Health care | Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Republican death trip

August 14, 2009

Senate Finance Committee members said yesterday they would strip out of the health care discussion any mention of helping older Americans or others with terminal diseases make adequate plans with, for example, durable powers of attorney and living wills.

Newt Gingrich and others on the wackaloon right have made the topic toxic, despite it’s having been urged by Republicans, to ensure privacy and individual rights near the end of death.

And so, also, we bid farewell to morality, reason and backbone among Republicans nationally.

Two pieces you should read:

1 Comment | Accuracy, Death Panels, Debunking, Ethics, Health care, Hoaxes, Law, Leadership, Legislation, Politics | Tagged: Accuracy, Death Panels, Durable Power of Attorney, H.R. 3200, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance Reform, Hoaxes, Legislation, Living Will | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Refusing to be shouted down, on rants against health care reform

August 13, 2009

People who just know they’re right, damn the facts, irritate me; I’m allergic to unnecessary bull excrement.

Here, at The Elephant’s Child, I scratched the itch a bit.

The post from Elephant’s Child is answered, ad seriatum. (I wrote this on the fly, and I may have missed a statistic here or there; if I find errors, I’ll correct ’em.) EC’s responses are indented:

Remember that this thread starts out with your savaging a program to support child abuse prevention programs.

We will have to agree to disagree. The federal government runs the Indian Health Service which is a disgrace and a tragedy.

Private health care on the Navajo, Hopi, Pine Ridge and other major reservations is [essentially] non-existent. Yes, the IHS is inadequate by any rational standards. It’s also underfunded, and a key problem is that many enrolled members of tribes lack other health insurance.

The federal program may be a wreck, but it’s 1000% better than the private alternative, which in that case is nothing at all.

And this is what I fear: Without government intervention, Indians are left to die from easily preventable and easily treatable diseases. Without government intervention, 50 million other Americans are left to die from easily preventable and easily treatable diseases, and 150 million more have limited access.

For reasons I cannot fathom, you favor letting the people die rather than fixing things. Surely you’re not making that decision on the basis of any rational system of rationing, are you? I don’t think the poor and unemployed “deserve to die.” Talk about death panels!

They run Medicare, which is going broke from waste, fraud and abuse.

Absolutely false. Medicare has problems from rapid inflation by the private sector and other causes. But it is NOT “going broke from waste, fraud and abuse” by any measure. Compared to private health care, Medicare is purer than distilled water.

They run Medicaid, ditto.

Ditto. Medicaid has problems from overuse because too many people lack private insurance. Waste, fraud and abuse are significantly reduced from private systems.

Which leads me to wonder why you favor a system that is going broke from inflation, waste, fraud and abuse. The denialism runs strong in you.
(No — it’s going broke mainly from uncontrolled inflation — but if you can make wild unsubstantianted charges, I can at least point out that your favored position is worse.)

And they run the VA, which has some bright spots and poor care in general, at least according to vets.

And what does the private insurance system do for vets? Any injury due to war is excluded from coverage.

Again, you choose no coverage over some coverage. Whose side are you on? Not the vets’ side, it appears.

Our current health care system is the best in the world. We have better outcomes for the major diseases, and most people are satisfied with their health insurance and happy with their care.

Except for heart and lung disease, where Canada, France and England lay it all over us, on an epidemiological basis. Their systems do a lot fewer major procedures because there is much less heart disease, and problems are discovered earlier and treated much more effectively and cheaply.

Yes, the U.S. does a lot more heart transplants, easily by double. The problem is we have nearly quadruple the need for heart transplants. Heart disease is often preventable, almost always treatable, well before heart transplant time. It’s cheaper and better for the patient if we treat heart disease before it progresses to cripple the victim.

Yeah, we do more transplants. The tragedy you don’t name is that we need to do them.

We pay more for it in general because we can afford it.

Have you discussed this with small businesses? We can’t “afford” to pay double what every body else pays. These incredible expenses broke Chrysler and General Motors. The cost keeps small businesses from creating plans for employees.

Worse, that $6,000 per capita includes spending for the 50 million people excluded from easy access. We pay double for services, and we pay for a lot that we don’t get. Talk about waste!

Our system spends nearly 25% of every “health care” dollar in insurance administration, mostly designed to keep the minority of uninsured from getting care at all.

Don’t tell me we should spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bar the doctors’ offices doors, and then claim any system is more wasteful. There is no more wasteful system possible, and it’s a moral imperative that we fix it.

We pay double because the system is broken. We can’t afford it.

Medical care has been transformed in recent years with CT scans, MRIs and all sorts of new drugs and treatments that have saved and extended life. That’s expensive, but worth it.

Mostly unavailable to about half of Americans. Insurance plans pay for surgery that costs six to eight times a CAT scan, because it doesn’t like “expensive technology” without justification. If a CAT scan discovers no problem requiring surgery, insurance won’t pay. “Doctor error.” So doctors don’t use the technology as it could best be used.

But when that heart disease that could have been prevented ends up in the surgery theatre, Katy bar the doors on expenses!

The health care bill before Congress is estimated by the CBO to cost $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, and another trillion over the 2nd decade. Health care costs will increase by 8% a year while revenues increase at only 5%.

Without it, health care costs will continue to rise at nearly twice that rate, 15% annually.

Don’t look now, but the lousy bill you don’t like is better than the catastrophe you’re defending.

Yes, I did read the bill. Medicare was estimated by the CBO to cost $12 billion by 1990. By 1990, it cost $110 billion.

Why? Do you know?

Medicare was expanded because it worked so well. Plus, it turns out there was a much greater need than anyone had projected.

In 1994, health care inflation was estimated to run about 8% annually if the Clinton plan didn’t get passed. Instead it ran closer to 16%.

The problem you cite is doubled in private insurance. Don’t tell me you don’t like waste and then propose to double the waste.

Waste is waste whether it’s government-run or private business run, and it hammers costs either way. Greater waste hammers us more greatly.

Government-run health care will cost vastly more than private insurance ever cost.

That’s not so for programs in either Medicaid or Medicare, compared to comparable coverage offered by private companies. The record, in every other nation AND in the U.S., is that government-run systems are cheaper. Especially where government simply takes over the payment, and not the delivery (leaving private health care providers as private health care providers), government systems are vastly less expensive.

This is why the insurance companies started to squawk about how unfair it would be for the government to compete against them. Competition is the key to an effective free-enterprise system — we need to inject some into health care now.

Doctors will leave the profession — Some doctors have estimated that 20% of doctors will retire early.

Compared to the estimates of 30% of doctors are retiring early now, right? We’ve had a physician shortage for 40 years. Here in Texas nearly 20% of our counties have no physicians at all. There is a reauthorization for a 40-year-old program to encourage medical students to graduate and serve these populations — you called it “socialism.”

Or you didn’t know it was in the bill.

Either way, the sensible solution would be to pass the bill and get more doctors for less money to serve the underserved areas, thereby reducing the incredible expenses of health care and even greater expenses of delivering no health care to millions of Americans.

There is nothing whatsoever in the house bill that will reduce costs.

The single most important cost-saving step is to cover people who lack insurance. No program can reduce costs at all without that. That’s a key target in the bill.

The cheapest health care system is the one that delivers care appropriately, on a timely basis. We spend an inordinate amount of money in the last 6 months of patients’ lives — 50% by some estimates — because they lacked good health care that would have kept them more sentient and more ambulatory until death.

The most important thing we can do is move health care delivery from the old to the younger, from the hospital emergency room to the doctor’s office. We can only improve that if everyone has access to a doctor on a timely basis, for the delivery of simply preventive programs, for the delivery of early treatment of disease.

Government health care has failed in Massachusetts, failed in Hawaii, failed in Tennessee, failed in Oregon, and failed in Maine.
To cut costs, which the government will have to do, they will have no choice but to ration.

We ration health care now by cutting out one out of every seven people for no care at all (though we pay for it — they just don’t get it; the money goes to “insurance company administration” instead of health care delivery). We ration health care now by denying technology to most Americans. That rationing saves no money for the nation — it seems to double the cost.

In contrast, Medicare patients, in the biggest government-run program, are the single least-rationed group.

