1.
Featured Article:
Education for Profit
Why is
everyone flaming the University of Phoenix? Katherine Mangu-Ward | Reason, July 2008 Print Edition
By many measures, the University of Phoenix is the
most successful institution for higher education in American history. With more
than 325,000 students currently enrolled - 22 times the number at the
University of Chicago - Phoenix is vast, and contains multitudes. On campuses
scattered across 39 states, and online as well, it offers everything from
associate's degrees in sports management to Spanish-language MBAs. And unlike
most universities, Phoenix makes a hefty profit. Its parent company, the Apollo
Group, produced margins of 11.7 percent last year on revenue of $2.9 billion.
What began in 1976 as a small night school where firemen and policemen between
shifts completed unfinished bachelor's degrees is now an educational and
commercial powerhouse listed on NASDAQ, with a market capitalization of $7.4
billion. To read more, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/index.asp.
But in recent years, the University of Phoenix has
become the poster child for everything the mainstream academic establishment
thinks is wrong about for-profit higher education. The school's aggressive
recruiting practices and high dropout rates have drawn fire from The
Chronicle of Higher Education, where a college admissions specialist in
2004 called Phoenix's approach "an affront to the principles that have
been developing in college admissions over the last three decades." The
head of the major accreditation body for business schools, the Association to
Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, last year accused Phoenix of using
"a lot of come-and-go faculty." The U.S. Department of Education has
punished the school for insufficient hours spent in the classroom and illegal
recruiting practices, exacting two settlements during the last decade totaling
$15.8 million. "Their business degree," Henry M. Levin, a professor
at Columbia University's Teachers College, told The New York Times
last year, "is an MBA Lite." . . .
But much of what academic
traditionalists see as problems, Phoenix advertises proudly as solutions. The
university aims to meet underserved demand for post-secondary education,
tailor-made to fit the individual circumstances of harried adults. Like other
for-profit schools such as DeVry and ITT, Phoenix offers the educational
equivalent of a subprime mortgage: not the best product the industry has to
offer, but a potentially valuable option for people who might not otherwise get
into a desired market.
As with subprimes, a nonnegligible
portion of consumers won't be able to stay afloat, exiting school moderately
poorer and perhaps not much wiser. But the students who do graduate - like the
millions who use subprime deals to gain a firmer foothold in the housing market
- have a much different story to tell. Their tales are not about sunshine on
the quad, Saturday night football games, or ivy-covered walls. They're about a
kind of practical, bare-bones education that you never see in coming-of-age
films but that is usually superior to no education at all. . .
From ‘Plague Spot' to Juggernaut
For-profit higher education is nothing
new in America. Up through the 19th century, most doctors, lawyers, and accountants
picked up their basic skills at schools that were out to make a buck. The army
of typists and stenographers that midwifed the information age at the turn of
the last century came pouring out of commercial institutions all over the
country. One hundred years ago, most medical schools were still small trade
operations run by practicing local or retired doctors as a way to supplement
their income.
But in 1910, amid newspaper horror
stories about quack doctors ("The Doctor Who Killed His Patients With Germs")
and fears that the U.S. was falling behind the rest of the world ("Germany
to Stop Quackery"), the Carnegie Foundation sent the prominent educator
Abraham Flexner to survey the state of medical education in North America. The
influential Flexner Report, which singled out Chicago's 14 mostly for-profit
medical schools as "the plague spot of the nation," called for
standardizing curriculum and dramatically reducing the overall number of
diplomas issued. As a result, the 160 institutions that educated more than
28,000 med students in 1904 became 85 schools educating half that many in 1920.
(Among the effects: a decrease in medical competition and an increase in
doctors' fees.)
The Progressive Era also saw the
creation of the modern research university. Schools such as Princeton, with its
Institute for Advanced Study (founded by Flexner himself), hit on the magic
formula of combining under one roof undergraduate education, graduate and
professional training, and academic research. Universities expanded and began
to swallow smaller medical schools. By 1935 there were only 66 medical schools
left in the country, 57 of which were affiliated with universities, according
to a study by the University of Virginia radiologist Mark Hiatt and the
D.C.-based consultant Christopher Stockton.
