|
MEDICAL TUESDAY . |
NEWSLETTER |
|
Community For Better Health Care |
Vol X, No 1, |
In This Issue:
1.
Featured Article:
Breasts will be the
First Practical Natural Stem Cell Therapy
2.
In
the News: Medicaid: Coverage and
Costs: 69.5 Beneficiaries; 43% of Health Care Costs
3.
International Medicine: Universal
health care is still just a dream even in Canada
4.
Medicare: Entitlements are
enslaving Americans
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Is only exceeded by
Government Gluttony
6.
Medical Myths: Health Care: A Commonly Misunderstood Concept
7.
Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: Where are
political donations most effective?
8.
Voices
of Medicine: Snore and you sleep alone.
9.
Movie
Review: The Gospel According to
Hollywood: One Blockbuster per Generation
10.
Hippocrates
& His Kin: ObamaCare Health without adequate coverage
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in HealthCare, Government and Society
Words of Wisdom, Recent
Postings, In Memoriam . . .
*
* * * *
Announcing The 1st Annual World Health Care Congress
The World Health Care Congress (WHCC)
convenes the most prestigious forum of global health industry executives and
public policy makers. Building on the 8th annual event in the
This prominent international forum is the
only conference in which over 500 leaders from all regions of Latin America
will convene to address access, quality and cost issues, including Latin
American health ministers, government officials, hospital/health system
executives, insurance executives, health technology innovators, pharmaceutical,
medical device, and supplier executives.
World Health Care Congress Latin America will address escalating challenges such
as improving access to quality care, financing and insurance models for health
care, driving innovation in health IT, promoting evidence-based medicine and
clinical best practices. World Health Care Congress Latin America will
feature a series of plenary keynotes, invitational executive Summits, in-depth
working group sessions on emerging issues, as well as substantial business
development and networking opportunities.
*
* * * *
1.
Featured
Article: Breasts will be the
First Practical Natural Stem Cell Therapy
By Sharon Begley|
To be in the company of Chris Calhoun is to encounter breasts, and encounter the damn
things anytime, anywhere—including over a plate of spaghetti in a bustling
Manhattan restaurant.
On this spring afternoon, the 44-year-old CEO of San
Diego-based biotech company Cytori Therapeutics pulls out his laptop, launches
a PowerPoint presentation, and there they are: conical and cantaloupy, As
through Ds, beige and pink and taupe and tan, more breasts than you might see
in a women’s locker room, never mind in the middle of a lunch table.
A passing waiter does a double take at this lively
slide show, but Calhoun is oblivious. He’s talking excitedly about how these
women’s bodies led him and his team of scientists to a discovery in tissue
engineering, a process that could well be one of the most momentous medical
advances of the 21st century: the use of stem cells—specifically stem-cell-enriched
adipose (fat) tissue—to enhance, heal, and rebuild injured or damaged organs.
A few taps on his laptop reveal the unsettling
“before” images of these seemingly normal breasts. There: a breast with a divot
the size of a plum taken out of the bottom from a lumpectomy. There: a chest as
flat as a floor mat from a double mastectomy. There: one so misshapen after a
partial mastectomy, it’s possible to determine what it actually is only because
of its healthy companion. “We realized that for these women there was a huge
unmet need for a disruptive change in technology,” Calhoun says of the work
that has consumed his team of researchers and surgeons for the past eight
years. “It’s the first practical cell therapy.” He pauses. “And it’s breasts.”
Which means cancer victims with breasts mutilated by surgery—as well as women
who are simply unhappy with their natural assets—can now grow a new and
improved pair, with raw materials harvested from their own body fat.
But breast augmentation is just one development (so to
speak) in the company’s more ambitious plan: to introduce stem cell medicine to
the mass market—and not using the ethically fraught kind of stem cells from
human embryos. Instead, based on almost a decade of trials that Cytori and its
academic partners have performed on cell cultures, lab rodents, and now humans,
they believe their engineered flab cells can treat more organs than you find in
a French butcher shop. Chronic heart disease? Check: In human studies released
in May, the cells improved patients’ aerobic capacity and shrank the size of
the infarct (tissue killed by lack of blood). Heart attack? Check: A human
clinical trial, also reported in May, found that the cells increased both the
blood supply to damaged heart muscle and the volume of blood that the heart
pumped. Kidney injury as a result of cancer therapy? Check: In recent rat
studies, the cells improved kidney function. Incontinence after prostatectomy?
Check: Another recent study reported that, by 12 weeks after injection, the
cells had decreased the amount of urine male volunteers were leaking by 89
percent. If Calhoun and his scientists succeed, they won’t just create more
cleavage. They’ll make practical a whole new field, one that medical
visionaries have dreamed of for decades: regenerative medicine.
It makes sense to apply Cytori’s
technology to enhance breasts instead of, say, repair urinary sphincters as a
strategic way to move the patented technology out of rats and into people as
soon as possible. Hearts, kidneys, and even sphincters have to work in order
for us to survive. But we can live just fine without breast tissue, and,
outside of feeding offspring, breasts don’t have to do much. The fact is, the
scientific and regulatory hurdles to getting Cytori’s
cells into clinical use will be easier to clear for breasts than for other
tissue: Breasts simply aren’t as necessary as other organs, so the bar for
proving to regulators that the technology works will be lower.
It’s also a booming market. In 2009, women forked over
$964 million to plastic surgeons for breast augmentation, which edges out nose
jobs as the most commonly performed plastic surgery in the
More is driving that trend than just media-hyped views
of beauty. Breast cancer is a major factor. Incidence of the disease has risen
from 105 per 100,000 women in 1975 to 125 per 100,000 today (though it peaked
at 141 per 100,000 in 1999), and the survival rate has increased: 75 percent of
women diagnosed in 1975 lived at least five more years, compared with 90
percent today. That means more women will live more years after a lumpectomy or
mastectomy. Most of these survivors would just as soon live those years with
something that resembles what they had before, thank you very much. Yet only 30
percent of women facing mastectomy are even offered a consultation with a
plastic surgeon, notes Michael McGuire, president of the American Society of
Plastic Surgeons and an associate professor of surgery at UCLA. And only 25
percent of women who lose a breast to cancer get a new one. (In 2009, there
were 86,424 breast reconstructions.)
