MEDICAL TUESDAY . NET NEWSLETTER
Community For Better Health Care Vol IV, No 11,
In This Issue:
1. Featured Article: [Health Care in America, Take Lessons
from France] - Innovate
2. In the News:
“Shaken Baby Syndrome” Questioned by British Court
3. International
Medicine: Travelers Beware of Deadly Prescription Mix-Ups
4. Medicare: A Disaster
(and Health Care) Lesson from Ben Franklin
6. Medical Myths: Patients Should Be Protected from the Risks
of Self Diagnosis and Treatment
7. Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge - Email from Katrina
- We Can Still See Our Rooftop
8. Voices of
Medicine: A Review of
Various Local and Regional Medical Journals
9. Book Review:
From the Physician Patient Bookshelf: LIFE WITHOUT DISEASE
10. Hippocrates
& His Kin: Is the Congressional Record for Real?
11. Related
Organizations: Restoring Accountability in HealthCare, Government and Society
* * * * *
The 3rd Annual World Health
Care Congress,
co-sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, is the most prestigious meeting
of chief and senior executives from all sectors of health care. Renowned
authorities and practitioners assemble to present recent results and to develop
innovative strategies that foster the creation of a cost-effective and
accountable
* * * * *
1. Featured Article: [Health Care in
Brian M. Carney reported in The Wall
Street Journal -
HALLENCOURT, France -- In
this hamlet in the north of France, Jean-Francois Zobrist leads the sort of
company that isn't supposed to exist any more in high-tax, high-cost socialist
Europe. It's a company -- in France, remember -- where workers volunteer to
work Saturdays when an extra-large order needs to be filled by Monday, where
front-line employees redesign products to improve efficiency, and where prices
have fallen almost every year for decades.
The business is as
old-economy as they come. FAVI is an 800-employee copper foundry that began in
the 1940s making plumbing fixtures. In the 1970s, with the market for copper
plumbing in decline, it moved into water meters, and in the 1980s FAVI started
making copper forks for automotive gear boxes; it is now the European leader in
this niche, with over 50% of the market.
Moreover, FAVI makes money
in markets in which its competitors lose money -- or have long since outsourced
production to
The key to happiness, in Mr.
Zobrist's view, is to free workers from the arbitrary restrictions of the chain
of command, or rather, the chaine de
comment -- the chain of "how."
"In the system of
'how,' you talk to the foreman, who doesn't know. The shop chief, he doesn't
know. Neither does his boss, so he goes to the director, who doesn't know, so
he asks the factory manager and the CEO. This is the chain of 'how,'" Mr.
Zobrist explains, mockingly. Everyone must ask his boss how to get anything
done, so nothing gets done. . . .
If this sounds overstated,
few people who work in a large or medium-size company will find Mr. Zobrist's
description wholly unfamiliar. The inability or reluctance to take decisive
action to improve the efficiency of one's day-to-day tasks is pervasive in most
firms of any size. Many of us are trapped in the chaine de comment.
When Mr. Zobrist was put in
charge of FAVI, he set about to break the chain. Most businesses, in his view,
are "Soviet" in character -- they rely on centralized control by
bosses, whose priority is the reduction of risks to themselves. . . . At FAVI, what matters is "why" and
"for whom," not "how." That is, workers aren't told how to
do their jobs, but whom they are doing them for -- the customer, not their
boss. "The only power lies with the customer," Mr. Zobrist avers.
"I have no power in here. I enter a meeting, no one stands up. I don't
have a parking space, and if I start pretending to expertise in a meeting, my
people will often cut me off."
What's more, FAVI has no
personnel department; Mr. Zobrist eliminated it 20 years ago, "because
this department's main job was to put constraints on people's activity and grow
its own ranks to enforce these constraints." There is virtually no middle
management at FAVI; the company is organized into teams, which each serve one
customer -- one automaker, for example. Those teams choose their own leader,
who reports to Mr. Zobrist. Thus, the organizational chart is only three layers
deep.
