Anger Kills Health Care Costs

The Face of Anger

In the Brave New World of nationalized health care the medical-government complex needs to convince us that most illnesses:

1. Can be avoided by "preventative" health care
2. Are exacerbated or initiated by behavioral characteristics
3. Can be ameliorated or treated with "unconventional" therapies -- the kinds that most doctors are not trained in

The common thread? All the above are low-tech, low-cost solutions to health care problems for the government that is paying the bill.

You will see these points driven home in the media in the next several months and years as we move to national health care where low-cost solutions are the goal. For your own good, you should read the articles in full and ignore the headline. Here's why:

Every day the news carries some story to buttress one of the aforementioned health care fallacies, like this one today:

Anger really can kill you, U.S. study shows

...people who had the highest anger-induced electrical instability were 10
times more likely than everyone else to have an arrhythmia in
follow-up, ... the study suggests that anger can be deadly, at
least for people who are already vulnerable to this type of electrical
disturbance in the heart.

Of the group, 7% developed heart disease in
the first five years; 12% showed signs within the first nine years. They were
also more likely to be in a high social class, smoking a couple packs of
cigarettes a day, and have high cholesterol. (italics mine)

This study gets picked up on line and in the news as "anger kills" as you can see from the leader for the cited article. Yet the study only suggests that dangerous heart rhythms may be induced in people who already have severe disease.

Truth is, in these patients (cigarette smokers with high cholesterol!) there are probably a lot of things that may induce rhythm disturbances including burping, surprises, shovelling snow and the doggy position.

Anger?

Please.

But it works for our brave new world of health care. The low cost solution? Anger management.

Gulfstreaming Your Health Care

Good for the Goose

Ted Kennedy wants to equalize health care for everyone. This is something he hopes to get done now, before his newly diagnosed brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, takes him down from behind.

Equal health care for everyone.

Laudable.

To make health care equal for everyone, we, the people, are going to have to make sacrifices. Our choices will be limited, waiting times for diagnostic tests and procedures will be common, and the overall quality of the system will decline to that of other socialist programs like Canada.

So, what does Kennedy know about the fair and equal health care he wants US to have? Let's take a look.

The Best Care in the World

Ted Kennedy knows nothing about health care for the common man or the type of health care we are destined to receive under a nationalized system That's because he and his ilk -- including everyone in Washington -- get the best health care in the world all the time, and they will continue to get the red carpet treatment after health care reform reduces your care to patch quilt.

In previous posts here and here I discussed how Ted Kennedy had a seizure late one weekend night and the diagnosis was glioblastoma multiforme, an incurable cancer.

Immediately after his seizure, Kennedy was whisked to Harvard where a team of physicians gathered STAT to attend to him. The next day experts at Harvard and from around the world conferred with Kennedy to give him their opinions regarding his diagnosis and options.

In a move that is analogous to GM executives jetting to Washington to beg for bailout money, Kennedy (the health care reform Guru) then jetted to Duke to receive the best possible care by the best possible neurosurgeon, as advised by the best possible group of doctors --all within days of his seizure:

According to several news sources Kennedy consulted with

...his doctors at Mass General Hospital and "experts from around the country," Sen. Ted Kennedy decided to trust his treatment for a cancerous brain tumor to Dr.
Alan Friedman of Duke University Medical Center.

Is this the kind of care YOU will get if Kennedy's ideas about reform are institutionalized?

No. You will be relegated to a local oncology clinic where a dispirited foreign graduate will shuffle your papers, give you the routine by-the-book treatment options and then you will wait for whoever is available whenever he is available to actually get your treatment.

Kennedy -- and every other VIP demanding health care reform -- knows that their care will ever be secured by their money, or celebrity or influence.

You will not have those options.

How to Tell Someone is Lying to You About Health Care Reform: Part I

KISS ME

You are being deceived if you hear or are told that the United States health care system needs to be reformed because of:

• high infant mortality
• low life expectancy
• we spend 13% of GDP on health care
• 40 million people are uninsured

I'm guessing you will be hearing a lot about these social problems in the coming months as our lawmakers march forward in goosesteps to nationalize health care.

Today, the Commonwealth Fund (sounds like a bad Greenwich investment firm) somehow made the news with these exact well-worn criticisms of the current HEALTH CARE system:

The Commonwealth Fund, a leading private health policy research group, unveiled a comprehensive plan for changing a U.S. health care system that is the world's most expensive yet lags many other nations in important measures of quality.

Problem is, HEALTH CARE does not equal MEDICINE AND SURGERY which is what you really care about. HEALTH CARE, as far as the Commonwealth Fund and other social scientists are concerned is about INSURANCE, DISTRIBUTION and FAIRNESS, which while all are laudable concepts, are separate from MEDICINE AND SURGERY which is what doctors do.

The social scientists know that they are tagging real science with sociology to achieve sociologically satisfying results. This is a purposeful deception --in some corners known as a lie -- meant to play the public for suckers.

Will the results of sociologically appropriate reform of insurance, cost and delivery issues be good for MEDICINE AND SURGERY -- which is what you need to stay well and to stay alive when you are ill...?

Nope. You will lose there. You'll get cheap health care for everybody but it will be...cheap health care for everybody.

As Al Pacino, as Sonny, said in Dog Day Afternoon:

Sonny: Kiss me.
Det. Sgt. Eugene Moretti: What?
Sonny: Kiss me. When I'm being fucked, I like to get kissed a lot.

Searching for Breast Cancer in California

An interventional radiologist doctor in California -- a Dr. Bittner -- has made Section B in the Wall Street Journal for doing liposuction and burning the removed fat in his automobile, or some such thing.

A much more interesting part of this article about the entrepreneurial Bittner is a side report of how the government came after him in 2003 for proferring MRI of the breast as a cancer screening tool:

... he operated a chain of radiology-imaging shops in California and other states. He offered magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, that he claimed was better than mammography for detecting breast cancer. In 2003, the California board claimed this was false advertising in a civil suit it filed against him and the company he founded, HealthScan America Inc. The shops closed at about the same time. In 2004, a California state court ruled against the business

Shops? Why do they call them shops? A place where MRI of the breast is done is an imaging center, no? And why in Good Arnold's name would the State be chasing after doctors who are recommending THE TRUTH... namely, MRI is actually WAY better at finding breast cancer than mammography. And it was that way in 2003, believe me.

So why did the government go after him? I know why. But the truth is too shocking, aparently, for you lay people.

So shocking that when I wrote a book about this very subject, in 2006, I could not get it published. No one wants to hear it. No one wants to know. I was told that...well...maybe I shouldn't say.

I will, though.

Stay tuned; I'll get around to it, I promise.

DON'T LINE UP FOR STEM CELLS YET

Stemming Pundits and Panderers

You know, for years I've been listening to people attack George Bush et al for not supporting stem cell research. And all the while --although I fully support such RESEARCH -- I've also been disgusted at the techniques used to promote stem cell research; namely, falsely aggrandizing what is known or can be done with stem cells right now

Like the following from By Arthur Caplan, Ph.D. -- who gets his medical expertise by doctoring in the philosophy and history of science (translated: don't go to him with your sore bunions):

An administration that has shown itself over and over again to have trouble telling the truth is now telling Americans in wheelchairs, those with damaged hearts, babies who are diabetic and those left immobile by Parkinsonism not to worry. The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, having been in Washington forsome time now, claim to know best which medical researc Is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future. (boldface mine)

There are thousands of examples like the above in the news of that day. And diabetic children -- among other tools --were paraded in front of Congress begging for stem cells to cure themselves. I had friends and mothers of friends -- some quite well educated -- calling me asking if a cure for arthritis or ataxia or retinoblastoma was in the offing, just as soon as that idiot demon Bush and his cronies got their fists out of their noses...

Well here's a story on the AP today about a desperate family who went to Israel to have a desperate thing done -- an injection of stem sells:

Report: Fetal stem cells trigger tumors in ill boy

By LAURAN NEERGAARD – 13 hours ago


WASHINGTON (AP) — A family desperate to save a child from a lethal brain disease sought highly experimental injections of fetal stem cells — injections that triggered tumors in the boy's brain and spinal cord, Israeli scientists reported Tuesday.

Read it all here

Stem cell research offers great promise and should be pursued at all speed; but to make irresponsible claims about the current use or potential of this research, especially while conjuring up hope for those immediately ill as a spectre to beat down, hijack, blackmail, or man-up your political or philosophical hobgoblins is dishonest, ignorant, and...well, I guess we should say now, dangerous. Nay, criminal.

HOLLA AT YOUR BOYS

YOU GUYS ARE CRAZY!

Top Ten Myths of American Health Care?

How did this get into print? I just ordered it. Not that any of it is a surprise, but no you never see THE TRUTH about health care in the MSM, or in a book, let alone in the MSM REVIEWING a book that contains TRUTH about health care and not just the bald face rote nonsense that the reformers have been using since the 1970's to promote their version of National Health Care.

Sally C. Pipes wrote the book. And this is where she works.

Help A Fetus? O No Obama!

Over the Rainbow

If you are pregnant right now, the $10 billion Obama is handing over to the NIH in the STIMULUS bill is not likely to help your fetus-- if at all-- if ever --until it is an adult.

Because, as even TIME noted in a typically tendentious piece a couple of years ago

It does take on average more than 13 years and often several hundred million dollars for a company to research and test a major new drug before it's presented to the FDA for approval.

Only about one of every 10,000 chemical compounds that are first tested end up as medicine cleared by the feds.

Converting basic scientific research into effective medicines to treat complex diseases like cancer has also become more difficult the past several years with more expensive and longer drug trials, as well as higher failure rates.

So, although I'm all for research, and the NIH, and even STIMULUS, but I mean wtf?

Giving money to the NIH is not going to stimulate this economy. Not now. Not maybe ever.

Sin is behovely

KILL ALL THE CHIROPRACTORS

A NICE ADJUSTMENT AT NO COST


The New York Time explained today how $1.1 billion of B. H. Obama's STIMULUS bill is going to be used to study the efficaciousness of medical therapies so we can stimulate the economy by making better health care choices. Obama is interested in finding out which treatments are better -- according to evidence-based medicine.

I guess, if this is a STIMULUS bill, we are hoping these policies will STIMULATE the economy; or, namely, help us get out of our current fiscal morass.

Will these 1.1 billion dollars stimulate our hurting economy? Will they save your 401K? Will they help you pay for that house you couldn't afford or for the equity loan you took out on the overleveraged, overassessed value of that home?

How about those tickets you bought for Disneyworld...and three nights at the GRAND FLORIDIAN?

I'm not sure...but if I were you, I'd look into refinancing instead.

Anyway.... that's not the point. I HAVE A BETTER IDEA.

If you believe in evidence-based medicine and you want to save lots of monies, just FIRE ALL THE CHIROPRACTORS. TOMORROW. Or at least cut them off. Cut them out of the health care pie--the part you pare into the garbage disposal unit.

No federal monies. No insurance repayments. Chiropractors go back to the paraprofessional primordial ooze from which their teleologically retarded pseudo medical science crawled out of (I believe it was inventive by a 19th century salesman).

Case Closed.

One billion saved.

Next item on the stimulus bill?