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MEDICAL TUESDAY . NET |
NEWSLETTER |
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Community For Better Health Care |
Vol VIII, No
8, July 28, 2009 |
In This Issue:
1.
Featured Article:
Live
Free or Die
by Mark Steyn
2.
In
the News: The SAFE
Commission to Control Federal Spending and National Debt
3.
International Medicine: Canadian Medicare in Alberta
4.
Medicare:
Warnings about Medicare's Impending Bankruptcy Could Become Illegal
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Why Emergency Departments are the most costly.
6.
Medical Myths:
AAPS Healthcare Reform Mythbusters Series
7.
Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: The $11 trillion national debt
8.
Voices of Medicine:
"Primum non nocere " - First, not to do harm
9.
The Bookshelf: AMERICA
ALONE, The End of the World as
we Know It
10.
Hippocrates
& His Kin: Giving Federal Employees a
credit card is like giving whiskey and keys to teenagers.
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
Words of Wisdom, Recent
Postings, In Memoriam . . .
* * * * *
MOVIE
EXPLAINING SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
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.
* * * * *
1.
Featured Article: Live Free or Die by Mark Steyn, April 2009
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on
March 9, 2009.
MY REMARKS are titled tonight
after the words of General Stark, New Hampshire's great hero of the
Revolutionary War: "Live free or die!" When I first moved to New
Hampshire, where this appears on our license plates, I assumed General Stark
had said it before some battle or other—a bit of red meat to rally the boys for
the charge; a touch of the old Henry V-at-Agincourt routine. But I soon
discovered that the general had made his famous statement decades after the
war, in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. And in a
curious way I found that even more impressive. In extreme circumstances, many
people can rouse themselves to rediscover the primal impulses: The brave men on
Flight 93 did. They took off on what they thought was a routine business trip,
and, when they realized it wasn't, they went into General Stark mode and cried
"Let's roll!" But it's harder to maintain the "Live free or
die!" spirit when you're facing not an immediate crisis but just a slow,
remorseless, incremental, unceasing ratchet effect. "Live free or
die!" sounds like a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an
honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald
statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as
free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.
My book America Alone is
often assumed to be about radical Islam, firebreathing imams, the excitable
young men jumping up and down in the street doing the old "Death to the
Great Satan" dance. It's not. It's about us. It's about a possibly
terminal manifestation of an old civilizational temptation: Indolence, as
Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic. When I ran into trouble
with the so-called "human rights" commissions up in Canada, it seemed
bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam.
One half of the alliance profess to be pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the
other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Even as the cheap bus 'n'
truck road-tour version of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it made no sense. But in
fact what they have in common overrides their superficially more obvious
incompatibilities: Both the secular Big Government progressives and political
Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted
to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and
exploit his potential.
In most of the developed world,
the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood—health
care, child care, care of the elderly—to the point where it's effectively
severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival
instinct. Hillary Rodham Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. It's
supposedly an African proverb—there is no record of anyone in Africa ever using
this proverb, but let that pass. P.J. O'Rourke summed up that book superbly: It
takes a village to raise a child. The government is the village, and you're the
child. Oh, and by the way, even if it did take a village to raise a child, I
wouldn't want it to be an African village. If you fly over West Africa at
night, the lights form one giant coastal megalopolis: Not even Africans regard
the African village as a useful societal model. But nor is the European
village. Europe's addiction to big government, unaffordable entitlements,
cradle-to-grave welfare, and a dependence on mass immigration needed to sustain
it has become an existential threat to some of the oldest nation-states in the
world.
And now the last holdout, the
United States, is embarking on the same grim path: After the President unveiled
his budget, I heard Americans complain, oh, it's another Jimmy Carter, or LBJ's
Great Society, or the new New Deal. You should be so lucky. Those
nickel-and-dime comparisons barely begin to encompass the wholesale
Europeanization that's underway. The 44th president's multi-trillion-dollar
budget, the first of many, adds more to the national debt than all the previous
43 presidents combined, from George Washington to George Dubya. The President
wants Europeanized health care, Europeanized daycare, Europeanized education,
and, as the Europeans have discovered, even with Europeanized tax rates you
can't make that math add up. In Sweden, state spending accounts for 54% of GDP.
In America, it was 34%—ten years ago. Today, it's about 40%. In four years'
time, that number will be trending very Swede-like.
But forget the money, the
deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end of them.
So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn't the
cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to
cover them each month. They're wrong because they deform the relationship between
the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the
moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal. . .
Mark Steyn is
the Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism, Hillsdale
College.
* * * * *
2. In the News: The SAFE Commission to Control Federal
Spending and National Debt
The Need
According to the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), outlays will top $4 trillion for this year
alone and will consume 28.5 percent of our nation's economy. By 2019, CBO
estimates that spending will still constitute 24.5 percent of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) - about four percentage points above the historical
average. On the revenue side, CBO estimates that the Administration's
budget will increase taxes by $1.5 trillion. The proposal would
more than double the level of public debt over the 10 year CBO projection -
resulting in debt equal to 82 percent of Gross Domestic Product by
2019.
