Story from the left-wing Guardian. (H/T Legal Insurrection via ECM)

Excerpt:

Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths….

Britain is poor by international standards at diagnosing cancer. [Prof. Mike] Richards’s findings will add urgency to the NHS’s efforts to improve early diagnosis….

Richards found that “late diagnosis was almost certainly a major contributor to poor survival in England for all three cancers”, but also identified low rates of surgical intervention being received by cancer patients as another key reason for poor survival rates.

Research by academics at Durham University led by Prof Greg Rubin has identified five types of delay in NHS cancer care: “patient delay”, “doctor delay”, “delay in primary care [at GPs' surgeries]“, “system delay” and “delay in secondary care [at hospitals]“….

I followed the link on Legal Insurrection to this Medscape Medical News story, which talks about studies on cancer survival rates in European countries.

Excerpt:

One of the reports compares the statistics from Europe with those from the United States and shows that for most solid tumors, survival rates were significantly higher in US patients than in European patients. This analysis, headed by Arduino Verdecchia, PhD, from the National Center for Epidemiology, Health Surveillance, and Promotion, in Rome, Italy, was based on the most recent data available. It involved about 6.7 million patients from 21 countries, who were diagnosed with cancer between 2000 and 2002.

The age-adjusted 5-year survival rates for all cancers combined was 47.3% for men and 55.8% for women, which is significantly lower than the estimates of 66.3% for men and 62.9% for women from the US Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program ( P < .001).

Survival was significantly higher in the United States for all solid tumors, except testicular, stomach, and soft-tissue cancer, the authors report. The greatest differences were seen in the major cancer sites: colon and rectum (56.2% in Europe vs 65.5% in the United States), breast (79.0% vs 90.1%), and prostate cancer (77.5% vs 99.3%), and this “probably represents differences in the timeliness of diagnosis,” they comment. That in turn stems from the more intensive screening for cancer carried out in the United States, where a reported 70% of women aged 50 to 70 years have undergone a mammogram in the past 2 years, one-third of people have had sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy in the past 5 years, and more than 80% of men aged 65 years or more have had a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. In fact, it is this PSA testing that probably accounts for the very high survival from prostate cancer seen in the United States, the authors comment.

I think that the breast cancer and prostate cancer numbers are significant, because it makes me think of the video in which Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn and Sue Myrick were talking about how Obamacare will limit diagnostic exams for breast cancer, because they are so expensive. When the government pays, they have to keep costs down to make sure that they have enough to pay for the elevated salaries of all the government workers who decide whether you live or die. And prostate exams would undoubtedly also be restricted because of costs.

What this Tom Coburn, M.D. video and he’ll explain. (H/T Hugh Hewitt)

He’s a medical doctor, so he knows what he’s talking about.

Robert Rector does the analysis here at the Heritage Foundation. (H/T National Review via ECM)

Here’s the abstract:

H.R. 3962 would deliberately permit illegal aliens to participate in the government health insurance exchange and in the public option insurance program. It would nominally bar them from receiving health care “affordability credits” and most regular Medicaid benefits, but verification procedures are weak and subject to fraud. Moreover, any limitations on benefits provided to illegal immigrants under the House bill are deceptive. The Presi­dent and the congressional leadership clearly intend that these limits will be only temporary, to be overturned by amnesty or “comprehensive immigration reform” legisla­tion that will be introduced next spring.

And here are the main points:

The health care bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 3962) clearly and directly contradicts the President’s declarations and promises. Under H.R. 3962:

• Illegal immigrants are clearly permitted to purchase health insurance under the government health insurance exchange created by the bill.
• Illegal immigrants are permitted to receive cover age under the “public health insurance option” created in the bill.
• Illegal immigrants are ostensibly barred from receiving taxpayer-funded “affordability credits” to subsidize their health care, but the verification procedures used to determine the legal status of those who receive credits are weak and subject to fraud.
• The bill expands the Medicaid program. Illegal immigrants are nominally barred from receiving most Medicaid services, but the verification procedures used to determine the legal status of those who receive credits are also weak and sub ject to fraud.
• All illegal immigrant women who do not have private health insurance and who give birth inside the United States will have the full cost of childbirth paid by the U.S. taxpayers. There will be no effort to have the mother repay any of the cost. Given the fact that nearly 400,000 children are born inside the U.S. each year to illegal immigrant women, these costs could be quite large.
• The bill will provide tax credits to small businesses to subsidize the purchase of health insurance for illegal immigrant employees. Under H.R. 3962, small businesses will be given tax credits to encourage them to purchase health coverage for employees; because firms are not required to verify the legal status of subsidized employees, both legal and illegal employees will receive taxpayer support.
• Illegal immigrants will continue to receive so-called emergency medical services under the Medicaid program.

The full research paper, with references, is here.

BONUS: The Senate bill includes a monthly abortion premium for all enrollees in the government-run health plan.

