The Medical Freedom Channel

I’ve reached the point where filling this space every week is not only a burden, but an impossibility! Either I have no good ideas, or I have so many I can’t choose among them … or I just don’t get the juice and the time to do them justice …

So for the time being I’m going to use this spot for those Editor’s Notes I keep trying to shoehorn into a few words in each daily posting. I can be a bit less brief, and I can keep this space moving along; a win-win situation.

First off, the Commentaries:

FRIDAY:

Principle determines course of healthcare
Tennessean - Richard Cowart

This is a fairly well considered thinkpiece, from a writer identified as “chairman of the health law and public policy departments of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz and a past president of the American Health Lawyers Association.” It directly addresses the question of how we might balance the alleged desire to take care of everyone else around us, with the reality of taxes as the revenue-source for such largess. The only real problem is how blithely he steps over the fact that a “desire to help” should come from one’s own charitable sentiments and resources — NOT at the expense of others against their will. He does admit, however, that even in his worldview of coercion, pragma overcomes philanthropy: “The ultimate lesson learned from TennCare is that we cannot afford, as taxpayers, to do all we want to do as admirable citizens.”

http://tinyurl.com/6j8src

=====

2. The Florida revelation …
Wall Street Journal - staff

This could bear watching, since it attempts to de-governmentize the concept … Similar notice could be given to New Jersey, which is attempting to knock down the state barriers for those seeking “coverage.” The possibility now that one or more states might lower their list of mandated services, then allow even outsiders to buy such streamlined policies from companies operating there, could bode well in the healthcare reform process.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121201589150427551.html

===== News

1. Tamiflu linked to convulsions, delirium & deaths - Natural News

So now we are finding that a Big Pharma drug, developed to combat an illness that has yet to be proven to exist among humans (except via DIRECT physical contact with diseased Asian birds?) … turns out not only to not prevent such an illness, but be dangerous and even lethal to those who ingest it … Hmm … why am I not surprised?

“An FDA advisory panel has recommended stronger warnings on two influenza drugs after reviewing evidence linking them to neurological and psychiatric problems that have led to deaths in some cases. The current warning on Roche Laboratories’ Tamiflu (generic name oseltamivir) urges close monitoring of flu patients, particularly children, for ‘increased risk of self injury and confusion shortly after taking Tamiflu.’”

http://www.naturalnews.com/023324.html

=====

2. Oops! Did I remember to take my pill? - Boston Globe

As has been noted numerous times in this space, contraception should be a major focus of our pharmaceutical labs: With safe, simple, easily reversible and 100% effective contraception (coupled with an attitude that affirms the right to experience and share peaceful and voluntary pleasure among adults, instead of condemning “licentious behavior”) we could virtually eliminate the entire abortion issue from our discussions, and focus on wellness, prevention and affordable necessary healthcare.

http://tinyurl.com/49rben

THURSDAY:

1. $1.85 fee to see a doctor? Some say it’s too much
New York Times - Nicholas Kulish

“In the Czech Republic, you can now see a doctor for about $1.85. A day in the hospital can verge on $4. This is not cause for celebration. A patient at Motol Hospital. A day in a Czech hospital costs about $4. Many Czechs see free care as a matter of principle. For Czechs, who visit their doctors more often than anyone else in Europe, it has led to great outrage. In fact, the idea of charging anything at all for healthcare can generate significant controversy, not to mention abrupt about-faces in policy, here and in other Central European countries. In Hungary, healthcare fees were resoundingly defeated in a nationwide referendum in March, which resulted in the firing of the health minister.”

Hard to know where to start on this one, or which of several agendas the Times could be pushing here. Are they cautioning against the abuse of the healthcare system here? Are they merely showing how much worse it COULD be? The piece really doesn’t take either stance; I’ll let you judge by reading it:

http://tinyurl.com/6hfa7y

=====

2. More insurance will not solve healthcare woes
Providence [RI] Journal - Deborah Burger

“You can tell how far off track the discussion on healthcare reform has gone when the idea of forcing everyone to buy corporate health insurance is sold as ‘universal healthcare.’ That has been the crux of the debate between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over what is called individual mandates. She’s for it, he’s against it. Compelling people to pay private insurance premiums is not ‘universal healthcare.’ Especially when you let those insurers continue to charge as much as they want and do nothing to stop the all too routine practice of denying medical treatment or blocking access to specialists or diagnostic tests because the company doesn’t want to spend the money.”

Here’s a seemingly MSM piece, actually written by “Deborah Burger, a registered nurse, is a member of the Council of Presidents of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.” And by her organizational ties, one can tell she is in favor of nationalized healthcare. HOWEVER, she is very effective here in breaking the “insurance” aspect out of the equation, and addressing the issue of affordable access — That alone makes it relevant to this blog.

http://tinyurl.com/6zmssz

And so to the News:

1. AZ: “Dramatic results” for experimental cancer drug - Arizona Republic

This one touts a new drug being teated for certain cancers: GDC-0449. An interesting story, depending on what else it does to the human body. But this one purports to harness “basal-cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. Typically caused by sun exposure, basal cell affects about 1 million Americans annually. Most are treated successfully with minor surgery. But for a few patients, like Coffman, the cancer cells run amok, targeting other organs, until the patient dies.”

