Extras – Current Events – Seminar Presenation
All support documents in Adobe PDF
Third Saturday Seminar 2011-2012
Return of the Elders, Unleash your Wisdom
Session 06
Your Money or Your Life
Options and Considerations of Current and Future Medical Care
24 March, 2012
9:30AM til 12:00 noon
Room B-102, Lone Star College – Montgomery
3200 College Park Drive – Conroe, TX – 77384 – 936.273.7000
In November, Paul Watson wrote to me:
“Curt – While I have understood and tend to be in general agreement with most of your positions, I was surprised when you said that you support a single payer medical system. … I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue at the Third Saturday Seminar and present history, options and considerations of current and future medical care.”
And, it is my pleasure to give him the opportunity on Saturday. (From the reading list he sent me, (see the following) I think we are in for a really interesting session. I am looking forward to it)
Paul is a retired pathologist. He has worked in private practice and the Veterans Administration, as well as having experiences as a patient within the VA and in the private world. He has experience as a part owner of a hospital. As a pathologist he had to interface with the administrative considerations of medical care as well. He began practice before Medicare became firmly established. He has had the opportunity to observe various types of practices. He believes that he has the background to understand the advantages and disadvantages of various medical care systems.
He plans to address these issues – and maybe others: Is there a right to health care? Is the US health care the best in the world? Is the US health care the most costly in the world? How did we get to where we are with health care? What are the drivers for the increasing cost of health care? What are the ways to pay for health care? What can an individual do to optimize his health care? What are the alternative systems for health care costs? What is an entitlement? Funding for abortion and contraception?
Paul: Went to Wake Forest – the College. Graduated from West Virginia University School of Medicine – 1964. Internship at Harris Hospital, Fort Worth. Pathology residency at Baylor, Houston and University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio. Board Certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology. Practice 25 years in 1960, Conroe and Tomball. Practiced 15 years and retired from Gulf Coast Veterans Healthcare System, Biloxi Mississippi; Enjoyed Katrina before coming back to Texas in time for Ike
For Those who like to read ahead …
The following Reading List, with the exception of the last four items was prepared by Paul. The first three are books which you can order on line or just read some of the content or reviewer comments. You can download them electronically.
The rest are available on the Internet. I have accessed all of the items and excerpted text which seem to me to be worthy of your interest to encourage you to click the links to go deeper.
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
Robert Whitaker Publication Date: April 13, 2010
In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation’s children. What is going on?
The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, Irving Kirsch , Publication Date: March 8, 2011
Irving Kirsch has the world doubting the efficacy of antidepressants. Based on fifteen years of research, The Emperor’s New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what the medical community considered a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: He offers a path society can follow to stop popping pills and start proper treatment.
Pharmocracy: How Corrupt Deals and Misguided Medical Regulations Are Bankrupting America–and What to Do About It
William Faloon (Author), Publication Date: September 16, 2011
Our healthcare system is irretrievably broken, and now it is devastating the US financially. Pharmocracy uncovers egregious FDA incompetence and abuse, and shows how over-regulation causes lifesaving medications to be delayed or suppressed altogether, and makes consumers pay inflated prices for FDA-approved therapies that are only minimally effective and often dangerous. A free market approach to healthcare, Faloon argues, would spare Medicare and Medicaid from insolvency, while significantly improving the health of the American public.
How the VA Abandons Our Vets,Joshua Kors, August 27, 2008
This article appeared in the September 15, 2008 edition of The Nation.
Published on The Nation
Sgt. Juan Jimenez had one of the most dangerous jobs in Iraq, ushering top Administration officials through the war-torn streets of Baghdad. He returned home with two Purple Hearts and shrapnel lodged in his right arm. Today he is gravely ill.
What Jimenez didn’t realize is that before he could receive benefits for his wounds, he’d have to prove that those wounds came from war. Three and a half years later, the sergeant is still making his case. The Department of Veterans Affairs isn’t convinced. And it won’t give him his benefits until it is.
The VA requires all veterans to prove their wounds are “service-connected” before it writes them a check. Jimenez thought that hurdle was merely a formality. The Army sergeant had been struck by two roadside bombs. The first sliced into his arms; six months later, a second bomb sprayed scrap metal into his face, knocking him unconscious and leaving him brain damaged. He began having seizures and suffering from memory loss. The blast left a persistent ringing in his right ear. The stress sparked nightmares, flashbacks and acid-reflux disease.
Competitive Care
When Italy’s Lombardy region pitted private hospitals against public ones, the quality of care rose dramatically
By MARGHERITA STANCATI
MILAN—When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped in on Italy’s fashion capital late last year, his focus wasn’t just the city’s designer shops. He was also intensely interested in the state-of-the-art local health system.
With the U.S. searching for ideas about how to make health care more affordable, he said during a speech, “I hope we have a situation where the federal government…looks at the entire world, including this region here.”
As the U.S. debates the proper roles for the public and private sectors in health care, Italy’s Lombardy region suggests a way that encouraging competition between the two can improve health care overall. For the past 10 years, public and private hospitals in Lombardy have competed directly for patients, and in doing so have created what is considered by many to be one of Europe’s most efficient health-care systems.
Story of the Blues: Blue Cross and Blue Shield A History of Charitable and Benevolent Health Insurance Plans (63 Pages)
Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans across the country were created with the intention of providing affordable health care coverage in the nonprofit context with a community focus. The plans were established to fill significant holes in the health care system. They were created and promoted by the community, acting in the public benefit. Their history and involvement in creating an alternative health care coverage source—the voluntary, nonprofit prepaid health plan—and their subsequent participation in the development of the Medicare and Medicaid programs have helped ensure that more Americans obtain access to health care coverage.
Since the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association voted to allow its nonprofit members to become for-profit corporations in 1994, some Blues plans have attempted to deny that they are charitable organizations, claiming they are thus not obligated, under charitable trust law, to set aside their assets to continue their missions when they convert to for-profit entities. But nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans were clearly established as charitable and benevolent entities, and should therefore be subject to charitable trust requirements. This paper discusses the history of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, with a particular emphasis on the Texas plan, and outlines the many pieces of evidence showing that Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans are charitable and benevolent organizations …
Complex but interesting (Paul’s comment)
This is a large wall chart with lots of information in headings which you can view online by manipulating a frame on the document and using the “+” and “-“ signs.
“Lethal Shortages” Life Extension Magazine, April 2012, “As We See It”
Shortages of Lifesaving Medications
Profit margins for prescription drugs are beyond obscene.2-8 With so much money to be made it is difficult to imagine why there would ever be a “shortage” of any prescription drug, let alone the widespread crisis that has emerged.
Federal bureaucrats and politicians, along with hospital and doctors’ groups, are rushing to find solutions for critical shortages of drugs to treat life-threatening illnesses,including bacterial infections and common cancers.
When these drugs are not readily available, the narrow window of time to cure a cancer or eradicate an infection can lapse, resulting in American patients needlessly dying.
By mid-year 2011, a record-breaking 180 different drugs needed to treat leukemia, solid tumors (like breast and colon cancers), infections, and other diseases had been declared in short supply.
The WORLD HEALTH REPORT 2000 (215 pages)
Health Systems:Improving Performance, Excerpt p. 7
What makes for a good health system? What makes a health system fair? And how do we know whether a health system is performing as well as it could? These questions are the subject of public debate in most countries around the world. Naturally, answers will depend on the perspective of the respondent. A minister of health defending the budget in parliament; a minister of finance attempting to balance multiple claims on the public purse; a harassed hospital superintendent under pres sure to find more beds; a health centre doctor or nurse who has just run out of antibiotics; a news editor looking for a stoly; a mother seeking treatment for her sick two-year old child; a pressure group lobbying for better services — all will have their views. We in the World Health Organization need to help all involved to reach a balanced judgment.
Whatever standard we apply, it is evident that health systems in some countries perform well, while others perform poorly. This is not due just to differences in income or expenditure: we know that performance can vary markedly, even in countries with very similar levels of health spending. The way health systems are designed, managed and financed affects people’s lives and livelihoods. The difference between a well-performing health system and one that is failing can be measured in death, disability impoverishment, humiliation and despair.
When I became Director-General in 1998, one of my prime concerns was that health systems development should become increasingly central to the work of WHO …. From Message from the Director General- Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland
Hurray for Health Reform, By PAUL KRUGMAN, Published: March 18, 2012
It’s said that you can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. If the same principle applies to legislation, the Affordable Care Act — which was signed into law two years ago, but for the most part has yet to take effect — sits in a place of high honor.