Hey all,

A member of the Kitchen Garden Club died last week. Of course this is very sad for those she left behind and my sympathies are with them. BUT…… on a rather selfish note, this might be my chance to get a Kitchen Garden Plot. Is that selfish? Yes, is that life? Yes, it certainly is.

Of course it will take some time before the family has decided if they want to keep the plot for themselves (that is possible) or if they want to give up the plot, so until they have made a decision, all I can do is wait. I am selfish enough to hope that they’ll make a decision soon and that their decision will leave me with a Kitchen Garden Plot.

Well, see ya all later!

These are the best and brightest conservative women in the House.

I am all in favor of cutting health care costs – but that doesn’t mean cutting the throats of patients to save money.

How conservative are they?

Here are their 2008 and 2007 congressional ratings from the American Conservative Union.

• Michele Bachmann (MN) – 100% and 100%
• Marsha Blackburn (TN) – 96% and 100%
• Sue Myrick (NC) – 91% and 96%
• Jean Schmidt (OH) – 87% and 92%
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) – 92% and 85%
• Candice Miller (MI) – 63% and 72%

All SIX of these women members of the Pro-Life Women’s Caucus!

Story here at Hot Air. (Via Confederate Yankee via ECM)

Here’s the ex-NIH Director:

Dr. Bernardine Healy ran the National Institute of Health has a rather daunting resumé on health care issues.  She became the first woman to run the National Institute of Health in 1991, has served on two Presidential Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, and served as President of the Red Cross.

And here are her comments in US News:

The bill takes all sorts of choices out of patients’ and doctors’ hands. Even mammograms and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests would be similarly restricted by the government for millions of people, and they actually serve as better examples of what happens more broadly to personal medical decision making in the new system.

[...]As the pioneering prostate cancer surgeon Patrick Walsh of Johns Hopkins points out, a European randomized trial showed that PSAs saved lives. In the United States, there has been a 40 percent reduction in prostate cancer deaths since testing began in the early 1990s. Yet prostate screening arouses many of the same concerns as does breast cancer screening: too many follow-on studies, too many biopsies, and surgery on slow-growing tumors that may never have harmed the patient. The government task force claims that there’s insufficient evidence to make a recommendation for routine screening of men younger than 75 and is firmly against screening in men older than that. The American Urological Association’s position is the polar opposite: Baseline PSAs should be offered to men at age 40, and the frequency of subsequent testing should be determined by doctor and patient choice.

Ed Morrissey adds:

Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests help catch prostate cancer early. The American Urological Association wants men screened with the test beginning at age 40 to catch the problem at its earliest stages.

[...]The government board wants to move away from what it sees as excessive testing, claiming that it will reduce unnecessary stress and anxiety in patients. It’s no small coincidence that it will also save the government money — and in the case of PSAs, it will save money directly if Medicare refuses to pay for PSA tests until age 75, rather than retirement age.

Right now, the US leads the world in catching, treating, and curing prostate cancer. Britain, which has a single-payer system that rations care, has one of the lowest ratings in the world. That’s not a coincidence.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. If we want to keep patient choice, then we have to pay for our own care. If we allow the government to absorb our choices in the name of “fairness,” expect the USPSTF and other government panels to ration these tests and reduce our chances of surviving these cancers.

Previously, I wrote about a Stanford University professor’s survey of health care systems around the world, in which he compared American health care to single-payer systems, favored by those on the left. In Canada, there is a 184% increase in prostate cancer mortality rates, compared with American mortality rates for prostate cancer. That’s what we’re headed for if the public option passes.

Video here via DoublePlusUndead. (H/T ECM)

I suspect that they did it to save costs – it’s the UK version of the public option.

Story from the Wall Street Journal, by the Dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey S. Flier.

Excerpt:

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I’d give it a failing grade.

[...]Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

In order to have an economy recover, you need people running government who actually understand health care and economics. My lunch-time book is Regina Hertzlinger’s “Who Killed Health Care?”. Regina teaches at Harvard University, as well. She talks about how we need to lower costs and improve quality by introduce elements of choice and competition. Her plan is similar to the Republican’s Patient’s Choice Act. Consumer-Driven health care is the right solution to the problem of rising health care costs. Obama’s plan just adds fuel to the fire.

The right way to reform health care without sacrificing liberty

Consumer-driven health care:

Health Care: Fostering Focus Factories
with Dr. Regina Hertzlinger
(8:46)

Choice, Competition Should Drive Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(5:21)

The Republican Plan (“Patient Choice Act”) is consumer-driven:

Obama’s False Health Care Choice
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(10:39)

Ideas for Free-Market Health Care Reform
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(8:30)

What’s wrong with Obamacare, Medicare, RomneyCare and CanadaCare:

Competing with the Government
with Dr. Michael F. Cannon
(7:34)

Medicare: A Model for Reform?
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:34)

Lessons from Massachusetts Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:18)

The Canadian Health Care Experience
with Sally C. Pipes
(7:45)

Puncturing the Myths of American Health Care
with Sally C. Pipes
(about 8 minutes)

Nonprofit organizations must work within the legal system and, often, are also held responsible for other professional standards of practice.  The activities of nonprofit organizations are also constrained by another important factor:  public perception.  Why does public perception matter for nonprofit organizations?  How does a nonprofit organization effectively educate the general public?  How does a nonprofit organization earn the public trust?