After World War II, the baby boom and the GI Bill helped usher in the
"golden age of higher education," a three-decade stretch in which
America went from a country where two-thirds of adults hadn't even managed to
complete high school to one in which more than 17 percent earned a college
degree. Not coincidentally, this era was also the golden age of public funding
for universities. Federal and state research grants and student aid became
major sources of revenue for public schools and nonprofits. In 1972 Congress
allowed for-profit colleges to sidle up to the government trough as well. Now
students were allowed to carry what would eventually be called Pell grants with
them from school to school; as with vouchers, the money adhered to the student,
not the institution.
John Sperling was a middle-aged
professor of humanities at San Jose State University in the mid-1970s when he
decided to take advantage of what he saw as a gap in the market by risking his
life savings, a whopping $26,000, to start a private school. According to
Phoenix's official history, Sperling hatched the idea after realizing that
"working adult students were invisible on the traditional campus and were
treated as second-class citizens."
Initially, there was little more than a
facility in San Jose called the Institute for Professional Development,
dedicated exclusively to adult education - that is, education for students past
their early 20s. At the time, Sperling found, it was taking adult students in
the U.S. about eight years to finish a typical four-year degree, in part
because nearly all university business happened during work hours. Even if
classes were offered at night, the rest of the campus was typically closed,
forcing full-time workers to take time off just to register for class, meet
with a professor, or buy a book. By offering extended hours and a host of other
individualized tweaks, Sperling made it possible for older students with jobs
to satisfy all the requirements for a college degree in about four years.
Sperling's fledgling school left San
Jose in 1976 and struck out for Arizona after being denied accreditation (not
for the last time), in this case by the Western Association of Schools and
Colleges. (Nonprofit regional accreditation bodies certify most schools in the
U.S. based on site visits and other measures of quality, though schools do not
need any accreditation to operate.) The Institute for Professional Development
was reassembled as the University of Phoenix, winning accreditation from North
Central Association of Colleges and Schools the following year.
The school grew quickly, graduating its first full class in 1981 and gaining
accreditation for a nursing school in 1987. In 1989 it inaugurated an online
campus. A few years later it launched an online library, one of the first of
its kind, offering course materials and reference books that might otherwise
require students to dig through the stacks of an academic library - a
time-consuming luxury many Phoenix students can't afford. . . .
To read the entire lengthy report, go to
www.reason.com/news/show/126856.html.
* * * * *
2.
In the News: The
Candidates, The Uninsured, Their Medical Plans and Taxes
McCain, Health Insurance and Taxes, by
Grace-Marie Turner, Galen Institute, October 6, 2008
Sen. John McCain would replace the current tax break
that locks health insurance to the workplace with a new refundable tax credit
of $5,000 for families and $2,500 for individuals to help them buy health
insurance. This credit would give families more control over their health
benefits, would provide new help for the uninsured, and would modernize health
insurance so it is portable and people don't have to lose their coverage when
they lose or change jobs.
Lately, this tax credit has come under fire from Sen.
Barack Obama's campaign and the media.
The McCain plan has been criticized for taxing
workers' health benefits. This is inaccurate.
To read more,
please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/news.asp.
· Sen. McCain replaces an outmoded tax break with a new
direct, refundable credit. And the new $5,000 credit would be worth more
to the great majority of Americans than the currently invisible and regressive
tax break, which he estimates is worth $4,200 today a year for a family in a
35-percent tax bracket. For those in lower tax brackets (or non-taxpayers), the
$5,000 would go even farther. So rather than a tax increase, the McCain tax
credit would in fact lead to a tax cut for the great majority of workers.
· In fact, health coverage is part of the employee's
overall compensation package, but the value of these non-tax wages is generally
invisible to workers, many of whom think the insurance is a gift from their
employers. Under the McCain plan, that part of workers' income they
receive in the form of health benefits would be visible, as would the new
direct tax benefit. . . .
Sen. McCain's health plan also has been criticized for
threatening the stability of employment-based health insurance.
Critics say it would undermine the employment-based system
because the employer would lose his tax deduction. But this is
inaccurate. Whether the employer offers compensation in the form of
health benefits or direct compensation, employers still would receive a tax
deduction for the amount they spend on health coverage. In addition, the
payroll taxes they pay would continue to be protected from corporate income
taxes under the McCain plan. These provisions make providing health insurance
neutral for employers in terms of financial incentives.
