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MEDICAL TUESDAY . NET |
NEWSLETTER |
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Community For Better Health Care |
Vol IX, No 6,
June 22, 2010 |
In This Issue:
1.
Featured Article:
The End of Medicine
2.
In
the News: ObamaCare Prevents
Disincentives which Causes Overuse of HealthCare
3.
International Medicine: Prisoners
Have Better Diet Than Some Hospital Patients
4.
Medicare: Another
View of the Health Care Legislation
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Doctors Manipulating the Codes for Clinical Procedures
6.
Medical
Myths: Medicare is Efficient and Fair
7.
Overheard in the Staff Lounge: Will your practice close with ObamaCare in 2013?
8.
Voices
of Medicine: Fraud by
government is rewarded
9.
The Bookshelf: Socialized
treatment isn't free, it's just depersonalized
10.
Hippocrates
& His Kin: Kaiser
Permanente Ranked as Fifth Most Innovative Health Care Company
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
Words of Wisdom,
Recent Postings, In Memoriam . . .
* * * * *
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck,
the father of socialized medicine in Germany, recognized in 1861 that a government gained loyalty by making
its citizens dependent on the state by social insurance. Thus socialized
medicine, or any single payer initiative, was born for the benefit of the state
and of a contemptuous disregard for people's welfare.
* * * * *
1. Featured Article: The End of Medicine As We Know It
The
End of Medicine: Not With a Bang, But a Whimper by Theodore Levy
The Freeman, April 2010 • Volume: 60
• Issue: 3
Social change can be revolutionary, sudden, and swift,
but more commonly it moves at a glacial pace. Yet glaciers work great change,
and great damage, given enough time.
There has been much talk of people leaving the medical
profession if government further bureaucratizes health care. But the odds are
great that there won't be any dramatic job stoppage. No medical "Galt's
Gulch" will form where masses of physicians on strike will live in peace
and solitude, some building cars and others mining copper, all vowing never to
return to medicine until their demands are met. Such is the stuff of fiction.
But the reality is much worse.
What will happen is more insidious, though over time
no less damaging. There will be an increase in early retirement, as more
physicians tire of their jobs. More physicians will take time off and let their
practices suffer at the margin. Patients will have slightly more difficulty
making appointments . . . each year . . . year after year, though never so
quickly as to lead to mass complaints or a recognition that things are
obviously worse.
Coverage will be shunted to physicians' assistants,
nurse practitioners, emergency department physicians, hospitalists, and
partners. Fewer patients will feel they have their own doctors. This will not
necessarily be worse—I don't feel I have my own McDonald's, yet the food
remains as I expect—but it may be worse, to the extent quality of care depends
on background knowledge of individuals.
The filter of who gets into medical school will
change. Fewer will enter the field due to intellectual curiosity. More and more
people who cannot tolerate bureaucracy will be weeded out. Questioning
authority will become as dangerous in medicine as it is in policing or the
military. The 40-hour physician work week, on the other hand, will become
commonplace, and the type of person attracted to medicine will not be the type
who is willing to work any longer, or any harder.
Health care will be less a service than a commodity.
All your complaints will have answers, if not always the right answers. Workups
will be standardized by "expert panels" allegedly educating
physicians as to "best practices." And if the "best
practice" is to not treat you because it is not cost-effective to society,
the fact that you want and are willing to pay for the treatment will be seen as
a problem rather than a solution. . . .
Does this sound unbelievable? It is happening already.
In the 1990s the Office of Inspector General investigated major teaching
hospitals in America. Taxpayers are billed by such institutions for training
new generations of physicians. PATH (Physicians at Teaching Hospitals) audits
found patients in these hospitals were commonly evaluated by medical students
or interns only. Attending senior physicians were fraudulently simply
"signing off," saying, "I agree," without ever seeing the
patient. The University of Pennsylvania Hospital settled a PATH dispute for $30
million, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital did so for $12 million.
Anecdotes describing such problems abound, including hospital charts saying,
"Physical exam shows both pupils equally reactive to light," when the
patient had actually been blind in one eye for decades, a mistake much more
easily attributable to the exam's never having been done than to error. . .
Pharmaceutical innovation, produced by those evil
for-profit companies that even doctors love to denounce, will drop off. Not
precipitously, but eventually. And people will die, as they have died since
time immemorial, without anyone ever knowing what drugs might have improved or
extended their lives, if only there had been greater incentives to produce
them. . .
There is already a spectrum of quality available in
medicine, and those with means can obtain better medical care than those
without, just as O.J. Simpson was able to obtain better legal services than
your average defendant—the first time. But that spectrum risks becoming more
rigid, more settled. What has been, in America, health care for the poor will
become health care for all but the very rich. But the cost curve will bend
downward.
Or will it? Medical salaries will bend downward,
certainly, but administrative costs associated with government programs are
always huge, and always underestimated. Medicare spending now is an order of
magnitude higher than the projections in 1965 of what it would be now. But we
do know this: Bending the cost curve of medical care in either direction comes
with costs. . .