We have a responsibility to avoid passing a massive
debt burden on to our children and grandchildren. A doubling of the debt
burden over the next 10 years to 82 percent of GDP will impose a significant
tax burden on them coupled with the prospect of a lower standard of
living. In conjunction with the coming explosion in entitlement spending
entailed by the aging of the "baby-boomers," we are simply
"kicking the can down the road" for the next generation to
address. As both a father and grandfather, this greatly concerns me.
The time is long overdue for a holistic look at the budget process which takes
into account our immediate needs and which doesn't plant the seeds for the next
economic bubble. If nothing else, we must learn from the current crisis
that it is not possible to indefinitely live beyond our means.
The Legislation
The SAFE Commission Act (H.R.
1557), bipartisan legislation authored by Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN) and
Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), would:
·
Establish the Securing
America's Future Economy (SAFE) Commission to develop legislation designed to
address:
o
the unsustainable
imbalance between long-term federal spending commitments and projected revenues
o
increases in net
national savings to provide for domestic investment and economic growth,
o
the implications of
foreign ownership of federally issued debt instruments, and
o
revision of the budget
process to place greater emphasis on long-term fiscal issues.
·
Require the Commission
to:
o
develop one or two
methods for estimating the cost of legislation as an alternative to the current
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) method, and hold at least one town-hall style
public hearing within each federal reserve district.
·
Require the Commission
to submit a legislative proposal to Congress and the President to achieve
generational equity and long-term economic stability.
·
Authorize the President
to submit to Congress an alternative proposal.
·
Authorize the Committee
on the Budget of either chamber to publish its own alternative proposal in the
Congressional Record.
·
Require the House and
Senate to vote on the legislation within 90 days.
o
Require CBO to prepare a
long-term cost estimate and have it published in the Congressional Record as
expeditiously as possible whenever requested to do so by the Commission, the
President, or the chairman or ranking minority member of the Committee on the
Budget of either chamber.
Read
the entire solution . . .
* * * * *
3.
International
Healthcare: Canadian Medicare in Alberta
Because
it tries to deal with the symptoms of a failing health care program without
tackling the cause of that failure, it is difficult to see Alberta's new plan
as anything beyond a dismal disappointment.
A few months ago, Alberta Premier Ralph
Klein committed to a "Third Way" that would have been a major
milestone in the history of Canadian Medicare.
Up to that point, discussions of health
care reform had inevitably deteriorated into accusations of promoting a
"U.S.-style" health care program in Canada. Klein turned the debate
in Alberta by not only realizing but actually publicly stating that there are
many other options for reform. Specifically, the Premier proclaimed that he
would implement reforms based on the developed world's most successful
universal access programs.
So it came as a particular disappointment
that the "Third Way" announced Tuesday by his government amounted to
little more than a reaffirmation of Alberta's commitment to the status quo.
Consider, for a moment, the current state
of Canadian medicare. No nation that guarantees access for all citizens
regardless of their ability to pay spends more on health care than this
country, on an age-adjusted basis. But Canadians still suffer some of the
longest waiting times, experience relatively poor access to doctors and
technology, and enjoy only average health outcomes when compared with these other
nations. Put simply, the status quo leaves taxpayers dishing out for
world-class health care and getting service that ranges from average to
terrible.
It seemed, for a while at least, that the
Alberta government was prepared to recognize there was a better way -- one that
would take its lessons from the health care programs found in Australia,
Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, Sweden and Switzerland.
The programs in those nations deliver superior health outcomes to Canada's, or
deliver access to medicare without waiting lists, or both. And while each is
unique, all have some very important fundamental policies in common.
Most importantly, all of them revolve
around competition and financial incentives. Each of those countries requires
patients to be responsible for at least some of the cost of their care, allow
care to be delivered competitively by private hospitals and allow patients the
opportunity to seek care on their own terms if the public program is unwilling
or unable to meet their needs. As a result, these programs make better use of
their resources and deliver services in a more patient-focused and
patient-oriented setting.
It is these policies, and the fundamental concepts of competition and financial incentives, that should have been at the core of Tuesday's announcement. Klein and Health Minister Iris Evans should have been talking about implementing a cost-sharing arrangement, introducing competitive private provision of publicly funded services and withdrawing all rules and regulations restricting Albertans' freedom to seek all health services (even medically necessary ones) on their own terms. Instead, the government turned away from the promising vision hinted at in Klein's previous discussions of the Third Way, and all the benefits that would have accrued to Albertans as a result. . . .Read the entire article . . .
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:
Warnings about Medicare's Impending Bankruptcy Could Become Illegal
House Health Bill Would Silence Trustees'
Medicare Bankruptcy Warnings
When the Medicare Trustees warn Congress
that Medicare is on an unsustainable path to bankruptcy, the Democratic
response is not reform the program but to simply silence the trustees.
President Obama has repeatedly claimed that his health
care reforms also represent entitlement reform. Not surprisingly, the
Congressional Budget Office shows this claim is implausible. They have scored
several health care proposals as costing more than $1 trillion in the first
decade, and certainly more thereafter. Accordingly, lawmakers are
considering substantially raising taxes (during a recession!) to fund their
proposals. Of course, health care reforms that are intended to save money
usually do not typically require painful tax increases to offset their
cost. The reality is that health care reform will substantially worsen
the alarming condition of the long-term budget outlook where the biggest
problem is Medicare, says the Heritage Foundation.