Sen. McCain has been criticized for not helping the
uninsured.
The uninsured would get meaningful help in purchasing
health insurance because they, too, would be eligible for the tax credit.
The average price of health coverage that people buy on their own is less than
half the cost of a job-based policy, so the credit could provide significant
help in enabling them to buy coverage for their families.
A survey by Forrester Research found that families
purchasing health insurance in the individual market pay between $3,300 and
$4,550 a year for health insurance. Many of these are high-deductible plans,
but for most of these families, the $5,000 credit would pay for the full cost
of the policy and even provide extra money to fund the deductible.
And because the credit is refundable,
people would receive the full amount, even if they owe less than that in taxes.
Read more www.galen.org/component,8/action,show_content/id,68/category_id,0/blog_id,1095/type,33/.
* * * * *
3.
International
Medicine: International
Health Systems Comparison
The Single-Payer Remedy Is Worse Than
the Disease, Grace-Marie
Turner, The Galen, Jan 22, 2008
No one denies that America's health sector faces
problems. Costs continue to rise, and 45 million people lack insurance. Even
worse, many politicians think they've discovered the cure in a single-payer
system.
But that remedy would be worse than the disease. The
government-dominated health systems of Europe and Canada are struggling with
serious cost pressures, inefficient bureaucracies, and unmet demands for more
advanced medical care.
For the privilege of their supposedly "free"
care, other countries pay much higher taxes. In 2005, taxes consumed 41% of GDP
in Canada, 42% in Britain, and 51% in France, compared to 32% in the U.S.
Single-payer systems invariably involve rationing.
What good is free care if the government denies access to it?
About one million people in the U.K. are on waiting
lists for hospital care, including surgeries. And 200,000 more are waiting just
to get on the waiting list. To read more,
please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/intlnews.asp.
Cancer patients in Britain have resorted to waging
public relations campaigns because their government won't pay for new
medications for breast and kidney cancer.
In Canada, the situation is no better. Long waiting
lines lead to restricted access to care. There were 45 inpatient surgical
procedures per 1,000 Canadians in 2003, compared to 88 in the United States.
Canadians received only one-third as many MRI exams and half as many CT scans.
Meanwhile, patients in Sweden have been sent to veterinarians
for diagnostic tests so the government could reduce waiting lists.
Proponents of a single-payer system argue that the
United States would be different -- that we could get all the money we need to
finance universal health insurance by eliminating profit in the private health
sector.
But that's like trying to cure a disease with arsenic.
Socializing our health care system would mean that one-sixth of our economy
would operate under different economic rules, with the government setting
prices, allocating resources, and deciding what medical care would be available
to whom and when.
There is a better way.
We should embrace competition, not stifle it. We
should reward innovators, risk-takers, and entrepreneurs for providing faster,
better, more affordable health care. And we should recognize that progress
depends upon innovation and profit.
The U.S. market already is pointing the way by
responding to consumer demands for more convenient, more affordable health
services. Health plans are offering programs to help patients better manage
chronic diseases like diabetes, lowering costs and improving health.
Small clinics are springing up in retail stores around
the country, providing customers with easy access to nurses who treat common
ailments like ear infections and poison ivy. These clinics cost less than a
visit to the doctor or emergency room.
Competition is leading to more affordable prescription
drugs. Wal-Mart started a price war by announcing it would sell a long list of
generics for only $4 for a month's supply. Target and other pharmacies followed
suit. Today, more than half of the prescriptions Wal-Mart fills are $4
generics. . .
Rather than regressing to the failing systems of
Europe -- with waiting lines and rationing -- we must develop our own unique
solution. Ultimately, that means embracing the truly American qualities of
innovation and competition.
Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute
in Alexandria, Va.
Read more www.galen.org/component,8/action,show_content/id,13/blog_id,997/category_id,10/type,33/
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
* * * * *
4. Medicare: The Geographic Practice Cost Index (GPCI)
Inequity - Time To Fix It
Where Did The Geographic Practice Cost Index Come
From?