We'll pride ourselves, as we do now, on "the best
health care system in the world," even while we also brag that we have
universal care, just like the great nations of Europe. And we'll suffer with
double-digit unemployment, just like the great nations of Europe. And we'll
have lower growth in productivity, just like the great nations of Europe. And
we'll have smaller houses and cars, just like the great nations of Europe. But
it will be all right, because we'll be able to wait . . . and wait . . . and
wait . . . for our turn at the health care that is our right.
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* * * * *
2.
In the News: ObamaCare Prevents Disincentives which Causes Overuse
of HealthCare
The Unmet Promise of
ObamaCare by Marc Siegel, Forbes
06.15.10
The number one question on my patients' minds as the new health
reform bill passed was whether they would be able to keep their current health
care plan, like the president promised. This past week, when the new 83-page
draft of regulations was released jointly by the IRS, Health and Human
Services, and the Department of Labor, an answer was offered. Unfortunately,
it's a resounding no.
Whenever the federal government enacts a new law, agencies write
regulations on how this law will be enforced. The newly released draft is about
whether existing insurances can be "grandfathered in" and continue to
be legal policies as the new health reform bill, known as the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, takes hold. In my field, whenever a new
area of practice such as emergency medicine or geriatrics is established,
"grandfathering in" simply means that if you were already established
before the new board was created, you retain your credential.
But this usual and customary practice will not be the case with
the health reform bill, as insurers will routinely lose their status by not
jumping through the right hoops.
In fact, the regulations impose a major vise on private insurance,
restricting a company's ability to increase cost sharing (such as coinsurance,
deductibles and out-of pocket limits) as well as copayments ("more than
the sum of medical inflation plus 15 percentage points or $5 increased by
medical inflation"). So it is unlikely that many insurers will be able to
remain viable without raising premiums (not restricted by the regulations) or
slashing services.
Though the purpose of all the restrictions on insurance is to cut
costs, as a practicing physician I worry that extending a one-size-fits-all
insurance to more people will have the opposite effect because there will be no
disincentive for patient overuse. In countries such as Belgium (where one-third
of payments are out-of-pocket), it is precisely these patient responsibilities
which help keep the cost of medical care down, as patients only come to doctors
when absolutely necessary. I have noticed this effect in my own practice, where
patients with high-deductible insurance (Health Savings Accounts can help deal
with out of pocket office visits) only come to see me when they are sick. And
there is no evidence that frequent office visits by healthy patients with easy
to use insurance contributes significantly to preventive care.
At the same time, the draft regulations would imposed such an
inflexible restriction on employers--for group insurance, if an employer
decreases its contribution rate by more than 5% it will lose its grandfather
status--that it is likely that many employers will drop their insurance plans
altogether.
The draft's own midrange estimates reflect this bleak new world,
predicting that 66% of the insurance plans offered by small employers and 45%
offered by large employers will no longer be legal by 2013. And the numbers are
no better for individual policies. The draft estimates that individual policies
relinquishing their grandfathered status by failing to comply with the new
regulations will be from 40% to 67%.
Patients who lose their existing insurance will flock to the new
state insurance exchanges, sign up for Medicaid or pay the penalty for not
having insurance. There will be a drastic shift in health care coverage, and
the result will be lower quality care and more government oversight coming from
HHS as well as newly formed committees and panels such as the Independent
Medicare Advisory Panel. Young adults under the age of 26, who are eligible to
join their parents' plans, will find that 20% of these parents will have plans
that are not acceptable under the new law.
This new world of health care, filled with shifts and changes, is
particularly unfortunate when you consider the draft's own research, which
cites a survey in Health Affairs from 2000, showing that 83% of privately
insured individuals stuck with their plans in the year prior to the survey. . .
Marc Siegel, M.D. is an associate
professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone
Medical Center. He is a Fox News Medical Contributor.
Read
the entire Commentary by Dr. Siegel . . .
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* * * * *
3. International Medicine: Feeding patients becomes a political
issue.
Prisoners Have Better Diet
Than Some Hospital Patients
by David Gutierrez, staff writer
Prisoners in British prisons get better nutrition than patients in
the country's hospitals, according to a study conducted by researchers from
Bournemouth University.
"It's incredible that so many
hospitals are failing to serve healthy meals," said Liberal Democrat
health spokesman Norman Lamb. "If prisons can serve good food, then so can
hospitals."
The study found that the primary problem
in hospitals is that no one pays attention to make sure that patients eat the
food prepared for them -- as many sick and elderly people either have
suppressed appetites or have physical problems that interfere with their
eating. Yet no one is designated in most hospitals to assist
patients who have trouble eating. A total of 11 million meals are thrown out uneaten
every year, the report found.
Food is often prepared hot and then left
sitting out until an orderly gets around to taking it to patients, at which point it
is often cold and unappetizing. Food may be placed out of some patients' reach,
and other patients miss meals because they have tests or other procedures
during a facility's only designated meal times.
"Ward staff also don't actually know
how much patients are eating because it is domestics who clear the trays
away," researcher Heather Hartwell said. "This is an example of
fragmentation in hospitals that does not necessarily happen in prisons."