Rather than deal with Medicare's situation directly,
the President and his allies promise to "bend the curve" to achieve
savings across the health care spectrum -- including Medicare. If this is
true, why then would page 836 (Section 1901) of the House bill repeal the "Medicare
trigger" that is intended to force legislative action when Medicare's
finances worsen, asks Heritage?
·
The Medicare
Modernization Act of 2003 had mandated that if more than 45 percent of Medicare
expenditures were projected to come from general revenues (as opposed to
dedicated revenues, such as payroll taxes and beneficiary premiums) within a
seven-year period, the trustees would issue a warning.
·
Two consecutive years of
this warning would require the President to offer reform legislation and
Congress to give that legislation expedited consideration.
This warning has been triggered four consecutive years
-- the last three of which would have required legislative action. Yet
the Democratic Congress has regularly passed rules suspending their
responsibility to address Medicare's unsustainability. Now, the House
health care bill would repeal the trigger altogether.
The lesson is clear, says Heritage:
·
When the Medicare
Trustees warn Congress that Medicare is on an unsustainable path to bankruptcy,
the Democratic response is not reform the program, but to simply silence the
trustees.
·
Consequently, Congress
can continue to ignore Medicare's $38 trillion unfunded obligation.
During his campaign for president, Obama had said
"we're going to have to take on entitlements, and I think we've got to do
it quickly." Instead, he proposed layering an expensive new health
care entitlement on top of an entitlement system that was already projected to
go bankrupt. That will result in massive deficits and taxes dumped into
the laps of our children and grandchildren. If the President accepts the
House provision repealing the Medicare trigger, it will be another nail in the
coffin of our long-term financial sustainability, says Heritage.
Source: Editorial, "House Health Bill Would Silence
Trustee's Medicare Bankruptcy Warnings," Heritage Foundation, July 15,
2009.
www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18213
For more on Health Issues: www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16
Government is not the solution to our problems, government is
the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Why Emergency Departments are the most costly.
Patients with or
without insurance go to the Emergency Room of various hospitals to obtain care
for a variety of reasons. They may not have a personal physician, it may be
more convenient to go after work than to their own physician, they enjoy having
the full resources of the highest and most expensive care at their disposal
even without health insurance as only a hospital can provide, or it's their
social event of the day.
Regarding the
latter, I recall the Emergency Room at Kansas City General Hospital where many
members of the community congregated every evening. Some were sick, some
accompanied others that were sick and some came to see which of their friends
might be sick. Frequently there was standing room only but they didn't seem to
mind. In fact, they all seemed to be having a grand time.
About 10 PM one
evening, the two interns on duty were becoming exhausted and there still was
standing room only. They hadn't had an emergency all evening. They were getting tired of treating sniffles
and sore throats and earaches, which could have been treated in the patient's
personal physician's office earlier or later in the week with no diminution of
quality of care.
One of the
interns came up with a plan to clear the area of the non-sick. He drew up a
huge 50 ml syringe with saline and a spinal needle about five inches long. He
made arrangements with the other intern to be very busy doing nothing and a
nurse who would come to his aid after he went out into the middle of the
waiting room, feigning an epileptic fit. He held the syringe high and stammered
into the waiting room yelling, "Who's next?" as he went into a
writhing and then tonic, clonic, convulsive reaction. The other intern dropped
his black bag and yelled for the nurse to help as they dragged the jerking
intern back into the empty examining room.
They then
watched as about 50 alleged patients had their social event of the evening
interrupted and stumbled over each other to get out of the Kansas City General
Hospital Emergency Room. There were only about five patients left that the two
interns assumed were really the patients that needed attention. They took care
of them and had a nice, steady workload the rest of the night without the
stress of having 50 people in line.
This supports
the contention that about 85 percent of the care given in the Emergency Room is
for routine office-type care and not emergencies. But when highly trained ER
physicians practice pediatric and general medicine on a one-time basis with
patients whom they have never seen before and probably will never see again,
does the patient obtain a good level of care? Does the patient obtain a
cost-efficient level of care? No and no.
The patient with
costochondritis (inflammation of the ribs at the point of attachment to the
sternum), who mentions chest pain to the receptionist, will have the whole
triage system for a myocardial infarction immediately implemented. This is not
to discredit the ER Specialists, but to emphasize the necessary program for the
expected critical emergency care for which the ERs were established. This
patient gets a complete cardiac evaluation with the most modern tests
available, many of which are hundreds of dollars each. We've seen statements as
high as $9,000 for this type of visit where the patient was found to have no
heart disease. The patient is seen the next day in the office still complaining
of the chest pain. The personal physician then palpates a tender costal-sternal
margin, the patient is given two extra-strength Tylenol tablets and the pain is
resolved within the hour. Nine cents worth of medicine compared with $9,000
worth of high tech tests. Can the hospital or ER Specialist solve this problem?
