteristic of nationhood; something that separates us from the
Americans. In a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion in June, 69 per cent of
Canadians said they're proud of the health care system, edging out the state of
Canadian democracy, multiculturalism and bilingualism.
Yet the reality, based on
any number of international comparisons, shows that pride in a supposedly
world-beating standard of care is often misplaced, an "illusion," as
Liberal MP and medical doctor Keith Martin puts it. The sorry state of the
nation's emergency wards is just one indicator of trouble today and trouble to
come. ERs are just "the canary in the coal mine," says Dr. John Ross,
Nova Scotia's adviser on emergency care.
Martin, a former family
and emergency room doctor and an MP from Vancouver Island, has been saying as
much since he entered federal politics 17 years ago as a Reform party member.
He practised medicine part-time until about three years ago, experiencing the
same things that first spurred him into politics: the indignity of examining
patients on gurneys in hospital hallways; people enduring such agonizing waits
for hip or knee replacements that they suffered heart attacks; tumours that
grew to inoperable sizes as people waited months for diagnostic scans.
"Those," he says, "are the casualties of our health care system,
and the casualties of the inaction of modernizing the system, that people don't
talk about."
Emergency wards are all
too often the first point of contact with the health care system, a problem
exacerbated by the fact that five million Canadians don't have a family
physician, and because acute-care beds are often stuffed with elderly patients
who would be better served in long-term care facilities. Often the waits are
excruciating. For a man in the throes of a mental breakdown, driving to, and
through, the ER of Kelowna General should have been the last, worst option.
"He was at the end of his rope," his wife said. "You can't see a
psychiatrist. It takes a while to get an appointment. That's why people go to
the hospital."
And what they often find
in maxed-out ERs is a chaotic environment and waits, of six, eight hours and
more. The consequences can be deadly. In Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital
this September, Shayne Hay reported to the hospital's emergency ward, telling
staff he was suicidal. He was placed in a room on an emergency stretcher and
checked periodically, though repeated requests to see a counsellor went
unanswered, his family says. Some 12 hours later he was found dead, hanging
from a strap of his backpack. In Montreal, long waits in the ER at
Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital were blamed by families for contributing to the
deaths of two people last year. Mariette Fournier, 86, spent four days on a
stretcher in the hallway waiting for a bed in the geriatric department. She
contracted pneumonia, developed a blood clot, and died on Feb. 23, a day after
finally getting a bed. That same month, 75-year-old Mieczyslaw Figiel died
beside the triage nursing station, with his daughter banging on the station's
window as he gasped for breath. The ER was at 180 per cent capacity. . .
Read the entire report of Canadian Medicare . . .
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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
* * * * *
4. Medicare: Repeal and Replace: 10
Necessary Changes
Special Publications | Health | NCPA | Monday,
January 17, 2011
There are 10 structural flaws in the Affordable Care
Act (ACA). Each is so potentially damaging, Congress will have to resort to
major corrective action even if the critics of the ACA are not involved.
Further, each must be addressed in any new attempt to create workable health
care reform.
1) An Impossible Mandate
Problem: The ACA
requires individuals to buy a health insurance plan whose cost will grow at
twice the rate of growth of their incomes. Not only will health care claim more
and more of every family's disposable income, the act takes away many of the
tools the private sector now uses to control costs.
Solution:
1) Repeal the individual and employer mandates, 2) offer a generous tax subsidy
to people to obtain insurance, but 3) allow them the freedom and flexibility to
adjust their benefits and cost-sharing in order to control costs.
2) A Bizarre System of Subsidies
Problem: The ACA
offers radically different subsidies to people at the same income level,
depending on where they obtain their health insurance - at work, through an
exchange or through Medicaid. The subsidies (and the accompanying mandates)
will cause millions of employees to lose their employer plans and may cause
them to lose their jobs as well. At a minimum, these subsidies will cause a
huge, uneconomical restructuring of American industry.
Solution:
Offer people the same tax relief for health insurance, regardless of where it
is obtained or purchased . . .
3) Perverse Incentives for Insurers
Problem: The ACA
creates perverse incentives for insurers and employers (worse than under the
current system) to attract the healthy and avoid the sick, and to overprovide
to the healthy (to encourage them to stay) and underprovide to the sick (to
encourage them to leave).
Solution:
Instead of requiring insurers to ignore the fact that some people are sicker
and more costly to insure than others, adopt a system that compensates them for
the higher expected costs - ideally making a high-cost enrollee just as
attractive to an insurer as low-cost enrollee.