The report found that 242 patients died
from malnutrition in British hospitals in 2007, higher than any year since
1997. More than 8,000 other patients were discharged under-nourished.
Hospitals also spend significantly less on
each meal than prisons do, the report found. The food at prisons tends to be of
higher quality -- high in carbohydrates and low in fat -- and prisoners are
more likely to eat communally, which has been shown to increase food intake.
"If you are in prison then the diet
you get is extremely good in terms of nutritional content," researcher
John Edwards said. 'The food that is provided is actually better than most
civilians have."
Sources for this story include: www.dailymail.co.uk. www.naturalnews.com/027999_hospital_food_prison.html
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Government
Health Care does not give timely access to healthcare; it only gives access to
a hospital less nutritious than a prison.
* * * * *
4. Medicare: Another view of the Health Care Legislation
Health Reform by Cloward and Piven, AJPS, May 25th, 2010
By: Richard Amerling, MD
Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were Columbia
University sociologists who founded, in 1966, the National Welfare Reform
Organization, a "parent organization" of the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). They advocated what became known as
the "Cloward-Piven strategy," which "seeks to hasten the
fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of
impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic
collapse." This is an instructive prism through which to view the
recent health care legislation.
The legislation pushes millions into Medicaid, whose
costs are already crushing state and local taxpayers into powder.
Flooding it with new beneficiaries will hasten its bankruptcy. Likewise,
Medicare is to be cut by $500 billion at a time when the baby boomers will be
enrolling. The program is already running at a deficit, and will simply
be unable to provide seniors the same level of service they currently
enjoy. In other words, both systems will implode.
At the same time, incentives for employers to provide
health care will be lessened, and many will drop coverage, sending millions to
the government cooperatives for coverage. These policies will be heavily
subsidized by the taxpayer, and will dramatically swell an already very bloated
public sector. We are already mired in debt, and still bailing out Fannie
and Fred with tens of billions of dollars each quarter, and with no end in
sight. The health bill may be the coup de grace for our struggling
economy . . .
. . . We are moving towards a dual system in
medicine. There will be hospital-based physicians who will be
mostly salaried, full-time or part-time employees. Their primary loyalty
will be to their employer. They will follow protocols and
guidelines, and work shifts. They will be assigned patients, rather than
develop their own practices. They will eventually come under the heavy
hand of the SEIU. As hospital revenues suffer under ObamaCare, they will
find themselves increasingly burdened. Quality of care will
deteriorate.
Outside the hospital setting will be a thriving,
private, medical marketplace, anchored by a growing number of private
physicians who are opting out of Medicare and other third party arrangements.
These doctors will develop busy practices, and will be able to stay in business
by setting their own rates, cutting overhead, and controlling their
volume. They will be able to spend enough time with patients to ensure a
high quality experience, and will work to keep patients healthy and out of the
hospital. Unmoored from price controls, the cost of good care will
plummet. Doctors, labs, and imaging facilities will compete on
quality and price. There is no reason why an MRI shouldn't cost
$100 in a competitive marketplace.
Patients must understand the reality of what is about
to happen. As of this writing, Health Savings Accounts are still
available. Get them while you can! Creating and funding an
HSA is the best way to insure against the coming implosion of government-run
health care. Even seniors on Medicare should set up these accounts.
They should also consider opting out of Part B, which pays for doctors'
services, since they will have difficulty finding private physicians who will
accept Medicare. They will still have Part A in case they need
hospitalization.
Like the doomed Korean ship the Cheonan, our health
care system has been torpedoed. It hasn't sunk yet, but it will.
Man the lifeboats!
Richard
Amerling, MD, is a nephrologist practicing in New York City. He is an Associate Professor of at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the
Beth Israel Medical Center.
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Government is not the solution to our problems, government is
the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5. Medical Gluttony: Doctors Manipulating the Codes for
Clinical Procedures
A few years ago,
a Cardiologist and Cardiac Surgeon in Redding, California recognized that the
Codes for Clinical Procedures and Terminology for several items in their
specialty were very remunerative. They were so remunerative that they were used
frequently when there was minimal medical or surgical indication for their use.
As the Pot at the End of the Rainbow was filling up, they made larger pots and
filled them with more Medicare Gold patients. As in the case of most Ponzi
Schemes such as Medicare, the drain is finally so great that the criminals are
found out and the Vein of Gold dries up.
Doctors are
basically very honest. No one with an ulterior motive could get through four
years of College, four years of Medical School, and four to eight years of
specialty postdoctoral training unless they were very bright and honest. If
you're dishonest, there are much easier ways to wealth. But temptations are a
terrible thing. Many good people fail and fall. Ponzi schemes like Medicare or
any stream of money harbors crime - even among those that would otherwise never
consider the possibility.