Probably not because of liability issues involved in a one-time patient who
alleges an emergency. But if something goes wrong, the attorneys, judges and
jury will look on the outcome if the full evaluation was not done. Why would
the hospital or ER specialist risk this type of liability? Why would Medicare
or Medicaid interfere and assume the liability? So there can be no cost
controls under our present system. There are no effective controls without
serious risks in our present socialized government-controlled health care
system. The answer has to come from the patient. But the answer won't come from
the patient as long as the ER is relatively free. However, if the patient had a
ten or twenty percent co-payment, the cost containment would occur at the
registration desk as each patient evaluates the cost versus the expected
benefit for the perceived risks. If the costs exceed the expected benefits and
perceived risks, the patient and his family leave the registration desk, go
home and the spouse administers the Extra-strength Tylenol. The patient feels
better with nine cents worth of medicine, saving the system $9,000 of high-tech
tests.
Medical Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
Gluttony Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on
Every Service.
* * * * *
6. Medical Myths: AAPS Healthcare Reform Mythbusters
Series
Myth 2: A public plan could save enough on administrative costs to
provide coverage to all.
June 29th, 2009 (See MedicalTuesday July
14 for Mythbuster No 1.)
It is frequently asserted, especially by groups such
as Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), that a "single
payer" (government) system could "save" enough money on
administration to buy coverage for all the uninsured.
The basis for the assertion is the claim that Medicare
spends only 2% to 3% of its outlays on administration, compared with private
plans' alleged costs of 20% to 25%.
In fact, data from the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) shows that insurance companies spend at least 50% less on administration
than government does on its health programs. (The Congressional Budget Office
Reports: Comparing
health care admin cost: who's less costly?)
CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
divides spending data into care (paid to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and
others for patient care) and non-care (everything else). For 2009, CMS projects
spending on care at $2.13 trillion, and non-care at $424 billion or 16.7% of
total spending.
Of the $879 billion projected to be paid in 2009 by
private insurance, CMS estimates $128 billion for non-care—12.7%. For all
public programs except Medicare, the comparable percentage is 26%, without adjustment for the taxes and assessments
paid only by private insurers. Unlike Medicare, other public programs—Medicaid,
SCHIP, Veterans Administration, and military programs—are internally
administered.
Medicare is externally administered by private
companies; its non-care costs are 5.7%. If it were administered like other
government programs, administrative cost would increase by $1 trillion over the
next 10 years.
There are many reasons why private companies have
higher non-care costs for their private plans than for Medicare:
·
Private insurance plans
must pay government taxes and assessments up to 5% of premiums. When these are
factored out, the real net cost of private administration is less than 10%.
·
CMS excludes the cost of
its own employees who enroll recipients, perform outreach and education, handle
customer service, and do auditing and other functions. Private plans include
these in overhead.
·
Private plans have on
average a higher number of claims to process for a given amount of expenditure.
·
Insurance companies have
to collect premiums. The IRS does that for Medicare.
·
Private companies do
underwriting; their premiums have to cover their costs. Medicare deficits have
to be covered by taxpayers.
·
The cost of servicing
the public debt is not included in Medicare costs—and Part B is 75% subsidized
by general revenues, not beneficiary premiums.
Greg Dattilo and Dave Racer conclude: "Though one
has to dig for the truth, the CBO report makes the case: Competition in a
private health insurance market saves tens of billions each year that
government agencies would waste on administrative cost."
Benjamin Zycher of the Manhattan Institute
for Policy Research also notes that it costs the economy more than a dollar
to send a dollar to Washington (Wall St J
10/29/07). The lowest plausible assumption for the excess economic cost of
the tax burden, 20%, would raise the cost of delivering Medicare benefits to at
least 24% to 25% of Medicare outlays, and a more realistic estimate to about
52%, or four to five times the net cost of private insurance.
Other facts to remember about Medicare administration:
·
The threshold for investigating
fraud by carriers is about $200 million.
·
Physicians are subjected
to career or life-destroying audits, civil monetary penalties, or criminal
prosecutions, over what should be simple billing disputes (Libby RT, The
Criminalization of Medicine: America's War on Doctors, Praeger 2008,
reviewed in J Am
Phys Surg, summer 2008).
Additional information:
·
"The
Administrative Cost Fallacy," AAPS News, September 2002.
·
"Medicare Attacks; a
Practice Survives," by J. Philip Smith, M.D., J Am Phys Surg,
spring 2004.
Medical Myths Originate When Government 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 $11 trillion national debt
Dr. Rosen: The Sacramento Suburban
Congressman, Dan Lungren sent out a brochure with his concern about the $11
trillion national debt and that spending continues with no end in sight.
Dr.
Dave: I got one also. It's about time
Congress wakes up to the damage they're doing to the American people.
Dr.
Paul: I got one too, and he's like
the typical conservative Republican, worried about the cost of entitlements.
Dr.
Edwards: How can you not be worried?
Don't you have children that are being enslaved?
Dr.
Paul: You guys are always worried
about the next generation. We need the problems solved here and now.
Dr.
Edwards: Well, I have children. And I
think what we are placing on their shoulders is cruel and inhumane.
Dr.
Paul: They'll survive. It's just
money.
Dr.
Dave: I thought we once had a
"Tea Party" and "No Taxation Without Representation." And
then we whipped the British for taxing us. Haven't you sent tea bags to your
congressman and senator?
Dr.
Paul: No I haven't and don't plan to.
Did you vote in this last election?
Dr.
Dave: I certainly did. But I didn't
vote for this mess.
Dr.
Paul: Then you were represented. It's
just that your vote was in the minority.
Dr.
Edwards: But isn't there a moral issue
involved here? My children and future grandchildren are not able to vote for or
against these taxes that they will have to pay. That caused a war of
independence. Independence from the Brits and the Europeans.
Dr.
Paul: What kind of war do you want to
fight? We are independent and subservient to none.
Dr.
Rosen: But we are subservient to the
government. The war of independence was to put the people in charge of the
government, which was to be their servant.
Dr.
Paul: But our government is a product
of our people and their vote. So they have to do what we elected them to do.
Dr.
Edwards: But we didn't vote for the
Europeanization of America. Our forefathers left Europe for freedom from the
Tyranny of Government. Now we're the slaves of government.
Dr.
Rosen: We are going backward in
history. For millennia, governments had been oppressive and people had no
voice. Now after the first 150 years of the greatest experiment in freedom the
world has ever known, why are we giving up this hard fought freedom without
firing a shot?
Dr.
Paul: Who would you want to shoot?
Dr.
Rosen: I guess that's a good
question. It looks like if China and Russia call in all the United States notes
they hold from our excessive spending, they could take over our country since
they hold the mortgage. And they would not have to fire a shot.
Dr.
Edwards: I hope those of us that want
to keep our freedom wake up before it's too late. Once we're enslaved again, it
will take another millennia to restore freedom—if it still can be restored.
The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Medical Opinions Are Heard.
* * * * *
8.
Voices of
Medicine: A Review of Local and Regional Medical Journal Articles
VITAL SIGNS – Journal of The Fresno-Madera And Kern
Counties Medical Societies
President's
Message by Cynthia Bergmann, MD, "Primum
non nocere " – First not to do harm
"Primum
non nocere" – First not to do harm
– is a phrase often repeated as a basic tenant of medicine and one that
most of us believe is a part of the Hippocratic oath. Of course the fact that
Hippocrates was a Greek who lived between 460 and 370 BC makes it unlikely that
he spoke a Latin phrase to his students. The earliest use of the phrase has
been attributed to the 17th Century English physician Thomas Sydenham. The
phrase was used sparingly until it was popularized by the Journal of the
American Medical Association Editor Morris Fishbein, MD in1930. While this
phrase is an appropriate admonition to all physicians to think before they do
and perhaps knowing that doing nothing may be the best treatment, I believe it
is time to consider adopting a second Latin phrase to guide us as
physicians:
Secundus prosum –
Second, do good.
We are taught and our
ethics dictate that we always do what is best for the patient sitting in front
of us. With the advent of
telemedicine and e-medicine, our patient may be sitting in front of a
camera or a computer screen
instead of in an exam room.
That patient is our
community, and I believe now is the time we consider our duty to the community,
which in turn, has a huge impact on the health of our patients, family and
friends. The health of our community directly influences our patients, our
ability to practice, and even our own health.
For too long we have
thought that if we took good care of our patients, we were doing our job, and
that if we did volunteer work, any public obligations we had would be
satisfied. As we come to have a greater understanding of how health and
prevention intertwine, it becomes apparent that the small amount of time we get
to spend in direct patient contact is overshadowed by environmental influences
on the patient. The air they breathe, the foods they eat, the stresses they
encounter in their daily lives and their access to other doctors and health
care all have a profound influence on a patient's ability to lead a healthy and
productive life. As individual physicians we have little power to change these
types of challenges for our patient.
As a group of physicians,
however, we have tremendous ability to influence community attitudes. Our air
quality work has been instrumental in improving our ability to breathe healthy
air. We are being asked to support a new medical school at UC-Merced that would
have a patient-centered curriculum and give a combined BS/MD degree in six
years rather than the traditional eight. This would decrease the time and money
spent by our future doctors as well as giving them a "Valley
foundation" in the hopes that they would continue living here as
practicing physicians. By sharing healthy life-style messages directly with the
public, we re-enforce the healthy living advice they are getting in their
personal physician's office.
It is time to "do
good" for our community and our selves. Be prepared to say yes when you
are asked to participate. Even a small effort can have significant
consequences.
www.fmms.org/pdf/Feb09_VS.FINAL.pdf
VOM Is Where Doctors' Thinking is Crystallized into Writing.
* * * * *
9. Book Review: AMERICA ALONE, The End of
the World as we Know It, by Mark
Steyn, Regnery Publishing, Inc, an Eagle Publishing Company, Washington, DC,
xxx & 224 pages, $27.95; © 2006 by Mark Steyn. ISBN-13 978-0-89526-078-9
"When
people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong
horse." -Osama Bin Laden, Kandahar, November 2001.
"If we
know anything, it is that weakness is provocative." -Donald Rumsfeld,
Washington DC 1998.
Steyn
begins: "Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the
responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: he feels
good about feeling bad.
But
what to worry about? Iranian nukes? . .
. worrying about nukes is so eighties."
