1.
Featured
Article: Social media in the
16th Century
Five centuries before Facebook
and the Arab spring, social media helped bring about the Reformation
How Luther went
viral: The Economist | from the print edition | Christmas Specials | Dec 17th 2011
IT is a
familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering discontent a new form of
media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views,
register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters’
message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to
suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The
combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst
for social change where previous efforts had failed.
That’s what
happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened during the Reformation,
nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of
their day—pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts—and circulated them through social
networks to promote their message of religious reform. Read more . . .
Scholars
have long debated the relative importance of printed media, oral transmission
and images in rallying popular support for the Reformation. Some have
championed the central role of printing, a relatively new technology at the
time. Opponents of this view emphasize the importance of preaching and other
forms of oral transmission. More recently historians have highlighted the role
of media as a means of social signaling and coordinating public opinion in the
Reformation.
Now the
internet offers a new perspective on this long-running debate, namely that the
important factor was not the printing press itself (which had been around since
the 1450s), but the wider system of media sharing along social networks—what is
called “social media” today. Luther, like the Arab revolutionaries, grasped the
dynamics of this new media environment very quickly, and saw how it could
spread his message.
New post
from Martin Luther
The start
of the Reformation is usually dated to Luther’s nailing of his “95 Theses on
the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” to the church door in Wittenberg on
October 31st 1517. The “95 Theses” were propositions written in Latin that he
wished to discuss, in the academic custom of the day, in an open debate at the
university. Luther, then an obscure theologian and minister, was outraged by
the behaviour of Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar who was selling indulgences
to raise money to fund the pet project of his boss, Pope Leo X: the reconstruction
of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Hand over your money, went Tetzel’s sales
pitch, and you can ensure that your dead relatives are not stuck in purgatory.
This crude commercialisation of the doctrine of indulgences, encapsulated in
Tetzel’s slogan—“As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, so the soul from
purgatory springs”—was, to Luther, “the pious defrauding of the faithful” and a
glaring symptom of the need for broad reform. Pinning a list of propositions to
the church door, which doubled as the university notice board, was a standard
way to announce a public debate.
Although
they were written in Latin, the “95 Theses” caused an immediate stir, first
within academic circles in Wittenberg and then farther afield. In December 1517
printed editions of the theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets,
appeared simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by Luther’s
friends to whom he had sent copies. German translations, which could be read by
a wider public than Latin-speaking academics and clergy, soon followed and
quickly spread throughout the German-speaking lands. Luther’s friend Friedrich
Myconius later wrote that “hardly 14 days had passed when these propositions
were known throughout Germany and within four weeks almost all of Christendom
was familiar with them.”
The
unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in
which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide
audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote
in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German
translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating
it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote
that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known
what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon
on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary
to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The
pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the
Reformation.
The media
environment that Luther had shown himself so adept at managing had much in
common with today’s online ecosystem of blogs, social networks and discussion
threads. It was a decentralised system whose participants took care of
distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing
and recommendation. Modern media theorists refer to participants in such
systems as a “networked public”, rather than an “audience”, since they do more
than just consume information. Luther would pass the text of a new pamphlet to
a friendly printer (no money changed hands) and then wait for it to ripple
through the network of printing centres across Germany. . .
As with
“Likes” and retweets today, the number of reprints serves as an indicator of a
given item’s popularity. Luther’s pamphlets were the most sought after; a
contemporary remarked that they “were not so much sold as seized”. His first
pamphlet written in German, the “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, was
reprinted 14 times in 1518 alone, in print runs of at least 1,000 copies each
time. Of the 6,000 different pamphlets that were published in German-speaking
lands between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 were editions of a few dozen works by
Luther. In all, some 6m-7m pamphlets were printed in the first decade of the
Reformation, more than a quarter of them Luther’s. . .
Both
reformers and Catholics used this new form to spread information and attack
their enemies. “We are Starting to Sing a New Song”, Luther’s first venture
into the news-ballad genre, told the story of two monks who had been executed
in Brussels in 1523 after refusing to recant their Lutheran beliefs. Luther’s
enemies denounced him as the Antichrist in song, while his supporters did the
same for the pope and insulted Catholic theologians. . .
Luther’s
enemies likened the spread of his ideas to a sickness. The papal bull
threatening Luther with excommunication in 1520 said its aim was “to cut off
the advance of this plague and cancerous disease so it will not spread any
further”. The Edict of Worms in 1521 warned that the spread of Luther’s message
had to be prevented, otherwise “the whole German nation, and later all other
nations, will be infected by this same disorder.” But it was too late—the
infection had taken hold in Germany and beyond. To use the modern idiom,
Luther’s message had gone viral. . .
Modern
society tends to regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and
technological advance reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches
us that there is nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at
Harvard University, who has studied information-sharing networks in
pre-revolutionary France, argues that “the marvels of communication technology
in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense
that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider
before the days of television and the internet.” Social media are not
unprecedented: rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition. Modern
digital networks may be able to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the
sharing of media could play a supporting role in precipitating a revolution.
Today’s social-media systems do not just connect us to each other: they also
link us to the past.
Read the entire article in The Economist (Print edition) Christmas
Specials (subscription required) . . . .
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2.
In the
News: Michigan
has become the latest to repudiate
Obamacare:
In an action with major implications for
health reform in Michigan, the state House has voted to turn down—at least for
now—nearly $10 million in federal funds to create a statewide health exchange
by 2014 to sell more affordable, standardized health insurance to consumers and
small businesses. Read
more . . .
Jack McHugh of the Mackinac Center for
Public Policy writes:
Under the Michigan Constitution, no money
can be spent by the state—including federal grant money—unless the Legislature
passes an appropriation bill authorizing the spending…
House Republicans have shown no eagerness
[to create a state Obamacare exchange], and that reluctance extended to this
appropriation bill. In the colorful words of House Appropriations Chair Chuck
Moss, R-Birmingham, to MIRS News, “They’d rather be caught sacrificing to Satan
than voting for Obamacare . . . ”
Time does help us gain perspective
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3.
International
Medicine: Health
Care can no longer be separated from Government. It is a branch of government
and therefore we have to understand Politics to reform healthcare.
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Appeared in the Calgary Herald
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For those who look back on 2011
and wonder how European and American governments dug themselves into such a
deep debt hole, consider this image as an explanation: Santa Claus.
Over the decades, governments have promised benefits to current voters at the
expense of future generations. They borrowed massively; that created debt,
which future families must pay back with interest through their taxes.
Government played this promise-now, pay-back-later game in both high-tax
countries (Greece) and in more moderately-taxed countries (the United States),
so a lack of tax revenue was never the problem, just the chronic Santa-induced
spending binges. Read more . . .
Even in Canada, where we pat ourselves on the back for having (partially) dealt
with government deficits in the 1990s, the federal government ran deficits in
37 of the last 50 years, including in every year since 2009. Most of the
provinces are also deeply in the red again.
Governments have played Santa Claus in another fashion and this added to the
borrowing binge: by spending billions annually on subsidies to business
(corporate welfare), this on the justification that such spending creates jobs.
Almost every government in the country—be it Alberta, B.C., Quebec, other
provinces and the federal government—engages in corporate welfare. They do so
even though all are running large deficits.
As a specific example, consider Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, which
forecasts a $16.3 billion deficit this year. From 1991/92 to 2008/09, Ontario
governments of every political stripe—NDP, Progressive Conservative and
Liberal—have transferred $27.7 billion in total in tax dollars to businesses. .
.
Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development and Innovation, Brad Duguid, argued
recently that such spending is a necessity. He asserted that without it,
Ontario would be “completely unarmed” in competition with the rest of the
world.
Nonsense. Ontario has been lowering corporate taxes rates and that helps make
it competitive with other jurisdictions. That’s not the only factor that matters
in attracting business—regulation, power costs and other factors also count—but
lower rates are preferable to picking corporate winners and losers with scarce
tax dollars.
Besides, Canada’s politicians should keep in mind Canada can easily be “outgunned”
in subsidy battles given our relatively small 34-million population base and
thus how much any one government can spend in tax dollars vis-à-vis larger
jurisdictions. The European Union has 500-million people and the United States
has 312 million people. If they attempt to bribe companies and outbid Canada
(and they do), it’s relatively easy to do. That imbalance is why free trade
agreements between countries that cut down on corporate subsidies are useful
and ought to be pursued with vigour. . .
Economist Terry Buss found that
governments, in their corporate welfare and jobs justifications, routinely
ignore what’s called the “substitution effect”. That’s where tax dollars and
jobs are merely transferred from healthier businesses to those in pursuit of
taxpayer cash. Buss concluded that no new economic activity or jobs were
created from corporate welfare, not when the wider geographic area was
considered.
A perfect illustration of this happened years ago in Quebec. There, in the
1980s, the federal government funnelled tax dollars to pay for the construction
of a new fish processing plant at a cost of $2.2 million with the justification
of 250 new jobs. However, in a later review, the federal Auditor General noted
how the nearby existing fish-processing facility soon shut down. The job losses
at the old facility were equivalent to those “created” at the newly subsidized
plant. .
.
As we enter 2012, governments
will need to stop playing Santa Claus. They will need to end the practice of
borrowing money which future families must repay with interest. So here’s one
easy “gift” governments can stop giving: corporate welfare.
Read
the rest of the article . . .
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Corporate welfare doesn’t create new
jobs. It just destroys old and stable nearby jobs.
Canadian
Medicare does not give timely access to healthcare, it only gives access to a
waiting list.
--Canadian Supreme Court Decision 2005 SCC 35, [2005] 1 S.C.R.
791
http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html
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4.
Medicare: Medical Entitlements
can never be controlled by Medical overview.
Mrs. Atkinson, an RN, brought her elderly mother who
uses a walker into the office to obtain a number of items for her through
Medicare. Mrs. Atkinson complained that her mother was just too worn out from
walking from the car to the store and back. She needed a wheelchair.
The daughter was refractory to any discussion of the
walk from the car to the store being good therapeutic physical therapy. We
finally acquiesced, being tired of playing the medically responsible police officer.
It’s always a lose—lose proposition. It finally comes down to the time spent
for health care responsibility and being the bad guy versus the time spent to
complete all the Medicare requirements for durable medical equipment. When
Medicare makes the decision, we are no longer the ogres. Read more . . .
After getting all the forms for medical necessity for
the equipment completed; and my staff time making the arrangements with the home
care supplier; faxing all the required justifications to the home medical
supplier; the patient was called to pick up her wheel chair.
When the patient went to pick up all her supposedly
needed durable medical equipment at taxpayer’s cost, she found out that
Medicare required a 20% co-payment. She refused to pick up the items stating
she wasn’t that sick, didn’t need to be pushed around in a wheel chair and went
home walking.
When her daughter went to see her later in the day,
she became very upset. The daughter tried to convince her mother that she
needed the wheel chair. The patient insisted that she could manage her shopping
very well using the walker. She didn’t want to depend on another person every
time she went out or went shopping.
There are two very important observations: First, the original
Medicare 20% copayment; if it were still universally required, it would be a
very effective guard against unnecessary health care costs. The 20% copayment
probably is more effective than the HMO or Medi-Gap coverage instituted after
Medicare was founded which tries to control costs by medical review and denial.
In this case medical review allowed the purchase of the wheel chair, but it was
the patient copayment that deemed it was an unnecessary health care cost.
The second equally important cost savings is poorly
understood and totally disregarded by Medicare and other insurance companies.
The total time over three days spent to obtain the approval of the wheel chair
is born by the physician, his staff, and the durable medical equipment company.
Our office spent about 80 minutes on the medical justification time, talking
with the patient, reviewing the arguments of the RN daughter, documentation of
what the family felt was an important need, completing the several documents
and forms, faxing them to the carrier and the home care company. Later the
patient ruled it was unnecessary.
Our office is paid by Medicare about one-half of our
usual fee for a 20 minute office call. The non-reimbursed cost for the time spent
after the office visit was more than three times the office visit billable
costs. How long can the system bear this
drag and justification costs that are hidden and really may be several times
what should be a lean health care cost?
We should just return to the 20% Medicare copayment
system which would eliminate the drag of justification costs, reduce Medicare
expenses by 30% to 40% by some actuarial estimates, and save Medicare for all
seniors.
How can this be accomplished? Just by eliminating the
entire Medi-Gap insurance system which eliminates patient responsibility.
Patient responsibility will always control costs—even if only a 20 percent
copayment.
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Government is not the solution to our
problems, government is the problem.
-
Ronald Reagan
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5.
Medical
Gluttony: No
preparation for the medical appointment.
Margie, a 29 year-old-white married female
came in for a complete examination on referral from her insurance carrier and Medicaid.
Three months earlier she had a Cesarean section. She developed diabetes during
her pregnancy. She was on pills for her diabetes but didn’t know the name of
the medication she took with breakfast and dinner. Mentioning several diabetic
medications didn’t cause any recollections to surface. Furthermore, she was a
little put out that it would make any difference. What her new doctor prescribed
was all that mattered. If I thought her previous medications were important,
why didn’t I just call the pharmacy? But then she couldn’t remember which
pharmacy she got them from. Read more . . .
After a 10-15 minute unpleasant delay, we
just prescribed Metformin and asked her to bring her medications with her the
next time. We asked her to measure her finger stick glucose levels before meals
and at bedtime.
When she returned, she not only forgot to
bring in her glucose records, she hadn’t been able to find her prior
medications. Why was I so nosey to check up on her prior doctor?
With the current crop of welfare patients being forced into HMOs, we
see very little appreciation for the doctor—patient relationship or any
semblance of a shared responsibility for health. We have not seen this since
the old County Hospital days. With hospitals building palaces and acquiring
huge accounts receivables which are rapidly declining in value, and high
deductible plans increasing in popularity as hospitals bargain for their cash
payments, we may find ourselves returning to the County or City or States or
Public hospitals again.
The unfortunate tragedy is that physicians and surgeons who thought
that being part of a hospital medical group represented security, will become
unemployed as one hospital in every community declares bankruptcy as they find
their hundreds of millions of dollars of accounts receivable are essentially
worthless. It’s not too early to speculate which one it shall be in a community
with four major hospital systems, each with more than a hundred million dollar
expansion program. The university hospital which can write checks on the
taxpayers state bank accounts? The large Kaiser multiple regional hospital
system with their 20 Permanente Medical Offices with an enviably tight
contractual interrelation? The large Catholic multi-state Healthcare System
representing a world-wide membership of over one billion members? Or the free
standing regional hospital systems which can’t maintain any continuity with
patients in various insurance systems? Maybe they did the radiology group they
fired a great big favor.
When over half our population receives food stamps indicating that half
of America can no longer feed themselves, the “Dollar” losing value, with taxes
going up to the Pre-Reagan era, realizing that a 100 percent income tax soon
won’t be able to pay the interest on the National Debt that Obama has foisted
on the American People in just three years, we are headed to a crises out
country has never previously experienced. When the Dollar no longer is the
world’s currency, whose currency will we use to purchase goods internationally?
To follow this important health care discussion, please subscribe to
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Medical
Gluttony thrives in Government and Health Insurance Programs.
It Disappears with Appropriate Deductibles and
Co-payments on Every Service.
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6.
Medical
Myths: Why are Humans so
impressionable, emotional and irrational?
How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of
Sigmund Freud, revolutionised marketing
From The Economist | print edition | Dec 17th 2011
THESE are
thrilling days for behavioural research. Every week seems to yield a new
discovery about how bad people are at making decisions. Humans, it turns out,
are impressionable, emotional and irrational. We buy things we don’t need,
often at arbitrary prices and for silly reasons. Studies show that when a store
plays soothing music, shoppers will linger for longer and often spend more. If
customers are in a good mood, they are more susceptible to persuasion. We
believe price tends to indicate the value of things, not the other way around.
And many people will squander valuable time to get something free. Read more . . .
The sudden
ubiquity of this research has rendered Homo economicus a straw man.
Yet such observations are not new. Analysts have been studying modern man’s
dumb instincts for ages. Sigmund Freud argued that people are governed by
irrational, unconscious urges over a century ago. And in America in the 1930s
another Viennese psychologist named Ernest Dichter spun this insight into a
million-dollar business. His genius was in seeing the opportunity that
irrational buying offered for smart selling.
“You would be amazed to find how often we
mislead ourselves, regardless of how smart we think we are, when we attempt to
explain why we are behaving the way we do,” Dichter observed in 1960, in his
book “The Strategy of Desire”. He held that marketplace decisions are driven by
emotions and subconscious whims and fears, and often have little to do with the
product itself. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Dichter saw human motivation as an
“iceberg”, with two-thirds hidden from view, even to the decision-maker. “What
people actually spend their money on in most instances are psychological
differences, illusory brand images,” he explained.
At a time
when national companies were aggressively jockeying for position among
Americans—a suddenly cash-happy and acquisitive bunch—Dichter promised a way to
influence consumers’ brains. If shopping was an emotional minefield, then
strategic marketing could be a gold mine for companies.
Between the
late 1930s and 1960s Dichter became famous for transforming the fates of
businesses such as Procter & Gamble, Exxon, Chrysler, General Mills and
DuPont. His insight changed the way hundreds of products were sold, from cars
to cake mix. He pioneered research techniques such as the focus group,
understood the power of word-of-mouth persuasion and earned startling fees for
his theories. By the late 1950s his global business reached an annual turnover
of $1m ($8m today), and he enjoyed a reputation as the Freud of the supermarket
age.
Dichter’s
radical approach to goading shoppers, called “motivational research”, was
considered so successful that he was even accused of threatening America’s
national well-being. Americans have become “the most manipulated people outside
the Iron Curtain,” complained Vance Packard, a sociologist and virulent critic,
in his 1957 book “The Hidden Persuaders”. Even so, Dichter’s fame waned long
before he died in 1991. He spent his later years as a discarded guru in
Peekskill, New York, scribbling the occasional book about management or
motivation. Media research moved on; his name has largely been forgotten. Yet
many of his ideas about the role of the unconscious in sales are now back in
fashion. . .
. . . .
Asking shoppers why they bought particular products was like “asking people why
they thought they were neurotic,” quipped Dichter.
In fact, he
believed, most people have no idea why they buy things. They might answer
questions in an effort to be helpful (particularly in the early 20th century,
when consumers were chuffed to be asked to share their thoughts). But these
were attempts to make sense of decisions retrospectively. To understand what
truly motivated people, Dichter said, it was necessary to get them to talk at
length about their everyday habits. Instead of subjecting many people to quick
questionnaires, he preferred a deep, psychoanalytical approach with fewer
participants: “If you let somebody talk long enough, you can read between the
lines to find out what he really means.”
. . .
Read the entire article in The Economist—Subscription required . .
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Medical Myths originate when someone else pays the
medical bills.
Myths disappear when Patients pay Appropriate
Deductibles and Co-payments on Every Service.
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7.
Overheard
in the School: What
do you do for Christmas?
The teacher asked young Patrick Murphy:
"What do you do at Christmas time?
Patrick addressed the class: "Well,
Miss Jones, my brothers and sisters and I go to midnight mass and we sing
hymns; then we come home very late and we put mince pies by the back door and
hang up our stockings. Then all excited, we go to bed and wait for Father
Christmas to come with all our toys.”
"Very nice Patrick," she said.
"Now Jimmy Brown, what do you do at Christmas?" Read more . . .
"Well, Miss Jones, my sister
and I also go to church with Mom and Dad and we sing carols and we get home
ever so late. We put cookies and milk by the chimney and we hang up our
stockings. We hardly sleep, waiting for Santa Claus to bring our
presents."
Realizing there was a little Jewish boy
in the class and not wanting to leave him out of the discussion, she asked,
"Now, Isaac Cohen, what do you do at Christmas?"
Isaac said, "Well, it's the same
thing every year. Dad comes home from the office. We all pile into
the Lexus; then we drive to Dad's toy factory. When we get inside, we
look at all the empty shelves, and begin to sing: ‘What A Friend We Have in Jesus.’
Then we all go to the Bahamas."
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The Classroom Is Where Unfiltered Opinions Are Heard.
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8.
Voices of
Medicine: Secrets of the
Operating Room
Fragile
egos, obese patients and talking organs: A surgeon's view of what happens under
the scalpel
by PAUL A
RUGGIERI, MD
"Get this thing out of my operating
room!" The colon stapling device exploded into pieces when I hurled it
against the operating room wall. I was fed up with its failure to work as
advertised by the manufacturer. The stapler had probably cost less than $100 to
make. The hospital paid $300 for it (and then billed the patient, or insurance
company, $1,200). Now the thing didn't even work. Read more . . .
I do not react well
to imperfection inside the operating room. I cannot tolerate it in the tools I
use, the staff assisting me, or myself. Defective devices—I can have them
replaced. Unmotivated staff—I can have them removed from the operating room. I
haven't quite figured out yet what to do with myself.
Surgeons are
control freaks. We have to be. And when things don't go our way in the
operating room, we can have outbursts. Some of us curse, some throw
instruments, others have tantrums. These explosions are a go-to reaction when
we're confronted with the ghosts of prior complications.
Several
months earlier, I had performed the same operation on a 66-year-old patient,
using an identical stapling device. Everything seemed to have worked perfectly
until the patient developed severe complications four days after his surgery.
We soon discovered the cause: the nonperformance of the stapling device.
When the
stapler hit the wall, I had been in the operating room for more than four
hours, struggling to remove a diseased segment of colon from someone I'll call
Mr. Baker, a 330-pound middle-aged man. Trying to keep his fat out of my way
during the operation had been a continuous battle. The pain in my upper back
reminded me that I was losing the fight.
Obese
patients create more physical work for a surgeon during any type of procedure.
The operations take longer, tie our upper body in knots and leave us with
fatigue and frustration. Obese patients also automatically face an increased
risk of complications like infection, pneumonia and blood clots during
recovery.
If the
difficulties posed by Mr. Baker's obesity weren't enough, he had been steadily
losing blood during the procedure. His tissue reacted to the slightest graze
with more bleeding.
Why does this
guy have to bleed like this? As if it were his fault. Here I was blaming him,
even though I was the one causing the bleeding. But in surgery, it always has
to be someone else's fault. It's never the surgeon's fault.
Interestingly,
after an operation, most surgeons tend to underestimate the amount of blood
that was lost. Whether it's ego or denial, they can't help themselves.
The reality
is that blood loss can be measured. Hospitals know which surgeons are losing
blood, and how much, during every operation. They have data from their
operating rooms, but the public cannot get access to this information. And this
information matters, too. A large amount of blood lost during an operation can
be a harbinger of complications to come.
Like poker
players and their cards, surgeons are sometimes only as good as the patients
they are dealt. Obesity, excessive scar tissue from a previous surgery in the
same area, disease that is more advanced than anticipated—any one of these
physiological conditions creates more work and a more difficult environment for
the surgeon.
Even before
the surgery begins, underlying or chronic conditions such as a history of
hypertension, cardiac disease or lung disease put patients at risk for
complications. Today, based on your medical history, surgeons can usually
analyze, quite accurately, your risk of complications (or death) before setting
foot in the operating room. All you have to do is ask.
I had no idea
how bad Mr. Baker's colon disease would be until I opened him up and looked
inside. It was a mess. If I were playing poker and this man's anatomy were the
hand dealt, it would be time to fold.
"That is
one of the ugliest pieces of colon I've ever seen." I grabbed the scrub
nurse's hand. "See, touch that thing. Look how inflamed it is." When
given the chance, scrub nurses love to touch organs in the operating room.
"OK, don't poke it too hard, it will start to bleed again." Her hand
drew back onto the instrument stand. I was in for a long night.
Tonight, the
diseased colon on the menu was angry, cursing and taunting me: "Good luck,
Mr. Big-Time Surgeon, trying to remove me." Surgeons frequently have
conversations with the body parts or organs they are trying to remove. We also
have conversations with ourselves; it's a way to blow off steam while our minds
scramble to deal with the unexpected . . .
"Nurse,
hand me a curved scissors." Finally, I was granted a little success in
freeing up one end of the colon. But that was short-lived. More bleeding. I
hate this. And I had cut myself. I stared at my finger. "Nurse, I need a
new glove." The outer skin under my glove was breached, but not deeply.
"Almost
got you," the colon said. I could not shut the thing up. "How do you
know I don't have hepatitis or H.I.V.?"
Just great, I
thought. Now I have something else to worry about.
"You're
going to earn your fee tonight, Dr. Surgeon." The colon kept talking.
"I hope you're not in this business for the money, like the last guy who
operated on me. Between what Medicare pays you, the phone calls in the middle
of night and the time you spend guiding my recovery, I figure you will make
about $200 an hour for this operation. How does that grab you?"
Should have gone for my M.B.A., I mumbled to myself. Big
mistake going into medicine, never mind surgery. If I could only go back and do
it over again.
The colon's rant continued: "Wait, subtract what it
costs you in overhead to bill for this operation (double that if the claim gets
rejected), plus malpractice costs for the day, and we are now at $150 an hour.
And how could I leave out the biggest expense of all? The price of the mental
stress from worrying about me after the surgery (and double that if there's a
complication). Now, I figure you're under $100 an hour. Plumbers make more than
that just to step inside your house. I bet they sleep well at night. Just
remember, Dr. Surgeon, nobody put a gun to your head. You chose this
profession."
I could swear that the thing was laughing at me.
"Forget about keeping those dinner reservations tonight. You and me, we're
going for breakfast once this is over."
—Adapted from
"Confessions of a Surgeon"
by Paul A. Ruggieri, M.D. (Berkley Books).
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the entire OpEd at the WSJ Online—Subscription required . . .
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Is an Insider's View of What Doctors are Thinking, Saying and Writing about
*
* * * *
9.
Book
Review: Dandy Dames
Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson,
New Women in Search of Love and Power. By Susan Hertog. Ballantine
Books; 493 pages; $30 and £19.99.
Rebecca West
and Dorothy Thompson were remarkable—by any standards
From the Economist | print edition | Dec 31st 2011
DOROTHY THOMPSON and
Rebecca West were career women long before the term had been invented. In the
1930s, when Thompson and West were making their mark as established
professionals, a Gallup poll recorded that 82% of the American population
believed women “should not have paying jobs outside the home” if their husbands
were employed. Yet both women worked consistently from their early 20s in
occupations that were almost entirely male-dominated—Thompson as a foreign
correspondent and then a political commentator; West (pictured) as a literary
critic, lauded novelist, historian and travel writer. Susan Hertog’s biography,
an accomplished synthesis of these two lives and the remarkable parallels
between them, is also a history of the 20th century, a study of female
emancipation and literary culture, and an acute analysis of dysfunctional
family life. Read more
. . .
The most striking
similarity between Thompson and West is their seemingly innate self-belief and
fearlessness. On her 27th birthday in 1920 the American-born Thompson sailed
for England. With no contacts but with portfolio in hand, her goal was to gain
credentials as a freelance reporter and make her way across Europe to witness
the aftermath of the revolution in Russia. By 1927 she was living in Berlin as
the first female head of a news bureau in Europe. West, the daughter of an
Anglo-Irish journalist who abandoned the family when she was eight, was a
reviewer and essayist by the time she was 19, when “regardless of reputation”
she published cutting critiques of established writers such as Arnold Bennett
and George Bernard Shaw. West wrote consistently until her death at 90 in 1983,
and was in the enviable position of having Harold Ross, the editor of the New
Yorker, write to her, pleading: “Please write any story you want for us,
fact or fiction.” In 1941 West published her best-known book, “Black Lamb and
Grey Falcon”, a history of the Balkans and a meditation on the rise of Nazism.
. .
When she was 21 West had
an illegitimate son with H.G. Wells, 26 years her senior and then on his second
wife, before marrying Henry Andrews, a banker, who was frequently unfaithful
and suffered early from a form of dementia. Thompson was married three times
and also had a son, with Sinclair Lewis, her second husband and winner of the
Nobel prize in literature. Resentful of their mothers after lonely childhoods,
both sons married young before abandoning their first wives, pursued
unrealistic ambitions, and, when they proved unsuccessful, demanded lifelong
financial assistance.
The danger of the book’s
title refers to the effects of their ambitions to be, as Thompson put it,
“something no other woman has been yet”. Both women turned out to be poor
parents, even if they came up to roughly the standard expected of working
fathers of the time; both chose work and travel over their child, sent them
away to school and placated them with lavish gifts. Ms Hertog poignantly
renders the conflict between maternal instinct and the desire for realisation
of ambition, backed by a fear of diminished “intellectual lustre” and of
becoming lost in a “cocoon of domesticity”. Thompson and West undoubtedly chose
work over family, but in doing so helped to break down barriers, not only for
women journalists but for all working women.
Read
the entire book review at The Economist – Subscription required . . .
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The Book Review Section Is an Insider’s View of What
Doctors are Reading about.
*
* * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: Not a Ringing
Endorsement
Michigan
has become the latest to repudiate Obamacare:
In an action
with major implications for health reform in Michigan, the state House has
voted to turn down—at least for now—nearly $10 million in federal funds to
create a statewide health exchange by 2014 to sell more affordable,
standardized health insurance to consumers and small businesses
If Obama is reelected, nothing matters.
Should Mitt
Romney run for Mayor?
Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt
Romney may be the best candidate in the 2012 GOP primary, but that's not saying
much.
It's like being the best
mayor of Oakland, Calif – Deborah
Saunders, SF Chronicle
Read more . . .
Former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for the Virginia Ballot
Gingrich also failed
to qualify for the Virginia ballot –and he lives in Virginia. Worse, his
campaign director quickly announced that he and Gingrich agreed that the fiasco
was analogous to Pearl Harbor—a sneak
attack that left 2,403 dead. Later, Gingrich explained to the media that his
campaign had hired a fraudster who had submitted 1,500 "false
signatures."
This is not the crack team
you want running the White House. – Deborah
Saunders, SF Chronicle
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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. 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.
•
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.
•
The Mercatus
Center at George Mason University (www.mercatus.org)
is a strong advocate for accountability in government. Maurice McTigue, QSO,
a Distinguished Visiting Scholar, a former member of Parliament and cabinet
minister in New Zealand, is now director of the Mercatus Center's Government
Accountability Project. Join
the Mercatus Center for Excellence in Government.
•
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
•
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?
•
The Foundation
for Economic Education, www.fee.org, has
been publishing The Freeman - Ideas On Liberty, Freedom's Magazine, for
over 50 years, with Lawrence W Reed, President, and Sheldon Richman as editor. Having
bound copies of this running treatise on free-market economics for over 40
years, I still take pleasure in the relevant articles by Leonard Read and
others who have devoted their lives to the cause of liberty. I have a patient
who has read this journal since it was a mimeographed newsletter fifty years
ago. Be sure to read the current lesson on Economic Education at www.fee.org.
•
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 America's health-care challenges by enabling a robust and competitive
health insurance market that will achieve and maintain access to affordable,
high-quality health care for all Americans. "The belief that more medical
care means better medical care is deeply entrenched . . . Our study suggests
that perhaps a third of medical spending is now devoted to services that don't
appear to improve health or the quality of care–and may even make things
worse."
•
The
Independence Institute, www.i2i.org, is a
free-market think-tank in Golden, Colorado, that has a Health Care Policy
Center, with Linda Gorman as Director. Be sure to sign up for the monthly Health Care Policy
Center Newsletter.
•
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.
•
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.
•
The
Heritage Foundation, www.heritage.org/,
founded in 1973, is a research and educational institute whose mission was to
formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free
enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values
and a strong national defense. -- However,
since they supported the socialistic health plan instituted by Mitt Romney in
Massachusetts, which is replaying the Medicare excessive increases in its first
two years, and was used by some as a justification for the Obama plan, they
have lost sight of their mission and we will no longer feature them as a
freedom loving institution and have canceled our contributions. We would
also caution that should Mitt Romney ever run for National office again, he
would be dangerous in the cause of freedom in health care. The WSJ paints him
as being to the left of Barrack Hussein Obama. We would also advise Steve
Forbes to disassociate himself from this institution.
•
The
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Lew Rockwell, President, is a rich source of free-market materials,
probably the best daily course in economics we've seen. If you read these
essays on a daily basis, it would probably be equivalent to taking Economics 11
and 51 in college. Please log on at www.mises.org to obtain the foundation's daily reports. 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 Washington,
D.C. The Institute is named for Cato's Letters, a series of pamphlets that helped
lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The Mission: The
Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow
consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government,
individual liberty, free markets and peace. Ed Crane reminds us that the
framers of the Constitution designed to protect our liberty through a system of
federalism and divided powers so that most of the governance would be at the
state level where abuse of power would be limited by the citizens' ability to
choose among 13 (and now 50) different systems of state government. Thus, we
could all seek our favorite moral turpitude and live in our comfort zone
recognizing our differences and still be proud of our unity as Americans. Michael
F. Cannon is the Cato Institute's Director of Health Policy Studies. Read
his bio, articles and books at www.cato.org/people/cannon.html.
•
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 (SPN). The mission is to
put into practice the fundamentals of a free society: individual liberty,
private property, competitive free enterprise, limited and frugal government,
strong local communities, personal responsibility, and expanded opportunity for
human endeavor.
•
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.]
•
McLauren Institute MacLaurinCSF is a community of
students, scholars, and thinkers working together to explore and understand the
implications of the Christian faith for every field of study and every aspect
of life.* Our Mission: MacLaurinCSF bridges church and
university in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, bringing theological resources
to the university and academic resources to the church. Our goal is to
strengthen Christian intellectual life in this region by creating public space
for leaders in the academy and church to address enduring human questions
together. MacLaurinCSF is grounded in the Christian tradition as articulated in
Scripture and summarized by the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds, and our
conversations are open to all.
•
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 St. Croix feels the impulses of the Administration and Congress
are often misguided. The politicians of both parties in Washington overreach so
that we see with disgust the explosion of earmarks and perpetually increasing
spending on programs that have nothing to do with winning the war. There
is too much power given to Washington. Even in wartime, we have to push for
limited government - while giving the government the necessary tools to win the
war. To read a variety of articles in this arena, please go to www.stcroixreview.com.
•
Chapman University: Chapman
University, founded in 1861, is one of the oldest, most prestigious private
universities in California. Chapman's picturesque campus is located in the
heart of Orange County – one of the nation's most exciting centers of arts,
business, science and technology – and draws outstanding students from across
the United States and around the world. Known for its blend of liberal arts and
professional programs, Chapman University encompasses seven schools and
colleges: The university's mission is to provide personalized education of
distinction that leads to inquiring, ethical and productive lives as global
citizens.
•
Hillsdale
College, the premier
small liberal arts college in southern Michigan with about 1,200 students, was
founded in 1844 with the mission of "educating for liberty." It is
proud of its principled refusal to accept any federal funds, even in the form
of student grants and loans, and of its historic policy of non-discrimination
and equal opportunity. The price of freedom is never cheap. While schools
throughout the nation are bowing to an unconstitutional federal mandate that
schools must adopt a Constitution Day curriculum each September 17th
or lose federal funds, Hillsdale students take a semester-long course on the
Constitution restoring civics education and developing a civics textbook, a
Constitution Reader. You may log on at www.hillsdale.edu to register for the annual weeklong von Mises Seminars,
held every February, or their famous Shavano Institute. Congratulations to
Hillsdale for its national rankings in the USNews College rankings. Changes in
the Carnegie classifications, along with Hillsdale's continuing rise to
national prominence, prompted the Foundation to move the College from the
regional to the national liberal arts college classification. Please log on and
register to receive Imprimis, their national speech digest that reaches
more than one million readers each month. This month, read ? Choose
recent issues. The last ten years of
Imprimis are archived.
•
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. Browse the
archives of their official organ, the Journal
of American Physicians and Surgeons, with Larry Huntoon, MD, PhD, a
neurologist in New York, as the Editor-in-Chief. There are a number of important
articles that can be accessed from the Table of Contents.
The AAPS California
Chapter is an unincorporated
association made up of members. The Goal of the AAPS California Chapter is to
carry on the activities of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
(AAPS) on a statewide basis. This is accomplished by having meetings and
providing communications that support the medical professional needs and
interests of independent physicians in private practice. To join the AAPS
California Chapter, all you need to do is join national AAPS and be a physician
licensed to practice in the State of California. There is no additional cost or
fee to be a member of the AAPS California State Chapter.
Go to California
Chapter Web Page . . .
Bottom
line: "We are the best deal Physicians can get from a statewide physician
based organization!"
PA-AAPS is the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Association
of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a non-partisan professional
association of physicians in all types of practices and specialties across the
country. Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards
of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the
patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine. We welcome
all physicians (M.D. and D.O.) as members. Podiatrists, dentists, chiropractors
and other medical professionals are welcome to join as professional associate
members. Staff members and the public are welcome as associate members. Medical
students are welcome to join free of charge.
Our motto, "omnia pro aegroto"
means "all for the patient."
* * * * *
Words
of Wisdom, Recent Postings, In Memoriam, Today in History . . .
Words of Wisdom
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors
to live at the expense of everybody else. --Frederic Bastiat, French Economist
(1801—1850)
If
it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving,
subsidize it.
–Ronald Reagan, (1986)
I
don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. –Will Rogers
Some Recent Postings
In The Nov 27 Issue:
1.
Featured Article: The Greek Tragedy –
A Lesson in Government Health and Entitlements
2.
In the News: Doctor’s Revolt Shakes the
Social Security Disability Program
3.
International Medicine: Spreading
prosperity and growth
4.
Medicare: Can Medicare make
three-quad-trillion decisions a year? 3,000,000,000,000,000?
5.
Medical Gluttony: Pharmacy Gluttony
6.
Medical Myths: Electronic Medical
Records are efficient savers of time.
7.
Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge: Electronic
Medical Records—Current Status
8.
Voices of Medicine: Polypharmacy
Among Our Patients
9.
The Bookshelf: Taking Back Healthcare
for Future Generations
10.
Hippocrates & His Kin: Sex and STD in
Sacramento;
11.
Related Organizations: Restoring
Accountability in Medical Practice and Society
In Memoriam
“Smokin Joe”
Frazier, heavyweight boxer, died on November 7th, aged 67
From the Economist | the print edition | Nov
19th 2011
TO SAY that Joe Frazier
had a left hook was like saying the Tomcat jet fighter is an aeroplane. This
one was devastating. You knew it was there, but he kept it hidden. For most of
a fight he would press in, head down like a bull charging, fists close to the
chest. He was short for a heavyweight, five feet eleven, and made himself look
shorter, hunching his shoulders and punching close with his stumpy, jabbing
arms. He didn’t dance around, but worked away at it, bobbing and weaving
relentlessly, throwing away perhaps two punches for every one he landed. His
style was to keep aggressively on, wear a man down, get him winded.
Then—boom!—the dazzling left hook that sent his opponent sprawling.
His craft had been honed
for years. First on the heavy bag he’d made himself that hung from the oak tree
in the yard of the family shack in Beaufort, South Carolina: just an old burlap
bag stuffed with rags and corn cobs, Spanish moss and rocks. Anything that
could take a punch. His mamma whupped him with a braided vine and his daddy
whupped him with a belt when he deserved it, and then he’d pummel that bag. His
uncle had told him at eight years old, as he watched the “Wednesday Night
Fight” on the blurry black-and-white TV with the other men, that he could be
another Joe Louis. He aimed to do it. Later he practised on the hanging sides
of beef at Cross Brothers’ slaughterhouse in Philadelphia, Rocky Balboa in real
life. One, two in the refrigerated room, breath smoking, gloves smoking. That
was what his first trainer told him to do when he signed on at the police gym
in 1961: make his gloves smoke.
Out of 37 professional
fights, he won 27 with knockouts. His left hook won him gold at the Tokyo
Olympics in 1964, toppling Hans Huber, even though his left thumb was so hurt
it was probably broken. It earned him the world heavyweight crown, besting
Jimmy Ellis in the fifth at Madison Square Garden in 1970. And most
spectacularly it was how he beat Muhammad Ali in “The Fight of the Century” at
the Garden in 1971, when after 14 rounds of increasing ferocity (just throw
punches, he was thinking. Just throw punches) he landed a blow on that bragging
jaw that won him the fight on points and sent Ali round to the hospital.
Nothing was sweeter to
him than that one punch. He kept a photo of it, blown up huge, in the office of
the gym where he had trained in Philadelphia and later trained young boxers
himself. His rivalry with Ali was the most intense in boxing. It may have
thawed at moments, but deep down he hated him. Hated the big mouth that called
him ugly, flat-footed and a gorilla (punching a little rubber gorilla as he
said it, contemptuously), while Frazier would sit with his plain, solid,
patient face wondering whether he could get one word in. Especially he hated
Ali calling him an Uncle Tom, a white man’s black boxer.
Ali had been stripped of
his world heavyweight title in 1967 for refusing the Vietnam draft. That made
some whites go to Frazier’s corner, and made many blacks go on calling Ali
champion even when Frazier was. That hurt. Ali talked a streak about civil
rights; Frazier didn’t mention them much. But it was he, the sharecropper’s
son, who had felt the sharper edge of segregation, “the animosity, hatred,
bigotry, you name it”. He punched his bag at home because the town playgrounds
were closed to him. From childhood he picked okra for white farmers until one
day he defied them, threw in his job and left the South on a Greyhound bus,
already sure at 15 that he could never make a life there. . .
In his last years the
money seemed to vanish; none was left for his funeral. His gym became a bedding
outlet, and at the Spring Garden Deli, where he went to eat his lunch of grits
with spinach and tomatoes, the waitress didn’t know who he was. Gamely, he
would let her beat him at arm-wrestling. And he could still be induced to sing
sometimes, in a voice slurred and croaky after hundreds of punches to the head,
his own version of his favourite song: “I fought them fair, I fought them
square, I fought them my-y-y-y way.”
Read the entire obituary in the
Economist – Subscription required . . .
On This Date in History - December 13
On this date in
1862, Robert E. Lee spoke these wise words as he was contemplating the Battle
of Fredericksburg, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too
fond of it.” The same is true of various kinds of wars—those fought by soldiers in
uniforms, those fought in courts of law, those fought with broadside after
broadside in the public press.
On This Date in History - December 27
On this date in
1822, Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France. Pasteur
discovered that disease can be produced by various bacteria; thereby, he laid
the groundwork for the whole modern idea of antisepsis, sterilization of
surgical instruments and prevention of infections. Others have extended this to
infections of the mind, the hate and lunacies that afflict the world.
After Leonard and Thelma
Spinrad
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and enter your email address. Then go to the archives to scan the last several
important HPUSA newsletters and current issues in healthcare.
Please note that sections 1-4, 6, 8-9 are
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Del Meyer
Del Meyer, MD, Editor & Founder
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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, any single payer initiative, Social Security was born for the benefit
of the state and of a contemptuous disregard for people’s welfare.
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.
Stalin said. "He who votes does
not have power. He who counts the votes has power".
Merry Christmas 2011