There will be rationing until we equalize access, which will require more doctors, more clinics, more nurses, less emergency room use and more doctor’s office visits. But that rationing now is draconian and cruel, based chiefly on whether one works for a company with a health plan or not.

That’s unfair and cruel. Worse, it multiplies the costs for everybody. (An enormous part of hospital charges to private insurance-covered people is to provide the pool of money for indigent care.) Multiplies, not “adds to.”

Non-fraudulent waste may be many times fraudulent waste. We need to stop it.

The first step is to cover everybody.

Both presidential health care advisers Ezekiel Emanuel MD, and Peter Orzag, his budget director,have pointed out extensively the high costs of end-of-life care and the need to cut back on those expenses.

Under the present system, yes. Emanuel’s paper in January talked about the rationing decisions made now, how unfair they are, and how they increase pain and suffering.

Damn straight we need to reduce those costs — to increase delivery of health care.

Don’t defend private rationing by pretending it doesn’t exist, or by pretending it’s more fair, when no study shows it is fair or cheap.

Pain pills for the older folks instead of hip replacements or motorized wheel chairs.

That’s what happens today, yes. Unless, of course, they’re on Medicare, the government run program. That’s why the advertising for carts for the immobile notes that the companies selling the carts will take care of Medicare paperwork.

God help you if you’re not on Medicare. Private insurance won’t.

All government-run health care programs ration care. Which they do because they will not do the things that would actually reduce the cost of health care, like tort reform, increasing free market competition, offer insurance across state lines, and offer medical savings accounts, high deductible policies.

Hold on — Medicare and Medicaid allow free market competition, offer insurance nationally (in contrast to private plans), and allow medical savings accounts (though that’s not a viable solution for the poor, unemployed, students and retired people).

Tort costs about 1% of health care — and to my view, it works well. I don’t think swimming pool companies should be able to suck the bowels out of children without paying for it.

We do have a tort problem with OB-GYN, but it is largely caused by the insurance companies’ refusal to defend good doctors. That’s not a tort reform issue.

You cite problems that exist now, problems that are subject to attack by H.R. 3200. We’re not going to get anything at all if yammering yahoos don’t stop fighting against all change.

Doing nothing is cruel and costly. If you want to make a case for adding something to H.R. 3200, make the case.

Defense of current incredible waste is not a rational, moral option.

All health care systems ration health care. Our system rations health care on income and geography, and age. Higher incomes, big-company-employed, urban locations, and higher ages get the care.

Is that smart? It’s not cheap.

I don’t think These all are proven to save costs, but the trial lawyers are second only to the Unions as financial support for Democrats.

Those figures aren’t accurate, or they demonstrate that political giving doesn’t have much effect.

Tort cases take up the slack where government regulation ends. Should we allow McDonald’s to keep burning old ladies almost to death? (I thought you were for reducing costs, no?) Unless you will allow the Ministry of Coffee Temperature to regulate every fast-food drive through, tort cases are real money savers in the long run. (It cost less than $2.00 to fix the Pinto’s gas tank so it wouldn’t explode on impact. How many lives should we have sacrificed instead? I thought you were for reducing pain and suffering.)

I know no Republican or Conservative who does not observe that Liberals want to guarantee equality of outcome.

But none of them can show anyone who actually proposes to do it, not since Lenin abandoned the idea in 1920. I know no Democrat or Liberal or Republican or Conservative who urges equality of outcome. I’ll wager you can’t name major players who do, if you can name anyone at all.

That’s the problem with a lot of Republicans and conservatives — they’re not even tilting at windmills, they’re tilting at wind. We need action to make things better.

You propose we stick with the most wasteful and inefficient health care program in the industrialized world, one guaranteed to bankrupt the nation, or collapse soon.

Better you should tilt at windmills.

It’s obvious in their legislation. All kids get vaccinated, they are required to be vaccinated before they can enter kindergarten, and help is available if they cannot afford it. Silly claim.

All kids getting vaccinated (religious exceptions honored), is a great idea, a high ideal, compassionate, money-saving and wise.

My brother had polio, and the complications killed him early. I’m partially deaf from measles, or maybe scarlet fever. I don’t think vaccinations are bad things at all. Back when we lost 1 out of 3 babies before their second birthdays to infectious disease, the nation was not better off.

Universal health coverage keeps a population healthy, learning and working. You don’t like it? Take a look at any nation where disease is rampant — like malaria in Uganda. The lack of simple preventive measures tends to cripple a nation’s economy and destabilize its government.

That’s not good.

I would challenge most of your claims, but there is no point. According to what I know to be true, you are vastly misinformed, but you probably think that of me. I simply do not have time to carry on pointless discussions.

Who was it who observed, it’s not what we don’t know, it’s what we know that isn’t true that gets us into trouble?

==========================

Don’t you be shouted down, either; Share the facts, with the system of your choice:

9 Comments | Death Panels, Health care, Hoaxes, Legislation, medicine, Politics | Tagged: Death Panels, H.R. 3200, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance Reform, Hoaxes, Medical Care, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Republicans screw up again: “Death panels” amendment was a Republican’s doing — and there’s a logical explanation

August 13, 2009

Protesters like to complain that advocates don’t know what is in the health care bill, but day by day it becomes more and more obvious that it is the critics who don’t know what the bill proposes, or why.

Washington Post policy blogger Ezra Klein tracked down who put the “death panels” clause into health care reform bills being debated by the U.S. Senate. (Yes, this demonstrates the value of the daily press, how they more thoroughly and accurately get the story than most bloggers do, or can. )

Turns out that it was a very conservative, Republican legislator from Georgia who put the amendment in the bill, for good and noble purposes.

So, all the sturm und drang about “death panels?” It demonstrates that opponents of the bill don’t care what it actually does, or how beneficial it may be. Like Napoleon at Waterloo, they think that they must win this fight at all costs, even if it brings down the nation.

Klein’s interview with Isaakson is below, in its entirety.

Is the Government Going to Euthanize your Grandmother? An Interview With Sen. Johnny Isakson.

I’ve seen the pain and suffering in families with a loved one with a traumatic brain injury or a crippling degenerative disease become incapacitated and be kept alive under very difficult circumstances when if they’d have had the chance to make the decision themself they’d have given another directive and I’ve seen the damage financially that’s been done to families and if there’s a way to prevent that by you giving advance directives it’s both for the sanity of the family and what savings the family has it’s the right decision, certainly more than turning it to the government or a trial lawyer.

U.S. Sen. Johnny Isaakson, R-Georgia - photo from Isaakson's office

Sarah Palin’s belief that the House health-care reform bill would create “death panels” might be particularly extreme, but she’s hardly the only person to wildly misunderstand the section of the bill ordering Medicare to cover voluntary end-of-life counseling sessions between doctors and their patients.

One of the foremost advocates of expanding Medicare end-of-life planning coverage is Johnny Isakson, a Republican Senator from Georgia. He co-sponsored 2007’s Medicare End-of-Life Planning Act and proposed an amendment similar to the House bill’s Section 1233 during the Senate HELP Committee’s mark-up of its health care bill. I reached Sen. Isakson at his office this afternoon. He was befuddled that this had become a question of euthanasia, termed Palin’s interpretation “nuts,” and emphasized that all 50 states currently have some legislation allowing end-of-life directives. A transcript of our conversation follows.

Is this bill going to euthanize my grandmother? What are we talking about here?

In the health-care debate mark-up, one of the things I talked about was that the most money spent on anyone is spent usually in the last 60 days of life and that’s because an individual is not in a capacity to make decisions for themselves. So rather than getting into a situation where the government makes those decisions, if everyone had an end-of-life directive or what we call in Georgia “durable power of attorney,” you could instruct at a time of sound mind and body what you want to happen in an event where you were in difficult circumstances where you’re unable to make those decisions.

This has been an issue for 35 years. All 50 states now have either durable powers of attorney or end-of-life directives and it’s to protect children or a spouse from being put into a situation where they have to make a terrible decision as well as physicians from being put into a position where they have to practice defensive medicine because of the trial lawyers. It’s just better for an individual to be able to clearly delineate what they want done in various sets of circumstances at the end of their life.

How did this become a question of euthanasia?

I have no idea. I understand — and you have to check this out — I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.