The acknowledgement that most such cases occur due to behavioral actions (sun exposure, in this case) is most welcome. How about shifting the focus to stopping the cause instead of trying to manufacture a cure?

http://tinyurl.com/3gxt53

=====

2. CA: Health Net paid workers bonuses to cancel policies
Natural News

“Health insurance company Health Net Inc. rewarded employees for finding ways to drop customer policies and not pay for their medical expenses, according to an investigation by the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC). Since 2005, the DMHC has been investigating five of the seven insurance companies that provide health care plans to individuals in California. The department is attempting to crack down on the practice among insurers of dropping people’s coverage based on often accidental errors in their enrollment applications. In many cases, people’s policies have been dropped after they submitted medical claims.”

If this were an isolated example of one little insurance company having some self-destructive and homicidal wackos in charge of bean counting … it would be tragic, but trivial for most of us. Since it is far more likely that this is an actual policy decision from among those in a rather sizable segment of that industry (at very least, in the nation’s largest state?) … we need to be very aware of the problem. While “tort reform” may be part of the picture of digging our way out of this mess, a redefinition of “insurance” is clearly a larger one!

http://www.naturalnews.com/023313.html

=====

WEDS. EDITION

COMMENTARIES:

1. The real medical malpractice problem: Medical malpractice
The American Prospect - Ezra Klein

So nice to see someone making the real point about this instead of the conservative/neocon’s “tort reform” euphemism. There ARE incompetent and uncaring people out there who happen to be doctors, and the AMA’s refusal to “police its own” has led to the “need” for malpractice insurance. Sure there are some folks out there who use their status as “patients” to abuse the system and use the OTHER largest trade union to wage legalistic battles; but there are also some egregious things done by SOME physicians that deserve lawsuits and huge judgments. Sorting out the process, by acknowledging these horrors (with an AMA that seeks to speed justice, and take these creeps off their accredited rolls), would go a long way to making “tort reform” mostly unnecessary.

=====

2. Where have all the doctors gone?
Boston Globe - Joseph B. Martin

“The question of whether there are enough doctors to care for patients” (as he puts it) has as much to do with how we “need” to have certified and licensed physicians at our beck and call.

Martin (who as the article notes is “professor of neurobiology and former dean of Harvard Medical School [and] chairman of the New England Healthcare Institute,” says nothing in this piece about nurse practitioners, therapists of all sorts, alternative healers or anything else besides his precious AMA fellow-unionites. He also overlooks a focus on wellness and self-responsibility, which if properly encouraged might make this “doctor shortage” the joke that it is.

Martin also says, “with an aging population there will be an increasing demand for geriatric medicine as well.” The question to be asked is, as those same “elderly” realize they are capable of eliminating the need for chronic care and constant attendance, just by changing their lifestyles.

He does touch on one valid point, however: “This debate needs to move beyond the issue of access and coverage to how the delivery system can be restructured to provide the best healthcare possible at an affordable cost.”

===== And now for the News:

1. Child obesity epidemic seen leveling off - MSNBC

So now that we’ve been bombarded with the propaganda about the obesity epidemic (which despite the claims of “a 25-year increase” has only been a newsworthy item for the about the last 3-5 years), we get to find out that “The percentage of American children who are overweight or obese appears to have leveled off … according to new figures” …

Of course the proponents of the theory are quick to see it as “a statistical fluke.”

Remind you of anything else? How about the “global warming” panic, that now turns out to be on a “ten-year hiatus” … presented only about 25 years after the panic was over “global cooling” and “a new Ice Age” … based on the same data!

=====

2 . Study: Gum disease may raise cancer risk - Reuters

This one may hit home a bit; I finally went to the dentist to check on some chipped and broken teeth, only to be told I should see a gum specialist! Am about to make the appointment tomorrow, visualizing the best and only a slight swelling on one side of my mouth, that submerges most of one of my remaining 3rd molars (aka wisdom teeth). Wish me well.

=====

3. Report: Adult ADHD costing workdays - Fox News

Now they’ve done it! They’ve taken what was once considered a relatively rare nerve disorder, with specific symptoms and causes, and over the course of about 20 years turned it into an industry, which then needs a national epidemic to drive it financially!

And what do you suppose is Big Pharma’s role in all this, given the wonderful “market” it’ has created for its Ritalin, Adderall and the other psycho-suppressants (which have also been linked, lest we forget, at least in school-age adolescents, to just about every school shooting we’ve had!)?

====

So that’s the first TWO sets of entries … comments? additions?