|
MEDICAL TUESDAY. |
NEWSLETTER |
|
Community For Better Health Care |
Vol X, No 12, Sept
27, 2011 |
In This Issue:
1.
Featured Article:
Home Remedy
2.
In
the News: What factors lead to the rise or fall of
liberalism, democracy and wealth?
3.
International Medicine: Growing wave of consumerism sweeping Europe
4.
Medicare: Obama’s promise he
would cut health premiums by up to
$2,500 a year has been revised by the CBO: premiums will rise by $2,100.
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Legal Gluttony:
Last minute laws cannot be scrutinized in detail.
6.
Medical Myths: Medical Laws like
ObamaCare will become palatable after next election.
7.
Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: How is ObamaCare
of putting Medicaid patients into HMOs working out in the real world?
8.
Voices
of Medicine: Social Security - Of Course it’s a Ponzi Scheme –But it
Should be Fixed
9.
The Bookshelf: Flourishing and Happiness
in a Free Society
10.
Hippocrates
& His Kin: Doctors are
forced to learn 140,000 new Medical Codes
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring
Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
Words of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In Memoriam, Today in History . . .
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
1.
Featured
Article: Home Remedy
A small town
solves its physician shortage.
By
Residents
of Albany, population 1,730, in
northwestern Missouri, aren’t shy about talking up their town. They point to
its scant crime, good schools, and tidy, Victorian-era downtown, where handsome
red-brick buildings whisper of an affluent past. Beyond its family-friendly
movie house and nine-hole golf course lie farm fields—wheat, corn, and soybeans
mostly—and woodlands with abundant hunting and fishing.
Yet for all of
Albany’s charm, trying to entice doctors and nurses to resettle there, an hour
northeast of the nearest city, St. Joseph, has proved extremely difficult. Read more . . . Nearly
25 percent of Americans live in rural places like Albany, but only about
10percent of physicians practice in those areas. And as more and more country
doctors retire, the rural health-care shortage grows, because so few newly
minted physicians have been willing to fill their shoes. Albany’s only
hospital, the nonprofit, 25-bed Northwest Medical Center, used to employ a
full-time recruiter who advertised and sent out mailers to lure health-care
providers from midwestern cities like Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis.
Response was tepid.
“You pretty much took
what you could get,” says John W. Richmond, who retired last year as Northwest
Medical Center’s president and CEO. . .
All told, about a
dozen physicians agreed to give Albany a try. Some, Richmond confides, turned
out to have spotty résumés or shaky work habits. Few lasted long. “They’d give
you a lot of reasons why they didn’t want to stay,” he says, “but when it came
down to it, they didn’t like the rural lifestyle.”
By 2000, Albany’s
hospital had become so short-staffed that registered nurses like Donna Walter
were putting in 24-hour shifts. “We were exhausted,” says Walter, who today
serves as the medical center’s vice president of patient services.
Richmond was at his
wits’ end. “You’re doing everything you can to get somebody, and you have
nobody to choose from,” he says. “Pretty soon, a light goes on: Hell, I’m
not getting anywhere. If I’m going to have stability on the medical staff,
I’m going to have to do it with people who are from here, who want to be here.
Either we grow our own, or we starve to death.”
Richmond began
speaking in local schools about the rewards of caring for family and neighbors.
He orchestrated “pipeline” events, allowing kids to shadow medical staff on
their rounds. He gave them paying jobs at Northwest Medical Center, even when
there was no real work for them. And to those who showed potential, he awarded
financial assistance to attend vocational or medical school, so long as they
promised to return one day to work. They signed letters of intent to practice
locally after finishing their studies, for a minimum number of years,
contingent upon how much money they had received. Albany natives interested in
a second career could also apply for financial aid from the hospital and return
to school—again, on condition that they would agree to come back to work in Albany.
To date, at least 23
nurses, two medical technicians, and a certified registered nurse anesthetist
have received financial assistance. So have two family-practice doctors who
will soon finish their residency training and begin serving full-time on Northwest
Medical Center’s five-physician staff. . .
David
Freed is a screenwriter and former investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where he shared in
a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1992 Rodney King riots.
Read the entire article in The Atlantic . . .
Feedback . . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
* * * * *
2. In the News: What factors lead to the rise or fall of
liberalism, democracy and wealth?
Does Disease Cause Autocracy?
In attempting to explain those factors which
lead to the rise or fall of liberalism, democracy and wealth, several
scientists believe they have identified a new culprit: disease. The eradication
of proliferating diseases correlates strongly with the rise of democratic
institutions and liberal social norms such as individualism, gender
egalitarianism and property rights. Such a relationship may seem distant, but
new research offer several explanations, says Ronald Bailey, Reason Magazine's
science correspondent.
Firstly, disease keeps the poor, poor. Read more . . .
·
Heavy
disease burdens create persistent poverty traps from which poor people cannot
extricate themselves.
·
High
disease rates lower their economic productivity so they can't afford to improve
sanitation and medical care, which in turn leaves them vulnerable to more
disease and further reduces their ability to prosper economically.
Secondly, a high prevalence of disease
encourages intolerance and localism.
·
In
the same way that the human immune system adapts to fight pathogens, groups of
people evolve customs that reduce the transmission of diseases.
·
This
usually includes a degree of xenophobia, whereby members of isolated groups
avoid contacts with "out-group" members who may have parasites to
which the group is neither accustomed nor resistant.
·
This
limits the flow of people and ideas, diminishing social tolerance and eating
away at the foundation of liberal thinking.
This natural defensiveness toward out-groups,
developed by survival instincts, also explains the lack of power sharing in
these nations. Elites, who because of their wealth have not been so heavily
exposed to disease and parasites, limit interaction with the poor for this very
reason, decreasing the potential for top-down reform. Simultaneously, bottom-up
reform is undercut by the inability of the poor to organize because of the
aforementioned xenophobia. Thus, the lack of unity amongst the lower class
opens these societies to autocratic rule.
Should these hypotheses prove true, the
implications for foreign aid to poor nations are that efforts should prioritize
disease eradication over the myriad of other issues. It remains to be seen,
however, if the very ethnocentrism and xenophobia predicted by these studies
will also hinder efforts by outsiders to break the vicious cycle.
Source: Ronald Bailey, "Does Disease
Cause Autocracy?" Reason Magazine, October 2011.
For text: http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/16/does-disease-cause-autocracy
For more on Government Issues: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=33
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
* * * * *
3.
International
Medicine: Growing wave of consumerism sweeping Europe
Britain Moves toward Doctor-Patient Control
Grace-Marie Turner
National Review Online, July 27, 2010
Britain’s new coalition government is
proposing a major transformation of its socialized health-care system to give
doctors much more authority over decisions involving their patients’ care.
This most entrenched of government-run health
systems is recognizing the importance of the doctor-patient relationship just
as the United States is taking a sharp left turn toward more centralized
government control over health care.
Is the world turning upside down? Read more . . .
The New York Times examines the
plan “to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a
centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level,” calling it “the most
radical reorganization of the National
Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.”
Currently, how and where
patients are treated, and by whom, is largely determined by decisions made by
150 entities known as primary care trusts — all of which would be abolished
under the plan, with some of those choices going to patients. It would also
abolish many current government-set targets, like limits on how long patients
have to wait for treatment.
Britain is trying to find a way to respond to
the growing wave of consumerism sweeping Europe. Better-informed patients are
demanding more control over health-care decisions and are increasingly fighting
the authority of large, centralized bureaucracies to make decisions about their
care.
Not surprisingly, the British government’s
proposal is facing strong opposition from entrenched interests. “Many critics .
. . doubt that general practitioners are the right people to decide how the
health care budget should be spent,” the Times reports. One of these
critics is David Furness of the Social Market Foundation, a London think tank.
He calculates that the plan would make every general practitioner (GP) in
London responsible for a $3.4 million budget. GPs would band together in
regional consortia to buy services from hospitals and other providers.
“It’s like getting your waiter to manage a
restaurant,” Furness said. “The government is saying that G.P.’s know what the
patient wants, just the way a waiter knows what you want to eat. But a waiter
isn’t necessarily any good at ordering stock, managing the premises, talking to
the chef — why would they be? They’re waiters.”
He disparages doctors at his peril.
Under the proposed plan, hospitals would
escape some of the bureaucratic micromanagement that binds them in red tape.
They would become “foundation trusts” with much more independence, somewhat
like charter schools in the U.S.
British health secretary Andrew Lansley is
straightforward about the rationale for his proposal. His government’s white
paper explains: “Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of
patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical
simplification, and remove layers of management.”
Opponents are sounding alarms that the
changes mean the terminally ill won’t get adequate care and that waiting times
will be even longer for surgeries like knee and hip replacements.
