Category Archives: medical news

medical news, national news, political news

Economist is now practicing medicine?

Knock it off, Paul Krugman.

I get that you’re a smart fellow, Nobel laureate and all.

But your Nobel Prize is in economics, not medicine.

Why, then, are you trying to diagnose a supposedly “obvious” mental illness for the president of the United States?

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-trump-mentally-ill-2017-1

Krugman leans left in his economic theory. He opposes Trump at every conceivable level. Heck, so do I. So do most of those Americans who voted in the 2016 election.

But for crying out loud, Professor Krugman. You need not fire off tweets alleging something about which you have no knowledge.

Sure, the president is acting kind of goofy. He campaigned as a serious goofball. I get all of that.

No one, though, except a medical doctor is qualified to toss out assertions like the one Krugman has tossed. Not even if he is a smarty-pants economist.

medical news, national news, political news

Why not just repair Obamacare?

All this talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act seems to ignore a possible alternative that’s been done already with other landmark legislation.

Congressional Republicans have been adamant about getting rid of the ACA. They’ve had six years to find a replacement mechanism to provide health insurance to Americans who cannot afford it otherwise. They have failed. They’ve come up with … nothing!

The alternative to flat-out repeal is to repair the ACA.

Congress enacted Medicare in 1965 to provide medical insurance to elderly Americans. It wasn’t perfect, either. Congress and President Johnson got together to tinker with it, to fine-tune it, to make it better. The same can be said of what Congress and other president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did with Social Security when they created that program in 1935.

Reasonable minds can come together to make landmark laws better. It’s been done. Why not now?

Well, my theory is that it’s because the ACA has President Obama’s name on it. It’s been called Obamacare chiefly by those who use that term as a pejorative. They don’t like something that carries the name of a president who House and Senate Republicans have opposed since the beginning of his time in the White House.

I get that the ACA isn’t perfect. I understand that premiums have increased, that health insurance companies are bailing out, that consumers are having trouble finding doctors who will treat those covered by insurance provided by the ACA.

Aren’t there reasonable solutions to fix these problems? Can’t the ACA opponents huddle with those in Congress who support the plan to repair the law?

Oh, no! They’ve got to toss the ACA into the trash heap. They want to declare victory by calling it a “monumental failure,” a “disaster,” a “terrible idea.”

Twenty million Americans have health insurance today who didn’t have it before the ACA became law in 2010. Congressional Republicans are quite sure they can repeal the ACA. Finding a replacement is a bit more of a hurdle.

They have precedent, though, for seeking ways to repair what many folks believe is a flawed idea.

Compromise, folks! That’s how you govern effectively. You either have Americans’ interests at heart, or you are thinking only of your own political futures.

medical news

House prepares to burn Obamacare to the ground

I told you I would say something good about Donald J. Trump when the opportunity presents itself.

It just has.

The president-elect has admonished Republican members of Congress about whether they should repeal the Affordable Care Act without having a replacement law ready to go.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-house-republicans-to-vote-on-obamacare-repeal/ar-AAlQhoT?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

According to Reuters: “The president-elect, who takes office on Jan. 20, pressed lawmakers this week to repeal and replace it ‘essentially simultaneously.'”

Yes, Trump has applauded House members’ swift action to repeal the ACA. He’s also been mindful of the consequences of peeling away health insurance for 20 million Americans who have purchased coverage under the ACA.

It’s not as if congressional Republicans haven’t had time to cobble together a replacement plan. For six years, since the ACA was approved, the GOP has been harping and carping about the need to replace it — with something! House Republicans filed a lawsuit to repeal the ACA. They wrung their hands and griped out loud continually about an insurance law that was patterned — interestingly enough — after a Massachusetts law endorsed and pushed by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.

House repeal doesn’t spell the end of the ACA. The repeal effort still has to jump through the Senate hoops, too.

However, the president-elect’s insistence that Congress have a replacement plan ready to go “simultaneously” is the more reasonable and humane approach.

medical news, national news, political news

Dr. Carson’s HUD nomination: most puzzling of all Trump’s picks

Of all the people nominated by Donald J. Trump to join the new president’s administration, the one that continues to puzzle me the most is his pick for secretary of housing and urban development.

Ben Carson ran against Trump and 15 others for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2016. He ended up in the campaign-trail ditch right along with the rest of them.

Here are two elements that trouble me greatly.

Trump said some amazingly harsh things about Dr. Carson, a noted pediatric neurosurgeon who retired from his medical practice to become a politician. Carson returned the fire to the eventual GOP nominee. They went at each other with rhetorical brass knuckles.

Second — and this came from Carson’s own mouth — was that he declared himself unqualified to lead a Cabinet agency. His spokesmen said managing a massive federal bureaucracy didn’t fit into his skill set. After the election, Carson in effect took himself out of the Trump administration mix for the most straightforward reason possible: He admitted to being unable to do the job.

But then … ?

Trump picks him to run HUD! The nomination raised eyebrows all across the nation. Didn’t this fellow just say he couldn’t do the job? Didn’t the good doctor admit to being — essentially — unfit to become a Cabinet secretary?

Now he’s going to lead an agency that, among other things, tends to the needs of poor Americans who need government-subsidized public housing.

The brilliant doctor has no knowledge of how to oversee such a massive operation.

Dr. Carson is a brilliant man. I do not intend to disparage his intelligence. But holy cow, man! His learning curve is going to be steep, as in monstrously steep.

Is the doctor up to the task of learning how this agency works? I have to wonder.

medical news, national news, political news

GOP set to repeal … but what about the ‘replace’ part?

It’s not like the Republican Party’s members of Congress haven’t had time. They’ve had six whole years to consider how they would replace the Affordable Care Act if they ever got the chance to repeal the law.

They seem set on the repeal part of the ACA. What, though, is taking them so long to come up with the replacement?

The ACA — aka Obamacare — is President Obama’s signature domestic achievement. He’s no doubt going to speak highly of it when he bids the nation farewell in just a little while.

The ACA has enabled about 20 million Americans to obtain health insurance. Has it been “affordable,” as the president pitched it? Not entirely. Premiums have gone up; medical plans have had trouble marrying up doctors and health insurance companies.

It is not, as the GOP has maintained for the past six years, a “disaster.” They seem to dislike it mainly because a Democratic president came up with the idea of providing insurance for uninsured Americans.

But hey! He got the idea from Massachusetts, which had a Republican governor — a guy named Mitt Romney — that had developed a nearly identical plan. Obama copied Romney’s plan, more or less, and adapted to the national model.

What’s more the president himself has said that he would have been willing to accept an alternative if it did a better job than the ACA. Republicans, though, aren’t ready to provide an alternative.

What in the world has taken them so long? Are they content only to bitch and moan for the sake of political expediency without giving serious thought and discussion to how they would replace the ACA?

They’ve got the repeal part down pat. How about giving us something with which to replace it? If they intend to govern, they need to flesh out the details of how their ideas on health care are better than what we have.

medical news

VPOTUS to continue ‘moon shot’ work to fight cancer

Vice President Joe Biden has let it slip.

He didn’t mean to tell us about his post-public-office plans. But he did. They involve continuing his “moon shot” effort to find a cure for cancer through the Biden Trust.

Allow me to cheer this accidental scoop.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-accidentally-reveals-post-inauguration-plans/ar-BBxRH4f?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Biden let it slip and the news was picked up by a C-SPAN microphone.

He’ll set up his “moon shot” operation at the University of Pennsylvania. The Biden Trust will administer the work that the vice president will do, presumably to raise money dedicated to continuing the scientific research that’s underway to find a cure for cancer.

The vice president, of course, has some serious skin in this game. His beloved son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015 and it is believed that Beau’s death — and his father’s profound grief that followed — prevented the vice president from running for president in 2016.

Indeed, I was hoping the vice president would be retained in some capacity by the new administration to continue his “moon shot” work using the imprimatur of the White House, the surgeon general or the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Biden Trust, though, is a valuable venue to continue this important work.

I wish the vice president well and pray his “moon shot” hits pay dirt.

medical news, political news, State news

‘War against women’ takes new turn in Texas

Let’s take a moment or two to connect a few dots.

* Democrats accuse Republicans of waging a “war against women.”

* Republicans deny such a thing.

* Republicans — many of them, at least — are adamantly opposed to Planned Parenthood, one of the nation’s leading providers of health care services for women. Yes, Planned Parenthood refers women to abortion clinics.

* The Texas Legislature, which has a GOP uber-majority, has now decided to cut Planned Parenthood off from the state’s Medicaid program, which enables low-income Texans to get medical assistance at a drastically reduced cost.

* Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, another Republican, has signed on to this effort.

* Oh, and the government does not provide any money for abortions.

So, Planned Parenthood is now in the Republicans’ sights because, the GOP leadership insists, the organization allegedly treats aborted fetuses cavalierly; there also have been unspecified allegations of billing fraud. The video recording shows staffers supposedly talking about harvesting “fetal tissue” for medical research — even though there’s been zero proof provided that it’s even occurring.

Planned Parenthood denies any wrongdoing and the activists who insist that there is haven’t produced evidence to back up their assertion.

Is there a “war against women” going on in the Texas Legislature?

Planned Parenthood has become the prime bogeyman among legislators who are enraged that the organization has anything to do with abortions.

Here’s the thing: The government doesn’t pay for the procedure. Planned Parenthood, though, does provide a wide range of other health-related services to women who need them. Medicaid is a state-run assistance program aimed at helping low-income women obtain medical services they otherwise couldn’t afford.

State health officials have delivered the bad news to Planned Parenthood. In about a month, the state is going cut off millions of dollars in aid, affecting thousands of Texas women.

The women who rely on state assistance to obtain medical advice from Planned Parenthood deserve better treatment than they’re getting from Texas legislators and the governor.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/20/texas-kicks-planned-parenthood-out-medicaid/

According to the Texas Tribune: “In the final notice, Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Stuart Bowen said the undercover videos — which depicted Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of fetal tissue for research — showed ‘that Planned Parenthood violated state and federal law.'”

And there’s more from the Tribune: “Planned Parenthood has vehemently denied those claims, and it has criticized the videos the state is pointing to as evidence as being heavily edited to imply malfeasance. Its health centers in Texas have also said they do not currently donate fetal tissue for research. Their Houston affiliate did participate in a 2010 research study with the University of Texas Medical Branch.”

This is looking for all the world to me as though the Legislature has found a solution to an unspecified and unproven problem.

Meanwhile, thousands of Texas women will be chewed up in the political buzzsaw.

Is there a war against women being waged? Looks like it to me.

entertainment news, medical news

You go, Cindy Stowell!

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I’ve been doing something quite unusual the past few days.

I have been planning my days around a TV game show. “Jeopardy!” airs in Amarillo on KFDA NewsChannel 10 every weekday afternoon at 4:30. I’m planning to tune in once again Monday to see how a young woman from Austin does on her fifth appearance as a contestant.

Cindy Stowell has won more than $100,000 while dispatching opponents over the course of four days. Her back story is astonishing to the max.

Stowell has died. She left this world on Dec. 5, about a week before her appearance on “Jeopardy!” was to begin airing. She competed while suffering from cancer. She knew she had little time to live. So did a few program staffers and the show’s  host, Alex Trebek.

Stowell agreed to donate her winnings to cancer-related research charities.

“Jeopardy!” producers aren’t divulging how much longer Stowell will be on the show; as the champ, she competes until someone beats her.

The New York Times reported today that this show — already immensely popular — has developed a unique following as the nation watches this amazing, brave young computer programmer compete in the amazing brain-teaser game.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/us/cindy-stowell-jeopardy-death.html?_r=0

As the Times reported: While it’s not unusual for the show to establish back stories for the contestants, the viewers’ knowledge of Ms. Stowell’s condition ‘is to share a sad secret with her,’ Seth Rosenthal wrote at SB Nation.

“’I sit in awe of a brilliant woman earning every last dollar she can for the causes dearest to her; building a sum of infinite potential in the face of her own finality,’ he said. ‘I have never rooted harder for anyone to win anything.’”

Neither have many of us. This story breaks my heart and lifts my spirits … all at once. Amazing!

medical news, national news, political news

Huck weighs in on HUD pick

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Mike Huckabee has joined the tweeter in chief in communicating with Americans about public policy.

Here’s a fascinating Twitter message from the one-time presidential candidate/Arkansas governor/Baptist preacher: “Ben Carson is first HUD Sec to have actually lived in gov’t housing. Fancy Nancy Pelosi says he’s not qualified; is she racist or just dumb?”

There you have it. Ben Carson is qualified to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because he once lived in a public housing project.

Is that what Huck has said?

I am absolutely certain that Gov. Huckabee would expand on Dr. Carson’s alleged qualifications when asked.

However, I cannot get past the statement that Dr. Carson made a week after the election, that he didn’t want to serve in Donald Trump’s Cabinet. A close Carson associate said the doctor — one of the world’s renowned pediatric neurosurgeons — isn’t qualified to run a federal agency.

If Huckabee’s logic holds up, I guess I’m qualified to pilot a jet airliner because I’ve flown several hundred thousand miles on them; I’m also qualified to practice dentistry because I’ve had root canals done on my teeth.

Don’t misread me here. I admire Dr. Carson’s skill as a brain surgeon. He has performed great work on young patients in need of medical miracles.

However, living in a public housing development does not give one the qualifications needed to manage a massive federal agency. Beyond that, he has zero government experience. Of course, neither does the man who has nominated him to become HUD secretary.

I will await with eager anticipation the grilling that Dr. Carson is going to get from the U.S. Senate committee that will recommend whether he gets the job he once said he didn’t want.

medical news, national news, political news

Dr. Carson changes his mind; he is ‘qualified’ after all

dr-carson

Was I hearing things a week after the presidential election?

I could swear I heard — and read — something from Dr. Ben Carson and his closest associates in which he declared he didn’t want a job in Donald J. Trump’s Cabinet because, in Carson’s view, he wasn’t qualified to run a federal agency.

That’s not his skill set … supposedly.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/11/carson-opts-out-of-cabinet-post-but-why/

Carson ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination and was one of 16 pretenders to get crushed by the Trump juggernaut.

So, what precisely is Dr. Carson’s skill? He’s a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon. He has performed what amount to medical miracles on children in need of them. His brilliance as an MD is beyond reproach.

Now, though, he’s being tossed into a brand new arena. Trump has nominated him to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

I don’t understand this choice.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-taps-former-campaign-rival-carson-as-housing-secretary/ar-AAl9QAE?li=BBnb7Kz

As The Associated Press reported: “In a statement, Trump says he’s ‘thrilled to nominate’ Carson, saying he “has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities.” Great! Does the passion qualify him to manage a massive federal agency? Time will reveal that in due course.

If the president-elect were to ask me, I’d say Carson would be a better fit as secretary of health and human services or as surgeon general. Trump seek my advice.

As for his ability to run HUD, I’ll just suggest that managing a massive federal bureaucracy ain’t exactly brain surgery … if you get my drift.