To illustrate the seriousness of this issue, I have provided an example below.  The following myths/facts about organ donation make a real impact on the nonprofit organizations that coordinate organ donations.  These incorrect perceptions can cause real challenges for:  the decision to donate (by an individual or a family), the choice to financially contribute to these nonprofits, and the political support for their work.

Myth: Organ donation is anti-religious.

Fact: All major religions in the United States support donation and view it as a charitable act.

Myth: If your driver’s license says you are an organ donor, the medical staff will not work as hard to provide proper medical care.

Fact: If you are admitted to the hospital for sickness or injury, the first priority is saving your life.

Myth:  People who are brain dead can come back to life.

Fact:  Brain death has been considered equivalent to the legal and technical meaning of medical death since the late 1960’s.

Myth:  Rich and/or famous people receive donations before poor minorities.

Fact: The order of patients on the waiting list is dependent upon the severity of your illness, time spent waiting, blood type, and other important medical information.

In what other areas of the nonprofit world are there incorrect assumptions or poor perceptions that complicate the work of an organization?  Please leave a comment with your ideas.

Still want to learn more about organ donations?  Check out my post on the various nonprofits involved or my post introducing the topic.

The last two months have been very busy. Work picked up at my job, so now I have returned to being a “part-time whipmaker.” With that, I have gotten behind schedule on my orders. I am currently working on orders from early July. I hope to be done with the July orders by the first of December. I currently have between 25 and 30 whips on the slate to be made. If you’re still waiting, please hang in there as I am working feverishly to get to everyone.

In other news, at just 10 year of age, my son Cordell will be finishing his second whip order very soon. He is currently working a large order of 6ft cow whips that are destined for a cattle ranch in Cameroon, Africa. As you can imagine, I am very excited for Cordell and quite proud of him.  Cordell’s whips are currently $11.00 per foot.  Cordell only takes on a limited number of orders each month due to school and other activities.

The latest exotic wood that I have turned for cow whip handles is Mopani. This African wood is very hard and makes a very nice looking handle. I have a picture of the new handle in my exotic handle gallery.

That’s all for now!

-Rhett

Cowwhips.com

I have a new kidney video up at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1u-rPIP6sw.

In this one, I ask for a kidney donation for a transplant that I will need because of polycystic kidney disease.  I mention www.mikeneedsakidney.com and how my kidney function is dropping pretty fast.

Just to do something different, I ask for a kidney in English, Danish, and French.  Then I ask for one in an Australian accent.  It’s not that I expect or want the donor to be Danish or French; it’s just that those are the only other languages I know a little bit.  I had a lot of help with the translation.  It may seem a little bit unorthodox, but I just thought it would be a different, interesting thing to do, and I hope that everything I do creates a little more awareness about kidney donation.

I think a lot of people aren’t very aware about kidney transplants and donation.  Highly educated people ask me questions that show this.

People who are healthy can donate one of their two kidneys and get along fine, and even be out of the hospital in as little as a day after the surgery, which is done laparoscopically with a small incision.  It does take a while to get back to work.

Kidney disease gets less publicity than other diseases or disorders.  Part of the reason is that it disproportionally affects poor people who often don’t check on their hypertension and diabetes until it’s too late.  Part of the reason for that is because many indigent people lack adequate health insurance.  Maybe it will get more attention in the future.  Ten years ago there wasn’t much awareness about autism and now there is.

In the video I mention that I’m not just looking for a kidney for myself, but I’m also trying to raise awareness about the fact that there are 80,000 people in the U.S. waiting for kidneys and more than 10 of them die each day waiting.

That’s why I did my previous kidney video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QU7TPvIQMI.  I’m a terrible singer and rapper, so naturally I had to do a rap video.

And while I’m at it, I might as well give a plug for the one I did in the beginning of the year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDbIw1d8XLM&feature=related.

For the new video, it was hard to choose from the three takes that I did, because they were all equally bad.  I almost fell asleep while watching the video.

***

Quick timeout for Coach Mike’s Mailbag:

Really?  It looks more like you fell asleep during the video.

Ha ha.  Very funny.

By the way, when are you going to make another movie?  Last time I saw you was more than 20 years ago in “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles,” and “Weird Science.”

Very funny.  Everybody’s a comedian…

At one point you say you are going to “attempt the Danish now…”  It’s not like this is a motorcycle jump or a magic trick.

True.  Those would have been easier.

(Actual email:)  I couldn’t watch your new video it was so boring.  Now people won’t watch the good rap one cause they’ll first be bored by your new one and move on.  You also are totally repetitive in your blog.  You already explained all this.  Couldn’t you have left the other one for awhile without adding a new crappy one.  And why do you keep saying what a bad voice etc. you have.  The whole point is that you need a kidney.  Otherwise you could have gotten a professional rapper to do it.  You’re really bugging me.

Sorry, Mom.  Couldn’t you have called about this instead of emailing? (just kidding.  the email was from one of my fans).

Shouldn’t people donate to, say, a single mother of three kids who is already on dialysis instead of an attention-seeking narcissist who refers to himself in the third person?  I’ll hang up and listen to your answer.

Let  me take the second part first.  Coach Mike isn’t sure who you’re talking about.  However, I agree that the idea to donate to someone who is more in need is a good one.  Check out www.matchingdonors.com.

***

Anyway, my next video is due out at the end of the month and it will be original.

So back to the kidney issue.  At some point I’ll have to get a transplant or go on dialysis.  Dialysis is a long, tiring process that cleans the toxins from the blood.  While it is life saving, it results in death for 20% of dialysis patients each year.

Transplants result in a better quality of life and a better outcome than dialysis.  In fact, kidney transplants are one of the few surgeries in which you can go from being extremely sick to just about as good as new, as if you never had the problem.

The waiting list for my blood type (O) is about five years and so far I’ve accrued a year and a half of waiting time.  Kidneys from the waiting list come from deceased donors.  A kidney from a living donor usually lasts significantly longer than one from a deceased donor.  Also, people who receive transplants without ever having to go on dialysis fare better on average than those who are transplanted after having been on dialysis.

In order to be compatible to donate to someone, you have to be the same blood type, though if you’re a different blood type, you can do a paired donation.  That happens when you have two unmatched donor-recipient pairs in which the recipients match the other donors, and the hospital supervises the exchange, doing both operations simultaneously or one after the other.

A couple of good sites are www.matchingdonors.com and www.kidneyregistry.org.  Matchingdonors has profiles of people looking for kidneys.  The National Kidney Registry facilitates paired kidney donations, in which incompatible or poorly matched donor-recipient pairs try to find a compatible match or a more compatible match from a pool of donors.

Sometimes I ask myself if I would donate a kidney to somebody in need.  It would be easy for me to say yes, but the truth is we’ll never really know.  I feel like I would definitely donate to a wife or a child, (though I’m not married yet and don’t have kids), and I’d also donate to a parent or a sibling.  Anyone else, I’m not so sure.  So in other words, I’m asking for a kidney from a stranger (or a friend or acquaintance but that probably would have happened by now if it was going to happen).  Meanwhile, I’m not sure I’d do it myself.  I guess you could call that hypocritical, though it’s honest.

On the other hand, I’ve been working with or volunteering for kids and adults with autism and other disabilities for more than 10 years.  I believe that many of the parents I’ve met, while they do an amazing job, wouldn’t necessarily be helping kids with autism if they didn’t have kids with autism themselves.

Whenever somebody helps somebody – saves a person through CPR or rescues someone from a burning building for example – the person says that he or she is not a hero, that anybody would have done the same thing.  But that’s not true.  A lot of people wouldn’t have done it.

This whole thing – asking for a kidney on a website, in videos, on a bumper sticker, does seem kind of strange. It’s pretty surreal.  But do you have a better idea? My hope is to get one for myself, and through my website and my videos, create enough awareness so that maybe at least one other person decides to donate who otherwise wouldn’t.  And maybe 5, 10, or 20 years down the road, the seed will have been planted for someone who would someday be ready to donate to someone.  Or maybe more people will fill out organ donor cards, or it will become easier to donate like it is in Europe.

Story from Irish Central. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

Three Irish surgeons have revealed that they are being paid a whopping $350,000 to do nothing. The three orthopedic consultants at Letterkenny General HospitalCounty Donegal have revealed that the Irish Health Service is paying them to “sit around doing nothing” while operating theaters are empty. Senior consultant and team leader, Peter O’Rourke said he is “frustrated and depressed” about the current working climate in Letterkenny General Hospital. The surgeon claims there is little or no work for his team in the busy hospital despite massive waiting lists for essential knee and hip surgeries known as elective surgeries. The health service has put such surgeries on hold until next year as the “elective” budget has overrun by $3.3 million.

It might be a good time to check out Thomas Sowell’s four-part series on the economics of health care cost-cutting in a government-run system. This story from Ireland shows how the government “cuts costs” in a government-run system. They ration health care services and products for the elderly, who have paid into the system their whole lives.

As I’ve said before, government-run health care is about equalizing life outcomes regardless of personal health and lifestyle decisions. It’s about giving some people health based on need because of their own choices, including sex changes, drug needles, in vitro fertilization, abortions, etc. And the care is paid for by people who avoided those costly behaviors, but have their incomes garnished in order to pay for the decisions of others who engage in costly behaviors.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – Karl Marx. This is Obama’s worldview, in my opinion, and the worldview of all those who voted for him.

Reposted from: http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | November 4th, 2009

The Double Standard About Journos’ Bias

By John Stossel

I made The New York Times last week.  It even ran my picture. My mother would be proud.

Unfortunately, the story was critical.  It said, “Critics have leaped on Mr. Stossel’s speaking engagements as the latest evidence of conservative bias on the part of Fox.”

Which “critics” had “leaped”?  The reporter mentioned Rachel Maddow.  I wouldn’t think her criticism newsworthy, but Times reporters may use MSNBC as their guide to life.  He also quoted an “associate professor of journalism” who said my speeches were “‘pretty shameful’ by traditional journalistic standards.”  All this because I spoke at an event for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a “conservative advocacy group.”

It is odd that this is a news story.  In August, AFP hired me to do the very same thing. I give the money to charity.  The Times didn’t call that “shameful.”

But in August, I worked for ABC News.  Now, I work for Fox.  Hmmm.

It reminds me of something that happened earlier in my career.

I was one of America’s first TV consumer reporters.  I approached the job with an attitude.  If companies ripped people off, I would embarrass them on TV — and demand that government do something. (I now regret the latter — the former was a good thing.)

I clearly had a point of view:  I was a crusader out to punish corporate bullies.  My colleagues liked it.  I got job offers.  I won 19 Emmys.  I was invited to speak at journalism conferences.

Then, gradually, I figured out that business, for the most part, treats consumers pretty well.  The way to get rich in business is to create something good, sell it for a reasonable price, acquire a reputation for honesty and keep pleasing customers so they come back for more.

As a local TV reporter, I could find plenty of crooks.  But once I got to the national stage — “20/20″ and “Good Morning America” — it was hard to find comparable national scams.  There were some:  Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc.  But they are rare.  In a $14 trillion economy, you’d think there’d be more.  But there aren’t.

I figured out why:  Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check.  Reputation matters.  Word gets out.  Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy.  Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.

It made me want to learn more about free markets.  I subscribed to Reason magazine and read Cato Institute research papers.  Then Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Aaron Wildavsky.

My reporting changed.  I started taking skeptical looks at government — especially regulation.  I did an ABC TV special, “Are We Scaring You to Death?” that said we TV reporters often make hysterical claims about chemicals, pollution and other relatively minor risks.  Its good ratings — 16 million viewers — surprised my colleagues.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so popular with them.

I stopped winning Emmys.

I was invited on CNN’s media program, “Reliable Sources,” to be interviewed by The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz and an indignant Bernard Kalb.  They titled the segment, “Objectivity and Journalism:  Does John Stossel Practice Either?”  It was in big letters over my head.

Apparently, I had broken the rules.

On the air they told me that I was no longer objective.  I was too stunned to defend myself effectively.  I said something like:  ”I’ve always had a point of view.  How come you had no trouble with that when I criticized business?”

In hindsight, I wish I’d said:  ”Look at the title on the wall, you hypocrites!  It shows you have a point of view, too.  Many reporters do.  You just don’t like my arguments now that I no longer hew to your statist line.  So you want to shut me up.”

But I didn’t.

So I’ll say it now:  Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view.

So why am I the one called biased?

I like what “Americans for Prosperity” defends.  I’m an American, and I’m for prosperity.  What creates prosperity is free and competitive markets.  That means limited government.

And I will speak about that every chance I get.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

]]> http://asx200.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/cocaine-binge-takes-its-toll-on-uk-bankers-2/ Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:31:45 +0000 asx200 http://asx200.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/cocaine-binge-takes-its-toll-on-uk-bankers-2/

(CFD.net.au – Contract for Difference, Share, Forex, ETFs, Commodities Traders) –

October 9, 2009

The decision to step back from the brink marked the end of a six-year binge of drug and alcohol abuse that by then had cost Junor his marriage and a career that paid him as much as 1 million pounds ($1.9 million) a year. He was out of work, having already walked away from …

Source: Cocaine binge takes its toll on UK bankers

Here’s my new video asking for a kidney donation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QU7TPvIQMI. It’s based on Coolio’s song “Gangster’s Paradise.”  (Do a youtube search on that to see the original video, which is great).  I’m looking for a kidney donor for a transplant that I’ll need in 2010 but the purpose of the video is also to raise awareness for kidney donation for others in need of a kidney.  I’m probably the least likely person around to do a rap and to sing, but I did my best (which wasn’t that great) and it was a lot of fun.  Special thanks to Martine Marshall who also appeared in my first kidney video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDbIw1d8XLM). Thanks too to Liz Riker for producing.

(Wow.  I just looked at the video.  I look pretty serious.  I was originally planning to do one that was more upbeat but I thought this song fit best for now.  Any future ones will be more fun.)

As of October 26, 2009, my kidneys are functioning at 9.1% and getting worse.  I have a genetic disease called polycystic kidney disease.  See www.mikeneedsakidney.com for updates.  Although I’m not on dialysis, my doctors are urging me to get ready for it now.  I’m hoping to go directly to transplant because the outcomes of transplants are much better when the recipient hasn’t yet been on dialysis.

I admit that the idea of asking for a kidney in a video or on a website seems unusual, but 15 years ago the idea of meeting someone to date from the internet seemed strange, and now some people get married by meeting that way.

So in the video I mention that in the U.S. there are 80,000 people waiting for kidneys and ten people die each day waiting for a kidney.  The average time on the waiting list is three years but it’s five years if your blood type is O.  Also, kidney transplants from the waiting list are statistically less successful than those from living donors.

If you want to donate to someone, here are a few websites to check out:

• www.matchingdonors.com
• www.kidneyregistry.org
• www.livingdonorsonline.org

Here are a couple of sites on organ donation:

• www.ehow.com/how_4787137_donate-kidney-stranger.html
• www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/fs_new/25factsorgdon&trans.cfm

Or just google “donating kidneys” and see what comes up.

For healthy people, the risks are minimal to donate.  Everybody has two kidneys and only needs one.  The operation results in some pain, but the donor is out of the hospital in one or two days.  All the medical expenses are paid for by the recipient’s insurance.

Again, this isn’t just for myself.  I hope to raise awareness for the problem.  It’s like for my other website, www.coachmike.net.  The main goal never was to get business for myself – I’ve turned down way many more clients than the number who I’ve actually worked for – and I’m very unlikely to add anyone else.  Part of the goal of coachmike.net was to raise awareness about autism and my philosophies of what works best.

Anyway, if I can get a donor, that moves everyone else on the list behind me up one spot.  If a couple of others ultimately decide to donate because of a website, a video, a blog, or a bumper sticker, then that moves another couple of people up the list.  And if a couple of people get the seed planted in their heads and donate five, 10, or 20 years down the line, then that helps as well.  So think about that if this seems at all unorthodox or even distasteful to you.

I write like I speak — candidly, honestly, and directly.  Some people don’t like it because it’s not always diplomatic or politically correct.  But just remember that your friends are the ones who will be honest with you rather than just telling you what you want to hear.

I must have met a bunch of people in the last few years who are really into dog rescue programs, which is great.  I just wish people treated people equally as well as they treat dogs.  Not necessarily better, just equally as well.  We also place a higher importance on recycling tin cans than donating organs.

Besides the music, I borrowed a lot of the lyrics for the video from Coolio.  I also snuck in a couple of lines that were tributes to two of the best, earliest and most influential rap songs of all time — “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang and “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.  I even got a reference to Len Bias in there.

Story here from the UK Independent. (H/T Legal Insurrection via ECM)

Excerpt:

NHS whistleblowers are routinely gagged in order to cover up dangerous and even dishonest practices that could attract bad publicity and damage a hospital’s reputation.

Some local NHS bodies are spending millions of taxpayers’ money to pay off and silence whistleblowers with “super gags” to stop them going public with patient safety incidents. Experts warn that patients’ lives are being endangered by the use of intimidatory tactics to force out whistleblowers and deter other professionals from coming forward.

The IoS has learnt of children in Stoke-on-Trent needlessly losing organs after safety issues highlighted by a senior surgeon – who was suspended after coming forward to voice concerns – were ignored. In one of more than 20 serious incidents, a newborn baby girl needed an ovary removed after a standard procedure to remove a cyst was delayed because of staff shortages.

According to Public Concern at Work (PCaW), two-thirds of doctors, nurses and other careworkers are accepting non-disclosure clauses built into severance agreements, in order to avoid years of suspension, financial ruin, incriminations and distress before a case reaches court. The details of these claims, including allegations of dangerous practice, dishonesty and misconduct, are never disclosed to the public.

The problem with government-run health care is simple. They take your money through income taxes, and they promise that later on, when you are sick, they will give you treatment. But because you have paid them up front, when the time comes to be treated you have lost your leverage to get the treatment. None of the people providing you with health care have any incentive to treat you – you’ve already paid them! No one’s salary or bonus is riding on providing you with what you want! Provision of care is often rationed so that those who voted for the party in power are served first.

Contrast government-run health care with a free market system. In a free market, sellers of health care services and medical devices compete to earn your money by giving you the highest quality for the lowest price. You have the power over these competing sellers because you have the money in your hand – no one took it from you before you needed to use it. You can always go to a competitor if you don’t like what’s being provided to you for your money, unlike government-run systems. The consumer can choose what they want by comparing prices and patient outcomes across vendors.

The Caner’s List- Now I know that many of you are asking the same question that many others before you have asked, what is the point of me putting my name on the Caner’s List. Also many of you also ask what is a Caner’s list?

I will answer the second question first- The Caner’s List is simply a waiting list of people waiting for caning to be done. When you put your name on the list, along with the type of chairs that you have to be done and the quantity, then as the caner works down the list you will be called as you are come to.

In my studio, you are called and if at that time it does not suit you to have your chairs done, then I usually will set aside one week the following month, usually the third week of the month, where I will move your name to and will call you back about having your chair done, if at that time it still does not suit, then I will move your name to the bottom of the list, which means that it may be 3 months out or sometimes a year or more from today. This is done as a courtesy to the customers as often there are situations that arise, that makes it not suitable at that time.

You know Caning is a lot like going to the grocery store, you walk in and look NO ONE is in line, however when you want to check out everybody and their brother is in line to check out. It is very much the same with caning/seat weaving, no one comes, no one calls, then suddenly and without warning everyone calls, so to the customer that says no I don’t want on the list I will call back in 6 weeks when you are caught up, they wait and then call just to find out, that now they have to wait for 6 months longer, had their names been on the list, I could have taken their chairs at 6 weeks.

I try to stress to customers, just because their name is on the list, does not mean they are making an obligation for work to be done, it is used as a scheduling tool

Please I urge all customers thinking of having work done to have your name put on the list, and avoid disappointments.

At long last Cowwhips.com is back up and running again! The outage lasted much longer than I had anticipated and I hope it will not be too detrimental to my business. The good thing about the outage is that it happened during a time I was not taking on new orders.

I”m running way behind due to a number of unforeseen issues with my job and extended family. Right now I’m working on orders from June.  July was a heavy month for incoming orders, so when I get started on July’s orders,  I expect it will take some time to work through them. For those who already have an order in with me, please rest assured that I am working as hard as I can to get to your order.

I am now going to start taking on new orders, but please note: I cannot guarantee a delivery date at this time. It looks as if the wait time will be around 16 weeks on a new order, but that could vary. Because of the length of the wait, I am not going to require a full prepayment for the order; a deposit of $25.00 will reserve a spot on my waiting list.

When I get some time to do some more writing, I want to share with you all the latest information on my son’s progress as a fledgling whipmaker.

That should get everything up to date for now…

-Rhett

www.cowwhips.com

Video from the Washington News Observer. (H/T Granite Grok via ECM)

Senator Coburn is a medical doctor who has delivered over 3,000 babies. He is a staunch social conservative.

Social conservatives are stopping the Democrat health care bill from passing

Maybe it’s time that social conservatives got a little more respect from fiscal conservatives?

From Riehl Worldview. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)

Excerpt:

There are still a number of dirty little secrets stalking the back alley’s of Congress ready to derail health care reform. And chief among them is abortion. Surprise, surprise, it’s moderate and conservative Democrats, especially many who won seats in the last election, preparing to cause trouble, no matter how much Pelosi wants to not discuss the issue right now.

[...]The stumbling block is especially huge given the dynamics of many of our largest cities. Catholic hospitals carry the bulk of the load for health care in those areas. They’ve already dug in their heels on this a long time ago, claiming they would close facilities before allowing them to perform abortions.

I’m conservative in both areas, of course.

(H/T @JamieDupree)

Wait a second. I thought there wasn’t going to be any rationing? I thought the Democrats promised us we wouldn’t see any of the problems detailed in Steven Crowder’s video about the Canadian Health Care System in our wonderful new Democrat-sponsored Health Care “Reform” bill?

Yeah, like anyone actually believed that.

Sure, this is just a very small segment of a massive government program, but it is indicative of the kind of half-truths and obfuscation that accompanies all such programs. The fact is, our health care system isn’t broken, our regulatory system is the problem.

There are mandates for insurance companies to cover elective surgery and drug and alcohol rehab and routine examinations. Government-created de facto state wide monopolies on insurance. Requirements that every patient who enters an Emergency Ward to get treatment, even if they come in for a case of the sniffles or a hang-nail. Massive tort settlements against doctors by juries who are told less than all the facts.

The problem isn’t the doctors or the health insurance companies. The problem is the government! It is mind-boggling how much of this was done in the name of “the people” that helps no one but the people in power. Every mandate is one that some politico can go home to his or her constituents and say, “Look what I did for you!” Then they turn around and laugh all the way back to their Washington address and their taxpayer-funded pension and health care plans, which suffer none of the problems of Social Security or Medicare.

It is not time to go running to government. It is time to tell government lawyers and bureaucrats to get the Hell out of our health care system and let the doctors work on medicine.

Originally posted at The Minority Report.

I have been writing a lot of posts in the last few months about the pitfalls of government-run health care in Canada’s single-payer system, and in the National Health Service in Britain. Some people may wonder whether comparisons can be made between these systems and Obama’s government-run medical insurance idea.

Consider the words of bioethicist Wesley J. Smith: (H/T ECM)

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence–the Orwellian-named NICE–is the template promoted by Obamacare’s primary non government pusher, Former Senator Tom Daschle, called by the New York Times to be the most influential adviser to the POTUS and Congressional Democrats on health care reform.  Indeed, he has repeatedly stated we need an American version of NICE.

That means what NICE does matters to Americans.

Smith then notes this article from the UK Guardian which explains what NICE does.

Excerpt:

A drug which can give women with advanced breast cancer extra weeks or months of life has been turned down by a government watchdog body for use in the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) says it proposes to reject Tyverb (lapatinib) in spite of changes in the rules brought in specifically to allow people at the end of their lives to have the chance of new and often expensive treatments.

Tyverb is the only drug licensed for women with advanced breast cancer whose tumours test positive for a protein called HER2 and for whom Herceptin, a Nice-approved drug, is no longer working. In much of the rest of Europe, Tyverb is then given, in combination with a standard chemotherapy drug called capecitabine. Around 2,000 women in the UK could be eligible for the drug, which has the additional benefit of being taken in pill form, which means that women can stay at home and attempt to live normal lives. Nice turned down Tyverb earlier this year, saying it was too expensive for the benefit to patients it offered…

Smith concludes:

And don’t forget NICE also pushed the Liverpool Care Pathway, that may have brought back door euthanasia to the UK.  Similarly, we recently discussed a similar refusal of coverage in Ontario, Canada, for life-extending colon cancer chemotherapy.

This is our future if we pass Obamacare, unless we explicitly forbid by statute such rationing power to the cost control boards. But attempts to do so have all been turned down.  NICE isn’t nice, and it is an approach to health care that Americans should reject.

Now consider this story about the Liverpool Care Pathway from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial ‘death pathway’.

Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year- old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water and medication except painkillers.

He died within two weeks. But tests after his death found that his cancer had not come back and he was in fact suffering from pneumonia brought on by a chest infection.

To his family’s horror, they were told he could have recovered if he’d been given the correct treatment.

[...]Mr Jones was being cared for at a hospice which was central to the contentious Liverpool Care Pathway under which dying patients have their life support taken away, although the hospice claims it wasn’t officially applied in his case.

The scheme is used by hundreds of hospitals and care homes, and is followed in as many as 20,000 deaths a year.

Read the whole thing.

In a socialized system, you pay you income to the ruling elite based on your ability to produce. You only have value to the state while you are working to pay taxes, taxes that socialists can use to buy votes and control other people lives. When you stop working and start needing services, you become the enemy of the state.

Contrast socialism with a free market system. Now you have the power because you have the money. Doctors and hospitals only get paid if they give you what you want – quality health care for the lowest price. You can go a competitor if you don’t like what you are offered from any particular provider. Choice and competition.

More NHS horror stories listed here.

Story from the UK Times. (H/T The American Thinker via ECM)

Excerpt:

The National Health Service has spent £1.5m paying for hundreds of its staff to have private health treatment so they can leapfrog their own waiting lists.

More than 3,000 staff, including doctors and nurses, have gone private at the taxpayers’ expense in the past three years because the queues at the clinics and hospitals where they work are too long.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information act show that NHS administrative staff, paramedics and ambulance drivers have also been given free private healthcare. This has covered physiotherapy, osteopathy, psychiatric care and counselling – all widely available on the NHS.

[...]The health department defended the practice and said sending doctors, nurses and other key staff for private treatment helped to get them back to work.

This is actually standard for socialized medicine. In Canada, leftists fly to the United States for health care. They know they’ve wrecked the Canadian system. It’s like Barack Obama and public school teachers sending their own children to private schools. It’s just hypocrisy.

Who is Robert Reich and what is he up to? Verum Serum explains:

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and more recently an Obama economic adviser, has been all over the media lately shilling for ObamaCare. The public option is no more dangerous than a box of puppies according to this professionally produced video featuring Reich. (I won’t embed it but it’s worth a quick watch.) The real injustice, according to Reich, is that political operatives like us are trying to “confuse and scare” people about change.

But what was Robert Reich saying in 2007? Well he was explaining what a candidate for president would say if he wanted to tell the truth about health care. And what is the truth about health care, according to Robert Reich, who now works for Barack Obama?

Listen:

Say what? (H/T Newsbusters)

Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you,  particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you. And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

“Also, I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid—we already have a lot of bargaining leverage—to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you.”

So let’s see. Young, healthy people (like me) will pay more. Old, retired people like my parents will be murdered by death panels. And health care innovators and insurance providers will be run out of business, which reduces quality and raises costs. Well, OK, then. So now we understand what Obama’s socialized takeover of health care would really accomplish from the mouth of his own advisor.

I note that Hot Air has a video of Reich explaining all his previous opinions away.

The Associated Press reports. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Excerpt:

The health insurance industry has been working until recently to help draft legislation, while publicly endorsing President Barack Obama’s goal of affordable coverage for all Americans. The alliance has grown strained as legislation advances toward votes in Congress.

Late Sunday, the industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans sent its member companies a new accounting firm study that projects the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions in the bill would be in effect.

Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis concluded in the study commissioned by the insurance group.

“Several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system,” Karen Ignagni, the top industry lobbyist in Washington, wrote in a memo to insurance company CEOs.

The study projected that in 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.

Keith Hennessey explains the study.