|
MEDICAL TUESDAY . |
NEWSLETTER |
|
Community For Better Health Care |
Vol X, No 8, |
In This
Issue:
1. Featured Article: Tourette’s syndrome
2. In the News: Our world is a much wilder
place than it looks
3. International
Medicine: Government’s
Health Spending Crises
4. Medicare: Who Has Power to Stop
a Rogue President?
5. Medical Gluttony: Government Gluttony:
Insurmountable Debts
6. Medical Myths: It’s Safe to be a
WhistleBlower? By James J. Murtagh,
M.D.
7. Overheard: If it weren’t
for Republicans in the House, I’d spend another $800 Billion
8. Voices of Medicine: Deal With the
Patient, NOT the Computer
9. The Bookshelf: The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: Can you really
go without Health Insurance?
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
Words of Wisdom,
Recent Postings, In Memoriam . . .
* * * * *
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 in improving their welfare
or quality of healthcare. Socialists know that once people are enslaved,
freedom seems too risky to pursue.
* * * * *
1.
Featured
Article: Tourette’s syndrome
Treating Tourette's | Scientific
American Magazine | by Sonya Collins | June 2011
Tourette’s syndrome is most pronounced in children.
The physical and vocal tics, which can alienate kids from peers, are difficult
to treat. First-line drugs are limited in their efficacy, whereas more
effective antipsychotics have many potential long-term side effects, including
weight gain and movement disorders. Investigators may be moving closer to a new
treatment option involving drugs that already exist. Read more . . .
Last year researchers identified a new gene mutation
associated with the disorder. Known mutations have only explained a small
number of Tourette’s cases, so the investigators, led by
Now
scientists have found parallels between this family and histamine-deficient
mice, which furthers the connection to Tourette’s. Most individuals with
Tourette’s have low prepulse inhibition, meaning that they are more easily
startled or distracted than the average person, says Christopher Pittenger,
director of the Yale OCD Research Clinic. In May he was to present new data to
the Society of Biological Psychiatry that both this family and mice missing the
histamine gene had low prepulse inhibition and tics. Other experiments have
shown that histamine-boosting drugs decrease ticlike behaviors in mice.
Histamine
is known for contributing to allergic reactions and keeping us awake at night,
which is why antihistamines are available over the counter. But it is also a
neurotransmitter found throughout the brain, including in a region associated with
Tourette’s.
The
findings suggest an alternative to antipsychotics, which reduce tics by
blocking dopamine. As dopamine levels drop, histamine levels rise. Increasing
histamine directly, without blocking dopamine, may work as well and avoid many
of the side effects of antipsychotics. “Other people with Tourette’s may have
other changes in their histamine system, so it’s quite possible that a
histamine-boosting drug may have benefits, but it’s still very early,” says
Kevin McNaught, vice president for medical and scientific programs at the New
York–based Tourette Syndrome Association.
Drugs that increase histamine are already
being tested to treat other neurological conditions, as well as attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder, which is often found in people with Tourette’s. —Sonya
Collins
Read the entire article with illustrations in
Scientific American – Subscription required . . .
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* * * * *
2.
In the
News: Our world is a much wilder
place than it looks.
A new study estimates
that Earth has almost 8.8 million species, but we've only discovered about a
quarter of them. And some of yet-to-be-seen ones could be in our own backyards,
scientists say.
So far, only 1.9 million
species have been found. Recent discoveries have been small and weird: a
psychedelic frogfish, a lizard the size of a dime and even a blind hairy
mini-lobster at the bottom of the ocean. Read more . . .
"We are really
fairly ignorant of the complexity and colorfulness of this amazing
planet," said the study's co-author, Boris Worm, a biology professor at
Canada's Dalhousie University. "We need to expose more people to those
wonders. It really makes you feel differently about this place we
inhabit." . . .
There are potential
benefits from these undiscovered species, which need to be found before they
disappear from the planet, said famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who
was not part of this study. Some of modern medicine comes from unusual plants
and animals.
"We won't know the
benefits to humanity [from these species], which potentially are
enormous," the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mr. Wilson said. "If we're
going to advance medical science, we need to know what's in the
environment." . . .
Mr. Worm and Camilo Mora
of the University of Hawaii used complex mathematical models and the pace of
discoveries of not only species, but of higher classifications such as family
to come up with their estimate.