There always is a risk with any government
rationing system that more care will be provided to the healthy majority of
patients who vote, leaving less for those who are older and sicker. But is it
safer to give the relevant decision-making authority to doctors, or to
bureaucrats and politicians? If there is less money for administrators, there
will be more money for patients.
The labor unions and the bureaucrats are, of
course, apoplectic about the loss of some of the bureaucratic jobs that have
swallowed up most of the money from a tripling of the NHS budget since 1998. .
.
You can’t make this up. Britain’s coalition
government is getting it right. Bureaucrats don’t deliver care; doctors do.
Sixty-two years after the founding of the NHS, the British government
recognizes it has no choice but to give doctors and patients more authority
over health-care decisions.
The complex plan — which would affect only
England — will need legislative approval to be enacted, but we should expect
some version of it to pass, because it reflects a growing awakening in Europe
to the importance of consumer control and choice. . .
Throughout Europe, a network of private
hospitals is growing. Government officials say private hospitals serve as a
safety valve for public health systems; they allow people to escape waiting
lines that would be even longer without their services. Many believe the
private hospitals make public hospitals better by providing competition. How
tragic, then, that the recently passed health-overhaul law in the U.S.
effectively prohibits new physician-owned private hospitals from opening.
Physician Hospitals of America has rightly filed
suit, challenging these provisions.
Clearly, Europeans have come to these conclusions
based upon long experience with government-controlled, bureaucratically run
health systems. Such systems don’t work, especially with something as personal
as health care. And yet, the U.S. has adopted “reforms” that will reduce
genuine competition and put more control over health-care decisions in the
hands of government bureaucrats.
We should also note that President Obama has
bypassed the constitutionally required Senate confirmation process to put Dr. Don Berwick — who is in love with
Britain’s socialized health-care system — in charge of implementing key parts
of his health-overhaul law. When Berwick appears at some point before a
congressional committee, members might want to ask him what he thinks about Britain’s
move to give doctors and patients, not bureaucrats, more authority over
health-care decisions.
As Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) said at a recent
Galen Institute conference, Obamacare
“will not stand.” The political system, the courts, or the American people —
and probably all three — will get us back on the right path.
Published in National Review Online,
July 27, 2010.
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
European Socialized Medicine is much like Canadian Medicare . . .
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: Actuaries released new
estimates of growth in health costs over next decade
Counting Up ObamaCare’s Health Cost Inflation
Forbes.com By: Sally C. Pipes
8.9.2011
It’s time to add
yet another study to the growing list of research showing that ObamaCare isn’t
delivering on its grand promises.
In the July issue
of the journal Health Affairs, Medicare’s actuaries released new
estimates of the rate of growth of national health costs. Surprise, surprise —
they’re projected to increase over the next decade. Read more . . .
The bad news for
ObamaCare’s proponents? ObamaCare won’t help contain health costs, as the
president so often claimed while lobbying for passage of his reform package.
Instead, it will exacerbate them. Remember his oft-repeated statement that his
plan would “cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”
As the CBO rightly explained, premiums will rise by $2,100.
Researchers
estimate that health care spending will grow an average of 5.8% per year
through 2020. The actuaries found that total health care costs in this country
will hit $4.6 trillion by the end of the decade — equivalent to about one-fifth
of the entire U.S. economy. That’s about $14,000 in annual spending for every
man, woman, and child.
In 2014, when the
law’s major coverage provisions kick in, total healthcare costs will jump 8.3
percent — a rate well above the 5.5% expected for 2013. As the study puts it,
the president’s law is “anticipated to contribute to a significant acceleration
in the national health spending growth rate in 2014.”
Worse still,
spending on private insurance plans is expected to expand 9.4% that year. That
rate is over 4 percentage points higher than the actuaries would have expected
without ObamaCare.
The biggest costs
from the health law come in the form of expansions in public insurance
programs. ObamaCare increases Medicaid spending by over 20 percent in 2014 and
will bring the program’s total enrollment to 75.6 million people. Over the next
eight years, the law increases Medicaid expenditures by a whopping $700
billion.
In 2010, the
government spent $1.2 trillion on health care. In 2020, it will spend an
astonishing $2.3 trillion, comprising nearly half of all healthcare
expenditures. Medicaid alone will account for a fifth of national health
spending. . .
The White House has
repeatedly said that its brand of health reform will bend the healthcare cost
curve down. Medicare’s actuaries have taken a sober look at the numbers — and
arrived at the opposite conclusion. The American people may not allow President
Obama to ignore the preponderance of evidence for much longer.
Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/sallypipes/2011/08/08/counting-up-obamacares-health-cost-inflation/
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
Government is not the solution to our
problems, government is the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5. Medical Gluttony: Legal Gluttony: Last
minute laws cannot be scrutinized in detail.
SacBee10-17-2011
Most bills go through a months-long
process of hearings, negotiations, amendments and votes. But that’s too much
openness for illegal and criminal activity schemes by the legislators.
The California State Legislature wrote 48
bills in the last three weeks of the regular session, long after the deadlines
for most lawmaking procedures had passed. They did so by deleting the text of
existing bills and replacing it with something new and often unrelated—a
process known as “gut and amend.” Some self-serving bills were written close to
midnight on the last day. Read more. . .
Lawmakers sent 22 of those bills to the
governor, who signed all but three of them.
Looks like legal subterfuge—which would be
a crime in any other profession if lawmakers found out about it. Lawmakers can
do equally criminal behavior and it is never perceived as crime because such a
law has no chance of being passed by lawmakers.
What’s the answer?
Reforming lawmakers who are lawyers is
untenable. You can’t watch everyone’s lips to note when they move. We need a
part time citizen legislature. If we had a legislature that met for two or three
months every other year, many farmers, entrepreneurs, business and professional
people including pastors, priests and rabbis could and would run for office.
The legislature would be crime free by the end of the first session.
The
dungeon of criminals would disappear without a single arrest being needed.
Now, wouldn’t that be a neat treat?
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
Medical Gluttony Appropriate thrives in Government and Health Insurance
Programs.
Gluttony Disappears with Deductibles and Co-payments on Every Service.
* * * * *
6.
Medical
Myths: Medical Laws
like ObamaCare will become palatable after next election.
President Barrack Hussein Obama
and his cronies were very shrewd with in developing the ObamaCare with what they
felt would be painless maneuvers during this term of office with the excessive
costs, loss of freedom, conscription, and plunging in the quality of health
care all delayed until 2014. His philosophy was to make it reality before the
people woke up in a socialized straitjacket existence.
Who would ever have thought
that four centuries of progress toward freedom could be reversed in four short
years? Read more . .
.
Who would ever have thought
that such a large segment of my Medical Profession could be hoodwinked into
Socialized Medicine so quickly?
Of course, this all began
under the reign of FDR in 1933 with a dramatic push by LBJ in 1966. Even the
costs which exceeded the best estimates by 800 percent didn’t slow the blind
march of Socialized Medicine. Perhaps the hyperbolic curve of BHO has awakened
more Americans as to what is really happening. Even the Democrats in the Senate
are beginning to avoid appearing to be under the BHO mantra. If this cleans out
the Senate in 2012, perhaps the BHO hyperbolic swing will take us back towards
the principles of our independence of 1776. If we then begin teaching civics
and constitution in our schools, there will be great hope for our nation and
human freedom.
ObamaCare may become totally unpalatable by
2012 and first class health care may be restored.
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
Medical Myths Originate When Someone Else Pays The Medical Bills.
Myths Disappear When Patients Pay Appropriate Deductibles and
Co-Payments on Every Service.
* * * * *
7.
Overheard
in the Medical Staff Lounge: How is Obama
Care of putting Medicaid patients into HMOs working out in the real world
Dr. Rosen: How are we
handling the onslaught of patients being dumped from Medicaid into a basket of
HMOs?
Dr. Edwards: We told our HMO
that we’d take our share. But that number has grown from 150 to 250 and now 400
welfare patients trying to adjust to private HMO care in just one practice. Read more . . .
Dr. Ruth: We
answered very grudgingly. We accepted a hundred which we felt was probably more
than our share. But that one hundred is taking up more time and office
resources than all of our other patients. They can’t be satisfied. I think
they’ve always felt that private patients could demand the sky and everything would
be ordered. They refuse to accept limits. They don’t understand that there are
limits to how much health care they can consume.
Dr. Yancy: The
practice of surgery has gotten so bad that I will operate on anyone for
anything he wishes, except an unnecessary amputation.
Dr. Paul: Well, I
don’t have any such worries. Mothers will always bring in their kids for any
problem the mothers are worried about.
Dr. Rosen: Don’t they
balk at your copayments?
Dr. Paul: My
patients don’t have copayments. They all have Medicaid and Medicaid patients
don’t have to pay anything?
Dr. Edwards: Didn’t you have
any Medicaid patients dumped into your HMO?
Dr. Paul: Certainly.
But that was a treat. The Medicaid/HMOs pay good for the first visit.
Dr. Edwards: But after the
first visit, isn’t it starvation wages again?
Dr. Paul: I don’t
understand your starvation wages. The second visit and beyond it’s the same as
any other Medicaid patient. So I enjoy that little hump in payment. So overall,
I’m better off with the dump into HMOs.
Dr. Milton: Well, would you mind telling us how much
Medicaid pays you?
Dr. Paul: I
believe it’s $14 a visit.
Dr. Milton: So in
Pediatrics I’m sure you can see twice as many as we internists do. Instead of
four patients an hour you must see six or eight?
Dr. Paul: You’re
kidding. I have to see at least 12 patients an hours to pay for my staff and my
family.
Dr. Milton: I have a
hard time seeing four patients an hour. How can you see 12?
Dr. Paul: Well,
you internists sit down and chat a few minutes, then get up and move the
patient to the exam table, and then sit down to write prescriptions and orders.
Pediatricians don’t have time to sit.
Dr. Edwards: Just a minute.
You don’t sit down in pediatrics?
Dr. Paul: I know
of a few pediatricians that do but they have a contingent of private paying
patients. Four of those bring in as much as 12 of mine. Big difference.
Dr. Edwards: I guess a
fully welfare type of practice is rather different.
Dr. Paul: Isn’t it
great that there are a few of us that see the down and outers and don’t
complain?
Dr. Edwards: I guess it is.
It probably also explains why you believe in socialized government healthcare.
Dr. Paul: It’s all
going to go that way and when the government controls every dollar spent on
healthcare, I’ll be there on the front lines to continue to do what I’ve been
doing for the past decade.
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
The Staff Lounge Is Where Unfiltered Medical Opinions Are Heard.
* * * * *
8.
Voices of
Medicine: A Review of Regional Medical
Journals and Articles by Physicians
Social Security is a
Ponzi scheme – and it should be fixed
The Great Social Security Debate,
Proposition 1: Of course it's a Ponzi scheme.
In a Ponzi scheme, the people who
invest early get their money out with dividends. But these dividends don't come
from any profitable or productive activity – they consist entirely of money
paid in by later participants.
This cannot go on forever because
at some point there just aren't enough new investors to support the earlier
entrants. Word gets around that there are no profits, just money transferred
from new to old. The merry-go-round stops, the scheme collapses and the
remaining investors lose everything. Read more . . .
Now, Social Security is a
pay-as-you-go program. A current beneficiary isn't receiving the money she paid
in years ago. That money is gone. It went to her parents' Social Security
check. The money in her check is coming from her son's FICA tax today –
i.e., her "investment" was paid out years ago to earlier entrants in
the system and her current benefits are coming from the "investment"
of the new entrants into the system. Pay-as-you-go is the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
So what's the difference? Ponzi schemes are illegal,
suggested one of my colleagues on "Inside Washington."
But this is perfectly irrelevant.
Imagine that Charles Ponzi had lived not in Boston but in the lesser parts of Papua New Guinea where
the securities and fraud laws were, shall we say, less developed. He runs his
same scheme among the locals – give me ("invest") one goat today,
I'll give ("return") you two after six full moons – but escapes any
legal sanction. Is his legal enterprise any less a Ponzi scheme? Of course not.
So what is the difference?
Proposition 2: The crucial
distinction between a Ponzi
scheme and Social Security is that Social Security is mandatory.
That's why Ponzi schemes always
collapse and Social Security has not. When it's mandatory, you've ensured an
endless supply of new participants. Indeed, if Charles Ponzi had had the
benefit of the law forcing people into his scheme, he'd still be going strong –
and a perfect candidate for commissioner of the Social Security
Administration.
But there's a catch. Compulsion
allows sustainability; it does not guarantee it. Hence …
Proposition 3: Even a
mandatory Ponzi scheme
like Social Security can fail if it cannot rustle up enough new entrants.
You can force young people into
Social Security, but if there just aren't enough young people in existence
to support current beneficiaries, the system will collapse anyway.
When Social Security began making
monthly distributions in 1940, there were 160 workers for every senior
receiving benefits. In 1950, there were 16.5; today, three; in 20 years, there
will be but two.
Now, the average senior receives
in Social Security about a third of what the average worker makes. Applying
that ratio retroactively, this means that in 1940, the average worker had to
pay 0.2 percent of his salary to sustain the older folks of his time; in 1950,
2 percent; today, 11 percent; in 20 years, 17 percent. This is a staggering
sum, considering that it is apart from all the other taxes he pays to sustain
other functions of government, such as Medicare whose costs are exploding.
The Treasury already steps in and
borrows the money required to cover the gap between what workers pay into
Social Security and what seniors take out. When young people were plentiful,
Social Security produced a surplus. Starting now and for decades to come, it
will add to the deficit, increasingly so as the population ages.
Demography is destiny. Which
leads directly to Proposition 4: This is one Ponzi scheme that can be
saved by adapting to the new demographics.
Three easy steps: Change the
cost-of-living measure, means test for richer recipients and, most important,
raise the retirement age.
The current retirement age is an absurd anachronism. Bismarck arbitrarily chose
70 when he created social insurance in 1889. Clever guy: Life expectancy at the
time was under 50.
When Franklin Roosevelt
created Social Security, choosing 65 as the eligibility age, life expectancy was 62.
Today it is almost 80. FDR wanted to prevent the aged few from suffering
destitution in their last remaining years. Social Security was not meant to
provide two decades of greens fees for baby boomers.
Of course it's a Ponzi scheme. So what? It's
also the most vital, humane and fixable of all social programs. The question
for the candidates is: Forget Ponzi – are you going to fix Social Security?
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/16/3914260/social-security-is-a-ponzi-scheme.html#ixzz1ZP4VxMSs
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
VOM
Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about.
* * * * *
9.
Book
Review: THE RATIONAL ARGUMENTATOR,
Edward Younkins, Editor
|
A Review of Edward W. Younkins's |
|
by
Gennady Stolyarov II |
|
|
|
||
|
This book is itself a synthesis of three of Dr. Younkins's
articles, presented here as three chapters and tied together by an
introduction that presents the philosophical and biographical backgrounds of
the thinkers being considered and a conclusion that offers guidance as to how
to infuse their ideas into the world of today. . . |
Read
the entire book review at quebecoislibre . . .
To read more book reviews . . .
To
read book reviews topically . . .
Feedback . . .
Subscribe
MedicalTuesday . . .
Subscribe
HealthPlanUSA . . .
The
Book Review Section Is an Insider’s View of What Doctors are Reading.
* * * * *
10.
Hippocrates & His Kin: Doctors are
forced to learn 140,000 new Medical Codes
According to a letter to the Editor of Wall St.
Journal written by Dr. Michael Petersen, Newport, OR that they are
expanding the Medical Codes to 140,000 and the heading says (this) is Rx for
futility.
Why doesn’t the AMA understand that this increase in our workload adds
nothing to Quality?
[MOBILE FACTOID] press@healthexecmobile.com
Only 9% of resident physicians said they're prepared for the business side of
medicine, and 56% of residents said they did not receive any formal instruction
on contracts, compensation arrangements and reimbursement models during medical
training.
No wonder new doctors are such easy prey for the
Socialist.
California Assembly won’t reveal expense details
The Sacramento BEE analysis
of the California Assembly’s member expense reports suggested underreporting
the amount of money spent to run legislators’ offices and over-reporting
committee spending. The gap was created by the use of committee funds to pay
for legislators’ personal staff. The legislature refused to release the data to
expose this subterfuge. The BEE also learned that this transfer of payroll
funds could be backdated to the beginning of the legislative year.
What happened to business corporations that back dated stock options?
Why are these Legislators not in Jail?
State
Workers rushing to buy service credit. By John Ortiz
More than 12,000 members of the California Public
Employees’ Retirement System asked for price estimates to buy additional
retirement service credit—sometimes called “airtime” [since no service was
rendered] to boost lifelong benefits at the taxpayer’s expense.
People “hardly working” buying more “hardly
working time” so they don’t have to work at all!
To read more HHK
. . .
To
read more HMC . . .
Feedback
. . .
Subscribe MedicalTuesday .
. .
Subscribe HealthPlanUSA .
. .
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 . . .
•
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
•
•
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,
•
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."
Nevada
Chapter meeting: Saturday October 22, 2011 at 12:00 to 2:00 pm at
Dr.
Andrew and Janet Zak
Words of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In Memoriam, Today in History . . .
Words of Wisdom
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait
until you see what it costs when it's free." -P.J. O'Rourke
Congress is so strange; a man gets up to speak and
says nothing, nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees. –Will Rogers
Then Congress makes a joke it’s a law, and when they
make a law, it’s a joke. –Will Rogers
Some Recent
Postings
In The Sept 13 Issue: