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Community For Better Health Care

Vol X, No X, Aug 23, 2011

 

In This Issue:

1.                  Featured Article: Scientific Research at the Crossroads?

2.                  In the News: Spinning Gay Data

3.                  International Medicine: Central Money or Medicare –It’s all Funny Stuff

4.                  Medicare: Health Care Reform

5.                  Medical Gluttony: Six Unnecessary Consultations

6.                  Medical Myths: The More Doctors, the Better

7.                  Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: Who is your favorite presidential candidate?

8.                  Voices of Medicine: Bad luck? Bad faith? Obama battles with mythical monsters

9.                  The Bookshelf: Presidential Malpractice

10.              Hippocrates & His Kin: Another $800 Billion of TARP money!

11.              Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice and Society

Words of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In Memoriam, Today in History . . .

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Always remember that 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.

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 in improving their welfare or quality of healthcare. Socialists know that once people are enslaved, freedom seems too risky to pursue.

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1.      Featured Article: Scientific Research at the Crossroads?                                                         

An Epidemic of False Claims

Competition and conflicts of interest distort too many medical findings

False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine. Many studies that claim some drug or treatment is beneficial have turned out not to be true. We need only look to conflicting findings about beta-carotene, vitamin E, hormone treatments, Vioxx and Avandia. Even when effects are genuine, their true magnitude is often smaller than originally claimed. Read more . . .

The problem begins with the public’s rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. The number of investigators—and the number of experiments, observations and analyses they produce—has also increased exponentially in many fields, but adequate safeguards against bias are lacking. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture.

Much research is conducted for reasons other than the pursuit of truth. Conflicts of interest abound, and they influence outcomes. In health care, research is often performed at the behest of companies that have a large financial stake in the results. Even for academics, success often hinges on publishing positive findings. The oligopoly of high-impact journals also has a distorting effect on funding, academic careers and market shares. Industry tailors research agendas to suit its needs, which also shapes academic priorities, journal revenue and even public funding.

The crisis should not shake confidence in the scientific method. The ability to prove something false continues to be a hallmark of science. But scientists need to improve the way they do their research and how they disseminate evidence . . .

John P. A. Ioannidis is C. F. Rehnborg Professor in Disease Prevention,

Professor of Medicine and of Health Research and Policy,
D
irector of the Stanford Prevention Research Center,

Stanford University School of Medicine.

Read the entire article in Scientific American – Subscription required . . .

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2.      In the News: Spinning Gay Data

SF Chronicle August 28, 2011 John Wildermuth, SF Staff writer

New figures show that Provincetown, Mass., population 2,642, is the gayest spot in America. Of course, those same data also put San Francisco lower, percentage wise, on the California gay scale than Palm Springs, Guerneville, West Hollywood and Cathedral City in Riverside County. Cathedral City? Blame it on the U.S. census, which doesn’t ask about sexual orientation, but only about same-sex relationships. And without the demographic gold standard that every 10-year count provides, every pronouncement of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population — local, statewide and national — is a hodgepodge of estimates, disparate statistics, conventional wisdom and just plain guesswork. Read more . . .

“There’s a lot of ‘back of the envelope’ figuring,” said Gary Gates, a demographer with UCLA’s Williams Institute, a think tank focused on sexual orientation law and policy. “We don’t even have terms everyone agrees on when it comes to defining who is gay, lesbian or bisexual.”

Ever since sex researcher Alfred Kinsey estimated in 1948 that 10 percent of the male population was predominantly homosexual, the number question has been a political football, with gay activists looking for a large population and antigay forces eager to downplay the size of the gay and lesbian community.

Gates found out all about that when he pulled together the best available information and found that about 4 million people, or about 1.7 percent of the country’s adult population, identified themselves as gay or lesbian. Adding bisexuals to that number roughly doubles the percentage, with transgender adults bringing the total to 3.8 percent.

Not all are counted

The number is far from perfect, Gates admitted. It doesn’t, for example, include closeted gays and lesbians.

“As a demographer, I’m all about the numbers,” he said. “How do you count people who don’t want to be counted?”

Gates’ estimate brought a firestorm of criticism, much of it from gay-friendly groups that complained his numbers were far too low.

“I was criticized and called irresponsible,” Gates said. “Clearly, there are people who think this number is critically important.”

Count Mario Guerrero as part of that group. As government affairs director for Equality California, Guerrero needs hard numbers to back up his Sacramento lobbying for laws and policies that benefit the state’s gay and lesbian community.

Earlier this year, for example, Guerrero fought to include gays and lesbians as specific “communities of interest” in the redistricting process, hoping to ensure that heavily gay areas such as the Castro district in San Francisco, West Hollywood and Palm Springs weren’t split by new political boundaries.

Numbers augmented

While census data showed where same-sex couples lived, Guerrero and others were forced to augment those numbers with figures from membership rolls of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender-oriented groups, lists of registered domestic partners, donors against the Proposition 8 same-sex marriage initiative, and anything else that could possibly indicate a shared community.

“It’s absolutely important to have a number,” Guerrero said. “In Sacramento, people use numbers to justify virtually everything, and the fact that we don’t have one hurts.”

Gay groups have to be careful what they wish for, however. In the United Kingdom, for example, the first national survey of sexual identity found that only about 1.5 percent of the population said that they were gay, lesbian or bisexual, well below the 6 to 7 percent estimate previously used by the government and gay groups.

Similar surveys found that the self-identified gay and lesbian community was 1.9 percent in Canada, 2.1 percent in Australia and 1.2 percent in Norway, Gates said.

Still, there’s a growing effort to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity on some of the large statewide and national surveys, in the hope of determining not only the number of gays and lesbians, but also identifying some of the specific problems they face.

For example, the California Health Interview Survey, a UCLA-run study of about 50,000 households done every two years, has long asked about sexual orientation. Data from the survey showed that gay, lesbian and bisexuals in California are at a surprisingly high risk for domestic violence. . .

Comment / analysis: It appears that the stats for the past century have not changed significantly. Many of our friends in the retail industry are gay but none are married. It would appear that the sexual research, which has indicated that up to ten percent of men are homoerotic and one to two percent are homosexual, has not changed significantly for centuries. It’s the change in civil society with the family unit that is the most disturbing.

From the SF Chronicle . . .
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3.      International Medicine: Central Money or Medicare –It’s all Funny Stuff

75 years of funny money* EDITORIAL by Martin Masse

A good start to understanding the real nature of central banking is the libertarian bumper sticker saying "Don't steal! The government hates competition." The whole purpose of the bureaucratic machine called central bank is indeed to steal from us.

How does it do this? By constantly printing money (or, nowadays, creating it out of electronic bits on computers) and increasing the money supply, thereby creating inflation. Read more . . .

When you get to the Bank of Canada's Web site, it says "We are Canada's central bank. We work to preserve the value of money by keeping inflation low and stable." Do a little search on the same Web site, however, and you discover that since the Bank started its operations in 1935, the dollar has lost about 94% of its value. A basket of goods and services that cost $100 in 1935 would cost $1600 today. That's some preservation!

Counterfeiting is understandably illegal and punishable by law. But central bankers do it all the time, the only difference being that they have a legal stick―their dollars are the only permitted legal tender―and they deploy a huge propaganda machine to force us to accept their funny money.

There are big stakes involved. Inflation is a way for governments to spend more without having to directly impose taxes. A central bank is an essential part of big government.

Central banking operations also serve as a permanent bailout for debtors. Interest rates are usually kept lower than they would be in a free financial market. And by reducing the value of the money being owed, they make life easier for debtors. So the modern era of central banking is one where debt, public and private, inexorably grows, to the point where the whole monetary edifice now threatens to collapse.

Finally, central banks protect the reckless practices of financial institutions, who lend money that they don't have under the fraudulent fractional reserve system. With government acting as a lender of last resort, financial institutions are prone to taking greater and greater risks. As we've seen recently, wads of cheap cash are always at their disposal to keep them solvent and profitable. .  .

Read Martin Masse’s Entire Editorial . . .
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Canadian Medicare does not give timely access to healthcare, it only gives access to a waiting list.

--Canadian Supreme Court Decision 2005 SCC 35, [2005] 1 S.C.R. 791

http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html

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4.      Medicare: Health Care Reform

Free Our Health Care Now Petition

Because of the NCPA, the Free Our Health Care Now petition (the largest policy petition ever, with 1.34 million plus signatures) was delivered to Congress against government-run health care.

Ideas in Progress Read more . . .                           

·                     Make health insurance portable

·                     Encourage insurance for pre-existing conditions

·                     Create a national market for health insurance

·                     Make the tax subsidies for health insurance fair

·                     Allow self-insurance for the chronically ill

View media coverage of the delivery of the Free Our Health Care Now petition.
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 Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.

- Ronald Reagan

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5.      Medical Gluttony: Six Unnecessary Consultations

The recent increase in welfare recipients being placed into Medicaid brings back recollections of the old county hospital. The poor collected in the Emergency Room every evening for the social event of the community. Mothers with their brood of children without their fathers. Homeless men. People doubled over for an alleged kidney stone that every intern knew was one of the most intense pains that humans endure. And then the relief seen in posture and expression after the narcotic shot was given and they sidled out the door having had a wonderful fix that didn’t cost anything. Read more . . .

So with the federal push to place all welfare patients into Medicaid, who can blame them for thinking they now have real insurance and access to the same care that the rich folks have? Their perception of that kind of care is that they will have a special consultant for every pain, ache and condition they have. Only when the reality of the situation appears, do they begin to understand. Or rebel. Or threaten legal action if specialists for their heart, liver, intestines, lungs, colon, bones, muscles, diabetic or thyroid condition, etc., et al, are not provided.

They don’t understand or maybe don’t care that three fourths of the medical community is declining to see them. The epithets are hurled at the personal physician who is unable to provide their demands, which in turn causes more personal physicians to remove themselves from this population. And access to care becomes even more difficult, if not impossible.

They have never been able to manage the money the government has given them and they fail to understand the cost of health care. Or, perhaps they consider it their entitlement no matter what the cost.

They are not medically sophisticated enough to understand the difference between basic necessary healthcare and the six consults that they request. In the same way, they fail to see that driving the Ford Fusion or the global small car is much less costly than the Lincoln luxury car. We can’t afford to give everyone a Lincoln. Socialized medicine is an illusion and will always be an illusion to socialists and the media. Greece still thinks they can have everything, even if there is no money to pay for it. Why should they be bothered with such trivia?

There will never be a classless society. Karl Marx and Stalin couldn’t provide it. Neither can Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney.

We should move forward to the city and county hospitals of yesteryear where anybody could go in the evening and get their shots, pills, and immunizations from the cream of the health care team—the Medical School faculty, residents, fellows, interns and the best of the private physicians.

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Medical Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.

Gluttony Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on Every Service.

Gluttony also disappeared in the Charity Hospitals of yesteryear.

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6.      Medical Myths: The More Doctors, the Better

There is another aspect to having six unnecessary consultations. Not only does the cost of health care increase six-fold, but the quality of health care diminishes. America has the highest quality of health care in the world, not because we are all forced to do everything the same way, but because every physician is allowed to practice in the best way that he or she was taught and allowed to do. When there are several doctors involved, each has his or her preferred way of handling a problem. As soon as one consultation is obtained, the personal physician loses control. This also provides the battleground where members of the family then become involved. Perhaps, they haven't spoken to each other for a year or two; those from afar feel guilty for not having seen Dad for some time. Each has a different perspective. The nearby family feels that Dad has been failing for some time and the next step is to say goodbye. The family from out of state wants everything done to avoid death and not say their last goodbye so soon after their first hello in years. Read more . . .

I had an 86-year-old patient in the hospital. He had heart disease and was progressing well. However, he had an arrhythmia that I wanted some help in managing. I told the family I would call in a consult with the cardiologist who may want to do a cardiac catheterization. However, if he mentioned cardiac surgery, they should talk to me before signing anything. At age 86, he would live longer without surgery than with any major procedure.

The cardiologist performed an immediate cardiac catheterization and found some vessels that his friend, the cardiac surgeon, could jump with a coronary bypass by harvesting vessels from the patient's legs and arms. In fact, he could do the procedure that evening or in the morning at the latest.

When I came by later to review the cardiologist's suggestions, the family told me I was no longer his doctor because I was incompetent since I had not recommended the surgery.

I followed him from a distance since I had told the family that in his sedentary lifestyle the biggest stress on his heart might be his daily bowel movement. His cardiac output might go from five to six liters, but he would be just fine with a few drugs to control his heart rhythm. He did not need a cardiac output of 10 or 15 liters like a working man, or 20 liters like a football player, or 30 liters like an Olympic runner.

After the surgery, he had several complications including an infection and then a fungus septicemia. He was dead in 30 days. I don’t suppose the family ever understood that they hastened his death. I felt he could have enjoyed a number of years with his doting grandchildren just the way he was.

Many Medical Myths are very gluttonous. The extra hospital charge for this type of surgery is around $120,000. Not only was it unnecessary, it was poor and inappropriate health care, and caused an unnecessary death.

I’m sure the family was convinced he received the best of care.

And the doctor who may have deprived the hospital of this financial largess would have been Peer Reviewed and removed for incompetence. This type of Abusive Peer Review is becoming rampant in our country. It is also a deterrent to improving health care.

By improving health care, you may lose your medical license and ability to have an income to pay for house and home. And if you don’t have an understanding wife, you may become homeless and destitute.

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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.

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7.      Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: Who is your favorite presidential candidate?

Dr. Rosen: Which of the presidential candidates would be best for medicine, health care, our patients and our country?

Dr. Sam: I still like the Texan. He speaks his mind. Read more . . .

Dr. Paul: I think Mitt Romney is my favorite. What Obama won’t get done Mitt Romney will.

Dr. Edwards: That’s precisely why I wouldn’t vote for him.

Dr. Paul: Of course, you still believe in private medicine. Get over it. The government is and will be in charge. And there is nothing that you can do about it.

Dr. Milton: Yes, I think there is something that we can do about it. If all physicians would work together, our patients would support our efforts to help them.

Dr. Paul: You’re a dreamer. You’d have more luck with a herd of cats working together.

Dr. Ruth: I’m concerned that I can’t get what my patients need just with the pre-Obama moving of patients into Medicaid. I can’t get approval for tests and consultations and I’m suffering right along with my patients.

Dr. Yancy: The days of the surgeon are essentially over. I have several afternoons off because of the lack or patients. I’ve cut my standard of living and will do consultations when possible. You wouldn’t think that things could change this dramatically in just three years.

Dr. Michelle: I’m also suffering with my patients. I spend more time with them and feel I’m doing less for them.

Dr. Rosen: But what Presidential candidate will make your patients happier?

Dr. Joseph: As a retired surgeon, I think we need a man with some force, clear ideas and governor experience. I think, despite his stumbling, that Rick Perry will clean up Washington. He has the most leadership qualities that will last eight years. By that time Palin will have matured, perhaps as his vice president and will be our first woman president on the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in 2020.

Dr. Rosen: Now I could get excited about that myself.

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The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Medical Opinions Are Heard.

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8.      Voices of Medicine: A Review of Articles by Physicians

Bad luck? Bad faith? Obama battles with mythical monsters

By Charles Krauthammer

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, got the economy moving again. …
But over the last six months, we've had a run of bad luck."

– President Barack Obama, Decorah, Iowa, Aug. 15

A troubled nation wonders: How did we get mired in 9.1 percent unemployment, 0.9 percent growth and an economic outlook so bad that the Federal Reserve pledges to keep interest rates at zero through mid-2013 – an admission that it sees little hope on the horizon? Read more . . .

Bad luck, explains our president. Out of nowhere came Japan and its supply-chain disruptions, Europe and its debt problems, the Arab Spring and those oil spikes. Kicked off, presumably, by various acts of God (should he not be held accountable too?): earthquake and tsunami. (Tomorrow: pestilence and famine. Maybe frogs.)

Well yes, but what leader is not subject to external events? Were the minor disruptions of the current Arab Spring remotely as damaging as the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74? Were the supply disruptions of Japan 2011 anything like the Asian financial collapse of 1997-98? Events happen. Leaders are elected to lead (from the front, incidentally). That means dealing with events, not plaintively claiming to be their victim.

Moreover, luck is the residue of design, as Branch Rickey immortally observed. And Obama's design for the economy was a near-$1 trillion stimulus that left not a trace, the heavy hand of Obamacare and a flurry of regulatory zeal that seeks to stifle everything from domestic energy production to Boeing's manufacturing expansion into South Carolina. . .

In Obama's recounting, however, luck is only half the story. His economic recovery was ruined not just by acts of God and (foreign) men, but by Americans who care nothing for their country. These people, who inhabit Congress (guess what party?), refuse to set aside "politics" for the good of the nation. They serve special interests and lobbyists, care only about the next election, place party ahead of country. Indeed, they "would rather see their opponents lose than see America win." The blaggards! . . .

Charging one's opponents with bad faith is the ultimate political ad hominem. It obviates argument, fact, logic, history. Conservatives resist Obama's social-democratic, avowedly transformational agenda not just on principle but on empirical grounds, as well – the economic and moral unraveling of Europe's social-democratic experiment, on display today from Athens to the streets of London.

Obama's answer? He doesn't even engage. That's the point of these ugly accusations of bad faith. They are the equivalent of branding Republicans enemies of the people. Gov. Rick Perry has been rightly chided for throwing around the word "treasonous" in reference to the Fed. Obama gets a pass for doing the same, only slightly more artfully, regarding Republicans. After all, he is accusing them of wishing to see America fail for their own political gain. What is that if not a charge of betraying one's country?

The charge is not just ugly. It's laughable . . .

This from a man who has cagily refused to propose a single structural reform to entitlements in his three years in office. A man who ordered that the Afghan surge be unwound by September 2012, a date that makes no military sense (it occurs during the fighting season), a date not recommended by his commanders, a date whose sole purpose is to give Obama political relief on the eve of the 2012 election. And Obama dares accuse others of placing politics above country?

A plague of bad luck and bad faith – a recalcitrant providence and an unpatriotic opposition. Our president wrestles with angels, monsters of mythic proportions.

A comforting fantasy. But a sorry excuse for a failing economy and a flailing presidency.

More: www.sacbee.com/2011/08/19/3847525/bad-luck-bad-faith-obama-battles.html#ixzz1ZP6flFTb

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VOM Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about.

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9.      Book Review: Presidential Malpractice

Destiny of the Republic | By Candice Millard | Doubleday, 339 pages, $28.95

Reviewed By FERGUS M. BORDEWICH, WSJ

Crazy as he was, Garfield's assassin was right to insist that the doctor who gravely mistreated the president was responsible for his death.

It's probably a fair bet that most Americans, if they can identify James A. Garfield as a president at all, would be hard put to place him where he belongs in the line of chief executives. Few if any presidents have left as faint an impression on public memory as he did during his brief stint in the White House, from March to September 1881. Read more . . .

With "Destiny of the Republic," a spirited tale that intertwines murder, politics and medical mystery, Candice Millard leaves us feeling that Garfield's assassination deprived the nation not only of a remarkably humble and intellectually gifted man but one who perhaps bore the seeds of greatness. Along the way, we encounter any number of splendidly drawn portraits, including those of the president's assassin, Charles Guiteau; his horrendously incompetent doctor, D. Willard Bliss; and even the inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Born into poverty in 1831, Garfield grew up fatherless in rural Ohio. He left school at 16 to labor on canals, a rough and dangerous trade. A compulsive reader, he decided that he might be fitted for something better and applied to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, where he was allowed to work as a janitor in lieu of paying tuition. He so impressed his teachers that by his second year he was promoted to assistant professor. After earning a degree at Williams College, he returned to the institute as its president, at age 26.

Garfield might well have spent his life teaching but for the Civil War. A passionate abolitionist, he volunteered early and fought well, leading his regiment to victory over a superior Confederate force to win eastern Kentucky for the Union. He was elected to Congress as a Republican while still in uniform. When opposing factions of the Republican Party deadlocked at their 1880 convention, they picked Garfield—to his own surprise—as a compromise candidate.

In July 1881, just four months after his inauguration, Garfield was entering a Washington train station when out of the crowd stepped Guiteau, a delusional ex-evangelist who believed that he had single-handedly brought about Garfield's election. He had repeatedly come to the White House demanding to be appointed ambassador to France as a reward for his efforts. He now believed that God had directed him to kill the president. In front of scores of onlookers, he pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot Garfield in the back, gravely wounding him though not killing him outright. . .

Guiteau was eventually hanged for his crime. Before his death, he declared that Garfield had died not from his bullet but from medical malpractice, insisting: "The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant." Ms. Millard makes amply clear that Guiteau, crazy as he was, happened to be right.

At the core of "Destiny of the Republic" is a tale of horrifying medical piracy. Bliss, a prominent Washington doctor who had attended Lincoln on his deathbed, commandeered Garfield's wounded body and rejected all advice that contradicted his incompetent diagnoses. Like most American doctors of the time, Bliss scorned the newfangled theories of antisepsis promoted by Dr. Joseph Lister in Britain. When Bliss and his assistants probed the president's wounds with unsterilized instruments or their own unclean fingers, they turned a serious injury into a fatal one. Garfield's body, which had survived the trauma of the shooting was now, Ms. Millard writes, "so riddled with infection that he was literally rotting to death." . . .

Many Americans believed that the real culprit behind Garfield's murder was the spoils system itself, which had, they supposed, inflamed Guiteau's "depraved" mind by feeding his obsession with obtaining a government job. To the astonishment of almost everyone, when Chester Arthur—the quintessential spoilsman—finally took the dead Garfield's place, he discovered that he had principles after all, turned against the system and pushed through the country's first Civil Service Act. The law transformed government appointments from gifts of the powerful to positions won by merit—the lasting monument to Garfield's short-lived presidency.

Mr. Bordewich is the author of "Washington: The Making of the American Capital."

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The Book Review Section Is an Insider’s View of What Doctors are Reading about.

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10.  Hippocrates & His Kin: Another $800 Billion of TARP money!

Obama said he would spend another 800 billion dollars if it weren’t for the Republicans in the House.

Thank God for our two-party system or we’d be Greece next month.


President Obama vs Mitt Romney

President Barrack Obama said he thinks that he would be glad to have Mitt Romney as his opponent in the next Presidential election. Read more . . .

Why of course. That way if he failed to win, he would still see his program implemented by the Massachusetts Socialist. So he would win even if he lost.


President Obama and Vice President Romney

Romney’s socialized health plan in Massachusetts has always been considered Obama light. President Obama choosing Mitt Romney as his running mate would make more sense. Birds of a feather should fly together.

Don’t you think so?

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Hippocrates and His Kin / Hippocrates Modern Colleagues
The Challenges of Yesteryear, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

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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.

                      To read the rest of this section, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/org.asp.

                      Michael J. Harris, MD - www.northernurology.com - an active member in the American Urological Association, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Societe' Internationale D'Urologie, has an active cash'n carry practice in urology in Traverse City, Michigan. He has no contracts, no Medicare, Medicaid, no HIPAA, just patient care. Dr Harris is nationally recognized for his medical care system reform initiatives. To understand that Medical Bureaucrats and Administrators are basically Medical Illiterates telling the experts how to practice medicine, be sure to savor his article on "Administrativectomy: The Cure For Toxic Bureaucratosis."

                      Dr Vern Cherewatenko concerning success in restoring private-based medical practice which has grown internationally through the SimpleCare model network. Dr Vern calls his practice PIFATOS – Pay In Full At Time Of Service, the "Cash-Based Revolution." The patient pays in full before leaving. Because doctor charges are anywhere from 25–50 percent inflated due to administrative costs caused by the health insurance industry, you'll be paying drastically reduced rates for your medical expenses. In conjunction with a regular catastrophic health insurance policy to cover extremely costly procedures, PIFATOS can save the average healthy adult and/or family up to $5000/year! To read the rest of the story, go to www.simplecare.com. 

                      Dr David MacDonald started Liberty Health Group. To compare the traditional health insurance model with the Liberty high-deductible model, go to www.libertyhealthgroup.com/Liberty_Solutions.htm. There is extensive data available for your study. Dr Dave is available to speak to your group on a consultative basis.

                      David J Gibson, MD, Consulting Partner of Illumination Medical, Inc. has made important contributions to the free Medical MarketPlace in speeches and writings. His series of articles in Sacramento Medicine can be found at www.ssvms.org. To read his "Lessons from the Past," go to www.ssvms.org/articles/0403gibson.asp. For additional articles, such as the cost of Single Payer, go to www.healthplanusa.net/DGSinglePayer.htm; for Health Care Inflation, go to www.healthplanusa.net/DGHealthCareInflation.htm.

                      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. Be sure to read News of the Day in Perspective:  ?. Don't miss the "AAPS News," written by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site which provides valuable information on a monthly basis. This month, be sure to read ? . 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."


Words of Wisdom

"The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow." — Bill Gates: co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corporation


"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." — Albert Einstein: theoretical physicist


"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity."  — Benjamin Franklin: Founding Father of the United States of America


"Setbacks and stressors are bridges to be crossed to our goals... not barricades to keep us from them." — Stephen Pierce: Nightingale-Conant author


Some Recent Postings

In The August 9th Issue:


1.          Featured Article: A Dearth of New Meds to treat neuropsychiatric disorders

2.                  In the News: What Happened to Obama? . .  In London? . . In Iowa? . .  In the Courts?

3.                  International Medicine: That intergenerational sleight of hand worked for a while.

4.                  Medicare: Political Interference with Health Care Increases Costs

5.                  Medical Gluttony: This time it started on a Rapid Transit Bus

6.                  Medical Myths: Losing consciousness in a ball room is always an emergency.

7.                  Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: A different crop of patients in the health care field.

8.                  Voices of Medicine: The Caterpillar Syndrome by SCOTT SATTLER, M.D.

9.                  The Bookshelf: The 9/11 Wars Is The West Any Wiser, Ten Years On?

10.              Hippocrates & His Kin: The Eyes of Texas are Upon Us

11.              Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in HealthCare, Government and Society


In Memoriam

Shamsher Raj Kapoor, Bollywood superstar, died on August 14th, aged 79

The Economist | from the print edition 

THE stately descent of an eyelid; the five-minute burning glance; tears frozen on a heroine’s cheek; the moustachioed hero standing to pained attention; the slowly circling dance of attendants in and out of curtains to some interminable tune. That was old Bollywood, before Shammi Kapoor came along. He could do old-style too, keeping chastely still and delivering his laments and what not, because it ran in the family’s famous blood. But in 1957, frustration boiling up inside him after 19 films which had made him precisely a nobody, he took a different tack; shaved off the pencil moustache; cropped his long hair into a Presley duck-tail, tossed his head sideways, spun round, shook his hips, and exploded on to the Hindi film scene.

The film was “Tumsa Nahin Dekha” (“Never Seen Anyone Like You”). And India never had. Suddenly, stasis and convention were thrown out of the window. On screen at least, in packed and humid cinemas across the country, everything changed. Shammiji never came that much closer to his heroines, but he seethed with Westernised sex appeal. He was a playboy and a clown, a ceaseless ragger of the girls he loved, who would serenade them on moving trains and dangling in bathrobes from helicopters, and who in his most monstrous hit, “Junglee” (“Wild”), in 1961 slid on his front down a mountainside of snow, leapt up (leather jacket sexily torn open), sang to his heroine that people could call him wild, what could he do, swept up in love, and then roared out over the ice-bound forest, “YAHOO!” His teenage audiences yelled out with him, suddenly liberated. He had won the girl just by being his mad self, and had apparently not asked his family or hers.

Offscreen, Shammiji behaved much the same. He was no natural mover, he insisted, and tended to tumble into lakes and damage himself (he put this down, oddly, to being a Libra, a not entirely balanced one, easily floored), but he also realised that classes could not teach him anything. His extraordinary, spontaneous style was never choreographed. When he heard good music, he had to dance to it. His favourite back-singer, Mohammad Rafi (who sang his numbers for him in the Bollywood tradition, and who would merely be warned by Shammiji “I might do this”, or “I might do that” before he threw himself in), said that if he had been born a leaf, he would have fallen off dancing.

Love came easily to him too, and from an early age. At 12, the gorgeous green eyes already starting to smoulder, he boldly brushed lips with a classmate as they sang “I’ll k-i-s-s kiss you in the d-a-r-k dark” at a concert in St Joseph’s convent in Mumbai. He never forgot that. In fifth standard at Don Bosco, playing goalie at a school match, he preferred to take shelter from the rain under a beautiful girl’s umbrella; his team lost by 11 goals. Both his deeply happy marriages were precipitate. His first, in 1955 to Geeta Bali, a film star better known than he was, took place in pouring rain in a temple near the Napean Sea Road in Mumbai with only one witness, and without informing the families. His second, to Neela Devi after Geeta had died of smallpox in 1965, was proposed, together with lunch at his place, on the telephone; he had last seen her, a nine-year-old with pigtails, as he acted at 19 with his father’s theatre company. Impulsiveness was just his way. . .

 Read the entire obituary, Subscription required . . .


On This Date in History – August 23

On this date in 1926, Rudolf Valentino died after a short illness. At age 31, he was the great romantic film idol of his time. His passing plunged countless females of all ages into an orgy of public grief. It reminded us, as if we needed any reminder, that we have an infinite capacity for hero worship.

On this date in 1927, two Italian immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti were finally executed after years of dispute over the fairness of their trial. They were both Anarchists and a large body of the public was convinced that they were innocent of the payroll murders for which they died.

After Leonard and Thelma Spinrad

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Announcing The 1st Annual World Health Care Congress Latin America, October, 2011 in
Săo Paulo, Brazil

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 United States, the 7th annual event in Europe and the inaugural Middle East event, we are pleased to announce the 1st Annual World Health Care Congress - Latin America to be held in October, 2011 in Săo Paulo, Brazil.

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.