Now, the act — known to its foes as Obamacare, and to the cognoscenti as ObamaRomneycare — isn’t easy to love, since it’s very much a compromise, dictated by the perceived political need to change existing coverage and challenge entrenched interests as little as possible.
The Future of Medicare, Thursday, March 1, 2012 – 10:06 a.m.
· Listen
· Transcript
Federal prosecutors in Texas and New York announced this week they had uncovered two massive health care fraud schemes. In the Texas case, they’ve charged a doctor and six others with cheating the government out of more than a quarter of a billion dollars in Medicare and Medicaid fees. For many critics of the government health programs, fraud allegations underscore their belief that radical restructuring is needed. Others say proposals to overhaul the programs don’t address the critical need to contain costs throughout the medical system. Diane and her guests will talk about the future of Medicare and Medicaid.
Health Care In Massachusetts: ‘Abject Failure’ Or Work In Progress? : Shots – Health Blog : NPR
Voters are hearing a lot about health care this year. Republicans want to make the 2012 elections a referendum on the health care law that President Obama signed two years ago.
That law was largely based on one that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed into law nearly six years ago in Massachusetts.
Romney is now a GOP presidential contender, and that has made the Massachusetts universal health care law a political football. Romney’s rival Rick Santorum recently called it “an abject failure.”
But “Romneycare,” as Santorum and others call it, isn’t controversial in its home state. And a lot of people there don’t call it Romneycare because it took the support of a lot of other people — Democratic legislators, business leaders, insurers, hospitals and doctors, consumer groups — to get it passed.
But it’s true that Romney got the ball rolling. When I interviewed him in 2006, Romney said he got the idea from talking to Massachusetts business leaders.
“The key insight was this: People who don’t have insurance nonetheless receive health care — and it’s expensive,” Romney said.
Vermont Passes Single-Payer Health Care, World Doesn’t End
Advocates celebrate, but critics warn: A few details—like, er, funding—have yet to be worked out. —By David Goodman | Mon May. 30, 2011 3:15 AM PDT
As Gov. Peter Shumlin took his spot on the granite steps of the Vermont State House, a row of people fanned out behind him wearing bright red t-shirts proclaiming, “Health care is a human right.” The slogan sounded noble, and wildly unrealistic.
….
Moments later, the governor made history, signing a law that sets Vermont on a course to provide health care for all of its 620,000 citizens through a European-style single payer system called Green Mountain Care. Key components include containing costs by setting reimbursement rates for health care providers and streamlining administration into a single, state-managed system. The federal health care reform law would not allow Vermont to enact single payer until 2017; Vermont is asking the administration to grant it a waiver so that it can get there even faster, by 2014.
Information from the Federal Government
Let’s have a great conversation Saturday!
Current Events: As usual we will start out with a current events session, Politics, Syia, Iran (as in “Bomb, bomb Iran”), Tragedy breeds tragedy. Iraq, 49 people die from bombings today (In all, 14 towns and cities were attacked, with the death toll estimated at 49 by late afternoon. The number of wounded was put at almost 200.) Tell me again about how this “Shock and Awe thing” is supposed to work.
Third Saturday Seminars
To refer to an ancient Chinese saying, our world is in interesting times and individual citizens are assaulted with a blinding array of propaganda from every conceivable source. The Third Saturday Seminar is about demystification of what is going on around us. Time will also be spent on current events. Class meets 1/21 (special session),
2/18, 3/24 and 4/21. 3 sessions. No fee.
LSC-Montgomery B102
16199 Sa 2/18, 3/24, 4/21 9:30AM-12PM Gibby
Come, join the discussion! Let’s see if there is hope!
ALL Montgomery Spring Schedule
Registration
How do I register for a class?
You can fill out a registration form and submit it to us: In person: LSC-Montgomery (3200 College Park Dr., Conroe, TX 77384), Continuing Education/ALL Office Building E (Room 205)
- Phone: 936.273.7446
- Fax: 936.273.7262
- On-Line
See you Saturday — Thanks for your support!
DON‘T (be) PANIC(ked)
Curt Gibby
Director, Third Saturday Seminar
Houston, Tx 77273
P.S. As usual if anything in this notice doesn’t make sense, please let me know. (You won’t be the first, I will appreciate it and say, “Thank you,” Curt)