There is also demand from a burgeoning demographic no
one would have predicted 15 years ago: young women choosing bilateral
prophylactic mastectomy after testing positive for mutations in genes—known as
BRCA1 and BRCA2—that increase the risk of breast cancer by a factor of five
compared with that for women without the mutations. Others are diagnosed with
cancer in one breast, have a mastectomy, and decide to have the healthy breast
removed as well. In a 2009 study of women undergoing all forms of surgery for
breast cancer, published in Annals of Surgical Oncology by researchers
led by surgical oncologist Todd Tuttle of the
Here’s the weird thing about breasts: They are a point of obsession,
vulnerable to the mercurial whims of mass culture. But one thing remains
constant: In every era, a whole lot of women are convinced they have the wrong
kind.
For better or for worse (mostly for worse), science,
or a rudimentary facsimile thereof, has always been eager to help. European
women of the 16th century applied a cumin-seed paste with a cloth soaked in
water and vinegar to their breasts to keep them small and firm. In the late
1800s, the Princess Bust Developer consisted of a cream and a nifty device
resembling a toilet plunger to increase cup size. Starting in the 1940s pinup era,
there were liquid silicone oil injections for breast enlargement (bad idea:
leakage, inflammation, granulomas) followed, in 1962,
by silicone-filled implants.
Given this history of far-fetched augmentation
schemes, it’s not entirely unfathomable that a plastic surgeon would one day
realize the secret to enhanced breasts was hidden in a pair of love handles. In
1999, Marc Hedrick, then an assistant professor of surgery at UCLA, was doing
yet another liposuction, and not a little suck-out-a-few-ounces-around-my-thighs-please-doctor
procedure, either. He vacuumed 8 liters—more than 2 gallons—of fat from his
patient. Scientists had long wondered whether fat tissue might contain stem
cells. “If it does, then here we are, stupid plastic surgeons, doing the stupidest
procedure on the face of the earth,” says Hedrick, 48, now sitting in the
Read
the entire stem cell research oriented article in WIRED . . .
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*
* * * *
Fiscal Health Hinges on
Containing Costs of Care | By DAVID
WESSEL | WSJ
Prepare to
hear a lot (more) about Medicaid, the government health-insurance program for
the poor.
President
Barack Obama is trying to protect the expansion of Medicaid built into his
health-care law. Governors from both parties are trying to slow rising costs of
Medicaid, which accounts for an average of 22% of state spending. House
Republican budget point person Paul Ryan is trying to reduce future federal
spending on Medicaid by converting it into block grants to the states. Read more…
The U.S.
government can't put itself on a sustainable fiscal course without doing
something to slow health spending. It can't slow health spending costs without
treating Medicaid. And it can't treat Medicaid without confronting the fact
that it has become the long-term-care insurer of last resort for an aging society.
Medicaid was
signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 alongside the bigger, and
politically better defended, Medicare program for the elderly. It's big:
Medicaid will cost a projected $465 billion this year, roughly equal to the
annual output of Norway and Denmark combined. About 57% is currently paid by
the federal government, the rest by states. More than one in five Americans
will be enrolled at some point this year, and that's before the Obama health
law expansions. Medicaid pays for 40% of all births in the U.S., and children
comprise half its beneficiaries. But kids are cheap when it comes to health
care: They account for only 22% of the costs.
Which brings
us to two often overlooked facts about Medicaid.
Medicaid pays
43% of America's long-term care bill, including bills for around 60% of
nursing-home residents.
One third of
all Medicaid spending goes for long-term care, a chunk of that for people who
once thought of themselves as middle class but outlived their savings.
There are two
time-tested ways for Washington to save money on Medicaid. One is to pay
doctors and other health-care providers less. The problem with that is they
already are paid so much less for seeing Medicaid patients than others that
many refuse to see Medicaid patients. . .
And that’s before ObamaCare places another 35
million Americans into the worse coverage ever.
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* * * *
3.
International
Medicine: Universal
health care is still just a dream even in Canada
Canada Still Working Towards Universal Health Care
By: John R. Graham | Pacific Research Institute
You
probably didn’t notice, but Canada will have a federal election . . . It’s a
big deal up there — and the number one issue is — you’ll never guess — health
care! It’s eleven percentage points more critical than jobs and the
economy, according to this poll.
Or, it would be if government planners could bring
about such outcomes. In fact, five million Canadians have no access to a primary
care physician. (That’s about 15 percent of the population.)
Remarkably, the Canadian people’s response to this astounding government
failure is to support government-run health care by a ratio of nine to one.
The real question here is how any politician (Paul
Ryan, Rick Perry, Rick Scott) could resist promising “universal” health care –
the resulting dependency is embraced by the people it victimizes, and vastly
increases politicians’ power.
The Liberal
Party of Canada, which introduced “universal” health care, has learned its
lesson well. Its big campaign promise for next week’s election? A National
Food Policy! Canadians have done without one for centuries. I wonder
how long it will take for five million Canadians to go hungry, after the
Liberals impose their National Food Policy?
Read this
enlightening post about 5 million Canadians not having access to medical care .
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Canadian
Medicare does not give timely access to healthcare, it only gives access to a
waiting list.
--Canadian Supreme Court Decision 2005
http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html
*
* * * *
4.
Medicare: Entitlements are
enslaving Americans.