So
what should we be cowering in terror over? Steyn feels the harrowing nightmares
of doom didn't start with Chicken Little and won't end with Al Gore. So, should
we forget about the end of the world and head for the hills? Steyn says: Don't
head for the hills - they're full of Islamist terrorist camps. He describes a
much bigger nutshell. The Western world will not survive the twenty-first
century. Many, if not most European countries will effectively disappear in our
lifetime. Just as in Istanbul there's still a building known as St. Sophia's
Cathedral, but it's not a cathedral: It's merely a designation for a piece of
real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations
for real estate. Forget the ecochondriacs's obsessions with rising sea levels
that might conceivably hypothetically threaten the Maldive Islands circ 2500;
contrary to Francis Fukuyama, it's not the end of history; it's the end of the
world as we know it. Whether we like what replaces it depends on whether
America can summon the will to shape at least part of the emerging world. If
not, then it's the dawn of the new Dark Ages (if darkness can dawn): A planet
on which much of the map is re-primitized.
Before
you think that Steyn is as nuts as the ecodoom set, he reminds us of Chicken
Little's successors in this field:
·
Distinguished Scientist
Paul Ehrlich declared in his 1968 bestselling book, The Population Bomb,
"In the 1970s the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of
people are going to starve to death."
·
In 1976, Lowell Ponte
published a huge bestseller called The Cooling: Has the New Ice Age Already
Begun? Can We Survive?
·
In 1977, Jimmy Carter,
president of the United States (incredible as it may seem), confidently
predicted that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the
entire world by the end of the next decade."
None
of these things occurred. But according to Steyn, here's what did happen
between 1970 and 2000: in that period, the developed world declined from just
under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, and the Muslim
nations increased from about 15 percent to 20 percent. Is that fact less
significant than the fate of some tree or endangered sloth? In 1970, very few
non-Muslims outside the Indian subcontinent gave much though to Islam. Even the
Palestinian situation was seen within the framework of a more or less
conventional ethnic nationalist problem. Yet today it's Islam a-go-go: almost
every geopolitical crises takes place on what Sam Huntington, in The Clash
of Civilizations, calls "the boundary looping across Eurasia and
Africa that separates Muslims from non-Muslims." That boundary loops from
Bali, to southern Thailand, to an obscure resource-rich Muslim republic in the
Russian Federation, to Madrid, and London before penetrating into the very
heart of the West in a little more than a generation.
September
11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that
revealed how much had already changed. That Tuesday morning the top of the
iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.
Steyn
says that his book is about the seven-eighths of the iceberg below the surface
- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too
enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call
into question the future of much of the rest of the world, including the United
States, Canada and beyond.
He
cites three key factors:
·
Demographic decline:
People Power
·
The unsustainability of
the Advanced Western social-democratic state: Welfare and Warfare
·
Civilizational
exhaustion: Fighting vainly the old ennui
1. People Power:
Steyn
starts with demography, because everything does. He wonders how many
pontificators on the Middle East peace process ever run this number: the median
age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years. Once you know that, all the rest is
details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want
to try to persuade a nation - or pseudo-nation of unemployed poorly educated
teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense?
Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into
account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.
In
a similar fashion, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is
that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is
one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history. The heart warming ethnic
comedies, where a WASPy type dates a gal from a vast, loving, fecund
Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles
that you can barely get in the room, are an inversion of the truth. Greece has
a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what
demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no
human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility rate is the healthiest
in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain, 1.1. Insofar
as any citizens of the developed world having "big" families these
days, it's the Anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New
Zealand's a little below. Hollywood should be making a movie on a Sad Greek
only child marrying into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse
actually has a sibling.
·
Steyn says this isn't a
projection - it's actually happening now. But if you do extrapolate, here goes:
by 2050, 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins,
no aunts, and no uncles. The big Italian family with papa pouring vino and mama
spooning out pasta on an endless table will be gone, no more, dead as the
dinosaurs. . .
2. Welfare and Warfare
In
this section, Steyn gives us valuable insight into our welfare system.
Demographic decline and the unsustainabilty of the social-democratic state are
closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like
to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have
to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse
shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to.
Steyn
gives several examples of populations peaks and valleys without any harm. In
the post-Gold Rush Yukon, one minute the saloons are bustling and the garters
of the hoochie-koochie dancers are stuffed with dollar bills; the next they're
all shuttered up and everyone's skedaddled out on the last south-bound dogsled.
But the territory isn't stuck trying to figure who's going to pay for the
hoochie-koochie gals' retirement complex. Unlike the emptying saloons of White
Horse and Dawson City, demography is an existential crisis for the developed
world, because the twentieth-century social-democratic state was built on a
careless model that requires a constantly growing population to sustain it.
Steyn
formulates it like this:
·
Age + Welfare = Disaster
for you
·
Youth + Will = Disaster
for whoever gets in your way. . .
3. Fighting Vainly the Old Ennui
Steyn
then proceeds into the third factor - the enervated state of the Western world,
the sense of Civilizational ennui, of nations too mired in cultural relativism
to understand what's at stake. To Americans, it doesn't always seem obvious
that there's any connection between the "war on terror" and the
so-called "pocketbook issues" of domestic politics. But there is a
correlation between the structural weaknesses of the social-democratic state
and the rise of a globalized Islam. The state has gradually annexed all the
responsibilities of adulthood - health care, child care, care of the elderly -
to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal
instincts, not least the survival instinct. These programs corrode the
citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government
is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like
Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff
it. We should have learned that lesson on September 11, 2001, when big
government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad
hoc citizen militia of Flight 93. . .
When
Osama bin Laden made his observation about people being attracted to the strong
horse rather than the weak horse, it was partly a perception issue. You can be,
technically, the strong horse - plenty of tanks and bombs and nukes and whatnot
- but if you're seen as too feeble ever to deploy them, you'll be kitted out
for the weak-horse suit. He wasn't thinking of Europe, whose reabsorption
within the caliphate Islamists see as all but complete. Rather, he was
considering the hyperpower.
America
is the most benign hegemon in history: it's the world's first non-imperial
superpower and, at the dawn of the American moment, it chose to set itself up
as a kind of geopolitical sugar daddy. By picking up the tab for Europe's
defense, it hoped to prevent those countries lapsing into traditional power
rivalries. Nice idea. But it also absolved them of the traditional
responsibilities of nationhood, turning the alliance into a dysfunctional
sitcom family, with one grown-up presiding over a brood of whiny teenagers.
American's preference for diluting its power within the UN and other organs of
an embryo world government has not won it friends. All dominant powers are
hated - Britain was, and Rome - but they're usually hated for the right
reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise
America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans
despise American because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion;
the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too
Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your
bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you're against, America is the prime
example of it. . . .
So
why is a book concerning America's future so relevant and timely for physicians
and Health Care? Steyn writes about the future of healthcare as part of all
government entitlements. He puts government healthcare into a perspective that
few who are still pushing for making it an entitlement understand. He has given
up on Europe, calling it Eurabia. He predicts their cradle-to-grave welfare
system will totally collapse before 2050, when there won't be enough children
to pay for the beneficiaries. Then all healthcare, social security, childcare
and government programs will simply disappear; those that believed in
entitlements will wonder why they are without benefits. . .
There
is a message on how detrimental state healthcare is for our future. He
places it in context that even the most arched advocate of government medicine
should be able to understand. It is critical for the leaders of our physicians'
professional organizations (who are supporting single payer initiatives) to
understand. This book has important messages for all physicians, nurses and
health administrators. It is urgent, not only for our patients, but for all
Americans to comprehend.
Read the entire book
review . . .
To read more book reviews
. . .
To read book reviews topically
. . .
* * * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin:
Giving Federal Employees a credit card is like giving whiskey and keys to
teenagers.
Ten years ago, Congress created a new system of government credit cards
for federal employees booking work-related travel. The cards were meant to curb
waste and abuse. But since their introduction, charges have doubled - from
$4.39 billion in 1999 to $8.28 billion in 2008.
Congress is now trying to create a new system of healthcare for
Americans. This government-controlled healthcare is meant to curb waste and
abuse. Just as Medicare cost about eight times as much as projected, so
controlling all of healthcare should easily drive the United States to
bankruptcy.
The Tax &
Spend party doesn't believe there are limits to federal spending (or taxing).
Combating Memory Loss
A friend had just purchased
the book Combating Memory Loss from Massachusetts General Hospital. He
felt it was very helpful. It had a lot of good points to work on. When asked
what some of the points were, he replied, "I forgot."
Some people have a hard time remembering
yesterday.
Tax the People while they're down.
New York citizens having
decreased income during the recession has not hindered the Tax and Spend folks
from adding new state and municipal taxes, increasing sales tax, and doubling
the beer tax.
And I thought seven taxes on my
telephone bill was excessive.
You suppose New Yorkers will ever
be able to get up and make enough to pay all those taxes?
Part-Time Congress, Anyone?
Sacramento Suburban Representative
Daniel Lungren dislikes the extent to which members of Congress have delegated
their work to members of their staff. He is troubled by the compressed work
schedule in which the House typically operates frenetically, but only three
days a week. And he is disturbed by the acid-laced partisanship that he thinks
a longer workweek could help defuse.
Sounds like we should return to a
part-time Congress and work frenetically full time three months a year and then
go home before we do more damage.
To read more HHK, go to www.healthcarecom.net/hhkintro.htm.
To read more HMC, go to www.delmeyer.net/HMC.htm.
* * * * *
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.
To read their practical guide: Taking
charge of your own healthcare, go . . .
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, go . . .
•
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,"
"single-payer," 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."
•
Madeleine
Pelner Cosman, JD, PhD, Esq, who has made important efforts in restoring accountability in
health care, has died (1937-2006).
Her obituary is at www.signonsandiego.com/news/obituaries/20060311-9999-1m11cosman.html.
She will be remembered for her
important work, Who Owns Your Body, which is reviewed at www.delmeyer.net/bkrev_WhoOwnsYourBody.htm. Please go to www.healthplanusa.net/MPCosman.htm, to view some of her articles that highlight the
government's efforts in criminalizing medicine. For other OpEd articles that are
important to the practice of medicine and health care in general, click on her
name at www.healthcarecom.net/OpEd.htm.
•
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/articles/DGSinglePayer.htm;
for Health Care Inflation, go to www.healthplanusa.net/articles/DGHealthCareInflation.htm.
•
Dr
Richard B Willner,
President, Center for Peer Review Justice, 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.
•
Robert J Cihak,
MD, former president of
the AAPS, and Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D, who wrote an informative Medicine
Men column at NewsMax, have now retired. Please log on to review the archives.
•
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: House bill would destroy
private insurance - and private practice. Don't miss the "AAPS
News," written by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site which
provides valuable information on a monthly basis. This month, be sure to read Get Off the Train.
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.
Be sure to read the editor's The Feast of Barhusobam.
There are a number of important articles and book reviews that can be accessed
from the Table of Contents.
* * * * *
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Del Meyer
Del Meyer, MD, Editor & Founder
6945 Fair Oaks Blvd, Ste A-2, Carmichael, CA 95608
Computers
are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Humans are incredibly slow, error
prone and brilliant. Together they can do amazing things.
-Albert Einstein
He knew at least one true thing:
the most dangerous weapon in the world is the human mind. Use it wisely. -Ralf Dahrendorf
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence
- is the key to unlocking our potential."
-Winston Churchill: author,
soldier, and the U.K. prime minister
Some Relevant
Postings
Corporate Practice by David Gibson, MD . . .
Charity,
Altruism and Free-Market Medicine by the late Madeleine Pelner Cosman, PhD, Esq
. . .
Med Students
Could Do Worse: Go to Law School by David Gibson, MD . . .
Medical Malpractice
Can Occur with Good Medical Practice by Ron A. Virmani, MD . . .
In Memoriam
Ralf,
Baron Dahrendorf, thinker and politician, died on June 17th, aged 80 From The
Economist print edition, Jun 25th 2009
As a man who spent his life defining and defending liberty, Ralf
Dahrendorf treasured the moment when he first felt that "visceral desire
not to be hemmed in". He was in prison and in solitary, sent there for
being part of a schoolboys' anti-Hitler society. He was not yet 16. Determined
to demonstrate his free spirit somehow, he tore a piece of brown paper out of
his mattress and wrote down, with a blunt pencil he had cadged from a guard,
all the Latin words he could remember. In the preservation of liberty, he wrote
later, "We have the weapons we need, our minds".
The advancing Red army eventually freed both him and Germany. For
a while, there was neither government nor rules. With a band of young friends,
he looted the local shops in Berlin. Through his long and stellar academic
career, on his professorial shelves at Tübingen, Konstanz, Columbia, Harvard
and the London School of Economics, he kept the few slim volumes of romantic
poetry he had filched then, when he suddenly found himself free to take
everything, but with almost nothing to take. This, he taught later, was "entitlement
without provisions". . .
Liberty, he had discovered the hard way, needed institutions to
preserve it. All the apparatus of civil society—courts, parliament, written
constitutions, citizenship—was needed to ensure, in a favourite phrase, the
greatest number of "life-chances", or choices, for everyone. And the
nation state, though he was well aware of its parochial and xenophobic
limitations, seemed to be liberty's best incubator.
Conflict-management, too, was necessary. The world was not simple.
A bland union of wills and ideas led to totalitarianism; a perfect Arcadia
would reduce human talents to a dormant state. Only man's "unsocial
sociability", in the words of one of his heroes, Immanuel Kant, could
sting society towards progress. And in the words of another hero, Karl Popper,
at whose feet he sat at the LSE in 1952-53, since no one had found the grail of
ultimate wisdom, "let us make sure above all that it remains possible to
give different answers". That was why he confronted Rudi Dutschke, leader
of Germany's students, on a trailer in Freiburg at the height of the unrest of
1968 (pictured above): not hiding away like Raymond Aron at the Sorbonne, but vigorously
debating, professor with student, as he did all his life. The
rest of the story . . .
On This Date in
History - July 28
On this date in 1868, the Fourteenth
Amendment was ratified. The Fourteen Amendment, which guarantees due
process of law to all, was enacted after the Civil War to extend the federal
guarantee of due process to govern state as well as federal matters. It was,
therefore, an extension of the supremacy of the federal Constitution.
On this date in 1914, World War I began. Within a month
after a Serbian activist killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary,
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within a week, Germany, Russia, France,
Belgium and England were in the war. It was the worst war, up to that time, in
all history. We must also remember that 25 years later an even worse war began.
On this date in 1945, as World War II was
winding down, a U.S. bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in New York. The building
stood firm. The bomber was destroyed. The crash occurred on a Saturday, killing
13 people. Fifty-six years later, a Saudi pilot on a suicide and murder mission
commandeered an American airliner and purposely crashed it into the World Trade
Center, vaporizing himself, his crew and all aboard and bringing the World
Trade Center into a heap of ashes, killing 3,000 people.
After Leonard and
Thelma Spinrad
The 7th Annual World
Health Care Congress
Advancing solutions for business and health care CEOs to
implement new models for health care affordability, coverage and quality
The 7th
Annual World Health Care Congress will be held April 12-14, 2010
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www.worldhealthcarecongress.com
Toll Free: 800-767-9499
The 7th
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pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and leading government agencies.
Download a brochure: http://www.worldcongress.com/request_brochure.cfm?confCode=HR09000