Instead of obedience, Mr.
Zobrist seeks responsibility and initiative from his employees. And to get it,
he gives them freedom -- to innovate and experiment, but also the freedom to
solve customers' problems in their own way. He tells them they work for the
customer, and gets out of the way. His only demand, just about, is that they
always look for ways to do it "better and cheaper" -- and never
deliver late.
Thus, the workers on the
factory floor have redesigned their own work spaces to improve their own
efficiency. . . . in every case, the employees exercised the freedom simply to
get it done -- no review committees, no manager approval. Just try it; if it
works, tell others, so they can try it too.
To some, the result seems
chaotic. Mr. Zobrist tells a story of a customer, a tradition-bound car
company, that sent a team to audit FAVI's work practices. "This won't do
at all," they said after their inspection. "You have no metrics for
tracking late orders . . . no structure, no planning, no delay management
[procedures]."
Mr. Zobrist responded:
"How many years have we been supplying your needs?" "11
years," said the customer. "And in 11 years, have we ever been early
or late?" "No." "Have we ever delivered too many parts, or
too few?" "No." "So, why do you want to put in place
measures of things that don't exist?" Mr. Zobrist asked. He got no
response.
Remarkably, FAVI has thrived
in, of all places,
Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel
Prize-winning economist, argued 60 years ago that decentralized systems would
always beat centralized, command-and-control systems because, in his famous
phrase, all important information is distributed and the
"man-on-the-spot" knows best. Thus, no one person or ministry knows
enough to direct resources for an entire economy. The collapse of the Soviet
system underscored his point.
But if central planning has
gone out of style as a means of organizing the economy, it remains far too
prevalent as a means of organizing firms. If Jean-Francois Zobrist can break
that mold in
Mr. Carney is editorial page
editor of The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB112225856507394646,00.html
[There is also a message of
how we need to free doctors, nurses and hospitals trapped in bureaucratic
mandates that prevent them from treating patients appropriately.]
It's like the beaver told
the rabbit as they stared at the
"No, I didn't build it
myself. But it's based on an idea of mine!"
Charles Townes, Nobel
Laureate, Inventor of the Laser
* * * * *
After 4-month-old Patrick
Harris died in 1999, his grief-stricken mother was sentenced to prison for
manslaughter. Expert medical witnesses testified that the existence of subdural
hematomas, cerebral edema, and retinal hemorrhages proved that the infant had
been shaken to death.
British Court of Appeal has not only overturned the conviction but, in
a 61-page opinion, questioned the very existence of “shaken baby syndrome.”
The ruling could lead to the
reopening of 88 similar cases in the
One study not considered by
the court, a biomechanical study published last month by Dr. Faris Bandak of
the University of the Health Sciences in
In the
www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday203.htm.
* * * * *
3. International Medicine: Travelers
Beware of Deadly Prescription Mix-Ups
NCPA Daily Policy Digest:
HEALTH ISSUES,
Prescription mix-ups create
a new risk for travelers since many drugs in foreign countries have the same
brand name as
The
* Norpramin, an antidepressant in the
* Flomax, used for prostate disease in the
* Vivelle, which is a hormone treatment for menopause and
osteoporosis in the
These mix-ups could result
in patients not getting a life-saving drug, getting the wrong drug or suffering
unexpected interactions; patients who want to import less expensive drugs could
encounter similar problems, says the Journal.
Moreover, there are about
16,000 drugs -- branded, generic and over-the-counter -- prescribed in the
United States, and as the number continues to grow, there is no regulatory body
that keeps track of names globally. Companies could do global searches but they
are expensive and even alternative sources, like reference books and electronic
databases, may not be exhaustive or up to date.
Until
Source: Marilyn Chase,
"Buying the Wrong Medicine Overseas," Wall Street Journal,
For text (subscription
required): http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112415070765613880,00.html.
For more on Health Issues:
Risks in Using Drugs: www.ncpa.org/newdpd/dpdarticle.php?article_id=2158.
* * * * *
4. Medicare: A Disaster (and Health Care)
Lesson from Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin Had the Right
Idea for
Why is
The short answer is that
For most of history, fire
was far more feared than flooding. Cities repeatedly burned to the ground.
Those catastrophes occurred sporadically enough that politicians must have been
tempted to skimp on fire protection - like levee maintenance, it was a
long-term investment against a calamity that probably wouldn't occur before
they left office.
But urbanites learned to
protect themselves through two innovations Benjamin Franklin introduced to
Their customers had a vested
interest, too, because they had to pay higher premiums if they lived in homes
or neighborhoods that were prone to fire. As fire insurance became a standard
requirement for homeowners, they and their insurance companies kept pressure on
politicians to finance firefighting and tighten building codes. . . .
But as we've learned this week,
few people seem to care passionately about maintaining levees or preparing for
a predictable flood. They've left that to
Starting in the 1960's, the
federal government took over the business of insuring against floods. It
offered subsidized insurance to people in flood-prone areas, encouraging
seaside homes that never would have been built otherwise. Even at bargain
rates, most people went without flood insurance - only about a third of the
homes in
People don't bother to
protect themselves because they figure - correctly - that if disaster strikes
they'll be reimbursed anyway by FEMA. It gives out money so freely that it has
grown into one of the great vote-buying tools of the modern presidency. . . .
. . . Since
The federal government has a
role in coordinating flood control among states and in organizing outside
disaster relief, but the locals should fight floods much the same way they
fight fires. Fifteenth-century Dutch burghers didn't have the financial or
technological resources of today's Louisianians, but they managed to hold back
the sea without the Army Corps of Engineers.
Here's the bargain I'd offer
Private flood insurance has
come to seem quaint in
To read the original
article, go to www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03tierney.html?th&emc=th.
Email: mailto:tierney@nytimes.com.
Government
is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.
- Ronald Reagan
* * * * *
REVIEW & OUTLOOK: Case
of the Vanishing X-rays, Wall Street Journal,
The judicial undressing of
the silicosis scam continues, and the lawyers are really starting to sweat
under the kleig lights.
Back in June, federal Judge
Janis Graham Jack disparaged nearly all of 10,000 claims for the rare lung
disease as having been "manufactured for money." She also told the
lawyers involved that federal prosecutors wanted access to the documents and
X-rays surrounding this "fraud." So imagine Judge Jack's surprise to
discover at a hearing last Monday that
Ms. Jack told Mr. Hooper
that if he did not have the documents back in her court by
The hapless Mr. Hooper offered
all sorts of legal reasons he felt he had a right to the X-rays -- including an
assertion that the judge no longer had jurisdiction. But the main point is that
Judge Jack had specifically informed everyone that the documents and X-rays
were under federal scrutiny. That Mr. Hooper still took them away suggested he
might be hiding something. By last Wednesday, Judge Jack had put out an order
noting that Mr. Hooper had removed 1,342 X-rays from the depository but had
only returned 1,219 by the end of Monday. She added: "In the future, the
Court would like Mr. Hooper to form a closer relationship with the law."
The other excitement was an extraordinary exchange between Judge Jack
and trial lawyer Richard Laminack. (See a reprint at http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112544438517227231,00.html?mod=todays_us_opinion.)The
judge had remanded most of the bogus silicosis suits to state court, but she
kept one -- originally filed by Mr. Laminack's firm in her
When Judge Jack brought this troubling fact up again in last week's
hearing, Mr. Laminack shocked everyone by explaining that he doubts his clients
ever had asbestosis. Put another way, so eager was Mr. Laminack to support the
credibility of his silicosis claims that he admitted in federal court that he
believed his clients had previously filed fraudulent asbestos claims. His
admission is all the more notable because Mr. Laminack was indicting some of
the lions of the asbestos bar -- Dickie Scruggs, for instance -- who (according
to defense attorneys) were among those filing "Alexander" asbestos
claims.
To read the entire editorial
(subscription required), please go to http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112544438428727225,00.html?mod=todays_us_opinion.
* * * * *
6. Medical Myths: Patients Should Be
Protected from the Risks of Self Diagnosis and Treatment
NCPA Daily Policy Digest:
HEALTH ISSUES: PATIENT POWER: OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUGS,
Consumers benefit from
self-administered over-the-counter (OTC) medications because of lower prices
and easier access. However, rigid FDA rules lock many drugs that are readily
accessible to consumers in other countries behind
The FDA can approve a
prescription drug for OTC sale once it decides that the benefits outweigh the
risks, the potential for abuse is low, consumers can self-diagnose the
condition, labels can be easily understood and administration by health
practitioners is unnecessary.
The 89 prescription products
the FDA has switched over the past 30 years include such familiar brands as
Advil, Afrin, Drixoral, Aleve, Pepcid AC, Zantac-75, Nicorrette, Rogaine and
Lamisil. Recently, however, FDA approval for OTC sale has slowed dramatically,
say Kittinger and Herrick:
* In the past five years, it has reclassified only seven
prescription drugs (including the bestselling drugs Claritin and Prilosec).
* Over a 20 year period, by contrast, European countries
approved about four times as many prescription medications for OTC sale as the
Every year, Americans spend
more than $200 billion on prescription medicines, but only one-tenth that
amount -- about $20 billion -- on OTC medications. Moreover, the average price
of an OTC medication is much lower than that of a prescription drug:
* The average name-brand prescription costs about $96.
* Generic prescription drugs cost about $28.
* OTC drugs cost an average of about $7.
Stringent FDA rules limit
consumer access to treatments that could safely be moved over the counter. One solution
is to allow any drug approved for OTC use in
Source: Paul Kittinger and
For text: www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba524/, www.ncpa.org/newdpd/dpdarticle.php?article_id=2144.
For more on Health Issues:
Drug Research and Development: www.ncpa.org/iss/hea/.
* * * * *
7. Overheard in the Medical Staff
Lounge: Email from Katrina - We Can Still See Our Rooftop
[As many doctors and nurses
are signing up with the American Red Cross and "Search and Rescue"
teams are leaving to provide medical services in
We evacuated
We evacuated to
We are watching TV, and
receiving first hand accounts. At this time, the flood waters are at the roof of
our house, our store, and my wife lost her job. The estimates are it will be
months before the flood waters recede.
I am heading towards
The Center for Peer Review
Justice has changed its phone number to 512-587-0064, an
Stay tuned to Rich at www.peerreview.org/.
* * * * *
8. Voices of Medicine: A Review of Various Local and Regional Medical Journals
We are glad to see that the Canadian Medical Association is FINALLY
backing private care in Canada......after they let Dr. Jacques Chaoulli take
all the risks (i.e. loser pays in the court) and do all of the heavy lifting.
This is the story of "The Little
Red Hen." Where was the Canadian Medical Association when Jacques was
baking the cake? Larry Huntoon, MD, Editor, JAPS
Larry's comments are right
on target. In fact, the Canadian Medical
Association deserves even more criticism. I met one of its top officers and
he said the Association had filed an amicus brief in Chaoulli's case in an
attempt to preserve the socialized system! Andy Schlafly, Esq, Counsel
Richard H Guth, MD, AMA delegate
from
The
Atul Gawande, MD, in a
Medical Dispatch column of the
* * * * *
9. Book Review: From the Physician Patient
Bookshelf: LIFE WITHOUT DISEASE
LIFE WITHOUT
DISEASE - The Pursuit of Medical Utopia by William B Schwartz, MD.
Academic physician Doctor William Schwartz has been studying health
policy for more than two decades. In 1994, he coauthored The Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care. Schwartz spent
the last five years writing Life Without
Disease - The Pursuit of Medical Utopia. His research, findings, and
understanding of our present healthcare delivery dilemma and proposals for the
future provide a link to a possible answer.
Schwartz reviews the health-care system in the
Dr Schwartz feels the long-term solution to cost-control lies in
molecular biology and genetic engineering. He envisions a drug that can be
designed that works only on the molecule affecting the disease in the body and
on no other. He predicts that as we eliminate disease through prevention and
molecular intervention, our healthy life span will increase by 40 years. The
next generation may live to be 130, free of the chronic illnesses that now
plague us. Consequently, the need for medical services will be greatly reduced.
Schwartz traces the birth and growth of "big medicine" to the
post World War II period and the success of research efforts such as the
Manhattan Project. Scientists and government leaders reasoned that aggressive
government support of medical research could yield equally dramatic results.
Schwartz considers this a pragmatic rather than a utopian dream. There was no
concept of the scale of either the costs or the success of a technological
revolution. Leaders were aware that medical progress was costly but believed
the American people were ready to harness the nation's economic muscle in the
fight to eliminate disease. Schwartz recounts the story of Albert and Mary
Lasker, who through their wealth, influence, and determination welded together
a coalition of public and private leaders dedicated to putting medical research
funding on the national agenda. The Laskers exploited their friendships with
influential physicians and powerful politicians to further their cause. The
couple heavily contributed to election campaigns, befriended presidents,
charmed the press, and built a network of like-minded movers and shakers, all
of which Elizabeth Drew memorably describes in an Atlantic Monthly article "The Health Syndicate: Washington's
Noble Conspirators." As a result of these efforts, the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) began its rise from a small agency with a budget of $26 million
in 1948 to become the Goliath it is today with a budget of $12.4 billion. This
rise in technology has driven the cost of health care out of reach of many of
our citizens.
Schwartz gives us neither economic nor political solutions for this
dilemma. It would seem a giant leap to envision a minority of working Americans
supporting the retirement and health care needs of the majority through 65 plus
years of leisure (age 65-130). When F D Roosevelt started Social Security, and
the average life expectancy was 60. Retirement was set at 65 years of age.
Thus, those that had prepared for their old age (including healthcare), who
lived more than 5 years beyond the life expectancy would have Social Security
to fall back on. Later, Medicare was set for the same age. If Social Security
and Medicare had kept pace by keeping benefits starting 5 years beyond the
average life expectancy, we would not now have problems financing these
systems. But politicians are unable to bite the economic bullet. Physicians in
politics seem equally impotent. To read the entire review, go to www.delmeyer.net/bkrev998.htm.
To peruse the Physician/Patient Book Shelf, please go to www.delmeyer.net/PhysicianPatientBookshelf.htm.
* * * * *
10. Hippocrates & His Kin: Is the
Congressional Record for Real? WalMart Spouses
John Stossel, on 20/20,
reports on the Congressional Record,
an alleged verbatim report, that the record is mostly Fake. In fact, it can be
changed if the congressman doesn't like the first Fake record or find that it
has MISTAKES in it to make it a more acceptable Fake. He concludes that
Congress is wasting $469 per page and doesn't seem to be able to keep from
wasting anything they touch. . . . If we ever let congress destroy the health
care we provide our patients it would be the most critical of all MISTAKES.
A produce manager at WalMart was a man who had clogged coronaries that produces
a high risk of cardiac arrhythmia, infarctions and cardiac arrests. After his
death, his widow won $253.4 million from ten members of a 12-jury panel against
the company that spent a billion dollars developing Vioxx and making it
available to arthritis sufferers. Vioxx, a cyclooxygenase-2 (cox-2) inhibitor
which causes less risk of gastric bleeding than the commonly prescribed
aspirin, Advil, Aleve and approximately 40 other nonsteroidal antiinflammatory
drugs (NSAID), shares the increased cardiac risk factors as the other Cox-2
inhibitors such as Celebrex and Bextra. The FDA noted in February 2005 that the
Cox-2 inhibitors, Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra, posed heart risks but recommended
that they should be available to consumers. Vioxx and Bextra have been
voluntarily withdrawn from the market.
"Plaintiff lawyers are
sharks and they smell blood," said David A Logan, the dean of Roger
Williams University School of Law. From the advertisements that accompany the
newspaper postings such as the following, the Dean appears to have made a
factual statement.
There
have been many serious medical conditions associated with Vioxx, Celebrex and
Bextra, including: Stroke, Heart Attack, Blood Clots, Nonbacterial Meningitis,
Interaction with Blood Pressure Medication, Kidney Damage Leading to Kidney
Failure.
If you or
someone dear to you has taken Vioxx, Celebrex or Bextra and
believe that it may have caused any of the symptoms or conditions listed above,
please contact our experienced Vioxx attorneys.
It is estimated that the
thousands of lawsuits pending, in which it can never be stated that the Cox-2
inhibitors are at fault rather than the underlying heart disease related to the
patients' gluttonous dietary habits, will cost the pharmaceutical company $20
to $50 billion and deprive Americans of at least 20-50 new lifesaving
pharmaceutical drugs, the largest private funding source for medical research.
What is seldom mentioned is the $6 billion that the attorneys will pocket as
the ads stake out the next $6 to $15 billion for their next assault on Celebrex
or Bextra, as soon as they get enough patients to call in for the next
pharmaceutical lottery.
Our patients on Celebrex
complain that it isn't as effective as Vioxx and always ask me if I still have
samples of Vioxx. Some had stashed away a large supply of Vioxx when the
publicity started and take it as needed for severe arthritic pain. Asked if
they are afraid of arrhythmias, they say that all drugs have risks and doubling
a one percent risk of heart attacks is an acceptable risk.
To read more Medical
Vignettes archives, go to http://healthcarecom.net/hhk1994.htm.
* * * * *
More than half of the
presidents of the United States–a country burdened with huge debt, a
devastating crime rate, a failing education system, excessive acid rain and an
embarrassing series of World Cup performances–have been lawyers.
Lawyers and Other Reptiles by Jess M
Brallier, courtesy of my attorney.
* * * * *
11. Restoring Accountability in HealthCare, Government and
Society:
These are sites you may wish
to access on a regular basis in order to obtain the latest in important health
care issues. We have made it easy for you to access these sites on
MedicalTuesdays. If you have made Tuesdays your day to review and become
knowledgeable about the world of health care (with corollaries in education
that have already been nearly destroyed by government intervention), you will
find that many of these sites have weekly postings that present the latest in a
vital dialogue. If you are pushed for time, the following thumbnail sketches
will give you an overview–a brief glance to keep you current.
$ The National
Center for Policy Analysis, John C
Goodman, PhD, President, who along with Devon Herrick wrote Twenty Myths about Single-Payer Health
Insurance, www.ncpa.org/studies/s166/s166.html,
which we reviewed in this newsletter the first twenty months. Their survey
included national health insurance in countries around the world and provides
convincing evidence that government control of health care usually makes
citizens worse off. When health care is made free at the point of consumption,
rationing by waiting is inevitable. Government control of the health care
system makes the rationing problem worse as governments attempt to limit access
to modern medical technology. Under government management, both efficiency and
quality of patient care steadily deteriorate. Also see their 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.
$ The Mercatus
Center at
$ 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. As
more Americans move into consumer-directed health plans, more and more studies
are being produced that report on early experience with these plans. The Galen
has released a paper that summarizes some of the newest studies of these
products, including Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement
Arrangements, which offer new incentives for consumers to help manage their
health care and health costs. The bottom line: Consumerism is working in these
plans. Grace-Marie Turner was to speak at the National Foundation for Women Legislators
Annual Conference last week (for information, go to www.womenlegislators.org/) and will
be the luncheon speaker today at The Heartland Institute's Emerging Issues
Forum. (For more information, go to www.heartland.org/Emerging2005/welcome.cfm.)
$ Greg Scandlen, Director of the “Center for Consumer-Driven Health Care” at the Galen Institute, has a Health News
Letter: Consumer Choice Matters. You
may subscribe to this newsletter that is distributed on Tuesdays by logging on
at www.galen.org
and clicking on Consumer Choice Matters.
Archives are now located at www.galen.org/ccm_archives.asp. This is the flagship publication of Galen's
new Center for Consumer-Driven Health Care and is written by its director, Greg
Scandlen, an expert in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). There is a new center
for Consumer Driven Health Care you
may access at www.galen.org/ccdhc.asp?1.
To read Greg's paper on "Rethinking the Uninsured," go to www.galen.org/fileuploads/Uninsured.pdf.
$ The Heartland
Institute, www.heartland.org, publishes the Health Care News, Conrad
Meier, Managing Editor Emeritus. The Heartland Institute and Miller College
of Business at Ball State University have released Reforming the Health Care System, a 38-page paperback book
featuring a debate between Kenneth E. Thorpe, Ph.D. of Emory University and
John C. Goodman, Ph.D. of the National Center for Policy Analysis. For more
information or to order your copy, go to www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17719.
$ The Foundation for
Economic Education, www.fee.org, has been
publishing The Freeman - Ideas On
Liberty, Freedom’s Magazine, for over 50 years, with Richard M Ebeling, PhD, 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. Read the current posting of the
classic by Ridgway K. Foley, Jr., "Essay on Caring." Be sure to pay
special attention to The Dividing Line.
"A remarkable duality pervades the concept of caring and its
current implementation. Force represents
the dividing line. Application or refrain from coercion separates the
wrongful intrusion into the sanctity of the life of another from the
permissible compassionate endeavor. The law ought not impede attempts to aid
others or to solve problems where those enterprises occur without compulsion.
This should be true where the majority decries the problem as ridiculous or the
solution as ill-advised; after all, the crowd often proves ineluctably wrong
and, in any event, no human being possesses either the ability or the moral
privilege to substitute his judgment for that of another choosing sentient
being.
"Conversely, no one should employ the legal monopoly of force to
compel adherence to, participation in, or compliance with an artifice designed
to better another, no matter how well intentioned or meritorious the plan. No
individual should be permitted to thrust a decision or shunt responsibility for
the consequences of his choice upon another, unwilling human being. Disregard
of this salient principle necessarily denies the dignity of that other
individual, since moral choice and accountability constitute an essential
element in the human condition.
"All too often, those who preach caring, compassion and concern
rest their case upon the root of envy: Loathe the rich and trust the poor; take
from the evil producer and give to the high- principled but helpless victim of
circumstance and oppression. Such caring
persons really do not care at all about others: The creators must be
plundered, the users must be pandered, by force and violence, by false premises
and promises, in order to salve the promoter’s inordinate ego and to effect his
flawed view of mankind and the world. In these, the vast majority of instances,
one can always count upon the concerned to care—for themselves!" Read the entire classic at www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=1501.
$ The Council
for Affordable Health Insurance, www.cahi.org/index.asp, founded by
Greg Scandlen in 1991, where he served as CEO for five years, is an association
of insurance companies, actuarial firms, legislative consultants, physicians
and insurance agents. Their mission is to develop and promote free-market
solutions to
$ The Health Policy
Fact Checkers is a great resource to check the facts for accuracy in
reporting and can be accessed from the preceding CAHI site or directly at www.factcheckers.org/. This week, read
the facts concerning the Commonwealth Fund report that in 2003, more than two
of every five
$ The Independence
Institute, www.i2i.org, is a
free-market think-tank in Golden,
$ The National
Association of Health Underwriters, www.NAHU.org.
The NAHU is a professional association of more than 20,000 health insurance
agents, brokers and benefit specialists that is extremely concerned about the
problem of the uninsured. "One of our primary goals is to help ensure that
Americans have access to appropriate health coverage. To help address this
problem, we have developed the Health Care Coverage Options Database
(Database), an on-line tool to help make American health care consumers aware
of all of the coverage options available to them. The Database contains
information about private health insurance coverage, as well as the many public
and private programs available to Americans to help them obtain the medical
care they need. Policymakers, the media and other interested parties can also
use the Database as a means of comparing health care coverage options for
Americans on a state-by-state basis." The Database is broken up in to four
components: Employer-Based Health Insurance Coverage; Individual Health
Insurance Coverage; Assistance for Obtaining Health Coverage; and Assistance
for Obtaining Health Coverage. You can also use the database to review all of
the information available for a particular state at www.nahu.org/consumer/healthcare/.
$ Martin Masse,
Director of Publications at the Montreal Economic Institute, is the publisher
of the webzine: Le Québécois Libre.
Please log on at www.quebecoislibre.org/apmasse.htm
to review his free-market based articles, some of which will allow you to brush
up on your French. You may also register to receive copies of their webzine on
a regular basis. This month, read Bradley Doucet's opinion piece, "Regulating
Risk: the Role of Choice in a Free Society." "The State today is like
an overprotective parent, extremely risk-averse with regard to its 'children,'
with the predictably perverse result of infantilizing us little by
little." To read the entire article, go to www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050815-8.htm.
$ The Fraser
Institute, www.fraserinstitute.ca,
an independent public policy organization, focuses on the role competitive
markets play in providing for the economic and social well being of all
Canadians. Log on for an overview
of the extensive research articles that are available. You may review their
impressive list of advisory board members, that includes a number of Nobel
Laureate economist, at www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=680.
You may want to go directly to their health research section at www.fraserinstitute.ca/health/index.asp?snav=he
and review the 2005 report, "How Good Is Canadian Health Care?"
$ The Heritage
Foundation, www.heritage.org/,
founded in 1973, is a research and educational institute whose mission is 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. The Center for Health Policy Studies supports and does
extensive research on health care policy
that is readily available at their site. “One of the important things about
financing these programs is getting people to work longer,” Saving said. “By
working longer, we would increase revenue while reducing the burden placed upon
the system.” www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/mm54.cfm
$ 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. If you can't brush up on economics, you
may be interested in a home-study course by Hillsdale professor Robert P.
Murphy that you can purchase at www.mises.org/story/1901.
You may also log on to Lew’s premier free-market site at www.lewrockwell.com to read some of his
lectures to medical groups. To learn how state medicine subsidizes illness, see
www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/sickness.html;
or to find out why anyone would want to be an MD today, see www.lewrockwell.com/klassen/klassen46.html.
To read his latest speech, "The Definition and Defense of Freedom,"
go to www.mises.org/story/1899.
$ CATO. The Cato
Institute (www.cato.org) was founded in 1977
by Edward H. Crane, with Charles Koch of Koch Industries. It is a nonprofit
public policy research foundation headquartered in
$ The Ethan Allen
Institute, www.ethanallen.org/index2.html,
is one of some 41 similar but independent state organizations associated with
the State Policy Network (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.
$
* * * * *
Stay
Tuned to the MedicalTuesday.Network and Have Your Friends Do the Same
Del Meyer
Del Meyer, MD, CEO & Founder
Words
of Wisdom
P. J. O'Rourke: If you think health care is expensive
now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
Ronald Reagan (1986): Government's view of the economy
could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax
it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
Heritage Foundation, Medicare Malady #54: Want to Keep
Medicare Solvent? Keep Working.
On
This Date in History - September 13
The First US National Elections were authorized
by Congress on this date in 1788 to occur on the first Wednesday in January,
1789.
The Battle of Quebec, when the British under General Wolfe
defeated the French under General Montcalm on this date in 1788, was noteworthy
not only for British Canada, but also the for the historical importance that it
was a battle in which both commanding generals were killed.