You’re saying that this is not a question of government. It’s for individuals.

It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you.

The policy here as I understand it is that Medicare would cover a counseling session with your doctor on end-of-life options.

Correct. And it’s a voluntary deal.

It seems to me we’re having trouble conducting an adult conversation about death. We pay a lot of money not to face these questions. We prefer to experience the health-care system as something that just saves you, and if it doesn’t, something has gone wrong.

Over the last three-and-a-half decades, this legislation has been passed state-by-state, in part because of the tort issue and in part because of many other things. It’s important for an individual to make those determinations while they’re of sound mind and body rather than no one making those decisions at all. But this discussion has been going on for three decades.

And the only change we’d see is that individuals would have a counseling session with their doctor?

Uh-huh. When they become eligible for Medicare.

Are there other costs? Parts of it I’m missing?

No. The problem you got is that there’s so much swirling around about health care and people are taking bits and pieces out of this. This was thoroughly debated in the Senate committee. It’s voluntary. Every state in America has an end of life directive or durable power of attorney provision. For the peace of mind of your children and your spouse as well as the comfort of knowing the government won’t make these decisions, it’s a very popular thing. Just not everybody’s aware of it.

What got you interested in this subject?

I’ve seen the pain and suffering in families with a loved one with a traumatic brain injury or a crippling degenerative disease become incapacitated and be kept alive under very difficult circumstances when if they’d have had the chance to make the decision themself they’d have given another directive and I’ve seen the damage financially that’s been done to families and if there’s a way to prevent that by you giving advance directives it’s both for the sanity of the family and what savings the family has it’s the right decision, certainly more than turning it to the government or a trial lawyer.

Update, August 14: Time’s Swampland blog notes that the the Republicans passed exactly the same language in a bill signed into law by George W. Bush in 2003, the Medicare prescription drug bill — except that bill limited application only to the terminally ill. That provision worked well in protecting the rights of patients in end-of-life scenarios, so it was determined to expand the plan. 42 Republican Senators voted for it then.

I’m sorry, did you say something? I’m having difficulty hearing you with all these hypocrickets chirping away.

Share the facts:

2 Comments | Accuracy, Death Panels, Debunking, Ethics, Health care, Hoaxes, Legislation, medicine, Politics | Tagged: Accuracy, Death Panels, Durable Power of Attorney, End-of-life decisions, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance Reform, Hoaxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Straight talk: Berenbaum on DDT and malaria

August 12, 2009

Plus, she’ll answer your questions.

But hurry.

One of the world’s great authorities on mosquitoes, May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, spends this week talking about mosquitoes and malaria, and answering your questions.

Public Radio International runs a feature this week with Dr. Berenbaum answering questions.

(Hey, Beck! Are you decent this week?)

(Steven Milloy? Got the guts to ask a real scientist a question?)

You should see these first:

The World, report on the politics of DDT and malaria in Uganda (this story actually asks and gets answers to questions about DDT use in Africa — why so many Africans oppose it, for example)
Dr. Berenbaum’s 2005 op-ed in The Washington Post, still valid

Life Cycle of Malaria, WHO and Campaign to Roll Back Malaria

You like straight talk – why not share it with others?

13 Comments | Africa, Cost of Green, DDT, Disease, Green Politics, Health care, History, Malaria, medicine, Public health, Rachel Carson, Radio, Research, Science, WHO - World Health Organization | Tagged: Africa, Berenbaum, Cost of Green, DDT, Disasters, Disease, Environmental protection, Foreign Aid, Green Politics, Health care, Malaria, medicine, Politics, Public health, Science, UIUC | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

MoveOn.org: Top 5 health care reform lies

August 11, 2009

I get e-mail from all sides — this one reflects a lot of my thinking, and came suitably footnoted:

Dear MoveOn member,

The health care fight has turned ugly, fast. Right-wing mobs are crashing congressional town halls,¹ lies are spreading via anonymous email chains,²and Sarah Palin bizarrely said that President Obama was going to set up a “death panel,” whatever that is.³

Many of these claims are just incredible—but if we don’t fight back with the truth, the right will continue to poison the health care debate. So as part of our Real Voices for Change campaign this August, we’re working to set the record straight.

Check out the list below: “Top Five Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back.” Can you spread the word by passing this email along to 10 of your friends today?

Also, if you’re on Facebook, please post the list today by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51746. If you’re on Twitter, retweet: @MoveOn Check out the Top 5 Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back. http://bit.ly/Bncs5

Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”⁴ What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.⁵

Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.⁶ Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.⁷

If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.⁸ But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.

Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.⁹ And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.

Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!

The truth: Health care reform planswill not reduce Medicare benefits.¹⁰ Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.¹¹

Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to preventbankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy.

Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.¹² The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade¹³—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.¹⁴ Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.¹⁵

We’re closer to real health care reform than we’ve ever been—and the next few weeks will decide whether it happens. We need to make sure the truth about health care reform is spread far and wide to combat right wing lies.

Can you forward this email to your friends today? And remember, also post it on Facebook by clicking here: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51746. And on Twitter, by retweeting: @MoveOn Check out the Top 5 Health Care Lies—and How to Fight Back. http://bit.ly/Bncs5

Thanks for all you do.

–Nita, Kat, Ilya, Michael and the rest of the team

P.S. Want more? Check out this great new White House “Reality Check” website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ or this excellent piece from Health Care for America Now on some of the most outrageous lies: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=1

Sources:

1. “More ‘Town Halls Gone Wild’: Angry Far Right Protesters Disrupt Events With ‘Incomprehensible’ Yelling,” Think Progress, August 4, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51733&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=2

2. “Fight the smears,” Health Care for America NOW, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51729&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=3

3. “Palin Paints Picture of ‘Obama Death Panel’ Giving Thumbs Down to Trig,” ABC News, August 7, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51728&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=4

4. “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill,” The Associated Press, August 10, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51747&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=5

5. “Stop Distorting the Truth about End of Life Care,” The Huffington Post, July 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51730&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=6

6. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 11, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#i1

7. “Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51737&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=7

8. “Obama: ‘If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Keep Your Doctor,'” The Wall Street Journal, 15, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51736&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=8

9. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#r1

10. “Obama: No reduced Medicare benefits in health care reform,” CNN, July 28, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51748&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=9

11. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#s1

12. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1

13. “Premiums Run Amok,” Center for American Progress, July 24, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51667&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=10

14. “Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies,” CNN, June 5, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51735&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=11

15. “Reality Check FAQs,” WhiteHouse.gov, accessed August 10, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/faq#c1

Sources for the Five Lies:

#1: “A euthanasia mandate,” The Washington Times, July 29, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51732&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=12

#2: “It’s Not An Option,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 15, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51743&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=13

#3: “Rationing Health Care,” The Washington Times, April 21, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51742&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=14

#4: “60 Plus Ad Is Chock Full Of Misinformation,” Media Matters for America, August 8, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51734&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=15

#5: “Obama’s ‘Public’ Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation,” The National Review, May 13, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51744&id=16778-5763840-nJFS5Ux&t=16

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Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Health care, Hoaxes, Legislation, medicine, Politics | Tagged: Accuracy, Death Panels, H.R. 3200, Health Care Reform, Hoaxes, Legislation, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Palin proposes “death panels”

August 11, 2009

Isn’t that a fair headline?

She must be proposing them — they don’t show up in the health care bill before Congress.

Update: Over at Le-gal Ins-ur-rec-tion, Cornell Law prof William A. Jacobson dug out an article by Rahm Emanuel’s brother Ezekial, a respected bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, and suggests strongly that Palin is just contributing to the the debate. In the paper (at Lancet, subscription required, but access to this paper is free because it’s so important), Dr. Emanuel and others discuss how to allocate health care resources to provide the greatest healing among many competing, worthy patients, when resources cannot be allocated to all of the worthy patients. Jacobson said:

Put together the concepts of prognosis and age, and Dr. Emanuel’s proposal reasonably could be construed as advocating the withholding of some level of medical treatment (probably not basic care, but likely expensive advanced care) to a baby born with Down Syndrome. You may not like this implication, but it is Dr. Emanuel’s implication not Palin’s.

Jacobson misses the greater point here, the part the sticks in the craw of those of us who have lived with these issues for 20 years, or 30 or 40: Dr. Emanuel’s paper discusses how to improve the current system of allocation of resources.

We aren’t debating whether to have “death panels.” The discussion is on how to make them work more equitably, and how to expand health care resources to make the need for such decisions less frequent. Palin’s point is to defend unfair death panels used often. She doesn’t know that, and Jacobson should realize that and not defend it.

Here’s the summary at Lancet:

Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system—the complete lives system—which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles.

He’s working to make the death panels more fair, more accurate, more beneficial. Palin suggests we should leave the current system in place where Palin’s death panels, though working hard, often are unfair and inaccurate, and waste resources.

In the present system, resources generally are allocated first on the basis of who has money. De facto, the system writes off to death anyone with a serious disease who is poor. “Poor” in this case doesn’t mean destitute. An annual income of $60,000 would put one into the category of “poor” I’m talking about here.

Jacobson said:

These critics, however, didn’t take the time to find out to what Palin was referring when she used the term “level of productivity in society” as being the basis for determining access to medical care. If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

I took the time to find out. I knew in advance. I’ve sat through hours of legislative hearings on this issue. In my opinion, Sarah Palin is still a carbuncle on the face of this debate. Her calling these panels “death panels” is designed to obfuscate the issues and deny the debate Jacobson says we need to have. She’s providing heat for cheap political gain, not light. She’s defending death, not life.

Shame on her. Jacobson should know better, too. I can all but guarantee that Palin didn’t read Dr. Emanuel’s paper, and didn’t consider the issues at all. I’ll wager she does not know that hospitals in her state make these decisions regularly.

Under Palin’s way, death panels already exist. Death panels make decisions on life or death every day, and the poor and uninsured are at the bottom of the scale of who gets to live, top of the list of who gets to die. Uninsured people often get shut out of the process, allocated pain and death from the start, because they lack insurance.

H.R. 3200 doesn’t do much to change this equation, the authors and legislators hoping to avoid cyanide politics like Palin plays; instead the bill encourages programs to help patients be on the “live if I want to live” side of the equation. These encouraged programs should be bread and butter to legal clinics at most law schools, by the way — great help to the poor in anticipating what to do in life-threatening emergencies. (I mention that because Jacobson is a clinical law professor — I don’t know which end of the legal clinics he works in, but he should know better anyway.)

We’ve already got the debate, and we already know that Palin’s trying to poison the well and fog up the lecturn, so that health care resources are misallocated. In reality, this leads to more unnecessary and preventable deaths.

Yes, let’s have the debate: Palin’s wrong to stand with unfair death decisions. She’s had her say, and she should be held accountable.

Agree or disagree, invite others to join the discussion:

7 Comments | Accuracy, Death Panels, Health care, Hoaxes, Legislation, medicine, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Science | Tagged: Bioethics, Death Panels, H.R. 3200, Health Insurance Reform, Hoaxes, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Sarah Palin, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Think you have health insurance? Wrong

August 7, 2009

Baseline Scenario lays out the facts: People fear government reform of health care because they think it will interfere with their own health insurance. Such people need to understand that they don’t have health insurance, and a broader government plan is the only saftey net they have to protect them from going naked against major health expenses.

Right now, it appears that the biggest barrier to health care reform is people who think that it will hurt them. According to a New York Times poll, “69 percent of respondents in the poll said they were concerned that the quality of their own care would decline if the government created a program that covers everyone.” Since most Americans currently have health insurance, they see reform as a poverty program – something that helps poor people and hurts them. If that’s what you think, then this post is for you.

You do not have health insurance. Let me repeat that. You do not have health insurance.

Just one more point in a series of misconceptions, misperceptions, and unwarranted listening to false claims about health care and legislation designed to save our tails. James Kwak and others at The Baseline Scenario do a good job explaining economics in the U.S. today. In this piece he makes the point that in terms of health care, we are all among “the poor” (save for those few of you who make more than $1 million a year and have done for the past decade).

Ask not for whom the health insurance reform bill tolls; it tolls for you.

10 Comments | Economics, Health care, Legislation, medicine, Poverty, President Obama | Tagged: Economics, H.R. 3200, Health care, Health Care Reform, Legislation, medicine, Poverty, President Obama, Recession | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Thoughts on Waterloo

August 6, 2009

Republicans and Sen. Jim Demint look forward to meeting Obama at Waterloo.

Obama Wellington at Waterloo, by Robert Alexander Hillingford

Napoleon looked forward to meeting Wellington at Waterloo, too.

It’s important to remember that at history’s great turning points, there are generally at least two sides. The British don’t celebrate the Fourth of July, either.

Be careful what you hope for, Republicans.

Leave a Comment » | Barack Obama, Famous Battles, Health care, History, History and art, Napoleon, Politics, Santayana's ghost, Turning Points | Tagged: Famous Battles, Helath Care, History, Napoleon, Obama, Politics, Santayan's Ghost, Sen. Jim Demint, Turning Points, Waterloo, Wellington | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Geographical lottery: Gambling with health care

August 4, 2009

Is it true that kids can’t get insured in Texas if their parents have two vehicles? I mean, this is Texas, the anti-mass transit state — how can you get a kid to the emergency room for the high-cost health care if you don’t have two cars, one for work, one for the family?

Children’s Defense Fund will help you contact your legislators to recommend improving health care for children.

How is the insurance weather where you are? Share the news:

1 Comment | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Government, Health care, Legislation, medicine, Politics, Public health | Tagged: children, geography, H.R. 3200, Health care, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

New Survey: Health Care Leaders Say Need for Reform Is Urgent; Broadly Support Public Health Care Option, Provider Payment Reform

August 3, 2009

Press release from the respected Commonwealth Fund, with views much to rare in blogging:

New Survey: Health Care Leaders Say Need for Reform Is Urgent; Broadly Support Public Health Care Option, Provider Payment Reform

Majority of Health Care Opinion Leaders Believe Other Key Elements of Comprehensive Health Reform Are Critical, Including a National Insurance Exchange with Standard-setting Authority

New York, N.Y., July 27, 2009—By a wide margin, health care leaders believe that individuals should have a choice of public and private health plans, and strongly support other central components of health reform such as innovative provider payment reform and a national insurance health exchange with strong standard-setting authority. In addition, two-thirds (68%) of opinion leaders feel it is urgent to enact comprehensive health care reform this year, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey.

“These results show that leaders from all the key stakeholder groups agree: comprehensive health care reform is urgently needed, to rein in costs and ensure that all Americans have access to affordable quality care,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. “Leaders also agree that offering a range of insurance options, and changing the way we pay for health care are critical steps for controlling the growth in health care spending over the next decade.”

Seven of 10 respondents to the survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, support the creation of a national health insurance exchange with the authority to enforce standards of participation by carriers, standardize benefits, set rating rules, and review or negotiate premiums. Two-thirds (65%) say that the exchange should offer a public plan that incorporates innovative payment methods, moving away from traditional fee-for-service and toward bundled payments. Half of opinion leaders (51%) support setting provider payment rates in a public insurance plan either at Medicare levels or between Medicare and commercial plan levels.

Other findings from the survey include:

Fifty-six percent of respondents believe that, in designing an individual mandate, the required benefit package should be similar to the standard BlueCross/BlueShield option offered in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program.

In considering strategies to reduce health costs, opinion leaders express substantial support for new insurance reporting requirements (78%), joint negotiation of pharmaceutical prices (72%) and provider payment rates (61%), and limits to high cost providers and overvalued services (71%).

Forty-five percent of respondents believe provider participation in the public plan should be linked to Medicare, while 43 percent believe it should not, with the strongest opposition among those working in health care delivery.

Nearly three quarters of opinion leaders (72%) support ending the two-year Medicare waiting period for the disabled.

When asked to indicate their support for a variety of approaches to financing coverage expansion, more than three-fourths of survey respondents (79%) support increasing the federal excise tax on alcohol, cigarettes, and sugar-sweetened drinks, and 77% support requiring employers to offer coverage or pay a percentage of payroll to finance coverage (pay or play).

The survey is the 19th in a series from The Commonwealth Fund, and the eleventh conducted in partnership with the publication Modern Healthcare. Commentaries on the survey results by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) appear in the July 27 issue of Modern Healthcare. The commentaries are also posted on the Fund’s Web site, http://www.commonwealthfund.org, along with a Commission data brief discussing the survey findings.

Methodology: The Commonwealth Fund/Modern HealthCare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of The Commonwealth Fund between June 8, 2009 and July 8, 2009 among 585 opinion leaders in health policy and innovators in health care delivery and finance. The final sample included 208 respondents from various industries, for a response rate of 35.6 percent. Data from this survey were not weighted. A full methodology is available in Appendix A.

The entire survey, “Health Care Opinion Leaders’ Views on Health Reform” is available here.

1 Comment | Health care, Legislation, medicine, Politics, Polling and Public Opinion, Taxes | Tagged: H.R. 3200, Health Care Reform, Legislation, Politics, Public Insurance Option, Taxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Another way to tell Republicans and opponents of health care reform have lost their minds, or their hearts, or their conscience

August 1, 2009

Republicans and opponents of health care reform make Dave Barry look like the prophet Isaiah with greatly improved accuracy. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried, as Dave Barry often says.

Included in the massive health care reform bill is some extra money to help out states and communities that have had difficulty getting effective programs going to combat child abuse. Pilot programs demonstrated that community health workers could provide a few parenting programs and dramatically reduce child abuse.

These are programs that prevent dead babies.

According to the text of H.R. 3200, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” starting on page 838 is a description of a program under which states and communities can get money to fight child abuse, if they have large populations of poor families, where child abuse is a problem, and where anti-child abuse programs need more money. That’s pretty straightforward, no? [That’s a hefty .pdf file, by the way — more than 1,000 pages.]

Parenting instruction and help can be offered, in private settings, and in homes where struggling parents need help most.

Money goes to states that want it and can demonstrate a need. Parenting help programs are purely voluntary under H.R. 3200.

Who supports child abuse? Who would not support spending some of the money in health care reform to save the saddest cases, the children who are beaten or starved or psychologically abused?

Is it not true that the prevention of child abuse would contribute to better health care for less money?

This is politics, you know. Non-thinking conservatives pull out the stops in their desire to drive the health bill to oblivion, claiming that these anti-child abuse sections are socialism, liberty-depriving, and a threat to the designated hitter rule. (I only exaggerate a little on the third point.)

This isn’t stripping liberties is it, we want someone else coming into our homes and telling us how to raise our children and live our lives.

This is right out of the Book 1984. If you had not read it I suggest it.

“Right out of 1984?” Isn’t this a violation of Godwin’s Law?

The Heritage Foundation appears to have taken a turn to radicalism, now advocating against fighting child abuse, and calling anti-child abuse programs a “stealth agenda.”

Have the Heritage Foundation, and these other people, lost their collective minds? They complain about the provisions of this bill because — this is their words:

One troublesome provision calls for a home visitation program that would bring state workers into the homes of young families to improve “the well-being, health, and development of children”.

Well, heaven forbid we should improve the well-being, health and development of children!

It is fair to conclude from this report that the Heritage Foundation does not want to prevent dead babies.

Years ago, when Father Reagan presided over the Conservative Church, one of the Heritage Foundation favorite deacons, a guy named Al Regnery, was appointed to be assistant attorney general over programs dealing with youth — juvenile delinquents, drug users, etc. His chief qualifications for the job included that he was a faithful aide to Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, and that he toed the party line on almost all issues, including shutting down federal funding for programs that might prevent juvenile delinquency, or treat it.

Republicans controlled the Judiciary Committee under Sen. Strom Thurmond, so Regnery’s confirmation was never doubted. But as if to throw gasoline in the face of advocates of anti-delinquency programs, When Regnery drove up to the Senate office buildings for his nomination hearing, his car had a generally humorous bumper sticker. “Have you hugged your kid today” showed on about 200 million of the 100 million cars in America at the time — it was a cliché. To fight the cliché, Regnery had the anti-fuzzy bumper sticker, “Have you slugged your kid today.”

When the issue hit the news, Regnery backpedalled, and said it was just a joke sticker that he probably should have taken off his car under the circumstances, but he forgot — and Regnery disavowed the bumper sticker, as humorous or anything else.

Comes 2009, we discover that the Heritage Foundation wasn’t kidding — slugging your kid is acceptable behavior to them, and creating programs to fight child abuse, is evil — to the Heritage Foundation.

Ronald Reagan would be ashamed of them. Somebody has to be ashamed — there appears to be no shame at Heritage Foundation offices.

One wouldn’t worry — surely common sense American citizens can see through these cheap deceptions — except that Heritage has a massive public relations budget, and there is a corps of willing gullibles waiting to swallow as fact any fantasy Heritage dreams up — see this discussion board on ComCast, where the discussants accept Heritage claims at face value though anyone with even a dime-store excrement detector would be wary; or see this blogger who says he won’t let the feds “take away” his liberties (to beat his children, or the children of others?); or this forum, where some naif thinks the bill will create a federal behavior czar. Glenn Beck, whose religion reveres children, can’t resist taking a cheap shot at Obama, even though doing so requires Beck to stand up for child abuse.

Beck falls into the worst category, spreading incredible falsehoods as if he understood the bill:

This doesn’t scare me! No way. Just the crazies like Winston Smith — you know, the main character from “1984.”

When did we go from being a nation that believed in hard work and picking yourself up by the bootstraps, to a nation that wants government to control everything from our light bulbs to our parenting techniques?

This bill has to be stopped.

Gee, Glenn — when did we go from a nation that thought government was for the people, as demonstrated by the Agricultural Extension Service, or the Air Traffic Control System, or the Tennessee Valley Authority, to a nation that fights to bring back Czarist Russian government in the U.S.? Stopping this bill won’t resurrect Czar Nicholas, and it will kill at least a few hundred American kids. Excuse me if I choose living American kids over fantasies of a new and oppressive monarchy.

These people are not journalists. Beck isn’t like Orwell — maybe more like Ezra Pound, in Italy. These people are not commentators, or columnists. These people are not editorial writers. They are not, most of them, lobbyists who give out information for money, having sold their souls away from the angels of serious public discourse.

They are crass propagandists. They should be regarded more like the guy Tom Lehrer warned us about, the old dope peddler in the park, who always has just a little bit of poison for the kids or anyone else. (“Don’t worry; you won’t get hooked.”)

How many other provisions of the health reform act are being distorted by conservatives in a desperate attempt to keep President Obama from “looking good,” despite the costs to America’s children and families?

These attacks on the health reform bill fall out of the category of robust discussion. They disgrace our polity, and they erode the dignity of our democratic system.

Please share the information on this bill:

Below the fold: An example of the type of program Beck and Heritage call socialism, 1984-ish, and dangerous.

Read the rest of this entry »

142 Comments | children, Civil Rights, Education, Ethics, Government, Health care, History, Law, Life, medicine, Paranoia, Politics, Poverty, President Obama, Public health, Rampant stupidity, Scams, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, War on Education, War on the Constitution | Tagged: 1984, America's Affordable Health Choices Act, Child Abuse, Glenn Beck, Government, Health Care Reform, Heritage Foundation, Law, President Obama, Propaganda, Section 440, Socialism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The article the British Chiropractic Association hopes you will not read

July 31, 2009

Science-based Medicine carried this article yesterday, and several other blogs have joined in. Below is the article Simon Singh wrote for which he is being sued for libel by the professional association for British chiropractors. It’s a good cause, so I’ll stretch it another little while.

Science-based Medicine introduced the article with this:

Last year Simon Singh wrote a piece for the Guardian that was critical of the modern practice of chiropractic. The core of his complaint was that chiropractors provide services and make claims that are not adequately backed by evidence – they are not evidence-based practitioners. In response to his criticism the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) sued Simon personally for libel. They refused offers to publish a rebuttal to his criticism, or to provide the evidence Simon said was lacking. After they were further criticized for this, the BCA eventually produced an anemic list of studies purported to support the questionable treatments, but really just demonstrating the truth of Simon’s criticism (as I discuss at length here).

In England suing for libel is an effective strategy for silencing critics. The burden of proof is on the one accused (guilty until proven innnocent) and the costs are ruinous. Simon has persisted, however, at great personal expense.

This is an issue of vital importance to science-based medicine. A very necessary feature of science is public debate and criticism – absolute transparency.This is also not an isolated incident. Some in the alternative medicine community are attempting to assert that criticism is unprofessional, and they have used accusations of both unprofessionalism and libel as a method of silencing criticism of their claims and practices. This has happened to David Colquhoun and Ben Goldacre, and others less prominent but who have communicated to me directly attempts at silencing their criticism.

This behavior is intolerable and is itself unprofessional, an assault on academic freedom and free speech, and anathema to science as science is dependent upon open and vigorous critical debate.

What those who will attempt to silence their critics through this type of bullying must understand is that such attempts will only result in the magnification of the criticism by several orders of magnitude. That is why we are reproducing Simon Singh’s original article (with a couple of minor alterations) on this site and many others. Enjoy.

Here it is:

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal

Simon Singh
The Guardian, Original version published Saturday April 19 2008
Edited version published July 29, 2009

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

—
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Other venues:

Related material:

2 Comments | Academic freedom, Accuracy, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Freedom of the Press, Health care, History, Journalism, Junk science, Jurisprudence, Justice, knowledge, Law, medicine, Science, Weblogs, Woo | Tagged: British Chiropractic Association, British Law, Chiropractic, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Journalism, Junk science, libel, Science, Voodoo science, Woo | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Newsmax turns to medical quackery?

July 30, 2009

You are surprised that Newsmax would engage in medical quackery? They make their money engaged in news quackery, they are principal exponents of political quackery, they practice history quackery, they support science quackery in schools — is this a trend yet?

FDA, FTC, where are you?

To the extent this is not quackery, it’s known, published material your physician has access to and can advise you on. To the extent this is not known, published material, it’s quackery. Where the information is good, it should be a violation of journalistic ethics to package this as somehow secret, unknown or suppressed by the medical establishment and news organizations — and available to you alone, if you only pay the fat fee demanded. Where the information is suppressed, it is suppressed because it is dangerous to patients — the real problem with quackery.

Do not ever think that Newsmax is engaged in news, after this.

Here’s the e-mail text Newsmax sent out today — the only thing missing is their actually calling this stuff “snake oil”:

Dear Newsmax Reader:

David Brownstein, M.D., one of the foremost American practitioners of conventional as well as holistic medicine, has some urgent health information that could dramatically affect your health and well-being. Please take a moment to read his information below.

Newsmax.com

How to Prevent Arthritis, Cancer and Alzheimer’s!

Try this simple remedy for rheumatoid arthritis!

Use this mineral to protect against skin cancer!

See what to do now to prevent multiple sclerosis,
Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s!

Plus, why a deficiency in this nutrient puts you at greater risk for heart attack and stroke!

Dear Friend,

Today I’ve got important news for you on preventing heart disease, stroke, skin cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s . . .

I’ve got an update on which vitamins (in addition to calcium) can strengthen your bones and fight osteoporosis . . .

I’ve got a simple, inexpensive, and almost entirely overlooked remedy for rheumatoid arthritis . . .

Plus, the risks of diuretic drugs, the importance of detox, and why most people are dehydrated and don’t know it!

Hi, I’m Dr. David Brownstein, editor of Natural Way to Health, the newsletter for folks looking for real solutions, not more drugs with harsh side effects.

In one moment, I’ll show you how to get a FREE copy of my latest report, “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health,” covering all the topics above . . .

Plus, full access to all of my previous reports, including the two most popular ones, “The Biggest Fraud In Medicine: Cholesterol Leads to Heart Disease” and “How To Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally.”

But first, let’s look at how I successfully treated one of my patients for rheumatoid arthritis, and also how to safeguard against multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Crippled by Arthritis But Now
Up and Out of the Wheelchair

My patient Susan had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for 20 years. Her hands were swollen and deformed. Harsh drugs were robbing her of energy. And her painful joints had forced her into a wheelchair.

Susan had tried many conventional treatments, including taking large amounts of the steroid drug Prednisone, but nothing much helped.

“I really did not know what to do,” she told me. “My rheumatologist had nothing good to offer me . . . just one toxic medication after another that I could not tolerate.”

The conventional treatment for rheumatoid arthritis is anti-inflammatory agents such as Naprosyn, Motrin, and Voltaren. But as the disease progresses, conventional doctors prescribe harsh drugs such as methotrexate and Plaquenil.

Unfortunately, these immune-suppressing drugs have bad side effects, including depressed bone marrow function, low white blood cell count, low platelet counts, anemia and loss of energy.

Newer drugs like Enbrel and Remicade are no better . . .

They block a protein the body produces as part of the inflammatory response. But blocking this protein for any length of time increases your risk of life-threatening infections and even cancer.

A Safer and More Effective Course . . .

The first thing I told Susan is I wanted to test her for a bacteria that has been associated with rheumatoid arthritis since 1938 (see your FREE report for details).

Sadly, most physicians, even specialists, never bother to test for this bacteria because conventional medicine focuses myopically on expensive drugs that treat only symptoms (see why just ahead).

When I told Susan that her test came back positive for this bacteria, and that I could prescribe an inexpensive antibiotic to treat it, she was overwhelmed . . .

“I began crying when I found out that I was positive,” she said. “It was the first time that I could connect the dots on why I have rheumatoid arthritis.”

In your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health,” you’ll get the name of this bacteria (so you can ask your doctor for the test), as well as the name of the antibiotic (and dosage) I prescribed that has proved successful in treating it.

Next, I also addressed Susan’s diet because she was making her arthritis worse by eating refined foods and sugars.

Most people don’t realize how devastating sugar is to their bodies and how it leads to serious problems such as arthritis, arrythmia, arteriosclerosis, edema, and Type 2 diabetes (see your FREE report for details).

How’s My Patient Doing Today?

Within four weeks, Susan began to feel significantly better. After eight weeks, we began to wean her off the anti-inflammatory and steroid medicines.

And the best news of all: On her last visit, she told me, “Now I feel I can get out of the wheelchair.” That’s exactly what she’s doing and today she’s in therapy to strengthen her leg muscles!

You’ll get Susan’s full case study in your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health.” And I hope you’ll share it with everyone you know who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis.

But why didn’t Susan’s rheumatologist test her for the bacteria? And why didn’t he discuss nutritional alternatives that would’ve helped her?

What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know Can Hurt You

I’m sorry to report that conventional doctors have no knowledge of — and thus very little interest in — natural therapies. And that’s because “health and nutrition” are NOT taught in medical school.

What is taught there? The two Ds: Disease and Drugs.

Physicians are trained to diagnose illness and disease, and then to prescribe the approved drug (or drugs) that will treat that illness or disease. People are often surprised to learn this but . . .

The emphasis is on disease, not health. And on drugs, not nutrition. Nothing is taught about how to achieve optimal health or prevent disease.

How did we get such a narrow-minded medical system in America? In the early days of medicine here, drug makers formed an alliance (some say an unholy one) with the newly founded American Medical Association.

The drugmakers provided education (on drug use) to AMA-affiliated doctors and also helped this fledgling organization win out over its competitors to become the dominant force in American medicine.

In return, the AMA endorses Big Pharma’s drugs and teaches drug therapy in their schools (generally disparaging other therapies).

Don’t get me wrong: Drugs play an important role in medical treatment, and there are times when they literally save your life . . .

But they are not the best solution for every problem. And drugs that do more harm than good should never be promoted in favor of natural therapies that are both safer and more effective.

And yet that’s exactly what happens every single day because of this unholy alliance between the AMA and Big Pharma.

But you don’t have to be victimized by this narrow-minded approach even one day longer. I believe . . .

You deserve to know how to really prevent heart disease, cancer, fatigue, diabetes, arthritis, weight gain and many more health problems!

You’ll discover several of them today, but before we return to these subjects, let me just say . . .

I’m going to extend a special offer to try my Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day. That’s not a misprint — I really mean 14 cents a day!

Each month in Natural Way to Health I routinely . . .

Expose the hidden dangers in common foods and medicines . . .

Reveal the truth about conflicting medical reports in the press . . .

Offer safer and healthier alternatives to harsh drugs . . .

Give easy tips for preventing disease and feeling your best!

And by signing on today . . . you’ll not only get 12 monthly issues of Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day but also gain access to all of my previous health reports, plus receive FREE copies of my three most popular health books, just go here now.

But first, let’s get back to the important remedies in today’s report . . .

Today’s Epidemic of Dehydration

This one will surprise you . . .

Today, the majority of people are going through their lives in a constant state of dehydration. And that’s putting them at greater risk for several serious diseases . . .

Heart disease . . . Stroke . . . Multiple Sclerosis . . . Parkinson’s . . . Alzheimer’s are all linked to a sustained state of dehydration. Let’s find out why.

Your body is 75 percent water. Your brain is 80 percent water. Because of your body’s high water composition, you need sufficient water intake to achieve optimal function at the cellular level.

In my own practice, I’ve found that every patient suffering a chronic illness also was dehydrated. Every single one! Can this be a coincidence? No.

We are all creatures of habits, and we’ve developed some bad ones over the years.

Typically, when I ask new patients how much water they drink a day, they tell me they don’t drink much pure water, but they do drink plenty of coffee, soda pop, juice, and even beer, so they’re sure they’re getting enough.

No, they are not! Coffee, soda pop, juice, and alcoholic beverages are all dehydrating. If you’re drinking them, you need even more water!

Caffeine, especially, is a potent diuretic, forcing the body to expel water. It’ll also over-stimulate your adrenal hormones, exacerbate hormonal irregularities, and weaken your immune system.

Are you also fatigued? See your FREE REPORT to find out why!

Of course the sugar in soda pop, in juices, and in alcoholic beverages causes dehydration. And that holds true for what you may think of as healthy fruit juice.

Check the sugar content on that carton of orange juice in your refrigerator; you’ll see it’s got more sugar in it than the ice cream in your freezer.

Another problem with sugar is that it leads to a number of degenerative diseases, including heart disease, kidney disease, osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes, and even cancer.

Did you know that cancer cells thrive on sugar? See your FREE report.

How about diet sodas? Worse yet. The sweeteners NutraSweet and Splenda have their own bad side effects that can lead to serious health problems (see your FREE REPORT for details).

Okay. How much water should you drink a day?

In your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health” I’ll give you a simple formula that’ll tell you exactly how much water to drink based on your weight, and also what kind of water to drink.

Yes, you can have other beverages, but get your water first. And here’s why it’s vitally important . . .

Dehydration, Toxic Buildup, and Disease

Remember, your brain is 80 percent water. It needs sufficient water to bring nutrients in, and it needs sufficient water to flush toxins out. Neurological disorders such as . . .

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis are occurring at epidemic to pandemic rates today for a reason . . .

Widespread dehydration is causing a buildup and concentration of toxins in the brain, and this problem worsens over time.

Remember, we are bombarded every day with poisonous lead, mercury, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, and bromine. These toxins are in our food, air, water, and thousands of consumer products, even in medicines!

Your first line of defense is the work your liver and kidney do to remove these toxins. But they can’t do their jobs without an abundance of water. Water makes detox possible.

And if you’re not getting enough water (most people aren’t), toxins will build up over time and become concentrated in your tissue and organs. That’s how disease gets started.

See your FREE report, “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health” for complete details on the link between dehydration and neurological disorders — just go here now.

The Link Between Heart Health and Water

Few people know that dehydration is also an independent risk factor for heart disease, and one that is far more critical than “elevated cholesterol.”

Dehydration promotes thicker blood. And thick, sticky blood is more prone to plaque buildup and eventual clotting that can cause heart attack and stroke.

For more than 30 years, heart disease has been the No. 1 killer in America, and we’ve made very little progress against it. Why? Because we do not treat the underlying causes of heart disease.

The culprit is not “elevated cholesterol.” And if you’re taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, you’re wasting your time. You’d be far better off just drinking more water.

But there’s more you can do . . .

Be sure to read my two most popular reports — “The Biggest Fraud in Medicine: Cholesterol Leads to Heart Disease,” plus “How to Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally” (details on getting FREE copies just ahead).

But look here . . .

In your FREE copy of “A Simple Way to Radically Improve Your Health,” I’m going to show you the startling results of a six-year study in Vienna that compared the amount of water intake to the incidence of heart attack and fatal stroke. After you see these results, you’ll know how much water to drink and why.

Want to know more about these and many more important health issues?

Try Natural Way to Health
For Just 14 Cents a Day

Each month in my advisory letter, Natural Way To Health, I report on the most important issues regarding your family’s health, sorting out what’s really useful to you, even life-saving, and also what’s harmful and sometimes life-threatening.

I don’t take anything away from what’s good about conventional medicine — and much is good. But . . .

Those who practice conventional medicine want to make drugs the solution to every problem, even when those drugs are harmful and ineffective. And again, that’s because of the unholy alliance between Big Pharma and the AMA.

You should know that, in many cases, there are safer, gentler, and more effective natural solutions. And you will know once you start reading Natural Way to Health each month.

Yes, I went to medical school and received the conventional training, but I’ve also spent the last 17 years studying holistic medicine.

Today at my clinic, The Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield Michigan, I’m integrating the best of conventional medicine with safe and natural therapies that in many cases work even better.

I’d like to share these good results with you. And that’s why I’m extending this special offer to try Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day. It’s a great time to join us because . . .

Today’s offer includes 12 monthly issues, three of my most popular books FREE (see titles just ahead), full access to all of my previous reports (titles to follow), plus a FREE copy of today’s report . . .

A Simple Way to Radically
Improve Your Health

Discover the bacteria associated with rheumatoid arthritis and the inexpensive antibiotic that kills it!

See which foods are anathema for arthritis sufferers and why!

Find out why most people are dehydrated and don’t know it!

See why multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s are on the rise, and the simple way to protect yourself!

Find out why a deficiency in this nutrient dramatically increases your risk of heart attack and stroke!

Also in Your FREE Report . . .

See a study showing how a Vitamin B-6 deficiency increases your risk for colon cancer!

See why high doses of both types of Vitamin K should be included in every osteoporosis treatment plan!

Discover which mineral produced a 57 percent decrease in skin cancer in an eight-year Australian study!

Find out the risks of diuretic drugs, plus how you may be able to get off of them by following a different plan!

See how age-related macular degeneration can be avoided by adopting a healthier diet!

There’s more in your FREE copy of “Simple Nutrients and Foods That Can Save Your Life,” too. And don’t forget when you take advantage of my 14-cents-a-day subscription offer today, you’ll gain full access to all of my previous reports, including:

Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally

The Biggest Fraud in Medicine: Cholesterol Leads to Heart Disease

A Safe Effective Vitamin (B-12) That Can Change Your Life

Hidden Dangers of Popular Stomach-Acid Drugs

Big Pharma’s Big Lie About Osteoporosis and Aging

Simple Nutrients and Foods That Can Save Your Life

As a valued Newsmax customer, I don’t want you to get tainted health news, bad advice, or to be strictly limited to drug-based conventional medicine when safer, gentler, and more effective natural therapies are available!

Once you start receiving Natural Way to Health each month, you’ll get the valuable information you need to make smart healthcare, nutrition, and lifestyle choices for yourself and every family member. Now look here . . .

Special Reports and 3 Valuable Books FREE!

Today, you can get a one-year subscription (12 issues) to Natural Way to Health for just 14 cents a day. And your no-risk subscription includes the valuable report we’ve been discussing today, access to all of my previous reports, plus three of my most popular books, ALL FREE!

With your one-year subscription, you’ll receive THREE FREE BOOKS worth $60.00!

You’ll not only get Dr. Brownstein’s newsletter and current issue “Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally” . . .

You’ll also receive three of Dr. Brownstein’s most popular books — Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do, The Guide to a Gluten-Free Diet, and The Miracle of Natural Hormones (each one a $20 value).

In fact, we’ll even pay the postage for you!

No kidding . . .

You’ve already seen some of the health answers you’ll find in Dr. Brownstein’s issue “Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally.”

But you haven’t seen anything yet.

Just look at all the additional information you’ll read about in your three FREE books . . .

FREE BOOK #1
Drugs That Don’t Work and
Natural Therapies That Do

In Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do, you’ll see why some of the most commonly prescribed drugs today may be harmful to your health . . . and why you should consider natural therapies in your treatment program for these six common obstacles to wellness:

Elevated cholesterol levels — Discover how you can lower your cholesterol
naturally . . .

Osteoporosis or brittle bones — See how to maintain healthy bones without inflammation-causing drugs like Fosomax® and Boniva® . . .

Stomach problems such as heartburn, reflux, and ulcers — See why you should use antacids only as a last resort. (Plus, holistic steps you can take to treat common digestive complaints) . . .

Depression — Discover how to raise your serotonin levels through diet and amino acid supplementation, the natural antidepressant treatment . . .

Inflammation — Hear about numerous simple and natural alternatives you can use to relieve the pain, stiffness, and other symptoms of arthritis . . .

Imbalanced hormonal system — Find out how to balance your hormonal system safely to improve your well-being, slow your aging process, and even reverse many chronic conditions . . .

FREE BOOK #2 —
The Guide to a Gluten-Free Diet

In The Guide to a Gluten-Free Diet, Dr. Brownstein will show you why ingesting gluten from wheat, barley, rye, and other grains could be detrimental to your health.

In fact, one in six people suffers from a serious illness that has a safe, effective, and inexpensive remedy: avoiding gluten.

In this eye-opening book, you’ll see:

How gluten sensitivity is not being diagnosed properly in nearly 97% of patients suffering from chronic illnesses . . .

Why gluten sensitivity may be responsible for such diseases as cancer, depression, obesity, ADD, autoimmune disorders, acid reflux, thyroid disorders, osteoporosis, and many others . . .

What you can eat — and still be gluten-free . . .

How to determine whether you or a loved one might be sensitive to gluten . . .

Simple strategies to transition to a gluten-free lifestyle . . .

Gluten-free meal and snack ideas, tips, and recipes to get you started . . .

And much more . . .

FREE BOOK #3 —
The Miracle of Natural Hormones

In your third free book, The Miracle of Natural Hormones, Dr. Brownstein describes the natural hormones he uses in his own clinical practice — and shares over 50 case histories of the amazing medical successes he’s witnessed in his own patients.

Look at the valuable health tidbits you’ll find between the pages of The Miracle of Natural Hormones:

10 chronic health conditions dramatically improved with natural hormone therapy — some even cured for good . . .

How your risk for pulmonary embolism skyrockets to more than 2,100% with these synthetic hormones . . .

The No. 1 reason conventional doctors don’t prescribe natural hormones (it has nothing to do with your health at all) . . .

A deficiency of this one powerful hormone can short-circuit your whole endocrine system . . .

Two natural remedies for the relief of menopausal symptoms — you’ll be surprised by how simple they are . . .

Who knew this natural male hormone could benefit women, too?

Plus much, much more . . .

All three of these easy-reading books (a $60 value) are yours FREE with your one-year subscription to Dr. David Brownstein’s Natural Way to Health.

And just so you know, this is a limited time offer — and only available to those who order from this special letter, so claim yours today!

I Don’t Want to Miss Out On My Three Free Books — Sign Me Up Now!

But along with the savings and book bonuses, our Newsmax guarantee should help make your decision a little easier, because . . .

You’re Covered by Our ‘No-Questions-Asked,’
Money-Back Guarantee . . .

I want you to take your time — read your brand-new Dr. Brownstein’s Natural Way to Health at your own pace. (Remember: You can have it delivered right to your home in print form or as a convenient digital download; your choice.)

Absorb what you learn to help yourself and those you care about. If you’re not completely wowed by all the health-saving information you receive in every report, just let Newsmax know within the first 90 days.

Every penny you invested will be refunded, no questions asked. (After 90 days, you’ll still qualify for a pro-rated refund of any unused portion of your subscription.)

Whatever you decide, you can keep the 3 Free Books you received with our thanks, just for giving the newsletter a fair try. How’s that for a deal?

What could be easier?

You have absolutely nothing to lose by saying ‘yes’ to your trial subscription to Dr. Brownstein’s Natural Way to Health newsletter. In fact, when you come right down to it, you just might be making money on this deal!

So, come on — sign-up today.

You know, your health is all you really have in this life. And if you don’t take care of it — nothing else is possible.

And if you’ve read this far, I’m sure you take your health very seriously — and want to do whatever you can to live your best life possible.

Go ahead, you have everything to gain by taking advantage of this limited-time offer.

To Your Lasting Health,

Christopher Ruddy
Newsmax CEO

P.S. There’s nothing more valuable than knowing the truth when it comes to your health. Make the decision right now to take charge of your health by claiming your report, Stop Heart Disease In Its Tracks, Naturally, full of critical, life-altering information you don’t dare miss.

You’ll also get your own free copies of Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do, The Guide to a Gluten-Free Diet, and The Miracle of Natural Hormones ($60 value) with your one-year no-risk trial of Dr. Brownstein’s new newsletter — a Newsmax exclusive. Don’t wait — Subscribe today!

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53 Comments | Business Ethics, cancer, Health care, Journalism, medicine, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Warning: Universal coverage will save lives, money and pain

July 22, 2009

Utah Savage tells the story:

My friend Z is doing amazingly well, considering. She is complying with her oncologists. But now that the radiation is burning her throat, and the chemo is making her queazy, the doctors are prescribing drugs that will alleaviate these problems. But Z doesn’t believe in Western medicine and when it came time to sign up for Medicare she assumed that she would never get sick enough to ever need the part A, B and D of Medicare coverage. Now she needs them all and the enrollment period won’t come around again until November. It is part D that would have paid for her drugs. It is part D that would make a drug that costs $150 at most $3.50. I audibly gasped when she told me that she didn’t have part D. I couldn’t help myself. I said, “But you need part D.” She was furious and shouted, “Don’t tell me what I should have done. That doesn’t help me now.” And of course she’s right. Now that it’s too late, it doesn’t help to tell her what she should have done.

If you’re healthy, you never think you’re going to need insurance and prescription drug coverage. And if you’re young you never think your going to get ill. But everyone needs insurance. That is why the healthcare debate is so terribly important. We need a public option. Please call your Congressional Representative and lobby for a public option for healthcare. We need you healthy. We need you paying attention to the issues that will make a difference in all our lives.

We are not allowed to drive a car without insurance and we don’t think twice about that. But we are so careless when it comes to insurance for our own health. It should be mandatory that everyone is covered with health insurance.

Does your mileage differ? Tell us in comments.

5 Comments | Citizenship, Health care, medicine, Politics | Tagged: cancer, Health care, Health Insurance, Medicare Part D, Politics, Universal Health Coverage | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Probably not the way to get a good reputation among scientists

July 19, 2009

Tensions between science and religion, and science and business, continue to drag down Texas’s hopes to be known as a major research location.

A hard look shows it’s not just the Deliverance-style local politics at the State Board of Education on science standards. Texas has trouble in a lot of areas.

For example, imagine a hurricane wiped out the town where one of the state’s major medical schools resides, and in the aftermath, rather than working to preserve the jobs of professors who agree to come back to the damaged buildings and storm-wracked town, the university uses the troubles as an excuse to get rid of faculty — not bad faculty, necessarily, just faculty the administration doesn’t like, or doesn’t know, or just for the heck of it.

This ain’t no way to run a medical school.

The rolling disaster that hit the Universityof Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, starting with Hurricane Ike, continued through unexpected layoffs of faculty on top of the 3,000 people laid off due to storm damage. The layoffs were unjustified, too, many thought, and so they appealed. The appeals process seems to have offered only a semblance of justice, to many of those involved, according to an article in The Scientist (free subscription required).

The story hasn’t got much traction in Texas media.

4 Comments | Health care, Higher education, History, Labor and unions, medicine, Science, Texas, Texas Lege | Tagged: Appeals, Faculty, Firings, Health care, labor, Layoffs, Medical School, medicine, Science, Texas, Universityof Texas Medical Branch Galveston | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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Is the Government Going to Euthanize your Grandmother? An Interview With Sen. Johnny Isakson.

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New Survey: Health Care Leaders Say Need for Reform Is Urgent; Broadly Support Public Health Care Option, Provider Payment Reform

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How to Prevent Arthritis, Cancer and Alzheimer’s!

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