Medical-Industrial Complex Wants You to Be Abnormal

An interesting opinion piece in the New York Times traces how the medical-industrial complex has been in cahoots for quite some time now developing new tests and devices and then forcing people to use them, with the goal, of course, of jacking up profits.

At the cornerstone of this campaign has been the definition of normal, as in “normal” health indicators such as, “We’d better check your cholesterol and blood sugar levels.” Along the way, the industry has succeeded in lowering the thresholds at which normal fades out and abnormal takes over. I remember a friend of mine who developed Type II Diabetes from gaining too much weight. He said his doctor told him that the upper limit of “normal” blood sugar levels used to be 140, but now it’s 100. Of course, he was well past both those figures, so it didn’t matter, but now it all starts to fit into a pattern after reading the NYT article by H. Gilbert Welch, M.D., entitled “To Overhaul the System, ‘Health’ Needs Redefinding.”

Here’s a sample:

It [the medical-industrial industry] develops diagnostic technologies able to find smaller and smaller abnormalities. So more and more of us are found to have damaged cartilage in our knees, bulging discs in our backs, and narrowed blood vessels throughout our bodies. And far too many are also found to have “spots” or “shadows” that are seldom significant but are said to be “worrisome.” So more and more of us have knee surgery, back surgery, angioplasty and more diagnostic investigation.

This all works well for the insurance industry too. I remember applying for health insurance a few years ago before my wife’s work-based insurance kicked in. I was declined for diabetes (hyperglycemia) because my blood sugar once tested at 107 (a freak result because I retook the test several times and it’s been down around 70 each time).

So who’s gaming the system? It seems to be a joint effort. Physicians order extra, unneeded tests for “defensive medicine” purposes. The device manufacturers and pharmaceuticals push tests and then drugs on patients who might not even need them. The insurance companies use the test results and the medicines we take to deny us coverage. And for our part, we consumers feel cheated unless our doctors order every test possible when we have the slightest little ailment.

Maybe what we all need is less health care. Now, there’s a novel idea, and of course, that’s exactly what we’re going to get if Obamacare goes through.

Sin Bins: Big Brother Is Alive and Well in the UK

I came across a story that’s really hard to believe. It appears that the United Kingdom has a program called Family Intervention Projects, sarcastically dubbed sin bins, that monitor suspect families and their treatment of their children.

So far, so good, but look at the mechanisms they use: First they install cameras in the families’ homes to make sure the children go to school, eat properly, and go to bed on time. Then they send out private security guards for follow-up and corrective home visitations.

I’d be laughing at this silly joke except it’s not a joke but a reality and a Big Brother nightmare at the same time. Some 2,000 families have already participated in (be subjected to is more apt) the program, and now Children’s Secretary Ed Balls wants to expand the outreach (stranglehold would be better) to another 20,000 families.

The program is designed to reduce the number of children drawn into crime.

There must be a better way. Waterboarding, anyone?

Saudi Family Takes Its Genie Nemesis to Court

A family living near the holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia has filed suit in Shariah court against a genie it alleges has been harassing them.

Typical genie harassment involves threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones, and throwing rocks at them at night when they leave the house.

The court is investigating while a local charity has relocated the family to a different house.

Genies are also called jinn in the Islamic faith and are a theme within the Koran itself.

Read about it here.

Meanwhile, the court is set to impose the granting of three wishes to the family. It’s not clear if the granting genie will be portrayed by Robin Williams or Barbara Eden.

Hawaii Passes Its Own EFCA

Over the veto of Governor Linda Lingle, Hawaii’s legislators have enabled card-check unionization and, copying the federal Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) even further, mandated contract arbitration if no labor agreement is reached within 110 days.

Hawaii thus joins four other states with their own mini-EFCAs: New York,  New Jersey, Illinois, and Oregon. However, these state laws pertain only to intrastate businesses, which limits their scope. The federal EFCA could change all that.

Now that Congressional negotiators seem to have rescinded the majority card authorization provision from the EFCA, it appears that labor’s goal all along has been the mandatory arbitration provision to force a contract on newly organized businesses. Absent this provision, employers can stall and stall until the union loses its legitimacy without a contract and just disappears.

EFCA lives on and could be exacting a costly toll on American business sometime soon through mandated employer-union contracts. If you can’t beat ’em, then legislate and arbitrate them into submission.

HELP Bill Will Help Employers Drop Health Insurance

Gee, talk about an incentive to drop out of providing health insurance for one’s employees, how’s this:

The Senate’s oxymoronically (or just moronically) named HELP Committee just reissued its health care redesign that includes an employer “play or pay” mandate. So what does an employer have to pay if he doesn’t provide insurance? A whopping $750 per family or $375 per individual–per year!

I could easily see many employers dropping their plans and telling their employees to sign up for the new so-called “public option.” They’d be saving a ton and shedding themselves of administrative heartache.

However, the HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee) bill also extends Medicaid to people earning up to four times the federal poverty level–about $43,000 for a single individual and $88,000 for a family of four ($54,000 and $108,000 respectively for Alaskans).

I’d say that within the next couple of years, if this bill passes, a great majority of Americans will be on either Medicaid or the public option. In other words, just a legislative move or two from what the Obamacrats really want, which is “Medicare for all” (at least until you get too old to work when rationing will set in to save the system money).

Shocking News: Lose Your Job, Lose Your Life

Losing one’s job shortens one’s life by up to a year and a half, according to recent studies. A job loss also often results in stress-related health conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.

The effects of job loss occur whether the loss came as a result of targeted layoffs, company closings, or individual terminations.

Another finding is–here’s the double whammy!–that periods of financial instability, often associated with unemployment, also lead to increased mortality.

While we’re having a go at health care, maybe we should focus on death care reform at the same time.

Sorry, just a bad joke as I think back over my own experience with job loss(es) the past decade or so.

Milton Could’ve Sued Lumbergh for Retaliation

Comes word from the Second Circuit Court in New York that Milton, the putative star of 1999’s iconic movie Office Space, could’ve sued boss Lumbergh and prevailed on grounds of retalation for relocating him to the basement.

Read the court’s rationale here, and view Milton and Lumbergh below:

Top Ten Regulations OSHA Gets Questions About

Here’s a list of the top ten enquiries sent by e-mail to OSHA about its regulations. The agency keeps tabs both by e-mail and phone enquiry, so a notation in parentheses shows the phone rank and regulation link:

1. Powered industrial trucks (1910.178, #3)
2. Sanitation (1910.141, #4)
3. Hazard communication (1910.1200, #2)
4. Bloodborne pathogens (1910.1030, #1)
5. Personal protective equipment, general requirements (1910.132, #5)
6. Medical services and first aid (1910.151, #6)
7. Ergonomics (no OSHA standard, not on phone list)
8. Electrical, general requirements (1910.303, not on phone list)
9. Respiratory protection (1910.134, #8)
10. Air contaminants (1910.1000, #7).

Stolen shamelessly (but with attribution) from Safety News Alert, which also notes:

“The two questions in the top-10 list of questions received by phone that aren’t on the e-mail list are about indoor air quality (no OSHA standard) and permit-required confined spaces (1910.146).”

SEIU Adopts Tactics It Wants Outlawed for Employers

Betraying its own selfish interests in trying to castrate business owners when it comes to union organizing, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is now employing the very tactics it wants to outlaw for employers.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the SEIU in California is blocking elections at hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities as the nascent National Union of Healthcare Workers gathers signatures and calls for elections.

Behind the battle lies the brutal takeover of United Healthcare Workers West (UHW West) earlier this year when SEIU President Andy Stern installed some henchmen at UHW and then accused the native leadership of embezzelment. The ousted UHW quickly morphed into the National Union of Healthcare Workers and is now battling SEIU for representation of healthcare workers in the Golden State.

Stern is fighting back like any good employer by trying to block elections while accusing the rival union of illegal tactics.

So far, two elections have been held, and each union has won one.

Since unions are unions no matter if one or more of them is an aggrieved party, it matters little who wins, but it would be nice to see Stern get his much-deserved comeuppance.

Such a Deal: $1 Trillion to Insure Just 16 Million More

Liberalcrats are scrambling to spin away a troubling (but no doubt right on) estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that “reforming” health care will come at a price tag of $1 trillion over ten years and will result in covering  just 16 million additional Americans out of a reported 47 million currently without health insurance. (The CBO estimate actually foresees the loss of 23 million privately insured individuals, with 39 million from all sources gaining insurance for a net of 16 million added insureds, not all of them newly insured.)

Ezra Klein, as usual, has become the media’s front man for liberal hype and cover-ups in the health debate. Klein has never met a government program that isn’t better than anything ever invented in human history. I guess he doesn’t drive, so he’s never experienced the DMV, or ever tried to get his Asian bride a green card. Or how about dealing with the IRS?

Whatever Klein and the liberal fabricators are doing seems to be working in the polls, which show that the public still favors health care reform. However, if you look through the polling data in enough depth, you’ll realize that the public somehow believes that so-called reform is going to make their health care costs, if not free, at least cheaper, not higher and more onerous (which is the guaranteed result of all this governmentizing of health care).

For instance, the uninsured, when asked how much they’d be willing to pay for health insurance, chose “nothing” as the overwhelming first option, but two-thirds did say they’d go as high as $100 a month, and one-third were really generous in saying they might be able to come up with $200 a month.

Yeah, and I got a nice bridge you can buy in Brooklyn for $24.

I guess we live in a delusional world suddenly. With everyone’s retirement savings having been wiped out, people are looking for a compensatory payback in free health care, evidently.

What they’ll get instead are increasingly higher taxes followed by long lines and wait lists to get health care, which in no time flat will also be rationed and in many cases simply denied.

“You’re too old for that procedure. You don’t have enough useful years left in the job market to justify getting a new hip. Just suffer. When you retire, you can sit all the time, and the hip won’t bother you.”

That’s what you get when you expect something to be free.