|
MEDICAL
TUESDAY . |
NEWSLETTER |
|
Community
For Better Health Care |
Vol X, No 11, |
In This Issue:
1.
Featured Article: I Wish I Never Would
Have Won the Lottery.
2.
In
the News: In
Government We Mistrust
3.
International Medicine: Related to
Economic Freedom
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Socialized
Universal Healthcare
6.
Medical Myths: Socialized Medicine
Controls Health Care Costs
7.
Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: The Medicare
Whip
8.
Voices
of Medicine: How Religion Can
Inoculate Against Radicalism
9.
The Bookshelf: The Fall of the Faculty,
The Rise of the All Administrative University
10.
Hippocrates
& His Kin: The fastest
growing crime wave: Educational Theft
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring Accountability in HealthCare, Government and Society
12.Words of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In
Memoriam, Today in History . . .
13.* * * * *
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.
For
more information on the World Health Care Congress Latin America . . .
For
information on the 9th Annual World Health Care Congress on April
16-18, 2012 . . .
* * * * *
1.
Featured
Article: I Wish I
Never Would Have Won the Lottery.
We notice that many of our
patients buy lottery tickets. Some will even bring one in to give to the staff
so they can get rich and not have to work so hard. They actually believe that a
one in fourteen million chance to win one dollar to more than a million dollars
is reality. Hence I was surprise to come across a study that interviewed 21
winners of more than a $Million. Twenty stated they wished that they had never
won the lottery. I find very few players that believe those stats. The
Does great wealth bring fulfillment? An ambitious
study by
The October 2008 issue of SuperYacht
World confirmed it: money cannot buy happiness. Page 38 of “the
international magazine for superyachts of distinction”—if you have to ask what
it takes for a yacht to qualify as “super,” you can’t afford to be in the
showroom—presented the Martha Ann, a 230-foot, $125 million boat
boasting a crew of 20, a master bedroom the size of my house, and an interior
gaudy enough to make Saddam Hussein blush. The feature story on the Martha
Ann was published just as the S&P 500 suffered its worst week since
1933, shedding $1.4 trillion over the course of the week, or about 2,240 Martha
Anns every day. Still, one of the captions accompanying the lavish photos
betrayed the status anxiety that afflicts even the highest echelons of wealth.
“From these LOFTY HEIGHTS,” the caption promised, “guests will be able to look
down on virtually any other yacht.” Virtually any other yacht! One
imagines the prospective owner wincing at this disclaimer, pained by the
knowledge that the world would still contain superyachts more super than his
own, that at least one gazillionaire in Saint-Tropez harbor would likely be
able to peer over his gunwales and down at the Martha Ann.
The
lesson that Mammon is a false or inadequate god goes back a long way, and a
glossy spread in SuperYacht World is just one place to relearn it.
Another is
The
responses, which run to 500 pages and fill three plastic binders on the fifth
floor of
The
results of the study are not yet public, but The Atlantic was granted
access to portions of the research, provided the anonymity of the subjects was
strictly maintained. The center expects to present the full conclusions
gradually at upcoming conferences and to publish them over the next several
months. The study is titled “The Joys and Dilemmas of Wealth,” but given that
the joys tend to be self-evident, it focuses primarily on the dilemmas. The
respondents turn out to be a generally dissatisfied lot, whose money has
contributed to deep anxieties involving love, work, and family. Indeed, they
are frequently dissatisfied even with their sizable fortunes. Most of them
still do not consider themselves financially secure; for that, they say, they would
require on average one-quarter more wealth than they currently possess.
(Remember: this is a population with assets in the tens of millions of dollars
and above.) One respondent, the heir to an enormous fortune, says that what
matters most to him is his Christianity, and that his greatest aspiration is
“to love the Lord, my family, and my friends.” He also reports that he wouldn’t
feel financially secure until he had $1 billion in the bank.
Such
complaints sound, on their face, preposterous. . . Most of us . . .
occasionally spoil ourselves with outbursts of deliberate and perhaps excessive
consumption: . . . dinner at an expensive restaurant, a shopping spree. In the
case of the very wealthy, such forms of consumption can become so commonplace
as to lose all psychological benefit: constant luxury is, in a sense, no luxury
at all.
Taken
together, the survey responses make a compelling case that being fantastically
wealthy—especially when the wealth is inherited rather than earned—is not a
great deal more fulfilling than being merely prosperous. . . Robert A. Kenny,
who has trained as a psychologist and is one of the survey’s architects, says
that extreme wealth can take away some of the basic joys of living—for
instance, that some wealthy people don’t look forward to the holidays, “because
they were always expected to give really good presents.” When you’re a
millionaire, Kenny says, expensive gifts merely meet expectations. That was
a pretty good present, the recipients might respond. But last year, you
gave me a car. . .
Schervish, the center’s sociologist and director, is 64, with three grown
children and a book-filled office overlooking the
Schervish says, adding, “Trump not, lest you be
trumped.” The rich, he points out, could easily ask him why he is teaching
sociology instead of donning sackcloth, selling his possessions, and giving
everything to the poor. “I found that there is no telling people what needs
need attending to, because needs are infinite. And they’d be better off
channeling their work through inspiration, rather than dictation by others.” .
. .
“
Career
advancement is the standard yardstick by which most people measure success, and
without that yardstick, it’s not easy to assess whether one’s time is well
spent. “Financial freedom can produce anxiety and hesitancy,” writes one
respondent to the
In
other cases, wealthy workers find that their work is viewed as a charade. One
wealthy survey respondent who worked in the nonprofit sector says she would
feel insecure about her position if she resumed working. “If I decided to get a
job in the field, I think I would have trouble being seen as a colleague and
not a donor,” she writes. As a result, she feels unable to take part fully in
the only profession for which she has trained. A similar kind of self-doubt
afflicts some of the “sudden” millionaires in the survey, whose wealth arrived
seemingly by chance. “I just happened to hit the jackpot by choosing to work
for the right company at the right time I have never thought that I in any way
earned this amount of wealth,” one writes. “I’m just now feeling like I’m
getting the hang of it.”
Just
as wealth can aggravate, rather than alleviate, stresses surrounding work, so
too can it complicate love, where Kenny says problems are “the rule and not the
exception.” Despite the financial security a fortune affords, issues related to
money cause the failure of many marriages and significant relationships. In the
survey, one wealthy mother writes that she worries that the men in her
daughters’ lives could feel “powerless,” and that “their role as provider has
been usurped.” Wealthy people of both genders are wary of gold diggers—Does
he love me or my money?—but at the same time fear that this wariness might
make them mistrustful of genuine affection. Weisgerber describes a client who
was handed a prenuptial agreement just two days before his wedding—a standard
form, presented to anyone who married into his bride’s family. “It’s like
marrying into the royal family,” the psychologist says, with its own rules and
practices, to which the groom might be only a legally complicated footnote.
One
issue that Kenny says comes up frequently is the question of at what point in a
relationship to reveal one’s wealth—a disclosure he makes sound as fraught as
telling your date you have herpes. “When do you tell someone that you have got
a huge amount of money?” he asks rhetorically. “If you tell them too soon, you
are going to worry that they want you for your money. If you wait too long, can
the person really trust you?
“Freud
was right,” Kenny concludes. “Love and work are the two things you have to do
in life.” And great wealth, he says, often undermines both . . .
Graeme Wood
is an Atlantic contributing
editor.
Read
the entire article in The Atlantic .
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* * * * *
2.
In the
News: In Government We Mistrust
One animating theme of Barack Obama's
campaign and early Presidency was that he would repair government's post-Reagan
reputation, expanding its role in American life so voters would turn once again
to Democrats as the party of government, as they did in 1964 and the 1930s. So
how's that working out? Read
more . . .
Not so well,
judging by a remarkable Gallup poll this week that asked the public about its
views of government and various businesses. The federal government dropped to
its lowest approval levels ever. Only 17% were positive, 63% negative, for a
net approval rating of minus-46%. Government never ranks well, but for the
first time since Gallup began asking in 2003 it fell to last place—below even the
oil and gas industry, which netted minus-44% approval. . .
In fact, as shown in the bottom chart nearby, the public's hostility to
government has climbed to all-time highs under President Obama's tenure. . . .
As Mr. Obama mused during the
primaries, he envisioned himself as Ronald Reagan in reverse, making the case
that government is the solution and not the problem. His 2009 health-care
speech to Congress ended with a soaring peroration about "the perils of
too little" government. . .
REVIEW & OUTLOOK SEPTEMBER 2, 2011
Read
the entire OpEd in the WSJ – Subscription required . . .
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* * * * *
3.
International
Medicine: Related to
Economic Freedom
But
“Despite
“In response to the American and European debt crises,
governments around the world are embracing perverse regulations and this has
huge, negative implications for economic freedom and financial recovery.”
The
Research shows that people living in countries with
high levels of economic freedom not only enjoy higher levels of prosperity and
greater individual freedoms, but also longer life spans.
“The link between economic freedom and prosperity is
undeniable: the countries that score highly in terms of economic freedom also
offer their people the best quality of life,” McMahon said.
International rankings
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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: $Billions Wasted
Improper Medicare
spending by Peter Suderman,
Reason magazine
The federal government spent $509 billion on Medicare payments in
2010, nearly one-tenth of which was improper, according to a March report from
the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Read
more . . .
Medicare, a federal health insurance program for seniors, is
already on an “unsustainable” long-run path, according to the GAO report. In
2010, it says, the system shelled out an estimated $48 billion in payments that
were fraudulent or otherwise “improper,” and those in charge of the program
aren’t doing nearly enough to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. The
$48 billion figure is lower than the full total, because it does not include
improper payments under Medicare Part D, which covers prescription drugs. An
estimate for that part of the program had not been calculated yet when the
report was issued.
This is not the first time the GAO has sounded the alarm about
Medicare payments. In 2007 the office found similarly problematic patterns,
recommending changes such as developing provider management systems that weed
out inefficient payments. But according to the new report, Medicare’s
administrators have failed to effectively follow up on many of the GAO’s
suggestions.
That failure led the GAO to declare that Medicare suffers from
“pervasive internal control deficiencies.” The GAO calls Medicare a “high risk”
program, noting that “its complexity and susceptibility to improper payments,
combined with its size, have led to serious management challenges.”
Peter Suderman from the June 2011
issue of REASON
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more . . .
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Government is not the solution to our
problems, government is the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5.
Medical
Gluttony: Socialized
Universal Healthcare is always Gluttonous
Two worlds that will never
meet: Private health care and Universal Health Care. Read more . . .
Private health care, in
which every participant is in part financially responsible for their health
care, has been well shown to be the most cost effective form of health care.
Everyone takes responsibility for his own health, both in frequency of doctor
visits, ER visits, urgent care visits, or hospital visits when they have to pay
a proportion of the cost. If that proportion is paid at the door of the
physician, ER, Urgent Care, or hospital visit, one can reasonably estimate the
number of people that will turn around and make arrangements for a lower and
entirely satisfactory level of care. Estimates of as high as 40 percent costs
savings in some studies or actuary estimates are realized.
In relatively free health
care, e.g. Medicare, the costs are estimated to be about 50 percent higher than
in private health insurance or personally responsive care.
A former chairman of our
Editorial Committee disagreed with this assessment. He stated that in all the
socialized systems of health care, there was too much freedom allowed. If
patients and doctors were fully regimented, we could eliminate all unnecessary
care and deliver only the best care to those that needed it and thus save
considerable money.
Why were
totalitarian states with gendarmes not able to reduce unnecessary care?
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Medical
Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
It Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on Every
Service.
Gluttony cannot be controlled by gendarmes.
* * * * *
6.
Medical
Myths: Socialized
Medicine Controls Health Care Costs
In the early days of managed
care, or controlled health care usage, every consult, procedure or high level
imaging utilization had to be approved. It was thought by those in charge that
this would certainly eliminate excessive care. Excessive care was on occasion
defined as the cost of care above the norm. Since half of physicians had
profiles in excess of the norm, just eliminating their excessive costs would
reduce cost of care considerably. Thus, insurance carries including Medicare
and Medicaid hired a number of reviewers to reign in the costs. As this army of
nurses and reviewers grew, one health insurer estimated that the costs of the
army of nurses, reviewers, and administrative personal exceeded any cost
savings. Read more .
. .
In the present myth of
controlling doctor and hospital costs, the password has become “Quality of
Care.” In previous decades, doctors were penalized for ordering too many tests
or procedures. In this decade, there is a standard of frequency for diabetic
glyco-hemoglobin, cholesterol, stool screening, mammograms, etc., et. al., with a large increase in
cost and decreased remuneration. The loss is being offset by increasing the
moneys withheld from physicians and then paying them for improved quality of care.
This forces the physicians to screen all patients including those that
frequently refuse a rectal or pelvic exam or even a lab test.
This has kept the army of
nurses, reviewers, and administrators employed with the job of policing doctors
who don’t order enough tests or procedures under the ruse of improving quality.
Thus, socialized medicine has not been able to control the costs even with
doctors being forced to harass patients.
When will doctors rise up
and refuse to remain the brunt of the ill-informed army that police them and
become the head of the health care team again? If we don’t, our patients will
suffer as we go on to greener pastures trying to regain our humanity.
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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.
Medical Myths will also disappear when doctors assume charge of the
healthcare team.
* * * * *
7.
Overheard
in the Medical Staff Lounge: The Medicare
Whip
Dr. Rosen: I understand we must have an updated billing program
to accommodate the new Medicare Code requirement. Read more . . .
Dr. Sam: Now isn’t that a pile of rabbit raisins. Rabbit
raisins don’t even make good fertilizer.
Dr. Paul: I think that’s the only way they’ll get us to use the
new ICD10 codes. More than a 100 thousand new ones to learn in three volumes,
rather than two.
Dr. Rosen: Now that’s really coercion. Invest in new software or
you won’t get paid. We just got the estimate on our new MediSoft billing
program upgrade. It was $3800. Plus our tech ops guy added $400 for installing
it on our server and two additional computers.
Dr. Ruth: I guess I better get busy and check out our
system.
Dr. Rosen: My eight-year-old laptop just died last month and I
had to replace it. Bank of America reduced my business line of credit. So I had
to scrounge to cover the cost of a new laptop. And with the new Windows 7, I
had to buy a new upgrade for Microsoft Office, a virus program and a printer. I
don’t know how I’m going to cover the MediSoft upgrade.
Dr.
Michelle: Looks like I may have a
problem also. I’ll have some difficulty covering two and four thousand dollar
charges in just a few months. When does this Medicare demand have to be
installed?
Dr. Rosen: By
Dr.
Michelle: No it isn’t. Might be too
soon for my office also.
Dr. Edwards: The stuff that Medicare, Medicaid and, in fact, more
insurance carriers throw at us makes medical school look like kindergarten.
Dr. Kaleb: Isn’t that the truth. Blue Cross/Blue Shield is
starting to send CDs and DVDs our way and they expect that we have time to
spend an hour or two listening to them. DVDs are even worse. Some have managed
to put out CD-ROMs that are very involved.
Dr. Paul: And interactive, if you can afford the time and the
concentrated effort to digest them.
Dr. Milton: Remember how we used to spend nights for a full
quarter reading Cecil and Loeb, the Bible of Internal Medicine?
Dr. Dave: It’s really unbelievable how government bureaucrats
think that practicing medicine is only part-time and, therefore, we can become
full-time medical students again. They’re probably sitting in the Senate
chambers as we speak having a big belly laugh over their control of our time.
Dr. Kaleb: Let’s not blame only Medicare, Medicaid and the
Blues; the drug companies are now sending us CDs and DVDs to inform us about their
drugs. There’s more information on their DVDs than in Goodman & Gilman’s
The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, which was a three-month course at my
medical school.
Dr. Sam: The more government interferes with my ability to take
care of patients, the closer I get to throwing in the towel. If I could find a
good position, I’d begin winding down my practice tomorrow.
Dr. Dave: Me too.
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The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Opinions Are Heard.
* * * * *
8.
Voices of
Medicine: A Review Articles by Physicians
HOUSES
OF WORSHIP | WSJ | SEPTEMBER 2, 2011
In the fall of
1989, I arrived as a student at the Royal London Hospital medical college, part
of the University of London. I was one of only a handful of Muslim students in
my year and, for us, the entire social scene felt alien. It all seemed based
around dancing, alcohol and socializing with the opposite sex. We were left in
a vacuum that the school's Islamic Society quickly offered to fill. Its members
were comradely, welcoming and—crucially—had great food. Read more . . .
They knew we were
lost and early on they started to explain how the alienation we felt was
something we should cherish rather than try to overcome. The reason they gave
was that we were better than the "kufar"—infidels—outside of our
gathering. It was at this point that the tone of the Islamic Society's meetings
started to change. Our duties to our religion started to merge with a series of
geopolitical aims involving the establishment of a global Islamic state and the
overthrow of the capitalist/Zionist system.
I soon dropped out of the Islamic Society and
widened my social circle to include non-Muslims. But several of my friends had
become intoxicated by the whole thing, even dropping out of the university
because of it. At first I didn't give this much more thought—until 9/11, that
is.
Then, as a practicing psychiatrist, I started
to read articles about how radicalization occurs, especially around adolescence
and through universities, where ideas like the need to create a global Islamic
state—a new Caliphate—were being spoon-fed to vulnerable youngsters. This is
what happened in Hamburg when the perpetrators of 9/11 were students there.
Why did I leave the Islamic Society while
others stayed—and even, in some cases, wound up in Pakistan networking with fellow
Islamists? What was the difference between us? The answer may be found
somewhere in our earlier lives.
Those men who were the most opposed to the
perverted messages being peddled by the Islamic Society were those who had been
brought up by religious parents. One friend, who had been steeped in mainstream
Islam as a child, used to tell me that the doctrine being preached at the
Islamic Society was, in his view, so aberrant that it risked becoming toxic. He
firmly believed that MI5 (British domestic intelligence) ought to be keeping an
eye on these guys, and that was 10 years before 9/11. Those who had no exposure
to Islam prior to the encounter with extremist recruiters seemed more likely to
follow them.
Now there is a growing body of research
explaining why that was. Caitlin Spaulding of Trinity University in Texas
studied the religious experiences of 84 first-year university students in her
home state. She found that the students tended to retain the core faith beliefs
instilled in them during their childhood—and that this helped their transition
to university life. They appeared to be more confident and better equipped to
adapt to their new environment.
In a study by Lorelie J. Farmer of Gordon
College in Massachusetts, adult subjects discussed their religious experiences
as children. The study found that childhood religious experience tended to give
individuals increased compassion for others, as measured in psychological
rating scales. This helps explain why it would be harder for such people to follow
a supremacist ideology that by definition is uncompassionate towards the
"out" group.
Deeper insights into radicalization may
spring from developments in what's called Relational Frame Theory, which is
based on a body of empirical research pioneered by Steve Hayes of the
University of Nevada. The theory focuses on the fact that people constantly
derive assumptions and conclusions about things they were never directly
taught. In our early years, the theory holds, we learn certain arbitrary ways
to compare things to each other (relational framing), and it is through a web
of such interlinking comparisons (relational networks) that we then start to
make sense of the world around us. . .
Thus contrary to the insistence of some that
religion is inherently divisive and harmful, this research suggests that
early-life exposure to moderate forms of religion may be a vital inoculator
against the dangers of extremist recruitment.
Dr. Razzaque is a British psychiatrist and
author of "Human Being To Human Bomb: Inside The Mind Of
A Terrorist" (Totem, 2005).
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VOM
Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about
* * * * *
9.
Book
Review: The Fall of the Faculty,
The Rise of the All Administrative University
By Benjamin Ginsberg, Oxford, 248 pages, $29.95)
BOOKSHELF | WSJ | SEPTEMBER 2, 2011
Several years ago, administrators at my university asked
the Center for Bioethics, where I work, to create and teach an online course in
"interprofessional ethics"—a compulsory, one-stop class for more than
a thousand students of dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, medicine, public health
and veterinary medicine. The fact that nobody could really think of any ethical
problems shared by veterinarians and dentists was not seen as a barrier. It was
not even a problem that we had scarcely any knowledge of the subject matter.
The proposed course had the backing of the administrative authorities, and we
felt pressured to comply.
Predictably, the course was a fiasco. Instructors hated it. Nobody could
understand how to make the online platform work. Students regarded the course
with a mixture of resentment and terror: The content was laughable, but many of
them were convinced that they were going to fail. A fellow instructor and I
were so embarrassed that we apologized to the students. Within days we were
relieved of our teaching duties. Read more . . .
Most professors
have a ready supply of similar stories, but few have quite as many as Benjamin
Ginsberg, a distinguished political scientist at Johns Hopkins University. In
his lacerating "The Fall of the Faculty," Mr. Ginsberg argues that
universities have degenerated into poorly managed pseudo-corporations
controlled by bureaucrats so far removed from research and teaching that they
have barely any idea what these activities involve. He attacks virtually
everyone—from overpaid presidents and provosts down through development
officers, communications specialists and human-resource staffers—but he
reserves his most bitter scorn for the midlevel "associate deans" and
"assistant deans" who often have the most direct control over the
faculty. Mr. Ginsberg refers to them as "deanlets," but at my
institution they are often called "ass. deans."
From 1975 to 2005, the costs of attending an American university tripled.
During that period, faculty-to-student ratios stayed relatively constant, but
administrator-to-student ratios ballooned. The number of administrators
increased by 85%, and the number of staffers rose by 240%. Administrative
salaries shot up as well. Today, 81 university presidents are paid more than
half a million dollars a year, and 12 earn more than a million.
Mr. Ginsberg acknowledges that some
administrative growth may be due to the fact that universities offer more
services than they did in the 1970s. They have a more sophisticated information
technology infrastructure, too, and a more extensive lobbying and fund-raising
apparatus. But he also notes that entirely new fields of research and
scholarship have emerged during that period, such as novel areas of computer
science, genetics and physics, without any corresponding increase in faculty
numbers. The primary reason for administrative bloat, Mr. Ginsberg believes, is
the nature of bureaucracy itself. Bureaucrats measure their status by the
number of people who report to them, so their primary mission is to increase
the size of their own offices and programs.
This enormous
investment in administrators has not translated into a better college
education. As administrative numbers have ballooned, teaching has been turned
over to the academic equivalent of temp workers—low-paid adjunct professors who
must often travel long distances between campuses and who are employed on
short-term contracts without benefits. In the 1970s, 67% of faculty members
were tenured or tenure-track appointees; today that figure is a mere 30%.
Administrators prefer adjuncts not just because they are cheap but because they
are less likely to resist administrative overreach.
Forty years
ago professors themselves managed university affairs, often spending limited
stints in administration as a professional obligation before returning to teaching
and research. But as professional administrators have proliferated, professors,
having little stomach for endless committee meetings and inane business jargon,
have been happy to give up their managerial responsibilities. (Asked if he
would continue serving on an especially noxious committee, Mr. Ginsberg
replied: "If offered a choice between another year of service and a year
of incarceration at Abu Ghraib prison, I would have to give the matter some
thought.") As a result, however, professors have sacrificed much of their
influence over their own institutions. . .
"The Fall of the Faculty"
reads like a cross between a grand-jury indictment and a call to arms. Yet as
bracing and darkly pleasurable as this call is, it is hard to imagine
professors joining the resistance with so few weapons at their disposal. Even
Mr. Ginsberg admits that the solutions he suggests—faculty representation on
boards of trustees, appeals to alumni and donors—seem feeble. Making the case
for reform to a broader public, especially prospective students and their
parents, may be a more promising tack. Fortunately, professors, unlike
administrators, write books.
—Mr. Elliott teaches at the University of
Minnesota and is the author of "White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the
Dark Side of Medicine."
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The Book Review Section Is an Insider’s View of What
Doctors are Reading about.
* * * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: The fastest
growing crime wave: Educational Theft
Last year, an African-American mother of
two used her father’s address to enroll her two daughters in a better public
school outside their neighborhood. She was charged with grand theft and spent
nine days behind bars. The single mother was convicted of two felony counts.
Not only did this stain her spotless record, but it also threatened her ability
to earn the teacher’s license she had been working on.
She caught a break last month when Ohio
Gov. John Kasich granted her clemency and reduced her charges to misdemeanors,
which allowed her to pursue her teacher’s license. (WSJ)
Out
of control government increases the crime rate. Read more . . .
Bakken Oil Fields of
Harold Hamm, the
Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th
largest oil company in America, went to Washington last month to explain to Mr.
Obama that the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North
Dakota could make the United States completely energy independent by the end of
the decade. We could be the
Mr. Hamm says
Mr. Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy. We can’t come anywhere near the
scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax
dollars into “Green energy; like wind and solar. It has to come from oil and
gas.” But he’s seen this sort of thinking before, like Jimmy Carter’s windfall
profits tax. (WSJ)
When Ron
Susskind asked the President: “Why his team had difficulty creating a policy to
deal with unemployment?” The president said some of the reason was that we
didn’t have a clean story we wanted to tell against which we would measure
various actions.
Peggy Noonan
asks, “What is the particular requirement of the president that no one else can
do?” The president answers: “What the president can do that nobody else can do,
is tell a story to the American people” about where we are as a nation and
should be.
How can that be when this president
doesn’t know where we are as a nation or where we should be?
To read more HHK
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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 informative article on Why Health Exchanges
Don't Work.
•
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. This month read Mr.
Graham’s article: Despite
the scholarly disputations about health reform, what drives most voters are not
questions about the solvency of Medicare or beneficiaries’ access to care, but
fear of change. Arguments will not change this fact: People change when the
pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing, but not before.
•
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. Grace-Marie warns us: One of the biggest fears Americans have
about the expanding role of government in health care is that bureaucrats — not
doctors and patients — will make decisions about what medical care they will,
or more likely will not, get. They should be
afraid. It’s happening now and getting worse.
•
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: RomneyCare
Is No Model for the Nation. It Lacks
Real Solutions.
•
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 discussion of an
excellent question: “How
can a government look and function like a private business?”
•
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 health
research section. Or read some good news:
The Canadian dream is well within reach.
•
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. Mr. Obama should consider using
Mr. Romney as his running mate next year. We would also advise Steve Forbes to
disassociate himself from this institution.
His flat tax initiative would then gain more traction.
•
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. 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 (www.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
•
•
* * * * *
14.Words of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In
Memoriam, Today in History . . .
Great part of that order which reigns
among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the
principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to
government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The
mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the
parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of
connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the
manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by
the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest
regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage
ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society
performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government. –Thomas
Paine (The Rights of Man).
Governments exist
to protect you, not to take care of you. –Dr. Charles Stanley
Some Recent Postings
In The August 23 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 . . .
The
Economist | the print edition | Sep 10th 2011
WHEN Ray Anderson first encountered the concept at an
international conference, it took his breath away. It was so smart, so right.
It was flexible, practical, beautiful, and made perfect sense. He knew right then
that modular soft-surfaced floor coverings (carpet tiles, in other words),
could change the world.
Others thought he was round the bend. Read
more . . . When he decided to give up his job at Milliken Carpet in
LaGrange, Georgia to set up a 15-person carpet company, and was clearing out
his desk that February of 1973, two colleagues looked in. “We don’t think you
can do this,” they told him. He replied, in his languid, ever-courteous
southern lilt, “The hell you say.” Fifteen years later his company, renamed
Interface, was the biggest carpet-tile maker on the planet.
This also made Mr Anderson a considerable plunderer of
the earth. He never thought about that at first. To his mind he was no more a
thief of Nature than when, a country boy during the Depression, he had hooked
20-pound channel catfish, now long gone, out of the Chattahoochee River. His
business complied with government regulations. His product, too, was much less
wasteful than broadloom carpet, since you could easily cut the tiles to run
cables underneath, and replace them one by one as they wore out. They were, it
was true, almost entirely made of petroleum in some form or another. Some
pretty bad stuff was used in the dye and the glue. More than 200 smokestacks
blackened the sky to produce them. But boardrooms laid with Interface carpet
tiles looked and felt a million dollars.
The turning point, his “mid-course correction”, came in
1994. He was 60, but not yet ready to retire to the mountains or chase a little
white ball. Under pressure from customers to produce some sort of environmental
strategy for his company, he got a small task-force together. Someone gave him
a book, Paul Hawken’s “The Ecology of Commerce” to help him prepare his first
speech on the subject. Thumbing vaguely through it, he chanced on a chapter
called “The Death of Birth”, about the extinction of species. Reading on, he
came to a passage about reindeer being wiped out on St Matthew Island in the
Bering Sea. Suddenly, the tears were running down his face. A spear-point had
jammed into his heart. It was the very same feeling, he said later, as when he
had first seen carpet tiles, but orders of magnitude larger. He was to blame
for making the world worse. Now he had to make it better.
Interface, he decided, would leave no print on the
green-and-blue carpet of the world. By 2020 it would take nothing from the
earth that could not be rapidly replenished. It would produce no greenhouse-gas
emissions and no waste. That meant using renewables rather than fossil fuel;
endeavouring to make carpet tiles out of carbohydrate polymers rather than
petroleum; and recycling old-carpet sludge into pellets that could be used as
backing.
Some of the technologies Mr Anderson hoped for (and
half-envisaged, as a graduate in systems engineering from his much-loved
Georgia Tech) had not been invented when he started. Several colleagues thought
he had gone round the bend again. He had to bring them along slowly, in his
quiet way, until they “got it” by themselves. But by 2007 the company was, he
reckoned, about halfway up “Mount Sustainability”. Greenhouse-gas emissions by
absolute tonnage were down 92% since 1995, water usage down 75%, and 74,000
tonnes of used carpet had been recovered from landfills. The $400m he was saving each year by making no scrap
and no off-quality tiles more than paid for the R&D . . .
Most satisfying of all, sales had increased by two-thirds
since his conversion, and profits had doubled. For Mr Anderson always kept his
eye on the bottom line. He could be sentimental, ending his many public
speeches with an apologetic poem to “Tomorrow’s Child” written by an employee
after one of his pep talks, but he was only half a dreamer. His company was his
child, too. Profits mattered. This made some greens snipe at him, but it also
made Walmart send two of its senior people round to his factory in LaGrange to
see what he was doing right. As a success, he could powerfully influence
others.
The forest floor
. . . He was proudest . . . of Entropy®, a carpet-tile design inspired
directly by the forest floor. No two tiles were alike: no two sticks, no two
leaves. They could be laid and replaced quite randomly, even used in bits,
eliminating waste. And when you lay down on them you might almost be in Mr
Anderson’s 86-acre piece of forest near Atlanta, listening to the sparrows in
the long-leaf pines, rejoicing in being a non-harming part of the web of life,
like him.
Read the entire obituary . . .
On This Date in
History - September 13
On this date in 1759, the British under
General Wolfe defeated the French under General Montcalm. This battle was
a very crucial one in the history of British Canada. It is noteworthy for the
fact that it was a battle in which both commanding generals were killed. That
is not the normal course of events for a military encounter.
On this date in 1788, Congress decided
that the first national election under the Constitution would be held on the
first Wednesday in January, 1789.
After Leonard and Thelma
Spinrad
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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 in improving their welfare or quality of healthcare. Socialists know
that once people are enslaved, freedom seems too risky to pursue.