Their study, published
Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library
of Science, estimated the number of species at nearly 8.8 million.
Of those species, 6.5
million would be on land and 2.2 million in the ocean, which is a priority for
the scientists doing the work since they are part of the Census of Marine Life,
an international group of scientists trying to record all the life in the
ocean.
The research estimates
that animals rule with 7.8 million species, followed by fungi with 611,000 and
plants with just shy of 300,000 species. . .
Of the 1.9 million
species found thus far, only about 1.2 million have been listed in the
fledgling online Encyclopedia of Life, a massive international effort to
chronicle every species that involves biologists, including Mr. Wilson.
If the 8.8
million estimate is correct, "those are brutal numbers," said
Encyclopedia of Life executive director Erick Mata. "We could spend the
next 400 or 500 years trying to document the species that actually inhabit our
planet." –Associated Press
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* * * * *
3.
International
Medicine: Bureaucrats don’t understand and can’t micromanagement healthcare
Government’s
Health Spending Crises by Mark Rovere
Provincial governments
across
According to Canada’s
Medicare Bubble: Is Government Health Spending Sustainable without Userbased
Funding?, our annual study that measures the sustainability of provincial
government health spending,1 total government spending on health grew at an
average annual rate of 7.5% across all provinces over the period 2000/2001 to
2009/2010. During the same time, total available provincial revenue from all
sources, including federal transfers, grew at an average annual rate of 5.7%;
while the economy, measured by gross domestic product (
If these trends continue,
provincial governments will be allocating the bulk of their revenues to pay for
health care, taking money away from other important government services.
Critically, this is not a recent problem, it is systemic. Government spending
on health has grown faster on average than
More
money is not a solution
Allocating more money to
provincial health care has not resulted in increased access to, or the
availability of, medical services and resources, thus is not a solution to the
problem. For example, despite significant increases in health spending across
Canada, the most recent data show that wait times for access to medical
services have increased in every province over the ten-year period (Barua et al., 2010). In 2010, patients waited approximately
18.2 weeks from the time they obtained a referral from a general practitioner
to the time they received treatment from a specialist. This means that
Canadians waited 96% longer for elective surgery in 2010 than they did in 1993,
when wait times were 9.3 weeks.
In addition,
research shows that in comparison to its international counterparts, Canada
lags behind many developed nations in the size of its medical technology
inventory (for instance the number of CT and
Rationing
access to health services has the effect of slowing growth in government health
spending in the short term. However, the rationing of health goods and services
cannot continue indefinitely without increasing medical risks for patients.
Unfortunately, under the current financing model, policy makers do not have
many tools at their disposal—cutting medical services or increasing taxes are
the only two options. With that in mind, it is absurd to suggest that
governments can sustain the health system indefinitely by raising taxes. Not
only is this political suicide, but rising taxes discourages economic growth
and reduces the long-term potential revenue base for governments
(Karabegović et al., 2004). . .
Read the entire article at the Fraser Institute . . .
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Canadian
Medicare does not give timely access to healthcare, it only gives access to a
waiting list.
Government micromanagement makes the waiting list longer.
Can’t bureaucrats ever take a hint?
--Canadian
Supreme Court Decision 2005
http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html
* * * * *
4.
Medicare: Who Has Power to Stop
a Rogue President?
WHISTLEBLOWER MAGAZINE: STATES
OF REBELLION
How legislators and governors nationwide
are challenging a rogue president
Posted:
While millions of outraged Americans protest what they
see as a lawless and power-mad Obama administration, many wonder how much clout
individuals can really have in reining in a wildly out-of-control government.
But suppose, in addition to citizens with little power
beyond their vote, those standing up to the federal government were named
Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Montana,
Maine, South Dakota – and many more? Read More . . .
Incredibly, though under-reported by the establishment
press, that's exactly what is happening right now, as the April issue of
Whistleblower documents in-depth, in "STATES
OF REBELLION: How legislators and governors nationwide are openly challenging a
rogue president."
A wide-ranging rebellion is indeed under way – by a
large majority of states – against what they claim are intolerable and
blatantly unconstitutional encroachments by the federal government. And they
are seriously intent on declaring such unconstitutional laws null and void
in their state.
Here's how Thomas E. Woods Jr., author of the
bestselling book, "Nullification: How to resist federal tyranny in the
21st century," succinctly lays out the issue in the April
Whistleblower:
Nullification
begins with the axiomatic point that a federal law that violates the
Constitution is no law at all. It is void and of no effect. Nullification
simply pushes this uncontroversial point a step further: If a law is
unconstitutional and therefore void and of no effect, it is up to the states,
the parties to the federal compact, to declare it so and thus refuse to enforce
it. It would be foolish and vain to wait for the federal government or a branch
thereof to condemn its own law. Nullification provides a shield between the
people of a state and an unconstitutional law from the federal government.
Take
Obamacare: Most people know the GOP-led House of Representatives repealed it
(though the Democrat-controlled Senate almost certainly will not, nor will
Obama ever sign it). And many also know 27 states are challenging Obamacare in
court. But what few understand is that at least 11 states are attempting to
legislatively nullify Obamacare within their borders. So far, an act
to nullify the entire federal health-care law has become state law in
· "Did
· "Barack
Hussein Alinsky" by Patrick J. Buchanan, who says the big battle shaping
up is between the "organizer in chief" and the governors of the 50
states – with
·
"Leadership requires actual leadership" by Herman
Cain, who shows that
"There's
so much bad news these days," said Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian,
"that it's great to be able to report this crucial and encouraging trend.
Read more in WND . . .
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Government is not the solution to our problems,
government is the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5.
Medical
Gluttony: Government
Gluttony: Insurmountable Debts
Explaining Our Debt Problem
Recently, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the
- U.S. Tax revenue:
$2,170,000,000,000
- Federal budget:
$3,820,000,000,000
- New debt:
$1,650,000,000,000
- National debt:
$14,271,000,000,000
- Recent budget cut:
$38,500,000,000
To make it easier, let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend
it’s a household budget:
Read more to see
how much wool has been used to cover the taxpayer’s eyes . . .
- Annual family income:
$21,700
- Money the family
spent: $38,200
- New debt added onto
the credit card: $16,500
- Outstanding balance on
the credit card: $142,710
- Total budget cuts:
$385
Now that’s putting Obama’s budget cuts in perspective.
This is courtesy of the Heartland Institute.
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Medical Gluttony thrives in
Government and Health Insurance Programs.
Gluttony Disappears with
Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on Every Service.
* * * * *
6.
Medical
Myths: It’s Safe to
be a WhistleBlower? Not unless we have a law to make it safe!
5th Annual Whistleblower Conference in
(Ed. Note: Dr. James Murtagh is co-chair of this
Caucus)
International Association of Whistleblower invites all
Citizens of Conscience to Caucus
A CONFERENCE FOR CONSCIENCE
WASHINGTON,
DC - This September 18, the whistleblowers and persons of conscience will hold
the fifth annual gathering on Capitol Hill, focused on signature issues of
Judicial Accountability, Medical Integrity and expanding education and
awareness of whistleblower issues, particularly in light of consideration of
the preventable disasters that have beset the United States. Advocates from
around the country to meet in the Nation's Capitol and encourage their
lawmakers to pass the protection for whistleblowers.
As the Nation's budget crisis continues to grow, lawmakers must be encouraged
to look towards the activities of corporate and federal whistleblowers in
assuring proper spending. Read more . .
.
Registration and details at http://internationalwhistleblower.org/
Dear
Scoop Readers and Writers,
Scoop
has been crucial to the public interest, and in exposing matters of critical
interest to the nation. Now, all of us are having a National Meeting to press
our agenda to Congress. OEN has consistently pursued the public interest and
whistleblower rights. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to make our
voices heard, and to meet and make the public aware of the crisis in rights.
We
Need Every Single OEN reader and writer to attend. Please send this invitation
everywhere. We need all interested citizens. Please examine: http://internationalwhistleblower.org/
The
IAW is non-political, and non-aligned. The IAW seeks to provide a forum for
citizens of conscience to meet, network, and seek new relationships and
mentoring in the struggle to bring integrity to
Now
is the time for all public minded and enlightened citizens to band together. The International Association of Whistleblower Caucus will be
held in Washington, DC, on Sunday Sept 18:
Included
in the IAW Caucus are many signature panels and events:
1. A ceremony to Honor Absent Heroes; a "empty
chair" panel will represent four outstanding whistleblowers that cannot attend the
meeting because they are in prison or are deceased:
a) Martin Salazar, former Dept. of Energy employee
b) Bradley Birkenfeld, former
c) Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli
nuclear technician
d) Karen Silkwood, Kerr-McGee technician (deceased)
Other
absent heroes will also be honored in a roll call of those lost while serving
the nation's interests.
2.
Atlanta Whistleblowers will discuss the alarming problems in
3.
Medical Whistleblowers will report on need for improvements at the nation's
for-profit hospital chains.
4. A
special session will be provided by OpEdNew's own Rob Kall and Joan Brunwasser
and Tapping the Power of Media "How can we use the power of story, and new
internet media, to promote social justice?
More
events can be seen on the IAW website. Whistleblowers from all walks of life
are welcomed. Membership is being enlarged. The IAW will also host social
events and book signings. Every single person attending will have the
opportunity to have their story recorded for You-tube. This event is
"of, by and for the whistleblower."
We
encourage all 264 organizations and corporations that signed the
Whistleblower letter to join us! We
are already bonded by a shared principle that "whistleblower protection
is a foundation for any change in which the public can believe. It does not
matter whether the issue is economic recovery, prescription drug safety,
environmental protection, infrastructure spending, national health insurance,
or foreign policy."
For
More Information, see http://internationalwhistleblower.org/
Please
register at: http://makeitsafecampaign.org/news/?page_id=2154)
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Medical Myths Originate When
Someone Blows the Whistle
Myths Disappear When Courts
Pay Appropriate Attention to the Whistle Blower
* * * * *
7.
Overheard
in the Medical Staff Lounge: If it weren’t
for Republicans in the House, I’d spend another $800 Billion
Mr. Rosen:
Mr. Obama said he would be able to spend another $trillion if it weren’t for
the Republicans in the House.
Dr. Milton:
Do we have a lunatic in the White House?
Dr. Sam: I
think we do. But a very smart one.
Dr. Rosen: I
think he will be another Bismarck who introduced Socialized medicine in
Dr. Edwards:
It’s going to be a tough battle to save our country, the nation and its people.
Dr. Milton:
It’s not only tough but critical. Just look at
Dr. Rosen:
Those countries have been downtrodden with inferior medicine for more than 150
years. The
Dr. Milton:
If you think Physicians can’t remember their more responsible days, certainly
the politicians in their House of Commons wouldn’t recall that much history.
Dr. Edwards: We’ll
have to pull this one out of the fire to save our nation.
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The Staff Lounge Is Where
Unfiltered Medical Opinions Are Heard.
* * * * *
8.
Voices of
Medicine: A Review of Local and Regional Medical Journals
Deal With the
Patient, NOT the Computer by STEPHEN KAMELGARN, M.D.
From the Humboldt-Del
Norte Medical Society
I’ve made no bones about my
reticence to fully embrace electronic medical records (
I’ve found them to be
klunky, user unfriendly, and designed for billers. I realize that we’re in the
early stages of
When I wrote of
He notes that we now have
the computer technology to really help us in our diagnostics, and treatments
since the computers can rapidly scan data bases far more extensively than any
human can hope to achieve, and make almost as many abstruse connections;
witness the recent success of Watson in handily defeating two Jeopardy champions
several weeks ago. The designers of Watson have stated that their next goal is
to aid in medical diagnoses and treatments.
However, not all is
perfect, and there is a downside. Dr Verghese writes: “But the complaints I
hear from patients, family and friends are never about the dearth of technology
but about its excesses. My own experience as a patient in an emergency room in
another city helped me see this. My nurse would come in periodically to visit
the computer work station in my cubicle, her back to me while she clicked and
scrolled away. Over her shoulder she said, ‘On a scale of one to five how is
your ...?’
“The electronic record of
my three-hour stay would have looked perfect, showing close monitoring, even
though to me as a patient it lacked a human dimension. I don’t fault the nurse,
because in my hospital, despite my best intentions, I too am spending too much
time in front of the computer: the story of my patient’s many past admissions,
the details of surgeries undergone, every consultant’s opinion, every drug
given over every encounter, thousands of blood tests and so many CT scans,
M.R.I.’s and ultrasound images reside in there.
“This computer record
creates what I call an “iPatient” — and this iPatient threatens to become the
real focus of our attention, while the real patient in the bed often feels
neglected, a mere placeholder for the virtual record.” (Italics mine)
Now, be honest, how many of
you that use
Humans seem to be
hard-wired to respond to novelty, and the flashing images on a computer screen,
popping up all over the place, are far more novel than looking at a poorly lit
patient from the same camera angle. There have been many, many studies (usually
using “starving” undergraduates, who need the money, as test subjects) that
seem to indicate that we are biologically programmed to respond to the screen
rather than a person just sitting and talking—no matter how important it is to
pay full attention to that person. Despite our hubris, none of us is truly capable
of multi-tasking, and one task will necessarily suffer when we’re paying
attention to something else. Witness the law prohibiting talking on a cell
phone while driving. Even if, while clicking all over the screen we can fully
imbibe the patient’s story we’re still missing something important: ritual.
An interaction with a
patient is a ritual, and it is this ritual that is part of the healing process.
Multiple studies have shown that patients derive more satisfaction from their
visit and do better when the doctor actually lays hands on them. Obtaining a
history and talking with the patient is part of this same ritual.
Patients feel that you’re
really listening to their concerns when you shove the monitor aside and look
them in the face. The way it’s set up now is that the computer robs us of this
interaction, and the ritual gets short-circuited. Not only are we missing part
of their story, we’re also missing an opportunity to indulge in a bit of
healing and treating.
Most of what we do doesn’t
require extensive searches of data bases or googling the latest treatments, or
even buzzing through a million old labs or reports. But we must engage in human
to human rituals with every patient visit, and this provides the basis for
healing to occur.
www.sonic.net/~medsoc/images/bulletins/2011%20-%204%20APRIL%20EXCERPTS.pdf
By looking at the computer while interviewing, we miss a lot of
clinically important body language also.
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VOM Is an Insider's View of What Doctors
are Thinking, Saying and Writing about.
* * * * *
9.
Book Review:
Life After Death By
Jeff Sugarman, MD,
CURRENT BOOKS The
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
by Rebecca Skloot, 384 pages, Crown, $26.
“HeLa
cells , the first human immortalized cells. They were removed from the cervix
of Henrietta Lacks several months before her death in 1951. Lacks was a poor,
uneducated African-American woman from a tobacco farming family in Clover,
The
origins of HeLa cells (whose name is an acronym for Henrietta Lacks), the
events leading to their worldwide dissemination, and the scientific
controversies surrounding them are described in detail by Skloot. She adroitly
delves into the moral and ethical ramifications of human tissue research, the
thorny issues of ownership, and the process of informed consent. . . Read more . . .
During the 1940s and early 1950s, Dr. George Gey, head of tissue culture
research at Johns Hopkins, tried to culture human cells without any success. In
1951, without Henrietta’s consent, Gey received cell samples from a tumor on her cervix. Instead of dying within a few days, as
all Gey’s prior samples had done, Henrietta’s cells started growing easily in
culture, and they eventually made Gey famous. HeLa cells were shipped to
hundreds and then thousands of laboratories, bought and sold, and grown by the
trillions. They played a key role in the development of polio vaccine and
helped launch the field of virology—all without the knowledge or consent of the
Lacks family.
HeLa
cells were so amazingly productive and hearty that they threatened to derail
the nascent field of cell culture biology by insidiously contaminating hundreds
of other cell lines. Researchers had thought they were studying liver or kidney
cells, but it turned out their cultures were contaminated with HeLa cells,
calling into question the validity of many of their findings.
Woven
into the fabric of the story of HeLa is the history of Henrietta Lacks, whose
name was often published incorrectly as
Uneducated,
and at first wary and reluctant to open up to Skloot, Deborah eventually learns
to trust her. Over many years Deborah shares more history about her mother, her
family and ultimately Henrietta’s hospital records. Skloot takes Deborah with
her on field research expeditions, providing Deborah with important information
about her mother and the cells. The climax occurs in 2001, when Dr. Christoph
Lengauer, a Johns Hopkins researcher, shows Deborah and Skloot the HeLa cells
firsthand. He apologizes for the way the hospital and its researchers had kept
the family in the dark about the use of Henrietta’s cells. This incident is the
seminal event in Deborah’s journey
to find her mother and is captured beautifully on the page. . .
. . . Skloot artfully moves from the science of HeLa and cell biology, to the
personal stories and tragedies of Henrietta, Deborah and the Lacks family.
One
of Skloot’s most provocative explorations is of the intersection between
scientists and the vulnerable population with whom they crossed paths. The
latter were mostly poor and uneducated, and in many cases were manipulated and
not provided important information about the tissue samples they donated to the
scientists. Scientific advances, and in some cases patents and significant
monetary windfalls, were gained from the use of their tissues. . .
In
my own experience as a clinical investigator, I have often found myself annoyed
at the countless forms, attestations and paperwork involved to protect the
interests of the research subjects, thinking that they did not really apply to
me or my work. Henrietta’s story has reminded me that advances in scientific
knowledge often outpace our ability to parse out the ethical issues that emerge
from the research process. These forms, while seemingly onerous, serve an
important purpose, one that I now see more clearly.
Dr. Sugarman,
a Santa Rosa pediatric dermatologist, is president of SCMA.
Email: pediderm@yahoo.com
This brought back memories of my medical student
research of growing HeLa cells in mice abdomen.
Read the entire
book review . . .
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reviews . . .
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The Book Review Section Is an Insider’s
View of What Doctors are Reading about.
* * * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin:
Can you really go without Health Insurance?
Going without
BC or KP
Ms. Rebecca was working but had no health insurance coverage from her
job. She tried Kaiser Permanente, which was $800 a month. She then tried Blue
Cross at $700 a month. She felt she couldn’t afford BC either so she dropped
that policy also. She continues to come in twice a year since she’s on
narcotics for Degenerative Disc Disease. This costs her about $700 a year. She
states she obtains the identical care she had from her previous $700 a month insurance
premiums. She figures that these costs should not increase for many years. She
thinks that she will be stable for two decades with her major problem an old
back injury. During the next 20 years she will save $150,000 in insurance
premiums.
What if she has a heart attack or a stroke or requires major surgery? She
states she would just quit work and go on welfare and let Medicaid pay for it.
What an amazing health
care net we have in these
Better than socialized medicine where so many options are denied
From the Fresno-Madeira
Medical Society Meeting of April 2011: Presentation by two lawyers.
Federal Healthcare Reform
has created a host of payment reforms and authorizes the Medicare program to
contract with Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to improve quality and
reduce cost through more coordinated healthcare systems. This presentation will
provide information on how independent physicians can create systems and
negotiate collectively in order to succeed in this new era of health reform.
Instead of negotiating for advantage
over your colleagues, how about letting each practice compete with every other
practice in the open Medical MarketPlace so that costs will drop to their
lowest level?
Medical Competition will always control
costs better than Lawyer’s Negotiations.
It will also be more transparent & fairer.
Deprofessionalization of
the Medical Profession –
Daniel Grabski, a
psychiatrist . . . at
Instead of
Physician Psychotherapy to accept this intrusion, why not just let Physicians
be Doctors?
Patients don’t like what government intrusion has made us!
Physicians:
Rise up and become Professionals Again!
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. . .
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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. 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 . . .
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PRIVATE NEUROLOGY is
a Third-Party-Free Practice in
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To read the rest
of this section, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/org.asp.
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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.
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Dr David
MacDonald started Liberty Health
Group. To compare the traditional health insurance model with the
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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.
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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.
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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
To view some horror stories of atrocities against physicians and
how organized medicine still treats this problem, please go to www.semmelweissociety.net.
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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.
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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.
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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: Surgery Center of Oklahoma
City Blog. Don't miss the "AAPS
News," written by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site which
provides valuable information on a monthly basis. Browse the archives of their official
organ, the Journal of American Physicians
and Surgeons, with Larry Huntoon, MD, PhD, a neurologist in
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
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."
Our country is the best country on this
planet.
I am fed up with politicians trashing our
country when it is the best country on this planet. Recession is worse in every
other industrial nation than it is in ours. And yet with the willing complicity
of much of the media, our country is mean-mouthed day in and day out until a
lie begins to sound like the truth. –Paul Harvey, 1918- News
commentator, author, and columnist.
The Census Bureau, based on a single
statistic, has declared that 30 million Americans fall below the poverty
threshold of $13,942 for a family of four. But the Bureau’s statisticians
ignore the fact that 40 percent of those people own their own homes . . . That
their average home is a three-bedroom house with a garage, porch and patio . .
. More than half of the poor live in homes or apartments with twice as much
living space as the average Japanese, four times more than the average Russian.
–Paul Harvey 1918- We are ‘Names,’ not ‘Numbers,’
Some Recent Postings
In The July
12 Issue: