In the news Health Care Reform

Sassi told Sebelius that insurance costs also continue to rise because medical prices are increasing faster than inflation, and people are using more health care. That use increase is driven by an aging population, new treatments and "more intensive diagnostic testing," he wrote.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100211/ap_on_he_me/us_insurance_rates_wellpoint

More reasons to scrutinize the diagnostic tests and new treatments. The insurance companies say that's driving up rates. They also say:

Brian Sassi, the head of WellPoint's consumer business unit, said in his letter to Sebelius that the weak economy is leading individual insurance buyers who don't have access to group plans to drop coverage or buy cheaper plans. That reduces the premium revenue available to cover claims from sicker customers who are keeping their coverage.


So let me get this straight, people drop insurance because insurance is too expensive and insurance companies raise the rates on everyone left to make up for it?

No insurance companies, you go bankrupt. The remaining people aren't made of money and many just needed one more push to drop your plan and 39% will probably do it.

They aren't so stupid that they'd price gouge during a recession?

And all DC can talk about it how they'll force the insurance companies to take people with preexisting conditions and make them compete with each other with the plans they offer.



WellPoint is the largest publicly traded health insurer based on membership and is a dominant player in the individual insurance market in California. Based in Indianapolis, the company runs Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in 14 states and Unicare plans in several others.

So we're going to break up this giant and have a bunch of smaller corporations compete for people to insure? Will those costs be cheaper? Oh right the plan is to inject 30,000,000 customers by mandating insurance coverage.

And as time has gone by, we have recruited every health person we can to screen and test and diagnose with new chronic conditions treatable only by a newer medication sold by the company that helped characterize the "disease" in the first place.

Who writes this stuff?

Evidence Based Medicine

We like to give lip service to the term evidence based medicine as physicians. It's a hallmark of cutting-edge scientific, modern medicine. Not shooting in the dark with our recommendations, not rigidly following the dogma of the expert's experience, not hoping our theories work out but insisting on PROOF that we're doing more good than harm.

But it goes beyond that.

Evidence based medicine is a way of turning the age old recommendation and paternalistic guidance of the physician into teaching, empowerment. It's rather ironic that as medicine has grown more complicated, we're expecting more and more understanding from our patients. Now patients make decisions after weighing the ups and downs of a medication or test; before patients were compliant with instructions.

And we should praise evidence based medicine; look at what it has saved us from already:

Screening stress treadmill tests which caused more harm from evaluating all the false alarms with heart cath tests (the plastic tube through the groin artery test) than saved lives through early detection

Screening Chest Xrays for catching lung cancer early in smokers (found spots that didn't need to be found AND added radiation which is cancer causing to the smokey mixture in the lung tissue)

Screening CT scans for kidney cancers (found more spots that were never going to spread in the lifetime of the individual than caught and cured genuine deadly cancers)

Screening CT scans for lung cancer (found just as many "cancers" in nonsmokers as smokers, the overwhelming majority never to cause a single symptom)

We learn from our mistakes and abandon harmful practices all the time. But when it comes to screening mammograms, medicine as a culture holds on stubbornly no matter how high the pile of damning evidence grows.

And it's no wonder. To admit that we've done more harm than good with screening mammograms would be admitting that most of the women we labeled as breast cancer survivors were victims of unnecessary treatment. It would also be admitting that the benefits and harms were unclear at the onset of large scale screening in the 80s. Which is an admission that our collective experience with screening mammography has been a large failed experiment.

We live in a society that equates being wrong with failure; we practice medicine with the constant judgment of the "Standard of Care" hovering an inevitable lawsuit away and we devote our lives to curing , relieving suffering and advocating. We have a score card in our head and the evidence tells us that most of the cures, most of the victories were actually harms.

And eventually, admitting screening mammography was a failed experiment without proper consented draws out the conflicts of interest within the wealthy so called advocacy groups such as the American Cancer Society.

Which leads to organizations like DuPont and General Electric (the largest corporation on earth according to Forbes 2009). Companies who have either funded, created and or benefited from the positions and marketing prowess of the ACS.

But more importantly, rejection of screening mammography is a rejection of powerful forces who are hopelessly budgeted to the continuation and expansion of harmful, expensive procedures while minimizing true prevention and treatment.

The health of the largest corporation on earth hinges on screening for breast cancer?

Crazy world.

http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001877.html

http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstf09/breastcancer/brcanrs.htm

http://www.nwhn.org/healthinfo/detail.cfm?info_id=20&topic=Position%20Papers


In other words, I have been wrong and for a decade participated in the promotion of harmful medical practices while gaining financially. I regret my negligence and will strive to prevent the same error from ever happening again as I openly explore what led to my errors.

Science Fiction Now

http://www.physorg.com/news183832835.html

So these people have developed a tiny implantable device that generates electrical current when it's bent back and forth,  turning the energy of motion into electricity.  

So not only could you recharge a cell phone with the movement of your limbs (if the device were implanted into your clothes) but also you could recharge a pacemaker battery with the movements of your lungs and diaphragm.  

The technology is similar to these little lights placed on the ends of airplane wings that charge up by the vibrations of the wings in flight.  

Again similar to technology where larger devices are placed under or within sidewalks and the mechanical energy of millions of footstep-vibrations power overhead lights in subways and what not.  

Could the vibrations of passing traffic in a busy intersection power the LED lights in traffic signals?  

Jama January 13th 2010

About half of the total pages in this episode of the Journal of the American Medical Association is taken up with discussions about the most recent screening mammogram recommendations from the US Preventive Task Force and the media and political controversy that followed.  

It's refreshing to see that JAMA is attempting to cut through the political drama and misinformation, commonly referred to as "spin", and get down to the actual risks and benefits of screening for breast cancer with mammography.  They actually point out that the real harms from screening mammography don't come from the false positives but from all the unnecessary diagnosis.  In one article they have a tiny table of the benefits of this screening test followed by the harms.   

If you can get your hands on this Jama edition,  take a look.  If you want to borrow mine,  drop me an email doctorcrafts@yahoo.com

They even mention the senate getting involved much like they did in 1997 but this time instead of passing a non-binding resolution supporting screening mammography,  they passed an amendment to the so called health care reform bill forcing insurance companies to pay for screening tests.  This reportedly includes testing for ovarian and lung cancer which are even more fraught with harms of unnecessary diagnosis, surgery chemo etc.  

All this press coverage and medical journal coverage will at the very least prompt more thorough discussions in exam rooms all over the country as women again decide whether it is in their best interest to under this screening test this year.  At the same time large institutions and hospitals are budgeting for an increase in revenue from their mammography centers.  It is easy to see how this seemingly routine decision affects the health care industry's bottom line.  This effect is magnified during a recession.  

Is more information helpful or harmful to the bottom line of these institutions?  

Do the interests of the average patient overlap with the financial interests of these institutions who respond to these so called controversies with more advertising?  

With the swine flu mirage and with screening mammography we can clearly see the political apparatus align itself with the medical industrial giants.  Based on the number of patients who chose not to accept the swine flu vaccine,   it is obvious that credibility is slipping. 

It will be interesting to see the rates of screening mammography for 2010 to judge whether the best efforts of industry and government will continue to prop up a harmful, expensive practices.  

Never a dull moment.  

Local Swine Flu News

The numbers nationwide have dropped to next to nothing. Yet the CDC announces the death toll increased 10 fold based on new ways of estimating. The vaccine hasn't been used widely in this area because of the shortages, and the protective effects take 2-4 weeks to materialize. The reason the numbers are dropping is because EVERYONE had the infection. Ok not everyone; but close enough to make it very difficult for the swine flu to spread. But the bottom line message repeated in most of the news casts still is "the most important thing you can do is get vaccinated". Get vaccinated even though one third or more of the population has already been infected? Get vaccinated even though there's no evidence that it prevents infection much less saves lives? Get vaccinated with an accepted risk of adverse reactions on the order of 1 per 100,000 doses?

Why wouldn't the people creating the news ask these experts with the CDC "why did your numbers shift so wildly?" or "why are we seeing decreases in disease rates despite the vaccine not being available?"

"why do 30%-50% of medical professionals still refuse the vaccination?"

Don't they like drama? Doesn't controversy cause ratings to spike?





http://www.kimatv.com/news/local/79595382.html


YAKIMA COUNTY --- Flu numbers are already going down. But experts still warn you; be cautious.

In Yakima County, the number of flu cases dropped from 31% in September and October to only 4% in the first week in December. The numbers count both H1N1 and the Seasonal Flu. While the Yakima Health District calls the numbers promising, they still urge caution. Jessica Brown is with the Yakima Health District.

"Both with H1N1 and the seasonal flu, we encourage people to get vaccinated as soon as they can. With the seasonal flu, we yearly don't see it peak until at least January, sometimes into February or even March."

The Health District thinks vaccines and hand washing have played a big role in bringing the flu numbers down.

Swine Flu Peaks?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34066494/ns/health-cold_and_flu/


But somehow it's STILL important to get your vaccine and take Tamiflu. I want a big scoreboard of the 200 million doses the government ordered for the US that ticks down as the vaccines are actually delivered to clinics and pharmacies. So we can see how many are left over and ask for our money back.

Even better let's see a running total of vaccines actually administered to people.

Great use of health care resources "leaders".

While I'm at it wishing for stuff, I also want to see a total of the profits generated from the sales of Tamiflu and vaccinations.

OK go ahead and include the money wasted on advertising the "pandemic".

Notice how the mutations in H1N1 variety of flu virus occur so consistently with Tamiflu? Yeah H1N1 is really good at mutating into a Tamiflu resistant form. So when the worry was "if swine flu mutates it could be more deadly" why would we promote the use of Tamiflu so widely? So widely that the company ramped up production so high that they surpassed their total production adding up the past 9 years? Yeah the company that makes Tamiflu is making more Tamiflu this year than they have in all of Tamifu history.

A drug without proven benefit other than decreasing the natural course of some flu strains a day.

Well at least the swine flu is decreasing before seasonal flu hits but you wait when seasonal flu hits. We'll hear something like "we can't tell if this is yet another wave of more severe swine flu!"

Who writes this stuff?

Creative Piggy Flu Profits

http://abcnews.go.com/m/screen?id=9115918


Talks about pharmacies jacking up prices on Tamiflu for children. Mentions that there are 2.2 million children without health insurance. I wonder how many families had to sacrifice some other purchase to cover the cost of this worthless medicine.