The woeful state of physician reimbursement deserves
careful study. Just how did we get here
and how can we fix it? It all started with the
development of the relative value scale (RVS). At the time in the mid-1950s, it
seemed logical and efficient to apportion a doctor's daily tasks by difficulty
and time consumption so that the physician could more reasonably and correctly
bill for his or her work. In addition, a personalized multiplication factor
added to the RVS could reflect overhead costs and that factor could change as
overhead costs changed. Further, others could use the RVS and modify their work
product with their own personal multiplication factor. The final result would
be a universal formula - a usual, customary and reasonable rate to charge - and
all would be happy. To read more, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/medicare.asp.
With this incentive, the California Medical
Association (CMA) went to work. In 1956, CMA launched a project titled
"California Relative Value Studies." First, every possible procedure
and diagnosis was listed as a code number - the Current Procedural Terminology,
or CPT code, as it was later named by the American Medical Association. Then a
relative value unit (RVU) reflected the physician's time, resources, and work
intensity necessary to accomplish each CPT code. Next, an individual physician
assigned a "conversion" factor to the formula based on individual
office overhead expenses and local area of practice. When a physician multiplied the conversion factor by the RVU, the
"uniform" fee was revealed.
At the time, just about every physician's office had an RVU rate
schedule. The booklet was an essential first purchase for any doctor starting a
medical practice. In 1969, CMA
published its "California Relative Value Studies." It was revised and
published again in 1974. CMA finally
published the "California Standard Nomenclature" in 1979. The final
CMA publication is still referred to as the "RVS book."
The recommended use of conversion factors to reflect
differences meant that physician fees varied greatly. Eventually, insurers
became reluctant to pay at different rates. A cry of injustice was heard
throughout the land. The media warned that doctors were operating outside the
law and demanded that the RVS be eliminated.
In 1979, the Federal Trade Commission charged that the
RVS system placed private-practice physicians in violation of federal
provisions against price fixing. Payers
were exempt from the ruling. Why were payers allowed to act like businesses
when solo and smallgroup physicians were not?
The result was that physicians secretly hid their RVS
books deep in office file drawers and developed individual billing schedules
that looked remarkably like the RVS.
Young physicians just starting their medical practices
bought gray market RVS books and kept them under lock and key.
However, when it came time for the government to pay
for Medicare and Medicaid, standardized billing was suddenly recognized as an
essential component. The shoe was on the other foot. The government established
national standard rates and fees based on a defined and limited total pool of
money, which they defined as a "resource." In 1989, the Health Care
Financing Administration developed a Resource-based Relative Value Scale
(RBRVS) to redistribute a fixed budget of Medicare funds to physicians. Healthcare
rationing, disguised as cost containment, rapidly won legislative
approval. In 1970, projected Medicare
spending for 1990 was $16.3 billion. In 1990, the actual cost of Medicare was
$109 billion. A few extra billion here and there, and pretty soon the
healthcare delivery system added up to major government debt. The RBRVS did not
do what the RBRVS was supposed to do.
Then, because no good deed goes unpunished, the
government came up with an even more confusing dynamic for payment.
From the 1991 proposed rule in the Federal Register:
Payment = [{RVUws x GPCIwa} + {RVUpes x GPCIpea} +
{RVUms x GPCIma}] x CF
·
RVUws = Physician work
relative value units for the service.
·
GPCIwa = Geographic
practice cost index value reflecting one fourth of the geographic variation in
physician work applicable in the fee schedule area.
·
RVUpes = Practice
expense relative value units for the service.
·
GPCIpea = Geographic
practice cost index value for the practice expense applicable in the fee
schedule area.
·
RVUms = Malpractice
relative value units for the service.
·
GPCIma = Geographic
practice cost index value for malpractice expense applicable in the fee
schedule area.
·
CF = Uniform national
conversion factor.
All of the above only served as more subterfuge. The
resource for Medicare funding was based on Americans having an average life
expectancy of 65 years in 1964. By
2000, that life expectancy was 78 years and today it is 80 years. The fastest
growing segment of our society is older people. The resource is grossly
inadequate. In an era of expanding technologies, the amount of funding
available for physician fees from a fixed-dollar resource mathematically
decreased. The logical next step was to increase the resource base, but neither
side of the political aisle appears to be interested in confronting this
painfully obvious solution. . .