The US Federal Budget:
Political Grandstanding versus Real Advances for Freedom
It is becoming more apparent every day that the
After
a federal-government shutdown was narrowly avoided on
Even more detestable was the game of political brinkmanship
played by both sides in the buildup to the Orwellian cuts. A deal was reached a
mere few hours before 800,000 federal workers, but not the members of Congress
deciding their fates, would be furloughed without pay. While some of them, such
as the
Read the entire article in LE QUÉBÉCOIS LIBRE by Gennady Stolyarov II. . .
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Government is not the solution to our
problems, government is the problem.
-
Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5.
Medical
Gluttony: Is only exceeded by
Government Gluttony
By Benjamin
Domenech | The
Washington Examiner |
On Capitol Hill last week, I ran into former
Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), of the National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform. Lean, sharp, and crustyas ever, Simpson chatted with
me for a few moments about his experience returning once more to the debate
about deficits and entitlements.
"I remember being in this same building back
in the 1970s," Simpson said, smiling as he shook his head, "and we
were talking about the same dang things. And if nothing changes, so will you!"
Joined by former Clinton White House chief of
staff Erskine Bowles, Simpson has spent the past few weeks advocating for a
draft proposal on America's deficit problem. Responses from Capitol Hill
ranging from dismissive to outraged. But if America wishes to avoid the
fate Simpson predicts, Congress would be wise to seriously consider several
aspects of this proposal.
True, the commission has advanced several ideas
that are anathema to both sides. The left side of Congress contends the
commission’s suggestions are naïve and irrelevant, and the right maintains they
are an attempt to run interference for a massive tax hike. . .
For example, the
commission calculates that enacting comprehensive medical malpractice reform—a
Republican amendment that was repeatedly rejected—would save $64 billion over
the next decade. Expanding cost-sharing in Medicare and creating a cap on
catastrophic costs (a better policy than Obama’s top-down cuts and price
controls) would save an estimated $85 billion. Limiting Medigap cost-sharing
coverage, placing dual-eligible individuals in Medicaid managed care, and
increasing nominal co-pays in Medicaid would save an estimated $76 billion.
The commission also
recommends a cap on Medicaid’s long-term-care allotment—a proposal included in
the 2009 Patients’ Choice Act, introduced by Senate Republicans Tom Coburn (OK)
and Richard Burr (NC) and House Republicans Paul Ryan (WI) and Devin Nunes
(CA). This would save taxpayers roughly $89 billion over the next 10 years.
These proposals would
reduce spending by $314 billion over the next decade. In addition, the
commission endorses a gradual increase in the retirement age to help Social
Security’s solvency, and further savings could be achieved by eliminating the
Medicaid expansion and subsidies and insurance regulation changes in Obama’s
health care law. . .
Consider, for example, the huge number of
Americans who pay little or no taxes, which allows a majority of non-taxpayers
to vote themselves benefits from a minority of taxpayers. The primary cause of
this big number of non-taxpayers is the $500 child tax credit instituted by the
1997 Republican Congress. Until 1998, fewer than 20 percent of federal returns
had no tax liability—but after 2002 that figure jumped to more than 25 percent;
it’s now above 35 percent after the credit was dramatically expanded under
President George W. Bush. . .
Members on both sides of
the congressional aisle should realize that demolishing the debt mountain will
require bipartisan dedication—and rejection of the falsehoods peddled for too
long by irresponsible politicians.
Benjamin
Domenech (bdomenech@heartland.org)
is a research fellow at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Health
Care News. He previously served on President Clinton’s White House summit
on Social Security.
Medicare itself is the most
gluttonous form of health care ever envisioned.
Entitlement medicine always
is.
Treat people like children
and the only answer is more . . . more . . . more . . . more candy, daddy!
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Medical
Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
It Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments
on Every Service.
*
* * * *
6.
Medical
Myths: Health Care: A
Commonly Misunderstood Concept
It is an odd
society indeed where such a seemingly simple idea as health care is so severely
misunderstood. Health care, as the constituents of the term suggest, is simply
caring for one's health, where health—of course—is the physical integrity and
unobstructed functioning of one's body. A healthy person is one whose body is
not breaking down, one who is not in constant pain, one who is going to live
for a long time unless some unforeseen external peril—such as an accident or an
assault—violates the integrity of one's body from without.
In a society
where there exists advanced scientific medical knowledge, it is possible to
benefit one's health by consulting with certain individuals who specialize in
aspects of this knowledge. These individuals are also useful in detecting
diseases or other malfunctions that are not obvious to the intelligent layman,
and they also do a commendable job in researching cures for diseases that have
hitherto been without remedy. Most doctors are to be praised for the excellent
work they do, and I am confident that any doctor worthy of his M.D. degree
would strongly concur with the fundamental understanding of health care that I
posit here.
Most people will
recognize that doctors play an important and sometimes necessary role in the
provision of health care. What many people today fail to recognize, however, is
that doctors are never a sufficient part of genuinely effective health
care. Doctors can indeed often detect signs of illness and recommend remedies,
but to expect a doctor to perform all of your health care for you is just like
expecting a teacher to perform all of your education for you. Doctors and
teachers can both help and can even at times make the difference between
success and failure, but without your participation and your vigilance, failure
is inevitable.
What are other
crucial components of health care? They are not esoteric, and they do not
require specialized knowledge. They include eating in moderation, exercising
regularly, avoiding harmful substances, practicing at most monogamy, keeping
one's surroundings clean, and avoiding risks to life and limb as much as
possible. There are also numerous over-the-counter medications and first aid
practices, that, if used intelligently, can enable individuals to recover from
many minor and even some major perils. These habits are not just little frills
added on to the body of health care; they are that body, and without them, one
will be quite dead quite soon—but not before racking up absurd amounts of
medical expenses. I will note that in the 20th century, human life expectancy
in the West surged from the mid-to-late forties to the late seventies. Although
medical advances were phenomenal during that time, the vast majority of the
increase can be attributed to improvements in overall cleanliness of
infrastructure and healthier habits. With the advent of sanitation, regular
dental hygiene, automatic washers and dryers, and efficient household cleaning
supplies, a lot of infectious diseases that formerly wiped out millions were
kept at bay—mostly not by doctors, but by ordinary laypersons living their
lives in a superior manner to that of their ancestors. New technologies
motivated new behaviors, and these everyday behaviors are our first and so far
our best line of defense against disease and decay. . .