4) Perverse Incentives for Individuals
Problem: The ACA
allows individuals to remain uninsured while they are healthy (paying a small
fine or no fine at all) and to enroll in a health plan after they get sick
(paying the same premium everyone else is paying). No insurance pool can
survive the gaming of the system that is likely to ensue.
Solution: People who remain continuously insured
should not be penalized if they have to change insurers; but people who are
willfully uninsured should not be able to completely free ride
on others by gaming the system.
5) Impossible Expectations/A Tattered Safety Net
Problem:
The ACA aims to insure as many as 34 million uninsured people. Economic studies
suggest they will try to double their consumption of medical care. Yet the act
creates not one new doctor, nurse or paramedical personnel. We can expect as
many as 900,000 additional emergency room visits every year - mainly by new
enrollees in Medicaid - and 23 million are expected to remain uninsured. Yet,
as was the case in Massachusetts, not only is there no mechanism to ensure that
funding will be there for safety net institutions that will shoulder the
biggest burdens, their "disproportionate share" funds are slated to
be cut.
Solution: 1) Liberate the supply side of the market by
allowing nurses, paramedics and pharmacists to deliver care they are competent
to deliver; 2) allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover walk-in clinics at shopping
malls and other unconventional care - paying market prices; 3) free doctors to
provide lower-cost, higher-quality services in the manner described below; and
4) redirect unclaimed health insurance
tax credits (for people who elect to remain uninsured) to the safety net
institutions in the areas where they live - to provide a source of funds in
case they cannot pay their own medical bills.
6) Impossible Benefit Cuts for Seniors
Problem:
The ACA's cuts in Medicare are draconian. By 2017, seniors in such cities
as Dallas, Houston and San Antonio will lose one-third of their benefits. By
2020, Medicare nationwide will pay doctors and hospitals less than what
Medicaid pays. Seniors will be lined up behind Medicaid patients at community
health centers and safety net hospitals unless this is changed. Either 1) these
cuts were never a serious way to fund the ACA, because Congress will cave and
restore them, or 2) the elderly and the disabled will be in a separate (and
inferior) health care system.
Solution:
Many of the cuts to Medicare will have to be restored. However, Medicare cost
increases can be slowed by empowering patients and doctors to find efficiencies
and eliminate waste in the manner described below.
7) Impossible Burden for the States
Problem:
Even as the ACA requires people to obtain insurance and fines them if they do
not, the states will receive no additional help if the estimated 10 million
currently Medicaid-eligible people decide to enroll. Although there is
substantial help for the newly eligible enrollees, the states will still face a
multibillion dollar, unfunded liability the states cannot afford.
Solution:
States need the opportunity and flexibility to manage their own health programs
- without federal interference. . .
8) Lack of Portability
Problem: The
single biggest health insurance problem for most Americans is the lack of
portability. If history is a guide, 80% of the 78 million baby boomers will
retire before they become eligible for Medicare. Two-thirds of them have no
promise of postretirement health care from an employer. If they have
above-average incomes, they will receive little or no tax relief when they try
to purchase insurance in the newly created health insurance exchange. To make
matters worse, the ACA appears to encourage employers to drop the
postretirement health plans that are now in place.
Solution:
1) Allow employers to do something they are now barred from doing: purchase
personally-owned, portable health insurance for their employees. Such insurance
should travel with the individual - from job to job and in and out of the labor
market; 2) Give retirees the same tax relief now available only to employees;
and 3) Allow employers and employees to save for postretirement care in
tax-free accounts.
9) Over-Regulated Patients
Problem:
The ACA forces people to spend their premium dollars on first-dollar coverage
for a long list of diagnostic tests. Yet if everyone in America takes advantage
of all of the free preventative care the ACA promises, family doctors will be
spending all their time delivering care to basically healthy people - with no
time to do anything else. At the same time, the ACA encourages the healthy to
over consume care, it leaves chronic patients trapped in a third-party payment
system that is fragmented, uncoordinated, wasteful and designed for everyone
other than the patient. . .
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Publications | Health
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Government is not the solution to our problems, government is
the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5. Medical Gluttony: Emergency Room Visits for Non
Emergent Medical Problems
Have you every tried to do a complete medical
evaluation in the ER when one that took years has already been done?
My last 10
patients with chest pain of concern to their spouses or children because they
interpret this as impending death were seen for follow up exam in the office.
In all ten cases, no heart disease was found and a brief exam confirmed that
the diagnosis was completely missed.
When they
arrived at the Emergency Department and said "chest pain," the staff
to full attention for an acute "heart attack." However, even a
cursory evaluation by a physician should have given the appropriate diagnosis
within minutes. A physician, or a nurse, laying his or her hands on the sternum
and upper abdomen would have determined that the diagnosis was costochondritis
(tenderness of the costal cartilages of the ribs) or GERD (gastroesophageal
reflux disease). The first would take a moderate analgesic pill about 15-30
minutes to relieve and the latter would take some liquid antacids a couple of
minutes to relieve.
If this had been
done, the acute myocardial infarction evaluation would not have been necessary.
What is the savings in costs?
Hospital costs
are difficult to assess. Patients bring in their statement of thousands of
dollars to show how valuable the care was that they received. One patient had a
$78,000 statement for two days in the Intensive Care Unit with about $50,000
written off with the remainder paid by his insurance. Since the $50,000 was not
a legitimate bill before it was written off, it did not even go to "money
heaven" as in bankruptcy with real debts.
We have a
patient who works in the Emergency Department of one of the hospitals. She
tells us the average charge of an acute myocardial infarction evaluation is
about $9,000. She says that every patient that says "chest pain" gets
the same evaluation that is implemented as an emergency prior to a doctor
seeing the patient.
When the patient
is seen in the office the next day, the clinician lays his hand on the chest
and palpates the sternum or breastbone. If it is tender, the diagnosis of
costochondritis is confirmed. If negative, the clinician proceeds to palpate
the upper abdomen or epigastrium. If tender, the diagnosis of GERD is then
made. In either case, it is treated as above and symptoms are promptly
relieved. The patients generally stare in awe that it was so simple and easy.
They are greatly relieved. However, they no longer remember or think of the $9,000
of unnecessary medical costs incurred.
There is no
oversight by the insurance carrier or by any government agency that would
interrupt this sequence. The only rational reduction in health care costs in
the emergency situation would be to place health care in the free enterprise
zone, whereby there is a proportionate co-payment on any health care that is
rendered. Thus, if a patient had a 20 percent co-payment on ER visits, they
would quickly learn the symptoms and signs of the commonly self-treated health
care problems. They would implement them at home and if their discomfort were
resolved, they would return to watching TV or to bed or whatever their former
activity might have been.
This free
enterprise technique also works in the middle of an evaluation. We have seen a
number of patients who have a legitimate reason for an emergency evaluation.
The initial treatment relieves the shortness of breath and the initial battery
of tests eliminates the possibility of an acute myocardial infarction (heart
attack). This portion of the evaluation is about $3,000, or one-third of the
entire evaluation normally given. Patients with a 20 percent co-payment will
decide not to proceed further since their co-payment of 20 percent of $3,000 is
$600, which they put on their credit card. If the patient does not interrupt
the diagnostic evaluation protocol, 20 percent of the entire $9,000 may exceed
the credit card limit (20 percent of $9,000 is $1800). In each of the cases
observed, the patient made the correct decision to interrupt the protocol and
did well. What is never mentioned or appreciated, is that these patients in the
free enterprise and responsible health care zone also save two-thirds of the
cost of medical care.
That is why our
research with our Ideal Health Plan for the US has actuarial estimates of 30 to
50 percent savings in health care costs. If you are an entrepreneur, you may
want to purchase a copy of the Business Plan at www.HealthPlanUSA.net and be part of
the disruptive enterprise.
There
is no other way to reduce our health care costs sensibly.
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Medical Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
Gluttony Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on
Every Service.
* * * * *
6. Medical Myths: The health care reform will
improve health care in the US
The AAPS
filed suit to invalidate the new massive health care bill.
The
Association of American Physicians & Surgeons ("AAPS") fought
Hillary Care in the early 1990's and won!
On March 26th, 2010 AAPS filed suit to invalidate the
new massive health care bill, which passed the House by only 4 votes on a
party-line vote (with 34 Democrats voting against it). Forcing patients to buy
insurance that may not even cover the care they need is wrong for patients,
physicians, and our nation, and is unconstitutional.
- Press Release of March, 29, 2010 - "Doctors Sue to
Overturn the Health Care Bill" READ RELEASE
- Talking Points and information for medical societies interested
in signing on to suit - 03/29/2010 READ TALKING POINTS
- Complaint for
Injunctive and Declaratory Relief
filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia - 03/26/2010 READ
COMPLAINT
- AAPS files Amended
Complaint on 8/23/2010 asking court to vacate HHS regulations requiring
non-Medicare providers to enroll with Medicare, to appear in PECOS, or to
obtain a National Provider Identifier ("NPI")
READ COMPLAINT
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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.
* * * * *
7. Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: The repeal of ObamaCare
Dr. Rosen: The House voted to repeal ObamaCare and the Senate
voted to sustain the previous vote. Is this a hopeless cause?
Dr. Yancy: I don't think so. They should keep doing it every
month. Sooner or later there should be five senators coming to their senses and
voting for repeal.
Dr. Paul: Then what? Don't you think it's time to give up?
Dr. Yancy: When five senators come to their senses and there is a
majority for repeal, it will go to the president's desk.
Dr. Paul: And then what? You don't really think the president
will sign it, do you?
Dr. Yancy: We will then have his decision on record. That record
can then be used for the next six years. That would spoil his chance of
reelection.
Dr. Paul: I don't think that would dissuade him.
Dr. Yancy: As this country goes broke and we become insolvent,
China could call her notes. We then become a colony without firing a shot.
Dr. Paul: You're not a realist Yancy. Nobody would take over
the United States.
Dr. Yancy: You're a dreamer. They would in a heart beat.
Dr. Paul: We'd let them without firing a shot or a rocket or a
bomb?
Dr. Yancy: Who would fire a shot or a rocket? The socialists in
Washington wouldn't dream of going to war.
Dr. Paul: If our freedom was at stake?
Dr. Yancy: Our freedom is at stake with the current socialistic
administration.
Dr. Paul: They're just trying to get us in step with the rest
of the world.
Dr. Yancy: You're right, that's their goal.
But, it is neither mine nor the believers in our constitution.
Dr. Paul: I believe in the Constitution. But that doesn't keep
me from believing in free health care.
Dr. Yancy: There is no such thing as free health care. The
nursing, medical profession, hospitals and laboratories will always get paid.
It's just impersonal. It's routed through the government. So you get hoodwinked
into believing it's free.
Dr. Rosen: There's enough here for the rest of the decade. Why
don't we take this up next week? Maybe we'll have a demonstration by that time
in Washington like they having in Cairo now. We need a regime change.
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The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Medical Opinions Are Heard.
* * * * *
8. Voices of Medicine: A Review of Articles by Physicians
Fulfilling Our Duty as Muslim-Americans
There's no reason we
should object to Congress investigating Islamist radicalism.
By QANTA A. AHMED,
MD
When New York
Rep. Peter King, the new chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security,
called for congressional hearings on radical Islam in America this fall, the
reaction from the official Muslim community was swift. Ibrahim Hooper,
president of the Council on American- Islamic Relations, said he feared the
hearings would become an "anti-Muslim witch hunt." Abed A. Ayoub of
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee asserted that Mr. King's
proposal had "bigoted intentions."
While Mr.
King has a reputation for adopting polarizing positions—particularly when it
comes to immigration—his hearings deserve serious consideration. "There
has to be an honest discussion of the role of the Muslim community—what they
are doing, what they're not doing," he explained to the New York Observer
in a Nov. 30 article. "I talk to law enforcement people across the
country; they will tell me. . . . They don't feel any sense of
cooperation."
These
concerns are reasonable. Histrionic objections to them only deter Muslims from
fulfilling a fundamental Islamic obligation: Meeting our duty to the society in
which we live.
According to
Islamic law, Muslims are obligated to three entities: the self, God and
society. This last has been overlooked too often by Muslims and their adopted
societies.
Similar to
the Christian obligation to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,"
the Quran and the derived corpus of Islamic jurisprudence support Muslims'
engagement with those to whom power is entrusted. Chapter 4, verse 59 of the
Quran reads: "Verily, Allah commands you to give over the trusts to those
entitled to them, and that, when you judge between men, you judge with
justice."
That
patriotic majority has a duty not only to follow the laws of the United States,
but to make sure that their fellow Muslims do the same. Islam calls this duty
"commanding the right and forbidding the wrong." It is an obligation
that is sourced widely in Islamic scripture, beginning with the Quran. The
scriptures even underline that this duty is shared by both men and women.
In one verse,
Muslims are instructed: "Let there be one community of you, calling good
and commanding right and forbidding wrong" (3:110). Another instructs:
"Believers, the men and the women, are friends of one another; they
command right, and forbid wrong" (9:71). Impartiality is critical to fulfilling
this duty. As it is written: "And let not the hatred of others to you make
you swerve to wrong and depart from justice" (5:8).
The holy
texts of Islam emphasize that one's greatest allegiance should be to
justice—superseding family and co-religionist ties. "Be strict in
observing justice, and be witness for Allah, even though it be against
yourselves or against your parents or kindred," the Quran says in chapter
4, verse 36.
Justice is
the cornerstone of Islamic life—despite the appalling reality of many Muslim-majority
countries today. Every faithful Muslim must contribute to the preservation of
justice within their society.
How we
respond to possible hearings on radicalism will reveal our own commitment to
Islam. Cooperation can take the form of expert testimony, informing on radical
entities, and perhaps foremost, educating ourselves about our religion. Lest
any doubt remain as to how Muslims must respond to Mr. King's call, an anecdote
from the hadith (the Prophet's sayings) makes it explicit. . . .
Dr. Ahmed is
author of "In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in
the Saudi Kingdom" (Sourcebooks, 2008).
Read
Dr. Ahmed's entire OpEd in the WSJ, Subscription required . . .
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VOM
Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about.
* * * * *
9. Book Review: The Slippery Slope
From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder
FORCED
EXIT - The Slippery Slope From
Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder,
by Wesley J Smith, Times Books, div of Random House, New York, 1997, xxvi,
& 291 pp. ISBN: 0-8129-2790-7
Wesley J Smith, author of No Contest: Corporate
Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America, opens his prologue of Forced
Exit with the story of a dear friend who spent years planning her suicide
and after inviting friends to the event, none of whom came, exited this life
quietly. Smith, an Oakland attorney, contacted the executrix and obtained her
suicide file wherein he found newsletters and other scurrilous documents from
the Hemlock Society that thoroughly sickened him.
This motivated Smith to research into death, the
inventing of the right to die that is driving people to embrace the death
culture, and euthanasia's betrayal of medicine. He finds that a society that
believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. Seen in this
light, support for euthanasia is not a cause but rather a symptom of the broad
breakdown of "community" and the ongoing unraveling of our mutual
interconnectedness. The consequences of this moral Balkanization can be seen in
the disintegration of family cohesiveness; in the growing nihilism among young
people that has led to a rise in suicides, drug use, and other destructive
behaviors; in the growing belief that the lives of sick, disabled, and dying
people are so meaningless that helping them kill themselves can be countenanced
and even encouraged.
Smith calls acceptance of euthanasia "terminal
nonjudgmentalism." He finds a good example in A Chosen Death by
Lonny Shavelson, an emergency physician, who describes "Gene" who has
had strokes and depression but is not terminal. Sarah, from the Hemlock
Society, is given the task of assisting in his death. Sarah found her first
killing experience tremendously satisfying and powerful, "the most
intimate experience you can share with a person... More than sex. More than
birth." Sarah gives Gene the poisonous brew as if she were handing him a
beer. Gene drinks the liquid, falls asleep on Sarah's lap who then places a
plastic bag over his head and croons, "See the light. Go to the
light." But Gene, suddenly faced with the prospect of immediate death,
changes his mind and screams out . . . and tries to rip the bag off his face.
Sarah won't allow it, catches Gene's wrist and holds it. Gene's body thrust
upwards and Sarah lays across Gene's shoulders . . . pinning him down, twisting
the bag to seal it tight. Gene's body stops moving.
Smith says what happened to Gene is murder. He
further feels that the ethical thing for Dr Shavelson to have done was to knock
Sarah off the helpless man and then dial 911 for an ambulance and the police.
Shavelson describes his thoughts on whether to act or observe the death, and
Smith calls this non-decision "terminal nonjudgmentalism," or TNJ. He
feels that what Shavelson and other death fundamentalists miss is that so-called
protective guidelines for the "hopelessly ill" are meaningless; they
provide only a veneer of respectability. Once killing is deemed an appropriate
response to suffering, the threshold dividing "acceptable" from
"unacceptable" killing will be continually under siege. But the
fiction of control, essential to the public's acceptance of euthanasia, will
have to be maintained, so the definition of what will be seen as
"legitimate" killing will be expanded continually.
I personally observed this attitude at the last international
meeting of my professional society as I spoke with pulmonologists from The
Netherlands, Belgium, and other Western European countries who admitted that
"killing patients" occurs rather frequently--sometimes the sickest in
the hospital is killed simply to open a bed for a new admission.
As we are beginning to comprehend the holocaust; as
African Americans are searching for the relics of their slavery, like the neck
irons with their torture springs and who say that this was the real holocaust;
when doctors are able to kill thousands of the millions that lie on beds of
mercy every day, we will see the epithet of Shindler's List, when doctors
directed those whose lives weren't worth living into lines toward the chambers.
What was thought to be the efficient killing by the Nazis and the communist
doesn't hold a candle to what a free misguided society can do as we open up
pandora's box for doctors to kill patients whose only crime was being ill, or
alive with a life not thought to be worth living, We must act before it is too
late. Otherwise those who do act, will be considered alive, but will not be
after their first accident or illness that brings them in contact with ruthless
bureaucratic state controlled doctors, a horror we can't imagine, or a thrill,
that not even Stalin or Hitler could envision.
This book review is found at . . .
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The
Book Review Section Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Reading.
* * * * *
10. Hippocrates
& His Kin: Doctor's scales
can make you cry.
Little girl who
watched her mommy get weighed in the doctor's office tells her friend who was
about to get on the scale: "Don't step on it. It'll make you cry."
Patient: Doctor,
you only marked eight tests and I would like every test that's on this
requisition. I have the best insurance that my boss provides. First class PPO
Triple Plus. No deductibles. No co-pays.
Doctor: But I
need a reason for every test I order. Why don't you take that requisition home
with you and write on each line the medical reason you want the test.
Patient: What do
you think that would cost my insurance company?
Doctor: I've
never figured up the total cost and the costs aren't that transparent. But I'm
told that they would add up to more than $100,000.
Patient: I think
that I'm worth it.
Doctor: What if
everyone in the country had your attitude? If only 200 million Americans wanted
what you want, that would be $20 trillion or ten times the health care cost of
the entire country.
To
read more HHK . . .
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Hippocrates
and His Kin / Hippocrates Modern Colleagues
The Challenges of Yesteryear, Today & Tomorrow
* * * * *
11.
Professionals Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice, Government
and Society:
•
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. For their article, "Are you really insured?," go to www.healthplanusa.net/AE-AreYouReallyInsured.htm.
•
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. I
also believe in an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Please Note that PAYMENT IS EXPECTED AT
THE TIME OF SERVICE. 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."
•
Dr Vern Cherewatenko concerning success in restoring private-based
medical practice which has grown internationally through the SimpleCare model
network. Dr Vern calls his practice PIFATOS – Pay In Full At Time Of Service,
the "Cash-Based Revolution." The patient pays in full before leaving.
Because doctor charges are anywhere from 25–50 percent inflated due to
administrative costs caused by the health insurance industry, you'll be paying
drastically reduced rates for your medical expenses. In conjunction with a
regular catastrophic health insurance policy to cover extremely costly
procedures, PIFATOS can save the average healthy adult and/or family up to
$5000/year! To read the rest of the story, go to www.simplecare.com.
•
Dr David MacDonald started Liberty Health Group. To compare the
traditional health insurance model with the Liberty high-deductible model, go
to www.libertyhealthgroup.com/Liberty_Solutions.htm.
There is extensive data available for your study. Dr Dave is available to speak
to your group on a consultative basis.
•
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.
•
ReflectiveMedical Information Systems
(RMIS), delivering
information that empowers patients, is a new venture by Dr. Gibson, one of our
regular contributors, and his research group which will go far in making health
care costs transparent. This site
provides access to information related to medical costs as an informational and
educational service to users of the website. This site contains general
information regarding the historical, estimates, actual and Medicare range of
amounts paid to providers and billed by providers to treat the procedures
listed. These amounts were calculated based on actual claims paid. These
amounts are not estimates of costs that may be incurred in the future. Although
national or regional representations and estimates may be displayed, data from
certain areas may not be included. You may want to
follow this development at www.ReflectiveMedical.com.
•
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,
who 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.
•
Dennis
Gabos, MD, President of
the Society for the Education of Physicians and Patients (SEPP), is
making efforts in Protecting, Preserving, and Promoting the Rights, Freedoms
and Responsibilities of Patients and Health Care Professionals. For more
information, go to www.sepp.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."
"Seek not to change the world, but choose to
change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your
thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see."
— Quote from A Course in Miracles
"Never let what you cannot do stop you from doing
what you CAN do!" — Stephen Pierce: Internet marketer and author
"There's lots of people in this world who spend
so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy
it." — Josh Billings: 19th
century humorist
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