Perhaps our government officials should get their act
together and properly fund programs so that those who actually deliver
healthcare are adequately reimbursed. Ω
Ralph Di Libero, MD, Southern California Physician
www.smcma.org/Bulletin/BulletinIssues/BULLETIN-08SeptemberF.pdf
Government is not the solution to our problems,
government is the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
5.
Medical Gluttony:
Can't We Repeat All Those Hospital Tests?
Martha, a 63-year-old lady, was admitted to the
hospital for observation of her abdominal pain. This resolved over several days
and she was discharged to see her personal physician immediately. She came in
the following morning. My medical assistant had already obtained the hospital
records, which included a 13-page section of laboratory work. Many tests had
been done daily and were essentially within normal limits. Even her
cholesterol, lipids and diabetic glycohemoglobin were all normal. Since it was
time for her annual exam, I went through my chart and brought items of her
history up-to-date. When I was writing her prescription renewals, she asked for
her annual tests. I explained to her that all the tests that we normally do to
check her elevated lipids and diabetes had been done several times over the
past few weeks. There was no further testing indicated. To read more,
please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/gluttony.asp.
She said, "But we always do them at this time of
year. How do we know that the hospital tests are valid?"
I tried to explain that they were indeed valid and we
should accept them as such. The additional tests could not be justified as
appropriate health care costs.
She retorted that costs should never be any criteria
when her health care was in question.
This was a real switch. Many hospitals refuse to
accept outside laboratory tests as valid for pre-surgical screening because
they believe no one has the quality control of hospitals. And here is a lady
that thinks the hospital tests are of poorer quality.
The cost of health care never crossed this lady's
conscious brain. There's no chance of it making any impact until patients pay a
percentage of every health care expenditure.
To read more, please go to:
Designing
the Patient-Centered Health Plan for America
www.healthplanusa.net/index.htm
A National Health Care
Plan www.healthplanusa.net/DelMeyer.htm.
* * * * *
6.
Medical Myths: If
You Are Cost Conscious, You Will Save Health Care Dollars
A patient had chest pain and had his wife take him to
the hospital ER. He was found to have coronary insufficiency. He was criticized
for not calling 911 and taking an ambulance in trying to save health care
costs. He had no difficulty riding in the car to the hospital.
He did have a coronary and was transported by
ambulance to another hospital for a cardiac catheterization. He said the ride
was so rough, he wished he'd hired a $50 limousine and a nurse and gone down on
his own. He was especially sorry after he got the ambulance bill for the
17-mile ride: $1500. To read more, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/myths.asp.
The choices in health care are difficult for everyone.
We need to be less critical of people trying to do their best in their own
estimation of cost-effective health care. Criticizing our patients for making
what the establishment sees as inappropriate choices only makes the public more
critical of us. Isn't it time we all became more tolerant of each other?
* * * * *
7.
Overheard in the
Medical Staff Lounge: The $700 Billion Bailout
Dr. Dave: What
do you think of the $700 billion bailout plan?
Dr. Ruth: Looks
like we needed it to keep us out of a depression.
Dr. Dave: You really
think that taking $2300 from every American will help them.
Dr. Ruth: Did
we have an alternative?
Dr. Edwards: Yes,
we could have let the large insurance carriers and brokerage houses go under.
Just like any other business that makes poor choices. It wasn't my fault that
they made poor choices.
Dr. Ruth:
Wouldn't that have messed up my retirement plans?
Dr. Edwards: When
the dot.com bubble burst in the late 1990s, I lost two-thirds of my retirement
plans and no one bailed me out. To read more,
please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/lounge.asp.
Dr. Milton: Once
the government bails out one industry, where does it stop?
Dr. Rosen: Which
presidential candidate would have done it your way?
Dr. Milton: I
don't think either one would have. The debates don't clarify anything. Both
candidates made vast over statements. One candidate, who was against nuclear
power and offshore drilling, stated that he has always been for those things.
Dr. Edwards: Well,
he's a lawyer; he's very skillful at bending the truth to serve his needs.
Lawyers don't call that lying. They consider that anything goes when trying to
win the case.
Dr. Michelle: Even
lying?
Dr. Edwards: They
don't perceive that as lying. They perceive that as winning an election or a
court case. How else can you win?
Dr. Rosen: I
think most people see through that. They aren't going to change their vote on
the basis of any debate. Debating skills have no relationship to governing
skills.
Dr. Edwards: But
will the public see it that way?
Dr. Rosen: I
think when Americans get into the voting booth and it's only them and their
conscience, they will vote for the best man to be president; not the best
debater or the best liar.
Dr. Milton: I
certainly hope so. I won't rest until after the elections. So much depends on
this one.
Dr. Edwards:
Remember when Osama said that he would some day rule America and he would be
able to do that through the political process?
Dr. Rosen: Are you
trying to say, that Obama is Osama's agent?
Dr. Edwards: Well
Obama has lived in Pakistan and has numerous friends in that part of the world.
He was middle class until recently. He went to ordinary schools. Then he went
to Ivy League schools and now has a $1.4 million house. Where did all this
funding come from?
Dr. Rosen: You
really think that Osama and his supporters are funding Obama?
Dr. Edwards: Who
knows? We may never know for sure until he's inside the White House. And then
it will be too late. Our country will come crashing down after a short stint of
225 years of freedom. It will be millennia before anyone tries this experiment
in freedom again.
* * * * *
8.
Voices of
Medicine: Election 2008 is the Most Critical We Have Seen, by Tom LaGrelius, MD
[MedicalTuesday is nonpartisan but this physician's
viewpoint on important issues is critical for our patients' and our country's
future.]
McCAIN BEATS OBAMA IN MY MIND BY A COUNTRY MILE
There is no doubt the presidential election of 2008
is critical, perhaps the most critical we have seen. In this financial crisis
we need strong, experienced leadership. In this time of terrorist threat and
conflict we need even stronger, more experienced leadership. John McCain
is prepared, experienced and qualified to lead this nation in these dangerous
times. Barack Obama, despite his current six-point lead in the
polls, is not.
McCain is a war hero who spent years in an enemy
prison camp being tortured, yet refused an offer of early release unless his
fellow prisoners were also sent home. He can be trusted to look out for his
fellow Americans first and foremost. Barack Obama has never served in this or
any other country's military and has really never been tested in any way.
John McCain has leadership and command
experience. After his heroic Naval Air actions in Viet Nam, he later
commanded the Navy's largest aviation squadron training its pilots and bringing
it from a level of poor performance to excellent during his command.(1)
He has been a leader in the House and Senate for decades, opposing waste,
corruption, all earmarks and many of the current administration's
weak policies including mistreatment of prisoners at any level. He
is incorruptible and if elected will be the real agent of change and bipartisanship
in Washington DC, that Obama, being such a polarizing candidate, can
never be.
Barack Obama has commanded nothing but his own
campaign and served only as an Illinois legislator and part of one term
beginning in 2005 as a freshman US Senator. He offered little innovative
legislation and voted "present" rather than "yes" or
‘no", over 130 times which obscured his true opinions, while
inserting earmark after earmark in legislation he did not author. He speaks
of reform, change and hope, but has no track record to point to. To read more, please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/voicesofmedicine.asp.
John McCain is a centrist patriot who reaches across
the isle in both directions. He has worked effectively with his own party,
with liberal Democrats like Kennedy and centrist Democrats like Lieberman. He
is now actively supported by Senator Lieberman who was the former Democratic
candidate for Vice President on the Gore/Lieberman ticket in 2000.
Barack Obama had the most leftist voting record in the Senate in 2007.(2)
As McCain noted in their first debate, reaching across the isle
to Obama is a hard, long reach to the far left. Obama stands way farther
to the left than the vast majority of Americans who plan to vote for him,
let alone the ones who don't.
Members of John McCain's family have been patriotic
American loyalists, military leaders and Navy Admirals like his father dating
back to the 19th century. Barack Obama's father was a brilliant
Harvard trained economist whom the younger Obama lionized in his 1995 book
"Dreams from My Father", but who returned to his native Kenya and
literally tried to communize it. Barack Obama Sr. wrote scholarly papers
encouraging Marxist changes in the Kenyon government.(3) (4)
In the case of John McCain the apple did not fall far
from the tree, and the same may be true of Obama Jr., whose high tax
plans and redistributive legislative proposals often sound much like the ones
his father proposed in Kenya. Before achieving his goals, Obama Sr. was
ultimately recognized for his ultra far left political position, ousted
from the Kenyon government and fell into obscurity, a fact not lost on the
younger Obama who keeps his long term political associations and
deepest opinions well under wraps until and unless others unwrap
them. Only by his actions as president are we likely to learn of them
directly.
John McCain's chosen mentors were military heroes
and American patriots at every step on the road. Barack Obama's chosen
mentors included Viet Nam era terrorists like Ayers
and radical black activists, like his minister and
"inspiration" for twenty years, the now denounced and discredited
Reverend Jeremiah Wright whose anti-American rantings have shocked all who have
seen them.(5)
Another Obama mentor was Communist Party member,
former Chicago community organizer and later Hawaiian ILWU union organizer
Frank Marshall Davis mentioned warmly as "Frank" in Obama's book, but
now acknowledged by Obama to be his friend and mentor during Obama's
formative years in Hawaii.(6) Time Magazine recently noted this connection and
influence and stated speaking of Davis "Still, it's clear that Obama did
seek advice from the old man and that what he got was undiluted. "You're
not going to college to get educated. You're going there to get trained,"
Davis once warned Obama. "They'll train you so good, you'll start
believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and
all that s___."(7)
So, to me, there is little choice in this election. We
must elect John McCain. To those Obama supporters who may have a
flicker of lingering doubt about their choice I invite them to
take the time to investigate the history and records of Obama and
McCain. Perhaps enough of them will change their minds in time,
I sincerely hope.
Thomas W. LaGrelius, MD, FAAFP
Speaking only for myself.
Footnote links to sources
(1) http://tampabay.com/news/politics/article656555.ece
(2) http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/
(3) http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_eastafrica.html
(4) http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=303952499910291
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M-kD0QdRJk
(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Marshall_Davis
(7) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1834623,00.html
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9.
Book Review:
Here's Looking at You, Kid From The Economist print edition Sep 18th
2008
|
IF YOU find yourself believing that "we are the
ones we've been waiting for", or that "this is the moment when the
rise of the oceans began to slow" or even, tout court, that
"yes we can", the chances are that you are suffering from a severe
case of Obamamania.
Tens of millions of Americans and an even larger
number of Europeans have fallen victim to the syndrome, which involves a belief
that a young black senator from Chicago can cure the world's ills, in part
because of his race, in part because of his obvious intelligence and rhetorical
skill; but in no part because of any record of achievement in the past.
Fortunately, an inexpensive remedy is at hand.
It comes in the form of a new book by David Freddoso,
"The Case Against Barack Obama". Unlike the authors of some of the
cruder attacks on Mr Obama, Mr Freddoso works for a well-respected
organisation, the online version of the National Review. Although it is
a conservative publication and the author makes no secret of where his
political sympathies lie, this is a well-researched, extensively footnoted
work. It aims not so much to attack Mr Obama as to puncture the belief that he
is in some way an extraordinary, mould-breaking politician. To read more,
please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/bookreviews.asp.
The Obama that emerges from its pages is not, Mr
Freddoso says, "a bad person. It's just that he's like all the rest of
them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington."
And the author makes a fairly compelling case that this is so. The best part of
the book concentrates on Mr Obama's record in Chicago, his home town and the
place from which he was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996, before
moving to the United States Senate in 2004. The book lays out in detail how
this period began in a way that should shock some of Mr Obama's supporters: he
won the Democratic nomination for his Illinois seat by getting a team of
lawyers to throw all the other candidates off the ballot on various
technicalities. One of those he threw off was a veteran black politician, a
woman who helped him get started in politics in the first place.
If Mr Obama really were the miracle-working,
aisle-jumping, consensus-seeking new breed of politician his spin-doctors make
him out to be, you would expect to see the evidence in these eight years. But
there isn't very much. Instead, as Mr Freddoso rather depressingly finds, Mr
Obama spent the whole period without any visible sign of rocking the Democratic
boat.
He was a staunch backer of Richard Daley, who as mayor
failed to stem the corruption that has made Chicago one of America's most
notorious cities. Nor did he lift a finger against John Stroger and his son Todd,
who succeeded his father as president of Cook County's Board of Commissioners
shortly before Stroger senior died last January. Cook County, where Chicago is
located, has been extensively criticised for corrupt practices by a federally
appointed judge, Julia Nowicki.
The full extent of Mr Obama's close links with two
toxic Chicago associates, a radical black preacher, Jeremiah Wright, and a
crooked property developer, Antoin Rezko, is also laid out in detail. The
Chicago section is probably the best part of the book, though the story
continues: once he got to Washington, DC, Mr Obama's record of voting with his
party became one of the most solid in the capital. Mr Freddoso notes that he
did little or nothing to help with some of the great bipartisan efforts of
recent years, notably on immigration reform or in a complex battle over
judicial nominations.
Sometimes, however, Mr Freddoso lets his own partisan
nature run away with him. It strikes the reader as odd to make an issue out of
the Obamas' comfortable income, when everyone knows that John McCain and
Hillary Clinton both have family fortunes in excess of $100m. On the whole,
though, Mr Freddoso raises legitimate points. And he ends with a question
Obamamaniacs should ask themselves more often: "Do you hope that Barack
Obama will change politics if he becomes president? On what grounds?"
The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and
Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate. By David Freddoso. Regnery; 290 pages; $27.95 and Ł16.99
www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12252991
www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=12252991
To read more book reviews,
go to www.delmeyer.net/PhysicianPatientBookshelf.htm.
To read book reviews topically, go to www.healthcarecom.net/bookrevs.htm.
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10. Hippocrates & His Kin: A $700 Billion Bank Heist
The $700 Billion Bailout: A $2300 Theft from Every
American Taxpayer
The a major difference
between free enterprise and government programs is that when a free enterprise
venture fails, it passes out of the picture and new businesses sprout up with
the same risk; when a government program fails, congress just taxes it citizens
more and more and pump more taxpayer funds into the failed program which never
goes out of existence. It continues to cost taxpayers money ad infinitum,
even future generations.
When the silicon bubble of
the 1990s dissolve in the late 1990s, most doctors I know lost about one-third
to two-thirds of their retirement fund. The doctors just dug in their heels,
realizing it was their decision where to invest their pension plans, and
decided not to retire at the now relatively young age of 72 and continue to
work until age 80 or so. Actually age 80 today is equivalent to age 65 when
Social Security was implement and is where Social Security Retirement would
begin if Social Security had been index for life expectancy.
Why would Congress even consider
a bail out when the investment banks are failing because of their own reckless
programs rather than let them fail? Is that the American or Free Enterprise way
of thinning the forest to allow the trees to grow? Why do we allow Congress to
steal $2300 from every man, woman and baby at gun point? Yes, we have gotten
more sophisticated, since the days of the Wild West, with gun control. But at
least in the old Wild West you could only be robbed of the money you had.
Congress can take the $2300 you don't have, the $2300 your children don't have,
confiscate your property and can collect what's left from your children which
may be yet unborn. That's worse than gun point.
Can we defeat every
incumbent that voted for this in our elections next month? What a cleansing
that would be. What a statement in support of our forefathers who came to this
country for freedom to choose, without government intrusion, whether one wins
or fails?
My grandparents fled German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's
government medicine in Germany in the 19th century. Why are we
importing Socialized Medicine to America in the 21st century?
To read more,
please go to www.medicaltuesday.net/hhk.asp.
Warren Buffet receives a call: "I'm from Bear Stearns, should I go on?"
Mr. Buffet recalls thinking: "It's like a woman
taking off half her clothes and asking, ‘Should I continue?' Even if you're a
90-year-old eunuch, you let 'em finish."
The deal was never consummated.
Warren Buffett observed when the investment houses
toppled: "One really doesn't know until the tide goes out, who's been
swimming naked.
The next deal from Morgan
Stanley was consummated.
To read more HHK, go to www.healthcarecom.net/hhk2001.htm.
To read more HMC, go to www.delmeyer.net/hmc2005.htm.
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11. Organizations Restoring Accountability in HealthCare,
Government and Society: