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In This Issue:
1. Should Health Care Be Left to the "Dictates" of the Market?
2. Why a Consumer-Choice Model Is Our Only Option
3. Patient Obtained Tests: CT Scans - Carotid Artery Scan - Arm/Ankle BP Index
4. This Week’s Review of Corporate  - Or Socialized - Or Regulated Medicine
5. Medical Gluttony: Why Should I Have to Trim My Own Toenails?
6. Medical Myths: Mandates Will Solve the Health Care Problems
7. Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge - The High Cost of Cancer Drugs
8. The MedicalTuesday Recommendations for Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice, HealthCare and Government

In democratic countries, where public opinion matters, those that believe "the government" has the answer, have used their verbal talents to change the whole meaning of words and to substitute new words, so that issues would be debated in terms of their redefined vocabulary, instead of the real substance of the issues.

Words which have acquired connotations from the actual experiences of millions of human beings over generations, or even centuries, have been replaced by new words that wipe out those connotations and substitute more fashionable notions of the statists. The statists have a whole vocabulary devoted to depicting people who do not meet standards as people who have been denied "access." Whether it is academic standards, job qualifications, credit requirements, or health insurance, those who do not measure up are said to have been deprived of "opportunity," "rights" or "social justice."

For centuries, rights were exemptions from government power, as in the Bill of Rights. Now the statists have redefined rights as things that can be demanded from the taxpayers, or from private employers or others, on behalf of people who accept no mutual obligations, even for common decency.  "Rights," for example, have become an all-purpose term used for evading both facts and logic by saying that people have a "right" to whatever the statists want to give them by taking from others. In government health care, the state takes health care away from people in waiting queues, and gives it to those who are "comrades" of the state or those that have survived the wait in the queues.

Sowell concludes: At one time, educators tried to teach students to carefully define words and systematically analyze arguments. They said, "We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think." Today, they are teaching students what to think -- political correctness. Instead of knowledge, students are given "self-esteem," so that they can vent their ignorance with confidence.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20040806.shtml

Most prominently, our system is besieged with increasingly higher costs. Currently, we are paying $1.6 trillion. We are adding $120 billion per year to the health care bill. This is unsustainable. Federal authorities predict that by the year 2012 it will reach $3.1 trillion. However, it will not, because it cannot. It is impossible, and something is going to happen between now and then.

The cost curve approximates an exponential curve. Very seldom do peoples' intuitive abilities penetrate these exponential cost increases. A physicist once said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is their inability to understand the exponential function." Now, I would say there are other shortcomings of the human race that exceed that; but, nevertheless, most ordinary people do not understand vertical curves. They are very dramatic and they are very sudden.

Why is the cost of health care going up? Let me summarize it this way: There are more and more people living longer and longer with more and more chronic diseases, taking more and more medications that are more and more expensive, using more and more technology with higher and higher expectations, in the context of more and more attorneys. All the convergences are simultaneous and the math is exponential. If you do the math, you will see that nothing is self-correcting.

We will hit a tipping point, probably sooner rather than later. When that happens, we are either going to go to a single-payer health care system or do "something else." Single payer is politically difficult for many reasons. It is a possibility, but I would say it is politically difficult. It is not optimal. "Something else" is optimal, and not as politically difficult.

A New Consumer-Choice Model
Swenson continues: The "something else" is what I would like to see. I believe that the "something else" model is the faith-friendly model--a private-sector, consumer-choice, defined-contribution model. I believe that our health care future will be, and can be, faith friendly. The opposite is not as faith friendly.

What are the rationales and predicted beneficial effects of this consumer-based model? First of all, we have history. We have a long history of churches and religious organizations that date back millennia in terms of health care--starting hospitals, medical schools, clinics, and missions across the world helping the needy, the infirm, the elderly, and the sick.

This model also promises superior performance. Peter Drucker, the nationally renowned management expert, makes the case that the volunteer sector--there are 2 million volunteer agencies in the United States today, including faith-based organizations--has a track record that works. It exceeds the track record of the public sector (government) or the private sector (business).

Equally important, the relationship between voluntary faith-based health plans and the delivery systems is, and should be, a natural development. Faith equals health. There are now over 1,000 studies that investigate the link between faith and health. Almost all show a positive association. Therefore, one could make the case that faith equals health. This is not rote, once-a-year faith, but intrinsically meaningful faith that translates into good health benefits. The savings may be around 25 percent. I once asked the late Dr. David Larson about this, and he said it was possibly as high as 75 percent. I would never go that high, but, nevertheless, we could see real savings there.

To review this pre-existent Natural Synergies between the mission of faith and the needs of a health care system, see http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/hl850.cfm.

The Single-Payer Health Care Model
Swenson then explores the alternative: Let's look at the predicted adverse effects of a single-payer system on both faith and freedom. I don't want to be too one-sided about this and say that a single-payer system would be automatically hostile to issues of faith. Yet I do believe there is enough of both theoretical and practical evidence to suggest that it would be very problematic.

First of all, we are a wildly pluralistic society. I do not believe we used to be as pluralistic in the past, but we clearly are today. This has profound consequences. The cultural and moral polarization that we see today is actually quite extreme. Meanwhile, we are poised on the threshold of a whole host of ethical conundrums that are going to hit us all very soon--within the next 10 years.

Here is a question for Congress and federal policymakers. Why in the world would the federal government want to set itself up as the arbiter of these inescapable ethical decisions, knowing that no matter what decisions they make, they are going to alienate certain large segments of their constituencies?

Some of the decisions that a single-payer system would require would certainly violate the tenets of one faith tradition or another. Certainly, I would expect that many of my most deeply held faith beliefs and doctrines would be violated by such a monolithic structure.

Consider Roe v. Wade and its aftermath. It has been suggested by some commentators--Peggy Noonan most recently--that perhaps our "culture wars" started in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. The public policy debate on abortion then was not taking place on the cultural level (leaving years to be worked out through public debate and discussion); instead, it was imposed. Would you want Roe v. Wade 20 times over? That is what I am suggesting we would be facing in a government-run health care system.

Dr Swenson Continues with the Bio-ethical Challenge
We have already touched on abortion. Yet partial birth abortion to me supercedes any other ethical marker. It does not need to go any further than that. As a physician, I have delivered many babies. What does partial birth abortion entail? This may be a nine-month baby, totally healthy. Yet the abortionist holds the head in the cervix, and he punctures the skull and sucks the brains out. However, we cannot decide as a nation today that this is morally wrong.

That tells me something about where we are as a nation today with regard to making moral decisions. I am not sure that I really want to trust all the other upcoming major moral decisions to a national governmental health system that cannot make a judgment on this one.

Just consider some of the other issues: Assisted Suicide. Oregon is the only state in which assisted suicide is legalized right now. The Justice Department objected by saying, "No, the doctors there cannot use medicines to kill their patients." However, the courts overturn the Justice Department's objection to Physician Assisted Suicide. It will not be long. Other states will follow Oregon. The other issues include: The Challenge in the care of the Elderly which will quadruple in cost in 25 years and Assisted Suicide will happen (and it may no longer be assisted or suicide); Stem Cell Research, embryonic versus adult stem cells; Prenatal Screening and the agonizing personal choices that result from finding fetal defects (and a government mandate that certain defects must be aborted); Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis which is getting into eugenics; Rationing of Care as there is simply too much need in America, as long as you define "need" broadly--not just critical need, but non-critical need, elective need, cosmetic need, and hypochondriacal need. The needs greatly exceed what we could possibly deliver in terms of the resources required to meet them and so there will be rationing; Creating Life; "Post-human" Species and Transhumanism; Transgenic Species and Chimeras; Resurrections from the Dead, or Giving Birth to Yourself which has now been done in cows in Japan.

To read the whole article as well as to review the other speakers at the symposium, go to http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/hl850.cfm.

Thomas H. Maugh II and Daniel Costello report in the Los Angeles Times about whole-body CT scans. Long controversial because of doubts about their effectiveness in finding hidden disease, they may significantly increase the recipient's risk of developing cancer, according to a recent study. The radiation from a single whole-body scan is equal to that from 100 mammograms and is similar to that received by survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- about 1.5 miles from the explosion -- according to radiation biologist David Brenner of Columbia University.

The radiation from one scan is enough to produce one tumor in every 1,200 people who undergo the procedure, reported Brenner and co-author Carl Elliston of Columbia in the journal Radiology. For those who have annual scans, the risk goes as high as one tumor in every 50 people, they said. "The risks for a single scan are not huge," Brenner said. "But if you have them repeatedly, the risk starts to build up quite a lot and becomes quite significant."

Brenner cautioned that his results apply only to healthy individuals who choose to receive the scans. "The risk-benefit equation changes dramatically for adults who are referred for CT exams for medical diagnosis," he said. "Diagnostic benefits far outweigh the risks."

To read the entire report, go to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/31/MNGQV8H1P01.DTL&type=printable.

Carotid Artery Ultrasound for Stroke Screening
Thomas Burton of the Wall Street Journal reported last week on stroke prevention. Although heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death, stroke is the leading U.S. cause of disability. More than 1.1 million people are impaired and many live in nursing homes.

A carotid ultrasound spots fatty plaque buildup in the carotid arteries on each side of the neck. These small conduits, the diameter of a fountain pen, transport blood to the brain. When plaque and blood clots block blood flow, a stroke occurs and brain tissue dies. Experts estimate that such carotid strokes account for one-third to one-half of all strokes.

Once plaque is found, it can be controlled with drugs and a better diet. In advanced cases, it is stripped away in surgery or compressed with tiny wire-mesh carotid stents. Carotid surgery is now a standard, low-mortality operation.

"Roughly one-half of all stroke deaths, and a lot of the permanent disability, could be prevented with the carotid ultrasound test," says William R. Flinn, chief of vascular surgery at the University of Maryland.

"I'm actually amazed at how slow the medical community has been in adopting these tests," says Eric J. Topol, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. "There is no risk, there is little cost and there are hardly any false positives or false negatives." The ultrasound operator, called a sonographer, can thus produce vivid color images of blood-flow changes caused by obstruction. Often, such a test costs $250 or more in hospitals but may be less than $50 in private offices.

The article also mentions the ankle-brachial test as a sophisticated blood-pressure test for Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD). Hospitals may charge several hundred dollars for it, but it can often be found for less, and LifeLine gives it for $45, one-fifth the hospital cost. Blood pressures are taken at the ankle and the brachial artery in the upper arm. The ratio of pressures should be about 1 to 1. So a normal "ankle-brachial index," or ABI, would be around 1.0. But if the arteries between the arm and ankle are partially blocked, pressure at the ankle will be less than that in the arm. A score of 0.9 means blood-flow blockage is significant enough to be considered abnormal.

To review the article, see http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109597858489826568,00.html.

But the Test Is Free
What was not mentioned in the article was that the ankle-brachial test is FREE. Increasingly, patients, especially those with blood pressure problems, have their own blood pressure recording device. The test is accomplished by taking the usual blood pressure (upper arm or the brachial artery) and then using the same cuff around the lower leg just above the ankle to obtain the blood pressure at the foot. If the blood pressure at the foot is less than at the arm near the heart, that would indicate that there is plaque buildup somewhere between the heart and the ankle. So when you get up tomorrow and measure your blood pressure, measure both of them and save $250. If you don't have a blood pressure device, the instrument costs less than $50. An office visit is not required unless your ankle is 10 percent less than the arm.

Medical Grand Rounds is Where Doctors Get the Latest Practical Information
The article made several remarks about the deficiencies in our medical system, that doctors learn slowly, and that there is not a single specialty where this problem finds a home. It should be noted that the Medical Grand Rounds at my hospital last Friday was given by a neurologist with a Power Point lecture on strokes and their treatment: surgical carotid endarterectomy versus medical stent. Most physicians spend several hours a week keeping up with advances in medicine and the weekly grand rounds highlight the most important issues in medical practice. If the vascular surgery departments at the Cleveland Clinic or the University of Maryland feel that their primary care doctors are slow to order these tests, they only need to speak with the Chief of Medicine and offer to present the scientific data and increase the awareness at the front line in medicine (internists, family doctors and others in primary care). When the benefits of these tests are explained and recommendations are made about  which patients  to refer to the Neurology Service or the Vascular Surgery service, or which should remain on the Medical Service for vigorous dietary management, the doctors will respond quickly. It would be a mistake for a patient to have a whole body scan and find plaques in the coronaries or have a carotid ultrasound and find plaques in the carotids, then seek out a cardiac or vascular surgeon to remove those plaques without first consulting the medical specialists and discussing the alternatives. Remember when Pritikin of diet fame was told to have surgical treatment of the plaques in his coronaries, he declined and went on a rigid low fat diet. When his leukemia caught up with him decades later, his son revealed to the world that the last tests before his death showed that all vessels around his heart were totally clear of plaques as a result of dietary management. His son at another grand rounds described the coronaries as being "like a teenager's."

Let's take the carotid ultrasound which costs about $250 in a hospital in this country and $50 in the private free-market environment. If the patient has no symptoms or medical indications for the test as determined by his or her physician, no insurance plan, whether public (Medicare or the NHS) or private, will pay for it. Patients who are used to first dollar coverage, whether in Medicare, NHS, or private third-party insurance, always demand that the requested test be provided at no cost, and if not, they assume the tests are not available to them.

If a doctor writes the requisition with the understanding that the patient is willing to pay for it, when the patient goes to the diagnostic facility, the clerk may say, "You should just have your insurance pay for it." The elated patient will then become more demanding and phone the office expecting the doctor to write out a letter of justification even though the lack of medical justification has already been discussed with the patient face-to-face during the office visit. Thereafter, an irate wife or daughter will come on line and the 15-minute office call balloons into a 45-minute harangue with demands for another 30 minutes of unjustifiable paper work. The doctor learns very quickly not to vary from the rules of the patient's insurance plan; otherwise, every 15-minute office call could mushroom into 45 to 75 minutes of additional work. The doctor knows full well that the request will always be denied. It's an hour or more work, for 15 minutes of pay that has been discounted about 50 percent. But it's the only way that the family’s hostilities can be transferred from the doctor to the patient's insurance carrier.

This would be tantamount to your boss saying that there are some additional loose ends attached to the work you did between 2 and 3 PM so please stay from 5 to 7 PM tonight to complete the regulatory requirements. It takes me about two hours after 5:30 PM to do the unpaid busy work that the patients and insurance carriers expect. The alternative, however, is lethal.

. Medical Gluttony: Why Should I Have to Trim My Own Toenails?
Diagnostic health screening is not an insurable item any more than having a diagnostic check up on your car. If a person does not value his health enough to obtain a carotid ultrasound in order to prevent lying in a nursing home for years after a stroke, or take an extra three minutes to obtain his or her own brachial-ankle blood pressures in order to prevent loss of a leg, then certainly an insurance company would not be any more interested in that person's health. And if patients have insurance, they are most likely inclined to have the hospital measure their blood pressure in the arm and leg for $250 rather than do it themselves.

It's just like patients telling me "Why should I trim my own toenails, when my insurance policy pays for a podiatrist to do it? Why should I care that it costs $45 a visit?"

Overutilization gluttony can never be controlled in a third-party system, whether Medicare, NHS, or private insurance, without a serious deductible and a percentage rather than a fixed dollar copayment. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) have a large deductible. Our working draft of HealthPlanUSA does both – a graduated deductible and a copayment without limit so medical gluttony never escapes financial responsibility. That's why it will provide 100 percent access without limit at an anticipated lower premium.

Yes, we are doing the initial research into a private HealthPlanUK. If you have data or know of someone we should speak with concerning the 47 private hospitals in the UK and the doctors that are interested in privatizing health care, we would like to involved them in a feasibility study for a possible HealthPlanUK. When the cost curve of the NHS becomes a vertical exponential line, as mentioned by Dr Swenson in section 2 above, we would like to be of assistance to the stranded patients.

6. Medical Myths: Mandates Will Solve the Health Care Problems
"Health-care solutions, not bigger government" by Alieta Eck, MD, as reported in Home News Tribune, Somerset, N Jersey.

Last June, Senator Jon Corzine admitted that New Jersey is the worst state in the union in regard to health insurance premiums and the number of uninsured. Yet, rather than look inward to try to determine what our policy makers may have done wrong, he suggests a solution that would make the rest of the country become just like us.

Since 2000, the Census Bureau claims that health-care premiums in New Jersey have risen $3,113 -- more than any other state. In explaining some of the reasons, Mr. Corzine correctly states that consumers are demanding more expensive procedures and prescription drugs and that administrative costs are rising.

But his solution would be more top-down control, more bureaucracy, more mandates, more community rating and guaranteed issue -- a single-payer system. And he thinks that this will save money. I guess he favors the "Just Say No" approach to health care. If a patient wants the more expensive care, "Just Say No."

7. Overheard in the Medical Staff Lounge - The High Cost of Cancer Drugs
Dr Edwards was remarking on the high cost of cancer drugs and how reimbursement was so low. At $2500 per weekly injection, who can afford it?

Dr David, who always thinks everyone should be able to have the highest level of care, said this is the best case for socialized medicine or single-payer medicine. Everyone should be able to get cancer drugs free.

Dr George reminded the group that in the UK, where they have single-payer, socialized medicine and everything is free, approximately twenty percent of patients with localized colon cancer that can be cured or controlled when diagnosed have metastatic incurable disease by the time they are pulled out of the waiting queue to be treated.

Dr Edwards concluded that it's not a perfect world. Although the price is more apparent in the private world, anybody can make the decision to be treated. In single-payer medicine, everybody is helpless and hopeless unless he or she gets out of the waiting line, hopefully before death knocks on the door.

8. MedicalTuesday Supports These Efforts of the Medical and Professional Community in Restoring Accountability in Medical Practice, HeathCare and Government

• PATMOS EmergiClinic - where Robert Berry, MD, an emergency physician and internist, provides prompt care for many of the injuries and illnesses treated in Emergency Rooms at a fraction of the usual emergency room fees. Be sure to read his article on how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is using "Cover the Uninsured" as a ruse to promote single-payer HeathCare by government mandate. Read the whole article "Health Coverage Does Not Equal Health Care" at http://www.emergiclinic.com.  To read Dr Berry's testimony in Congress, click on the sidebar. Read Dr Berry’s response to Physician’s Support of Single-Payer Health Care or Socialism at http://www.delmeyer.net/hmc2004.htm#by%20Robert%20Berry.

• Dr Vern Cherewatenko concerning success in restoring private-based medical practice which has grown internationally through the SimpleCare model network, http://www.simplecare.com. It's Simple. Patients and their physicians are returning to a true patient-driven health care paradigm. As the ranks of the uninsured grow and  businesses are strangled with increasing health insurance premiums - many are turning to SimpleCare as a viable and logical solution. Physicians and allied health care providers can charge a lesser fee when the patients pay them in full at the time of service. Any patient or provider may become a member of SimpleCare. A number of brochures are available on line. There have been a number of news network and press reports. For the AP article on April 27, 2004, go to  http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040404/D81O7R7O0.html.

• Dr David MacDonald started Liberty Health Group, http://www.LibertyHealthGroup.com, to assist physicians in controlling their own medical benefit costs for their staff and patients. Liberty helps employers navigate out of the health care storm. There is extensive data available for your study. Dr Dave is available to speak to your group on a consultative basis.

• John and Alieta Eck, MDs, for their first-century solution to twenty-first century needs. With 46 million people in this country uninsured, we need an innovative solution apart from the place of employment, and apart from the government. Please visit http://www.zhcenter.org and click on Newsletters and read Dr Alieta's address at the Galen Institute Press Conference. For their article “Are you really insured?” go to http://www.healthplanusa.net/AE-AreYouReallyInsured.htm.

• Madeleine Pelner Cosman, JD, PhD, Esq, has made important efforts in restoring accountability in health care. Please visit http://www.healthplanusa.net/MPCosman.htm to view some of her articles that highlight the government’s efforts in criminalizing medicine, and the introduction to her new book, Who Owns Your Body. For other OpEd articles that are important to the practice of medicine and health care in general click on her name at http://www.healthcarecom.net/OpEd.htm.

• David J Gibson, MD, Consulting Partner of Illumination Medical, Inc. and CEO of the Fraud Prevention Institute, has made important contributions to the free Medical MarketPlace in speeches and writings. His series of articles in Sacramento Medicine can be found at http://www.ssvms.org. Dr Gibson recently edited the March/April historical issue. To read his "Lessons from the Past" go to http://www.ssvms.org/articles/0403gibson.asp. For additional articles such as Health Care Inflation see http://www.healthplanusa.net/DGHealthCareInflation.htm. For last week’s featured article in MedicalTuesday, Counterfeit Drugs: The Next Likely Target for Terrorism, go to http://www.healthplanusa.net/DGTerrorism'sNextTarget.htm.

• Dr Richard B Willner, President, Center Peer Review Justice Inc, reports his latest success story and the secret of helping doctors keep their medical license. On a daily basis, doctors are reviewed, are suspended, lose their medical licenses and go to jail on trumped-up charges. These "extra"-legal services are necessary services that your lawyer does not offer. Stay posted with a wealth of information at http://www.peerreview.org. “The Center for Peer Review Justice now has a Joint Venture Partner so we can offer Headhunting for those MDs who have been DataBanked and cannot find a new job. This is a fee based service where the fee is paid by both the doctor and facility.”

• Semmelweis Society International, (http://www.semmelweissociety.net/) Verner S. Waite MD, FACS, Founder; Henry Butler MD, FACS, President; Ralph Bard MD, JD, Vice President; W. Hinnant MD, JD, Secretary-Treasurer; is named after Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, MD (1818-1865), an obstetrician who has been hailed as the savior of mothers. He noted maternal mortality of 25-30 percent in the obstetrical clinic in Vienna. He also noted that the first division of the clinic run by medical students had a death rate 2-3 times as high as the second division run by midwives. He also noticed that medical students came from the dissecting room to the maternity ward. He ordered the students to wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime before each examination. The maternal mortality dropped, and by 1848 no women died in childbirth in his division. He lost his appointment the following year and was unable to obtain a teaching appointment. He then went to St Rochus Hospital in the city of Pest and reduced the epidemic of puerperal fever to 0.85 percent. The rate in Vienna was still 10-15 percent. Although ahead of his peers, he was not accepted by them. When Dr Verner Waite received similar treatment from a hospital, he organized the Semmelweis Society with his own funds using Dr Semmelweis as a model: All we ask is that peer review be done with “clean hands.” To read the article he wrote for Sacramento Medicine when I was editor in 1994, see  http://www.delmeyer.net/HMCPeer.htm#by%20Verner%20Waite%20and%20Robert%20Walker. To see Attorney Sharon Kime’s response, as well as the California Medical Board response, see http://www.delmeyer.net/HMCPeerRev.htm. Scroll down to read some very interesting letters to the editor from the Medical Board of California, from a member of the MBC, and from Deane Hillsman, MD. Please check the ambitious website to see some horror stories of atrocities against physicians and how organized medicine still treats this problem, at http://www.semmelweissociety.net.

• Dennis Gabos, MD, President of the Society for the Education of Physicians and Patients (SEPP), http://www.sepp.net, for making efforts in Protecting, Preserving, and Promoting the Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities of Patients and Health Care Professionals, with a special page for our colleagues in nursing. Several free newsletters are available. There are some great tutorials on Health Savings Accounts and other medical issues. Be part of protecting and preserving what is right with American HeathCare–physicians, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, all health professionals and all concerned individuals can join.

• Robert J Cihak, MD, former president of the AAPS, and Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D, write an informative Medicine Men column that is at NewsMax. Please log on to review the last five weeks topics or click on archives to see the last two years topics at http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/Medicine_Men.shtml. This week’s column is on "Death is Not a Final Diagnosis" and can be found at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/9/23/142014.shtml.

• The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (http://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 scroll down on the left to departments and click on News of the Day. The “AAPS News,” written by Jane Orient, MD, and archived on this site, provides valuable information on a monthly basis. Scroll further to the 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 page of the current issue.

• The AAPS will be holding its 61st annual meeting at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon, on October 13-16, 2004. The theme for this year is “RECLAIMING AMERICAN MEDICINE.”Be sure to register at http://www.AAPSonline.org and make hotel reservations at http://www.bensonhotel.com or call 800-663-1144. Special guests this year include Radio Talk Show Host, Lars Larson, http://www.LarsLarson.com; author Star Parker, http://www.UrbanCure.org; Greg Scandlen, of the Galen Institute, http://www.Galen.org; and Art Robinson, of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, http://www.OISM.org.

Stay Tuned to the MedicalTuesday.Network and Have Your Friends Do the Same
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Read the latest medical news of the day at http://www.healthplanusa.net/MedicalNews.htm which will also lead you to the headlines for the past month.

If you would like to participate in this informational campaign on behalf of your patients or the HeathCare community, please send your resume to Personnel@MedicalTuesday.net.

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Del Meyer

Del Meyer, MD, CEO & Founder
DelMeyer@MedicalTuesday.net
www.MedicalTuesday.net
6620 Coyle Avenue, Ste 122, Carmichael, CA 95608

Words of Wisdom ---

P. J. O'Rourke: When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.
James Bovard: Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Edward Langley, Artist 1928-1995: What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. 

Recent Postings ---

Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World shows that national single-payer health care systems in countries such as Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have not delivered on the promise of a right to health care. See a brief review in progress at http://www.healthcarecom.net/JGLivesAtRisk.htm.

Voices of Medicine: To read a review of the first issue of Sacramento Medicine in 1950 go to http://www.ssvms.org/articles/0403vom.asp remembering that the first 132 years are no longer available. To read this year’s series of my column, the "Voices of Medicine," go to http://healthcarecom.net/vom2004.htm.

Charles B Clark, MD: A Piece of the Pie: What are we going to tell those bright-eyed little boys and girls who are going to be the doctors of tomorrow? When there isn’t anything left for them, are we going to tell them we didn’t fight because the changes were inevitable anyway? What are we going to say when they ask us why we laid down and died when things got a little tough? Are we going to feel good about ourselves when we tell them it’s all right because we got a piece of the pie? Read Dr Clark at http://www.healthcarecom.net/CBCPieceofPie.htm. Dr Clark has favored us with another of his editorials about sleeping with and feeding the monster that is destroying medicine. To read Feeding the Monster, go to http://www.healthcarecom.net/CBCFeedingMonster.htm. To read Dr Clark's bio, go to http://www.healthcarecom.net/OpEd.htm#CBC%20Bio.

Ada P Kahn, PhD: Foreword to "Encyclopedia of Work-Related Injuries, Illnesses and Health Issues. Dr Kahn came to Sacramento in February and I joined her on a Channel 31 interview about her book. I was privileged to write the foreword which we’ve posted at http://www.delmeyer.net/MedInfo2004.htm. To purchase the book, go to http://www.factsonfile.com/ and type in KAHN under search.

Henry Chang, MD: WEIGHT LOST FOREVER - The Five Second Guide to Permanent Weight Loss suggest daily weights to stem the weight loss before it becomes a problem and, if it does,  how to take it off and keep it off. Congratulations to Dr Chang for winning the Sacramento Publishers and Authors 2004 award for “Best Health Book of the Year.” Read our review at http://www.healthcarecom.net/bkrev_WeightLostForever.htm.

Tammy Bruce: The Death of Right and Wrong (Understanding the difference between the right and the left on our culture and values.) http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/bruce.html. Reviewed by Courtney Rosenbladt

An Alzheimer's Story: To read a touching story by a nurse about her Alzheimer's patient, go to http://www.delmeyer.net/MedInfo2003.htm and scroll down to the second story.

An Entrepreneur's Story: AriadneCapital (http://www.AriadneCapital.com) provided the initial funding for MedicalTuesday and the Global Trademarking. Julie Meyer, the CEO, has a clear vision in her mind of the world that she wants to live in, and it's considerably different from how it looks now. If you're an entrepreneurial woman, or if you lost hope or are having difficulty envisioning success (if you'll forgive a little nepotism), the following article may be of interest to you. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1237363,00.html. 

In This Date in History - September 28 ---

William the Conqueror invaded England and claimed the English throne in 1066.

Friedrich Engels, who wrote the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, and edited a considerable portion of Marx's writings, was born in Germany on this day in 1820.

President Gerald Ford was barely in office, and barely a month and a half in the White House, when Betty Ford made news in a surprising way. On this date in 1974 she had a mastectomy. She made a courageous decision to encourage the press to make it known showing a dramatic instance of confidence in medical wisdom as constructive to encourage women not only to obtain mammograms when indicated but to proceed to mastectomies if needed.
 
 

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