I recall a politician who ran for office
with the serious intent of cleaning up the House of Corruption, reducing
entitlements and eliminating "pork barreling." He was an honest,
upright God-fearing pillar of the community held in high esteem. Within one
year, in a bid to purchase votes, he was adding entitlements to his own bills;
eventually he became a master at it. He told the community that although he had
previously agreed that such expenditure of funds for personal gain was
essentially theft, in the House of Corruption it was considered good for one's
constituency and essential to survival and re-election for the greater good in
the community of which he also was a member.
On a recent urgent trip to Kansas for my
older brother's "celebration of life," I sat next to the local
retired Judge, a good Democrat who reads MedicalTuesday. He told me the tale
about his mild breath restriction, which caused him to seek the services of a
pulmonologist. After a brief interview and cursory exam, the physician asked if
he sometimes fell asleep for no apparent reason. "Of course," he did,
most nights after watching TV or working at his computer too long. The
pulmonologist said, "You have Obstructive Sleep Apnea and need a
Polysomnogram" (sleep study). The judge, being 80 years old, declined
stating he didn't think he was any worse than his friends who were also in
their 80's. The pulmonologist lost interest, got up and left the room. The
Judge wondered if more doctors were losing interest in patient care and were
simply milking the system. This pulmonologist didn't even give the Judge a
screening breathing test, which is on the order of $80 (for which Medicare pays
about $40) to determine the cause of his dyspnea while vying for the sleep
study at $1800 (for which Medicare pays about $800). He was more interested in
Medicare Gold than patient care.
This type of practice is causing us to
lose respect and status as the public increasingly believes we're in it for
money from procedures. But as Medicare pays less and less for diagnostic acumen
and more for costly diagnostic procedures, it's hard to swim against the
current. But we must stand firm like a rock or we will slowly destroy a great
profession. Even though it may have been caused by Government Medicare, it is
occurring on our watch. It is up to us to correct this corruption or at least
not participate in this Ponzi scheme.
To follow the importance of this, why not subscribe to
the HealthPlanUSA.net Quarterly.
The last three issues are free. For complete access, a token fee is requested.
In
matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the
current.
-Thomas
Jefferson
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Medical Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
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* * * * *
6. Medical Myths: Medicare is Efficient and Fair
Myth 24. Medicare
is the model of efficiency and fairness.
Medicare is immensely popular, has very low
administrative costs, is already a working model, … it is said: Why not just
have Medicare for all?
At one time, calling Medicare "socialized
medicine for the elderly" caused stunned silence in the Congress. Now, if
one opposes "socialized medicine," at least one listener is bound to
dare you to say you're opposed to Medicare.
Government may bumble at almost everything, but in a
handful of areas it does better than the private sector, writes Nicholas
Kristof. He lists firefighting, police protection, and health care. Also postal
service and education (NY Times 9/3/09).
And even if government is inefficient, he writes, at
least it is fair. It doesn't cancel your coverage if you get sick.
Here's a reality check on Medicare:
·
It is structured
as a Ponzi scheme. Or should we call
it a Madoff scheme? Its unfunded liabilities—an estimated $38 trillion—are
unpayable. Promises made to Baby Boomers, who were forced to pay into the
system throughout their working lives, simply cannot be kept. Their money is
gone, just like that of Madoff's "investors."
·
Its low
administrative costs are a mirage.
See Myth 2.
·
It is sustained
by the general fund and by cost-shifting. Medicare Part B premiums pay only about 25% of the
cost; the rest must be made up from the general fund. In addition, Medicare
underpays hospitals and physicians, and costs are shifted to private insurers.
The hidden tax on private insurers to subsidize Medicare and Medicaid amounts
to $89 billion/year, or $1,788 per average family in a PPO plan (Grace-Marie
Turner and Joseph Antos, Wall St J 9/11/09).
·
It is unfair to
both patients and physicians.
Payments to physicians are often so paltry that patients are having increasing
difficulty in finding a physician who can afford to see them. Coverage of
prolonged serious illness is poor; seniors who exceed the allowed number of
hospital days are on their own. Neither is Medicare a model for comprehensive
coverage of non-catastrophic costs. Seniors pay 50% of their medical bills out
of pocket, and most buy supplemental coverage (ibid.).
·
The system is
rife with fraud. An anti-fraud
campaign went into high gear with the passage of the Kassebaum-Kennedy, Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. Hundreds of
millions of dollars were made available to prosecutors, along with huge
penalties and new tools: a fraud hotline, bounties of up to 30% of amounts collected,
and money laundering charges, on which the accused can be convicted without
being convicted of any underlying fraud. This amounted to a post-hoc
criminalization of medicine. Still, despite allocating $1.13 billion for
"program-integrity" and enforcement activities in 2008,
government-wide "improper payments" allegedly amounted to $72 billion
that year, writes John Iglehart (N Engl J Med 7/6/09).
"[I]n our freewheeling society driven by capitalism, there is a strong
distaste in many quarters for overzealous investigations," Iglehart
opines. While physicians may be ruined or even imprisoned over alleged coding
errors, the threshold for investigating a Medicare carrier is $200 million (Theresa Burr, J Am Phys Surg,
winter 2003). The Government Accountability Office found that CMS
enrollment and inspection procedures were so poor that it routinely granted
billing privileges to fictitious companies with no clients and no inventory (GAO-09-838R Posthearing
Questions; 2009).
·
Government care
costs much more. The passage of
Medicare led to an immediate, enormous jump in spending. Between the introduction
of Medicare in 1965, and 1970, real hospital expenditures jumped 23%, reports
Linda Gorman (Library
of Economics and Liberty 6/1/09). Since 1970, Medicare's per-patient
costs have risen 35% more, and Medicaid's 34% more, than all other medical care
in America. This analysis greatly underestimates the cost of government care by
counting all Medicare prescription-drugs purchases as part of private care; not
adjusting for billions of dollars in cost shifting from Medicaid to SCHIP; and
counting care purchased privately by Medicare and Medicaid patients (including
Medicare copayments and Medigap premiums) as private, without counting those
patients as recipients of private care (Jeffrey
H. Anderson, New York Post 7/18/09).
·
Medicare taxes
impose uncounted costs. Among
the hidden costs of government programs is the deadweight cost of taxation. The
taxes that finance Medicare impose costs on society in the range of 30% of
Medicare spending (Michael
Tanner, Cato Policy Analysis #642; Aug 6, 2009).
Additional information:
·
"A Brief History of
Ponzi Schemes," by Craig J. Cantoni, J Am Phys Surg, Spring 2009.
·
"Crime," AAPS
News, June 1996.
·
"Anti-fraud activities
thriving," AAPS News, February 1998, p. 3.
To read the Entire
AAPS Myth 24 . . .
To read more myth busters from AAPS. . .
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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: Will your practice close with ObamaCare in 2013?
Dr.
Rosen: What will our practices be
like in 2013, only three years from now, when the full impact of ObamaCare will
go into effect?
Dr.
Sam: I plan to opt out of all
government programs.
Dr.
Dave: I'm hoping to do the same. Only
I'm a little nervous about making any drastic moves.
Dr.
Edwards: I'm with Dave. I want to
drop out but fear retribution by the government.
Dr.
Ruth: What kind of retribution?
Dr.
Edwards: I'm not sure. I'm not sure
Congress knows. But they will think of something if they think physicians are
thwarting there plans for expanding healthcare.
Dr.
Yancy: I'm essentially out of
government controlling me and I will just proceed with seeing private patients.
Dr.
Ruth: What if you won't have enough
private patients?
Dr.
Yancy: That's always the risk you
have to take. Just like when we started decades ago. The government has always
made it harder and harder but we've survived.
Dr.
Ruth: You don't think you'll ever
have to change course back again?
Dr.
Yancy: Are you crazy? I'd never stoop
to be a government whore again.
Dr.
Paul: Those are pretty strong words,
Yancy.
Dr.
Yancy: You think we are still in the
middle ages? Welcome to the real world.
Dr.
Rosen: We thought the New World was
the Real World in the 18th and 19th century. But in the
last 75 years the New World has regressed to the old world or old Europe. Our
generation has nearly forgotten the degree of freedom we accomplished in the first
century and a half, a good share of which we've lost in the last three-quarter
century.
Dr.
Paul: I still feel I am free to
practice medicine. In my pediatric practice, most of my patients could not
afford me unless they have Medicaid. That's been a boon to care for our
children.
Dr.
Edwards: I don't think we can do
justice to all the implications of that statement during a 20-minute lunch. The
government programs may be just as much at fault in creating poverty as in
managing poverty.
Dr.
Milton: Is there going to be any
momentum to those signs that started popping up in doctor's offices in Arizona?
Dr.
Michelle: What signs?
Dr.
Milton: The advance notice to patients that if ObamaCare is not repealed
by Congress or ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court by 2013 when the
full effects are felt, then "This office will close."
Dr.
Paul: I don't think you can frighten
the government like that. Do you think the government will care?
Dr.
Milton: Of course not. Congress has
nearly unlimited powers now to limit and restrict freedom including the freedom
to practice one's own profession.
Dr.
Rosen: They think they can tell
doctors through the CMS how to treat patients appropriately and if they do so,
and it produces a bad result, still hold the doctor guilty of malpractice.
Dr.
Milton: Nice work if you can get it.
Dr.
Rosen: A Catch 22.
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The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Medical Opinions Are Heard.
* * * * *
8. Voices of Medicine: A Review of Articles by Physicians
Fraud
by government is rewarded
The Democrats and Obama passed
the largest entitlement thus far. It too will fail. In the interim, Congress
and Obama refuse to learn.
Social Security is now
unfunded. This year Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it will
receive in taxes. Social Security was supposed to reach that stage in 2016
according to the Congressional Budget Office. Stephen Goss, the chief actuary
of the Social Security Administration, said the problem of joblessness and
decreased payroll taxes are the issues. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It works
just like Bernie Madoff's fraud.
Bernie Madoff:
- Takes money from
investors with the promise that the money will be invested and made
available to them later - similar to a "trust".
- Instead of investing the
money Madoff spends it on expensive yachts and homes.
- When the time comes to
pay the older "investors" back, Bernie finds new contributors
(investors) to provide new money to pay the older investors.
- When Bernie's scheme is
discovered, he gets no more new cash
- Bernie
goes to prison
Social Security
- Takes money from wage
earners with the promise the money will be invested in a 'trust fund"
and made available later.
- Instead of a "trust
fund" (which does not exist), the money is used by politicians to
fund other government spending and vote buying.
- When the time comes to
pay the older "investors", the US Treasury finds younger workers
to provide new money to pay the older investors.
- When the money runs out,
as it has, taxpayers are forced to make up the difference.
- Politicians
are not in prison-- they receive generous perks and wonderful retirement.
When the tax money runs out,
as it has, the US Treasury just prints more. It is good to be king.
The many reasons the latest entitlement
of universal health care will fail are ignored by the Democrat Congress and the
Democrat president.
- Costs of health care are
uncontrolled.
- Physicians will leave or
refuse to accept government enslavement
- Plaintiff attorneys are
not able to practice medicine.
- Bureaucrats are not able
to practice medicine.
- Congress is unable to
practice medicine.
- Obama is unable to
practice medicine.
- Reducing the pay of
physicians and raising the pay of bureaucrats will encourage physicians to
become bureaucrats.
- Whoever can afford it
will either leave the USA for medical care or find competent physicians
who have opted out of government controlled medicine in the USA
- Under current
circumstances, a physician shortage is present. It will worsen
substantially in the future.
- Thousands of physicians
are opting out of medicine today, retiring early, changing professions and
simply quitting practice.
- Morale
and productivity are dreadful in socialist countries when physicians are
surveyed. Recent surveys in the USA have found morale and productivity of
US physicians has deteriorated.
Medical innovations originate
in the USA more than any other place in the world. Nobel Prizes in Medicine and
Physiology have gone to more Americans more than all other nations combined.
Obama and the Democrats will kill that.
The British National Health
Service is the third largest employer in the world with 1.4 million employees.
The number of employed physicians is about 113,000. Most of the physicians are
trained in Third World countries. One British trained physician shared a Nobel
Prize in Medicine in 1988. He is the only one since 1946. Our so-called
representatives are ignoring the reality and destroying the most productive
medical care system in the world. They are rewarded with perks, high salaries
and generous retirement.
The
future is not bright unless the people undo the radical agenda
just put in place.
References: Jason Cutts,
"This sums up Social Security"
Jim DiFillippo, "Will Social Security Be There for YOU?"
Saul William Seidman, MD, FACS, Trillion Dollar Scam, Exploding Health
Care Fraud. available www.bn.com
& www.amazon.com
Saul William Seidman, MD, FACS, Inevitable Incompetence, Soaring Medical
Costs, Dangerous Medical Care, available www.amazon.com & www.bn.com
Read the entire OpEd . . .
Read
more about Saul William Seidman, MD. . .
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The HealthPlan that will
eliminate fraud . . .
VOM
Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about.
9.
Book Review: Socialized
treatment isn't free, it's just depersonalized
THE CANCER WARD by
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. (From our Archives)
Translated by Nicholas Bethel and David Burg, Noonday Press, New York,
1974. (Russian edition 1968)
This work of fiction is based on the author's own
experiences as a patient in a cancer ward in the 1950's, but it speaks to us
more clearly with each passing year as our country grapples with the problem of
providing basic health care for all.
As the story opens, Nobel laureate Solzhenitsyn's
Soviet world of 40 years ago seems like a strange and foreign place indeed,
with its detached, impersonal, "universal free health care" system
which serviced frightened powerless patients with competent but distant doctors
whose passionless demeanor would have served them as well if they had been
engineers or plumbers.
The chapter titled "The Old Doctor," is
particularly prophetic. A 75-year-old physician, Dr. Oreshchenkov, mourns the
extinction of the family doctor in modern Soviet medicine. He characterizes
this practitioner of a bygone era as the "most comforting figure in our
lives...a figure without whom the family cannot exist in a developing society.
He knows the needs of each member of the family, just as the mother knows their
tastes...the kind of person to whom they can pour out the fears they have
deeply concealed or even found shameful... But he has been cut down and
foreshortened. [It is very difficult] to find a doctor nowadays who is prepared
to give you as much time as you need and understands you completely, all of
you." A fellow physician and patient responds, "All right, but...they
just can't be fitted into our system of universal, free, public health
services." Dr Oreshchenkov retorts, "Universal and public--yes. Free,
no." The colleague replies, "But the fact that it is free is our
greatest achievement."
Dr Oreshchenkov then gives us the real message for our
time: "What do you mean by 'free'? The doctors don't work without pay.
It's just that the patient doesn't pay them, they're paid out of the public
budget. The public budget comes from these same patients. Treatment isn't free,
it's just depersonalized. If the cost of it were left with the patient, he'd
turn the ten rubles over and over in his hands.
The Author then describes how he feels the health care
system should be. He felt that primary treatment should be at the expense of
the patient, but hospitalizations or costly procedures should be free. Then
patients would be in control of when and how often and from whom they should
seek medical treatment. "With the right kind of primary system, . . .there
would be fewer cases altogether, and no neglected ones..." Each patient could
be treated as a whole person instead of a collection of diseases, to be tossed
from specialist to specialist like a basketball.
Solzhenitsyn's story is a classic - as relevant today
in America as it was 30 years ago when it was first published in Russian. Its
characterizations are vivid, its situations are hauntingly familiar, and its
truths are timeless.
This book review is found at . . .
To read more book
reviews . . .
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The
Book Review Section Is an Insider's View of What Doctors Are Reading.
* * * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: Kaiser Permanente Ranked Fifth on
Fast Company 2010 World's Most
Innovative Health Care Company
Dr.
Scherzer plans to stop practicing before 2014:
Dr. Joseph Scherzer, a Dermatologist
in Scottsdale, Arizona, placed a sign in his office: "If you voted for ObamaCare, be aware these doors will close
before it goes into effect, unless Congress or the Courts repeal the
BILL." He said the stress is what would push him out the door. The
maximum fine was previously $10,000; under the bill it will now be capped at
$50,000. Scherzer said the fine system makes seeing Medicare patients a
difficult and stressful exercise.
Now,
that's pretty straight forward.
Four Years
worth of Office Rent
Come to think about it, one fine
equals four years worth of rent. That would close my doors whether I wanted to
or not.
Will 2014 be the HealthCare Armageddon?
Congratulations to KP
Feb. 18, 2010 - Oakland, Calif. -
Kaiser Permanente has been honored in Fast Company's annual Most
Innovative Companies issue as the fifth Most Innovative Health Care Company
in the World for its pioneering electronic health record that is the world's largest civilian electronic health
record, and for its health care innovation center that develops the future
of health care.
Kaiser Permanente was recognized for its pilot
medical data exchange program with the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, which enables clinicians from VA and Kaiser
Permanente to obtain a more comprehensive view of a patient's health using electronic
health record information, including information about health issues,
medications, and allergies.
The exchange
program centers around Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect®, which gives the
organization's 14,600 physicians immediate access to a patient's status and
medical history, as well as decision support based on evidence-based practice
guidelines and the latest medical research. Kaiser Permanente's members easily
and conveniently can make and reschedule appointments, check lab results, and
send e-mails to care providers via My
Health Manager, the online personal health record that connects directly
with KP HealthConnect.
Fast Company
also recognized Kaiser Permanente for its Sidney
R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, the only setting of its kind
that brings together technology, architecture, nurses, doctors and patients
with human-centered design thinking and low-fidelity prototyping and design to
brainstorm and test tools and programs for patient-centered care in a mock
hospital, clinic, office or home environment.
Kaiser Permanente used the Garfield Center to develop the Digital Operating
Room of the Future and an award-winning medication error reduction program.
It's also used to test disruptive technologies such as telemedicine, surface
computing, robots, facial recognition, remote monitoring, video game consoles
and a handheld computer tablet similar to the Apple iPad that Kaiser Permanente
nurses and physicians have piloted in hospitals the last two years.
"This recognition is emblematic of a culture and
spirit at Kaiser Permanente that enables the transformation of health
care," said Kaiser Permanente Chief Information Officer Philip Fasano, who
was recently recognized by Computerworld
as one of the top 100 IT Leaders for 2010. "Our electronic health record
and Garfield Health Care Innovation Center are exciting examples of the
innovation fostered throughout our organization and are the starting point in
our journey to deliver real-time, personalized health care."
Read
the Health Care listings . . .
TO PEE OR
NOT TO PEE . . . that is the question
Like most folks in this country, I have
a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes & the government
distributes my taxes as it sees fit.
In order to get that paycheck, in my
case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have
no problem).
What I do have a problem with is the
distribution of my taxes to people who don't have to pass a urine test.
So, here is my question: Shouldn't one
have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to
earn it for them?
Please understand that I have no problem
with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a
problem with helping someone sitting on their butts, doing drugs while
I work. Can you imagine how much money each state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public
assistance check?
We could call this program "URINE OR YOU'RE OUT!"
To
read more HHK . . .
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* * * * *
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.
•
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/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.
During your visit you may wish to enroll your own data to attract patients to
your practice. This is truly innovative and has been needed for a long time.
Congratulations to Dr. Gibson and staff for being at the cutting edge of
healthcare reform with transparency.
•
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.
•
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.
He now has a new column with Richard Dolinar, MD, worth reading at www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/othervoices/story/835508.html.
•
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. How to opt out of Medicare. Be sure to read News of
the Day in Perspective: While All Eyes Are On BP,
Stopping the Medicare Fraud Gusher is Crucial 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: The
ability to proclaim, without fear, "Yes we can…say no we won't!"
is one mark of a free country. Increasingly, physicians will be facing
circumstances when "No we won't" is the only honorable, ethical
response. Which will you choose? 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."
* * * * *
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To subscribe to our companion publication concerning health plans and
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Please note that
sections 1-4, 6, 8-9 are entirely attributable quotes and editorial comments
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Spammator Note: MedicalTuesday uses many
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Del Meyer, MD, Editor & Founder
6945 Fair Oaks Blvd, Ste A-2, Carmichael, CA 95608
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"The diseases of the mind are more and more
destructive than those of the body." -Marcus Tullius Cicero: Was a
1st-century BC Roman philosopher.
"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is
what keeps you going." -Jim Ryun: Former
track athlete and politician.
"People often say that motivation doesn't last.
Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily." -Zig Ziglar: Author
and motivational speaker.
Achieving what you want is easy ... when you stop
pushing and activate your automatic success mechanism! The human mind functions
much like a goal-seeking device similar to those used to guide missiles on
auto-pilot! -Dr. Maxwell Maltz found that you will NEVER be different from
what your self-image says you are and that if you change your self-image to
"think" of yourself as the person you want to be ... you will
AUTOMATICALLY become that new person! -Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, PhD.
Some Recent
Postings
THE INNOVATOR'S
DILEMMA,- The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You
Do Business, by Clayton M.
Christensen, DBA
MARKET DRIVEN
HEALTH CARE - Who Wins,
Who Loses in the Transformation of America's Largest Service Industry by Regina Herzlinger
In Memoriam
Lena Horne, entertainer, died
on May 9th, age 92
From The
Economist print edition | May 20th 2010
TO THOSE few Americans in the 1950s who
did not care about race—who did not quibble about one-thirty-seconds or
one-sixty-fourths, and who were happy to share washroom or soda fountain with
people of another shade—Lena Horne was simply one of the most beautiful women
in the world. There was something of Audrey Hepburn in her large brown eyes,
and of Hedy Lamarr in her tall forehead; her nose was bobbed and cute. But to
everyone else Ms Horne, before her beauty was even considered, was black.
There were ways of saying this gently, of course. She was not coal
or piccaninny black; she was "dusky", "sepia",
"milk-chocolate", café au lait. At Harlem's Cotton Club, where
she started her career at 16 as a dancer, she was "tan and terrific",
like the others. The MGM Studios in Hollywood, where she went at 24 in 1941,
tried to pass her off as a Latina on her contract. A special make-up, called
Light Egyptian, would be rubbed on her skin to make her look more coloured: a
better match for the ink-black mammies and funny-men around her.
Her race-blind fans would have been prepared to see her star in
any show, as elegant, satin-clad and triumphant as she eventually appeared in
1981 in "The Lady and her Music" in New York. But to casting
directors during segregation she could only be a lady's maid or a jungle girl.
At best she could star in all-black comedies, as a devil-sent temptress in
"Cabin in the Sky" (1943), or as the lead in the Broadway musical
"Jamaica" (1957). She belonged in the piny woods or under the palms.
Because she was lovely, and could sing bewitchingly, she was also
allowed a few solo scenes in "white" films. There, like "a
butterfly pinned to a column", she would deliver a number which could be
seamlessly cut when the picture was shown in southern cinemas. Her greatest
hope was to be allowed to play Julie, a mulatto, in "Show Boat". But
Julie had to fall in love with a white man; so Ava Gardner played her,
initially lip-synching to Miss Horne's recordings and even made browner with
her Light Egyptian. Lena and Ava were friends. But it hurt to the end of her
days.
It hurt all the more because the young Lena did not think of
herself as black particularly. Her blood was mixed up on both sides with white
European and native American, so that in her black school she was
"yellow" to her playmates, and was whispered to have a white Daddy.
Both blacks and whites felt she was not one of them. Her family's social models
were the white bourgeoisie; her father, resplendent in a suit with a diamond
stick-pin, had told Louis B. Mayer to his face that he didn't want his daughter
playing maids in Hollywood, because she could have maids of her own. Not that
it did any good. At one of her lowest points Miss Horne went to tea with Hattie
McDaniel, who had played Mammy in "Gone with the Wind". They ate tiny
sandwiches and cakes in her grand drawing room, while Hattie explained that a
maid's role was her only realistic future on the screen. Pretty soon
afterwards, she threw in the acting life.
Singing, though she made her career in it, proved no simpler. She
toured with Charlie Barnet's all-white band in 1940, sleeping in the band bus
when hotels would not take her in, but counted in her repertoire songs like
"Sleepy Time Down South", which blacks were expected to sing. . .
Miss Horne's producers once complained that she opened her mouth
too wide to sing. They meant it was a Negro thing. Certainly Miss Horne had a
wide, extravagant smile, a real show-stopper. But it was on the face of a
tiger. It hid a lifetime of ferocious resentment and regret.
Read
the entire obituary . . .
On This Date in
History - June 22
On this date in 1970, the voting age was
lowered to eighteen by law. On June 30, 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment was
ratified extending the suffrage at eighteen to state and local elections as
well.
On this date in 1983, the space shuttle
Challenger's crew deployed and retrieved a satellite, using the shuttle's
mechanical arm.
After Leonard and
Thelma Spinrad
The 7th Annual World
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The 7th
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