"To expect a doctor to perform all of your
health care for you is just like expecting a teacher to perform all of your
education for you. Doctors and teachers can both help and can even at times
make the difference between success and failure, but without your participation
and your vigilance, failure is inevitable."
Read the entire article at
quebecoislibre.org . . .
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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: Where are
political donations most effective?
Dr. Rosen: The politicians are
furiously raising funds for the 2012 elections already. Is it still appropriate
to give to your favorite party?
Dr. Paul: Certainly. I give to the
Democratic Party because they feel spending money on health care is most
appropriate.
Dr. Dave: Paul, you have your own
prejudice. But in the long run, your political giving is going into a sinkhole.
You can throw $billions into a sinkhole and it keeps on sinking.
Dr. Sam: I’ve quit donating to
political parties completely. On every request I just write, “My next
contribution will come when you repeal ObamaCare.”
Dr. Ruth: Now that’s a good idea.
Why didn’t I think of that? I haven’t given any donations yet, but I will
return all requests with that note.
Dr. Edwards: I’ve received requests from
the Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican Congressional Committee,
the Republican National Committee, the California Republican Party, and a few
others I can’t recall at the moment.
Dr. Paul: It looks like both parties
have the same method of fundraising. But I keep mine simple. I just give to the
Democratic Party.
Dr. Edwards: Do you agree with
everything that your party does?
Dr. Paul: Basically, yes. I even tell
my patients if their free medical care is important, they should vote
democratic.
Dr. Joseph: That’s probably a true
statement if you’re for free health care. But don’t you think that will run out
some day?
Dr. Paul: Not as long as the
Democrats remain in charge.
Dr. Joseph: You don’t think there’s
going to be a change with the next election in 2012?
Dr. Paul: Not a chance. Obama is now
gearing up for the greatest fund raising drive in history—a One Billion Dollar
War Chest.
Dr. Joseph: So you think the
Republicans should give up.
Dr. Paul: The liberal Republicans
that you call RINOs will continue to give us the majority.
Dr. Rosen: If you’re interested in
changing the direction of our country, where would you donate?
Dr. Yancy: It’s obvious that there
are socialists and constitutionalists in both parties. So you can’t trust
either party. So I limit my self to the constitutionalists that are found in
the Tea Party. It makes me feel rather good. I’ve always thought the Boston Tea
Party was a great strike for American Freedom.
Dr. Sam: That’s exactly what I do.
After I return all the request cards from the political parties, I pick out a
candidate or two that is totally pro our American Constitution as the Greatest
living document ever written bringing freedom to a land in such magnitude that
the world has ever seen and donate to him through the Tea Party.
Dr. Edwards: So many RINOs vote
socialistic when the going gets rough. The only way to make them toe the line
is by the efforts of the Tea Party. They get the message quickly that way for
if they don’t vote right, they will be removed by the Tea Party.
Dr. Dave: That works for either
party. The socialists in either party are noted by the Tea Party and are marked
for extermination. It may not be effective for everyone, but it will make a
huge change in our country’s future.
Dr. Michelle: So you think the Political
Parties will become extinct?
Dr. Rosen: Certainly not. They have a
lot of depth in resources that the Tea Party will never have. So they won’t
replace the Political Parties. But they will clean up at least the Republican
Party. It will become the true Constitution Party while the Democratic Party
will become the Socialist Party. People will then have a clear choice. I still
believe the majority of Americans will choose freedom over socialism or a
paternalistic society.
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The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Opinions Are
Heard.
*
* * * *
8.
Voices of
Medicine: Snore and you sleep alone.
Sleep
Awareness Week: Global Sleep Emergency Persists
By James J.
Murtagh, M.D.
"To
achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep." Joan Klempner
If there were a fifth horseman of the
apocalypse, surely he would be sleep deprivation. He would be the palest of the
pale riders.
The National Sleep Foundation (NSF)
designated
Is it an exaggeration to say our society
faces a crisis in sleep disorders? The father of modern sleep medicine, Dr.
William Dement writes: "Sleep disorders . . . have not been
adequately addressed by the medical profession; … the absence of awareness of
these problems relating to sleep is so pervasive and the consequences are
potentially so dire as to constitute a national emergency". Richard L.
Gelula, NSF's chief executive officer states that "sleepiness that
permeates our society has serious consequences, and Americans' poor sleep is
creating a public health and safety crisis in need of immediate
attention,"
Dement links many of national major
disasters, including the Exxon Valdez and Challenger can be traced to sleep
disorders. Maybe "Mothers against drunk driving" need to change
their focus to "Mothers against drunk and sleepy driving." The
average sleep-apnea-induced truck disaster kills 4.2 persons. Friends cannot
allow friends to drive sleepy.
Among the key findings of the CDC
research reviewed:
* 4.7% of respondents say they had
fallen asleep while driving at least once in the past 30 days.
* 7.3% of people who got less than seven
hours of sleep report nodding off at the wheel, compared to 3% who got more.
* 37.9% of those questioned said they had fallen asleep unintentionally during
the day at least one time in the past month.
* Drowsy driving causes an estimated
1,550 deaths a year and 40,000 injuries.
* More than 40 Million Americans suffer
with sleep disorders, and more than 80 million are sleep deprived
* More than 95% of sleep patients are
not treated
* Almost all sleep disorders can be
treated, with immensely improved quality of life, productivity and life
expectancy Millions are too
sleepy even to have satisfying sex.
* Proper treatment of sleep disorders can result in improved
happiness, improved sex life, and loss of weight, and overall improved
efficiency and energy.
* Minorities, the poor, the chronically ill, the unemployed and the
elderly are at special risk.
* Direct medical costs of sleep disorders account for more than 30
Billion dollars.
* Lost productivity of sleep deprivation costs $50 to 100 billion
* Sleep Apnea is a major cause of many common conditions, such as
hypertension, stroke and sudden death.
Drowsiness is a major threat to military
readiness. DoD has made sleep research a top
priority, and has allocated more than $100 million this year to study military
aspects of sleep. Research suggests enhanced vigilance will lead to a superior
warrior.
Overweight men are most likely to have
sleep apnea, but no one is immune.
Some good news? Treatment of sleep
disorders actually saves money. The overall health costs of a patient suffering
from sleep disorders can be cut in half by effective treatment of the sleep
disorders. In an era of health reform and scarce resources, preventive medicine
must take priority. The nation can not afford to avoid treating sleep problems.
Burgess is just one of hundreds of
historical authors to write about sleep. For fun, a list of the top 100 movies
concentrating on sleep was compiled: www.sleepfoundation.org/top-100-sleep-movies
What can you do? There are seven simple
questions your can assess your risk of sleep disorder. Take the simple test at www.stanford.edu/~dement/epworth.html.
What could be a better use of a few minutes of your time? These few questions
can tell you if you need attention from a sleep specialist.
"We are such stuff/ As dreams are
made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep." Shakespeare wrote.
How true! As you wind your clock forward, take care to avoid the Clockwork
Orange horror show of sleep deprivation. Take the simple screening test. The
life you save may be your own, or it may be a loved one.
Last week was
National Sleep Awareness Week.
Dr. James Murtagh is Medical Director of
the
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VOM
Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about
*
* * * *
9.
Book &
Movie Reviews: Next week is Holy Week
The Gospel According to
Hollywood: One Blockbuster per Generation
Houses
of Worship | By JOHN A. MURRAY | WSJ
Imagine
meeting a person who
had never heard of Easter. If you could use only one film produced in your
generation to describe the real meaning of the holiday, which would you use and
why?
While there have been many films on Christ
over the last 85 years ("The Greatest Story Ever Told," "Jesus
of Nazareth," etc.), there has been, on average, only one major
blockbuster produced on Jesus per generation: "The King of Kings" (1927),
"Ben Hur: The Tale of the Christ" (1959), "Jesus" (1979),
and "The Passion of the Christ" (2004).
Mel Gibson's
"The Passion of the Christ" focuses primarily on the final hours
leading up to Christ's crucifixion. "Ben Hur" centers on the
fictitious character Judah Ben Hur (played by Charlton Heston), intertwining
Jesus' birth, ministry and death, but leaving out his resurrection.
Then there is Warner Brothers' 1979 film "Jesus."
Based on the Gospel of St. Luke, the film, funded in part by money raised by
Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, did poorly at the box office.
But in 1981, Campus Crusade began translating it for use in the mission field.
Known as "The Jesus Film," the movie has now been translated into
more than 1,100 languages. Seen by literally billions of people around the
world, it is arguably the most watched film ever—with many millions of viewers
professing faith in Jesus Christ as a result. It is still being shown
world-wide today.
Lastly there is Cecil B. DeMille's "The
King of Kings," the spiritual predecessor to "Jesus." Its
viewership was estimated at over 800 million people by 1959. Because it was
produced as a silent film, Protestant and Catholic missionaries alike were able
to use it for decades to share the Gospel with non-English-speaking peoples.
According to DeMille's autobiography, during the Korean War Madame Chiang
Kai-shek sent an emissary to DeMille seeking a copy of the film to show in
P.O.W. camps.
The most
powerful story related by DeMille about the influence of "The King of
Kings" involved a Polish man named William E. Wallner. Living in Danzig
(today Gdansk), Wallner saw "The King of Kings" in 1928. Greatly
moved, he decided to devote his life to Christian ministry.
By 1939,
Wallner was leading a Lutheran parish in Prague. Shortly after Hitler's
invasion of Czechoslovakia, a doctor in Wallner's parish was sent to a Nazi
concentration camp. Wallner shared with DeMille how the doctor, a Jewish
convert to Christianity, encouraged his fellow prisoners "to die bravely,
with faith in their hearts." As a result, the doctor became a target of
Gestapo officers.
Although
struck with an iron rod until one of his arms had to be amputated, the doctor
would not be quieted. Finally, as DeMille's autobiography recounts, "one
Gestapo officer beat the doctor's head against a stone wall until blood was
streaming down his face." Holding a mirror before the doctor, the Gestapo
officer sneered: "Take a look at yourself. Now you look like your Jewish
Christ."
Lifting his
remaining hand up, the doctor exclaimed, "Lord [Jesus], never in my life
have I received such honor—to resemble You." Those would be his last words
on Earth.
Distraught by
the doctor's proclamation, the Gestapo officer sought out Wallner that night.
"Could Pastor Wallner help him, free him from the terrible burden of his
guilt?"
After praying
with him, Wallner advised, "Perhaps God let you kill that good man to
bring you to the foot of the Cross, where you can help others." The
Gestapo officer returned to the concentration camp. And through the aid of
Wallner and the Czech underground, he worked to free many Jews over the years
that followed.
On July 30,
1957, Wallner met with DeMille and spoke about the impact "The King of
Kings" had on his life and all who came in contact with him. Wallner ended
his account to DeMille by declaring: "If it were not for 'The King of
Kings,' I would not be a Lutheran pastor, and 350 Jewish children would have
died in the ditches."
DeMille
concluded his account of Wallner's visit by writing: "If I felt that this
film was my work, it would be intolerably vain and presumptuous to quote such
stories from the hundreds like them that I could quote. But all we did in 'The
King of Kings,' all I have striven to do in any of my Biblical pictures, was to
translate into another medium, the medium of sight and sound, the words of the
Bible." . . .
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& movie reviews . . .
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The Book & Movie Review Section Is an Insider’s View of
What Doctors are Reading & Seeing.
*
* * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: ObamaCare Health
without adequate coverage
Who
has Health Insurance?
When Pew did the statistics and found 35
million Americans without health insurance, many of the people with Medicaid
checked off “No Insurance” because they thought if they can’t find a physician
to accept Medicaid, they didn’t really have health insurance coverage. When
ObamaCare places another 35 million Americans in the slough with the 69.5
million Americans that they think have coverage through Medicaid, will they
really have more than 100 million Americans with coverage or at least not be
able to find a physician?
When
reality strikes, there will then be 100 million Americans without adequate
health coverage.
Quantum Computing
Physics
is strange, and the people who spend their life devoted to its study are more
accustomed to its strangeness than the rest of us. But, even to physicists,
quantum mechanics—the basis of a quantum computer—is almost intolerably odd. As
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feyman noted,
“Our imagination is stretched to the utmost. Not, as in fiction, to imagine
things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.”
Dream Machine, the mind-expanding world of quantum computing.
By Rivka Galchen, New Yorker,
I want what I want when I want it.
This pubescent juvenile boy’s cry
is now heard more frequently in health care.
The mature girl’s cry is “you’ll
get what I got when I get it” is heard less often.
The government’s response is you
can have what you want when you want it.
Cost is no object.
Trash is Piling up in
Joan
Bryant, the director of employees for Trash Drivers Local 29, the union that
represent solid waste drivers, said 15 drivers are out on medical leave, 12 are
on vacation, seven called in sick. The number of sick drivers “is not an
unusual number,” she said.
And we though buying all
those garbage trucks with lifts to eliminate human back-lifting would eliminate
calling in sick.
Actually, the workers are
merely redefining sick days as vacation days before and after holidays.
High Bar to fire teachers proves costly (BEE
investigation. . . )
Several
How about a simple pink slip
for misconduct? Wouldn’t that solve both problems?
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read more HMC . . .
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Hippocrates
and His Kin / Hippocrates Modern Colleagues
The Challenges of Yesteryear, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
*
* * * *
11. Organizations Restoring Accountability in HealthCare,
Government and Society:
•
The National
Center for Policy Analysis, John C
Goodman, PhD, President, who along with Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick
wrote Lives at Risk, issues a
weekly Health Policy Digest, a health summary of the full NCPA
daily report. You may log on at www.ncpa.org and register to receive one or more
of these reports. This month, read the Health Care Alerts.
•
Pacific
Research Institute, (www.pacificresearch.org) Sally
C Pipes, President and CEO, John R Graham, Director of Health Care Studies, publish a monthly Health Policy Prescription newsletter,
which is very timely to our current health care situation. You may signup to
receive their newsletters via email by clicking on the email tab or directly access their health
care blog. Just released, California’s Proposal to Control Health
Plans’ Rate Increases.
•
The Mercatus Center
at
•
To read the rest of this column, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/org.asp.
•
The
National Association of Health Underwriters, www.NAHU.org. The NAHU's Vision
Statement: Every American will have access to private sector solutions for health,
financial and retirement security and the services of insurance professionals.
There are numerous important issues listed on the opening page. Be sure to scan
their professional journal, Health
Insurance Underwriters (HIU), for articles of importance in the Health
Insurance MarketPlace. The HIU magazine, with Jim Hostetler as the executive
editor, covers technology, legislation and product news - everything that
affects how health insurance professionals do business.
•
The Galen
Institute, Grace-Marie Turner President and Founder, has a weekly Health Policy Newsletter sent
every Friday to which you may subscribe by logging on at www.galen.org.
A study of purchasers of Health Savings Accounts shows that the new health care
financing arrangements are appealing to those who previously were shut out of
the insurance market, to families, to older Americans, and to workers of all
income levels. This month, you might focus on The
New Health Law: Bad for Doctors, Awful for Patients –Jason Fodeman,
M.D., April 2011.
•
Greg Scandlen, an expert in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), has
embarked on a new mission: Consumers for Health Care Choices (CHCC). Read the
initial series of his newsletter, Consumers Power Reports.
Become a member of CHCC, The
voice of the health care consumer. Be sure to read Prescription for change:
Employers, insurers, providers, and the government have all taken their turn at
trying to fix American Health Care. Now it's the Consumers turn. Greg has
joined the Heartland Institute, where current newsletters can be found.
•
The Heartland
Institute, www.heartland.org,
Joseph Bast, President, publishes the Health Care
News and the Heartlander. You may sign up for their
health care email newsletter. Read the late Conrad F Meier on What is Free-Market Health Care?. This month, be sure to read The Patriot’s Tool
Box.
•
The Foundation
for Economic Education, www.fee.org, has
been publishing The Freeman - Ideas On Liberty, Freedom's Magazine, for
over 50 years, with
•
The Council
for Affordable Health Insurance, www.cahi.org/index.asp,
founded by Greg Scandlen in 1991,
where he served as CEO for five years, is an association of insurance
companies, actuarial firms, legislative consultants, physicians and insurance
agents. Their mission is to develop and promote free-market solutions to
•
The
Independence Institute, www.i2i.org, is a
free-market think-tank in Golden,
•
Martin
Masse, Director of
Publications at the Montreal Economic Institute, is the publisher of the
webzine: Le Quebecois Libre. Please log on at www.quebecoislibre.org/apmasse.htm to review his free-market based articles, some of which
will allow you to brush up on your French. You may also register to receive
copies of their webzine on a regular basis. This month, read a very insightful article: If astrologers and meteorologists have
little influence on public policy, economists predicting the future occupy
strategic positions throughout the public decision-making process, whether in
government or at central banks, nurturing the enactment of more and more
wrongheaded large-scale policies.
•
The
Fraser Institute, an
independent public policy organization, focuses on the role competitive markets
play in providing for the economic and social well being of all Canadians.
Canadians celebrated Tax Freedom Day on June 28, the date they stopped paying
taxes and started working for themselves. Log on at www.fraserinstitute.ca
for an overview of the extensive research articles that are available. You may
want to go directly to their Business
and Economics section: When it comes to the economic policy, the key
to deciding which federal party’s platform is best for the economy is to
determine which offers the best policies that help create an economic
environment that encourages hard work, savings, investment, and entrepreneurial
risk taking. . . Unfortunately, no
federal party offers a truly austere fiscal plan.
•
The
Heritage Foundation, www.heritage.org/,
founded in 1973, is a research and educational institute whose mission was to
formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free
enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values
and a strong national defense. -- However,
since they supported the socialistic health plan instituted by Mitt Romney in
Massachusetts, which is replaying the Medicare excessive increases in its first
two years, and was used by some as a justification for the Obama plan, they
have lost sight of their mission and we will no longer feature them as a
freedom loving institution and have canceled our contributions. We would
also caution that should Mitt Romney ever run for National office again, he
would be dangerous in the cause of freedom in health care. The WSJ paints him
as being to the left of Barrack Hussein Obama. We would also advise Steve
Forbes to disassociate himself from this institution.
•
The
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Lew Rockwell, President, is a rich source of free-market materials,
probably the best daily course in economics we've seen. If you read these
essays on a daily basis, it would probably be equivalent to taking Economics 11
and 51 in college. Please log on at www.mises.org to obtain the foundation's daily reports. To take courses
in Capitalism, Socialism, Austrian Economics, Competition, Anti-Trust and
others, log on to http://academy.mises.org/courses/
You may also log on to Lew's premier free-market site to read some of his lectures to medical
groups. Learn how state medicine subsidizes illness or to find out why anyone would want to
be an MD today.
•
CATO. The Cato Institute (wwws.cato.org) was
founded in 1977, by Edward H. Crane, with Charles Koch of Koch Industries. It
is a nonprofit public policy research foundation headquartered in
•
The
Ethan Allen Institute, www.ethanallen.org/index2.html, is one of some 41 similar but independent state
organizations associated with the State Policy Network (
•
The Free State Project, with a goal of Liberty in Our
Lifetime, http://freestateproject.org/,
is an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to
move to New Hampshire, where they will
exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which
the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and
property. The success of the Project would likely entail reductions in taxation
and regulation, reforms at all levels of government to expand individual rights
and free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating
the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world. [It is indeed
a tragedy that the burden of government in the U.S., a freedom society for its
first 150 years, is so great that people want to escape to a state solely for
the purpose of reducing that oppression. We hope this gives each of us an
impetus to restore freedom from government intrusion in our own state.]
•
The
St. Croix Review, a
bimonthly journal of ideas, recognizes that the world is very dangerous.
Conservatives are staunch defenders of the homeland. But as Russell Kirk
believed, wartime allows the federal government to grow at a frightful pace. We
expect government to win the wars we engage, and we expect that our borders be
guarded. But
•
* * * * *
Father Knows Best.
By the time a
man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks
he’s wrong.
–Charles Wadsworth
Desirability does not justify force.
If
we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the
desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use
of coercion. –Friedrich
August von Hayek
St. Augustine of Hippo on the difference
between kingdoms and robberies.
Justice
being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies
themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled
by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the
confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance
of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places,
fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the
more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly
conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of
impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander
the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man
what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold
pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it
with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great
fleet art styled emperor."
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), in "The City of God."
To understand why Socialism will always fail:
“It is
always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would
prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better” –Friedrich
August von Hayek
And that’s why Socialist
never learn how to do things better.
Read more: www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/friedrich_august_von_haye.html#ixzz1KgzWBilk
There is no reason to
suppose that government regulators know what’s best for everyone.
Some Recent Postings
In The March 26 MedicalTuesday Issue:
1. Featured Article: Duty Hours: Where Do
We Go From Here?
2. In
the News: Is
Your Job an Endangered Species?
3. International Medicine: British Med
Assn proposes the first walkout by
doctors since 1975
4. Medicare: Talk
Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy
5. Medical Gluttony: Gouging on the
Hospital Laboratory Bill
6. Medical
Myths: ObamaCare with Increased
Taxes will solve our Healthcare Problems
7. Overheard
in the Medical Staff Lounge: ObamaCare
Sooners
8. Voices of Medicine: Medicaid Is Worse
Than No Coverage at All
9. The Bookshelf: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America
10. Hippocrates
& His Kin: Subsidizing
Students, Housing, and Healthcare are the same
11. Related Organizations: Restoring
Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
Words of Wisdom, Recent Postings,
In
Memoriam . . .
In The April HPUSA Issue:
1. Featured Article: A
Member of the European Parliament’s Warning to America
2. In the News: On Tax Day, Friday, April 15, 2011, Atlas Shrugged Opens
3. International
Healthcare: NHS breaches target for
hospital waits By Nicholas Timmins,
4. Government
Healthcare: Medicare’s Benefits
exceed Contributions by 300 Percent
5. Lean HealthCare: Lean
HealthCare requires defunding ObamaCare
6. Misdirection in
Healthcare: Hospitals taking
over private practices
7. Overheard on
Capital Hill: After the Welfare State
8. Innovations in
Healthcare: How
to become an Entrepreneur?
9. The Health Plan for the
10. Restoring Accountability
in HealthCare by Moving from a Vertical to a Horizontal Industry:
Helena Rubinstein: The Color of Money
Helena Rubinstein was born in 1872 in Krakow’s Jewish
ghetto, the eldest of eight daughters of a kerosene dealer. By her late teens,
she had abandoned Poland for Australia, where she began cooking up vats of face
cream. She called it Valaze, and claimed that it was the creation of an eminent
European skin specialist named Dr. Lykuski and had been “compounded from rare
herbs which only grow in the Carpathian mountains.” She rented a storefront in
downtown Melbourne, and peddled her concoction at a staggering markup.
In just over a decade, she had become a
millionaire. She expanded to London, then to Paris, then to New York—and from
there to almost every other major city in the world. She added one product after another, until
Helena Rubinstein Inc. comprised sixty-two creams; seventy-eight powders;
forty-six perfumes, colognes, and eaux de toilette; sixty-nine lotions; and a
hundred and fifteen lipsticks, plus soaps, rouges, and eyeshadows. In December
of 1928, she sold her business to Lehman Brothers for the equivalent of
eighty-four million dollars in today’s money—and, when Lehman’s mismanagement
and the Depression brought the stock price down from sixty dollars to three
dollars, she bought her firm back for a pittance and took it to even greater
success. She was four feet ten and spoke an odd combination of Polish, Yiddish,
French, and English. She insisted on being referred to as Madame. At the time
of her death, in 1965, she was one of the richest women in the world.
The biographer Ruth Brandon spends the first
part of “Ugly Beauty” (Harper; $26.99) describing Rubinstein’s rise, and the
picture she paints of her subject is extraordinary. Rubinstein bought art by
the truckload; a critic once said that she had “unimportant paintings by every
important painter of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” In just one room
in her Park Avenue triplex, she had seven Renoirs hung above a fireplace. Her
legendary collection of jewels was kept in a filing cabinet, sorted alphabetically:
“A” for amethysts, “B” for beryls, “D” for diamonds. “Rubinstein’s New York
living room, like everything else about her, was tasteless but full of gusto,”
Brandon writes. “It sported an acid-green carpet designed by Miró, twenty
Victorian carved chairs covered in purple and magenta velvets, Chinese
pearl-inlaid coffee tables, gold Turkish floor lamps, life-sized Easter Island
sculptures, six-foot-tall blue opaline vases, African masks around the
fireplace, and paintings covering every inch of wall space.” She once invited
Edith Sitwell over for lunch and, upon hearing that Sitwell’s ancestors had
burned Joan of Arc at the stake, exclaimed, “Somebody had to do it!” In the
nineteen-fifties, she took as a companion a young man half a century her junior,
wooing him on a date that began with an enormous lunch (“I need to keep up my
energy!”) and a showing of “Ben-Hur” (“Most interesting! I’m glad the Jewish
boy won!”). From then on, Rubinstein took the young man everywhere, even to a
state dinner with the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who asked her,
“Who’s your goy?” Rubinstein replied, “That’s Patrick! And . . . and, yes, he
is my goy.” . . .
Read more www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/03/28/110328crbo_books_gladwell
- ixzz1HkEGisJr
In the second part of
“Ugly Beauty,” Brandon tells a parallel story, about one of Rubinstein’s
contemporaries, a man named Eugène Schueller. . . . He called his company L’Oréal. Brandon’s
aim in relating the histories of these two pioneers of the beauty business is
to tease out their many connections and parallels—to explore what the
development of cosmetics at L’Oréal and at Helena Rubinstein tells us about the
social constructions of beauty. . .
Read more . . . www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/03/28/110328crbo_books_gladwell#ixzz1HkNxCSpH
On This Date in History - April 12
On this date in
1861, the
On this date in
1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt died. FDR was a popular President, but he also
had as fierce an opposition public as any Chief Executive of modern times. They
never even called him the President. They referred to him as “that man in the
White House.” History does repeat itself.
On this date in
1955, Salk vaccine was declared safe and effective. There is one
field of human endeavor that has a record of virtually uninterrupted progress.
That field is medicine, where we are always learning how to save more lives and
heal more wounds. Today is an anniversary in the field of medicine. One of the
most dreaded killers and cripplers of childhood had at last been tamed. Doctors
throughout the world are contributing to the development of new preventives and
new cures for other disease. If we could do as well with the diseases of
society as with the physical diseases of humanity, we would be making progress.
Unfortunately,
there are many in our generation who want us to go backwards to the lands we
emigrated from over the past two centuries where little progress in medicine
occurred. If the socialists succeed with their invasion of our country, medical
progress will indeed be interrupted. —Editor
After Leonard and Thelma
Spinrad
Thank you for joining the
MedicalTuesday.Network and Have Your Friends Do the Same. If you receive this
as an invitation, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/Newsletter.asp,
enter you email address and join the 10,000 members who receive this newsletter.
If you are one of the 80,000 guests that surf our web sites, we thank you and
invite you to join the email network on a regular basis by subscribing at the
website above. To
subscribe to our companion publication concerning health plans and our pending
national challenges, please go to www.healthplanusa.net/newsletter.asp
and enter your email address. Then go to the archives to scan the last several
important HPUSA newsletters and current issues in healthcare.
Please note that sections 1-4, 6, 8-9 are
entirely attributable quotes and editorial comments are in brackets. Permission
to reprint portions has been requested and may be pending with the
understanding that the reader is referred back to the author's original site.
We respect copyright as exemplified by George
Helprin who is the author, most recently, of
“Digital Barbarism,” just published by HarperCollins. We hope our highlighting
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Del Meyer, MD, Editor & Founder
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Always remember that Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck, the father of socialized medicine in
Thus we must also remember that ObamaCare
has nothing to do with appropriate healthcare; it was similarly projected to
gain loyalty by making American citizens dependent on the government and
eliminating their choice and chance to improve their welfare or quality of
healthcare. Socialists know that once people are enslaved, freedom seems too
risky to pursue.