EppsNet

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a longtime fixture on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending, died after complications from gallbladder surgery, according to his office. He was 77.

The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was “routine minimally invasive surgery,” but doctors “hit his intestines,” a source close to the late congressman told CNN.

— CNN.com

OMG I HAD THAT SAME OPERATION I COULD HAVE DIED!!!

On a lighter note, how ironic is it that the president loses a pro-ObamaCare vote due to medical error in a government-run hospital?

David Brooks declares “we spend too much on health care” (on NPR) then demands “innovation” and “new technologies.” What if they cost money?

— @kausmickey (Mickey Kaus)

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From TheCoreProtocols Yahoo group:

This one is pretty good:

IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF THOSE WE SERVE.

Compare that to the previous one:

Our mission is to make a significant, positive impact on the healthcare system by changing behaviors and improving outcomes.

And before that:

APS is dedicated to providing user-friendly, accessible, comprehensive and innovative behavioral healthcare systems that promote teamwork, relationships, and provider partnerships; add value to our client’s services; and improve upon members’ quality of care and outcomes. APS believes that quality is achieved by providing access to the most appropriate care and in the least restrictive setting.

And originally:

The mission is to be a premier care management company that can flexibly, yet cost effectively, deliver the full continuum of care management services needed to improve total health outcomes; and, more specifically, to assure quality care is provided in the most appropriate and cost-effective setting based on individual patient needs and within the guidelines of the particular insurance contract.

I will actually give you a speech made up entirely–almost at the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. . . .

“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you, and I would like to be president. 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. [laughter] That’s true, and what I’m going to do is I am going to 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. [applause] Thank you.

“And by the way, we are 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. [applause]

“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. But 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 that much longer than your parents. [applause] Thank you.”

— Robert Reich

When the government runs healthcare . . .

Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib — which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed. Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 [$60,000] a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.

The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was “simply too high” to justify the “benefit to patients.”

— Mail Online

In an interview with Popular Mechanics, Dean Kamen, one of the world’s most prolific inventors of healthcare technologies, challenges the notion that the U.S. has a healthcare crisis. Rather than slowing the pace of medical progress in order to cut healthcare costs, he argues, America should be encouraging more innovation in life-saving drugs and technologies . . .

• Why Health Care Will Never Be Equal – http://bit.ly/F1e8P #
• RT @Lileks: I'd paint that with a hammer! #failedcatchphrases #

My fellow Americans –

Perhaps it was unfair of me to be critical of President Obama’s healthcare speech without having heard it. There’s not much to do on a Saturday night when you’re dead, so I read the transcript:

We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies . . . Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

And how much money are we talking about, sir?

Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.

WTF?!

I will not accept the status quo as a solution.

OK — cut the bullshit, my friend. Your “plan” vs. “the status quo” is a false choice. You’ve just said so yourself. If you’ve figured out how to eliminate $900 billion in waste and inefficiency from the current system, GO AHEAD AND DO IT! Why are you tying that to 1,000 pages of unrelated “reforms” that no one has even bothered to read?

If you can eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency — I don’t believe that for a second, but let’s say you can — you will have no greater supporter than old Tom Jefferson. AND — you will have acquired so much credibility that you’ll be able to pass any reforms you like.

Don’t present false choices to us like we’re a nation of fools. Cut the bullshit and DO something.

— Tom

My fellow Americans –

Did you watch President Obama’s healthcare speech tonight? Neither did I. But I did learn from msnbc.com’s First Read that he hoped in his speech to explain to ordinary American voters — “call them Joe and Jane from Kansas City” — that his health-care reform will 1) cover nearly everyone and 2) cut costs in the long run.

So let me get this straight — we’re going to spend money to save money!

Does he think everyone in Kansas City is that stupid or just Joe and Jane?

What — you don’t believe we can insure 50 million more people and cut costs at the same time? Well then, you’re an uninformed kook!

You’re scared that those cost savings will come from drastically rationing access to care, particularly for people who are chronically ill and/or near the end of their lives? You’re un-American! Probably a Nazi!

I’m going to tell you something about myself that you probably didn’t learn in school: When I died, I was deeply in debt. Do you know why? Because everyone, including successful politicians like yours truly, struggles to keep up with the demands of organizing and managing the daily realities of their own lives, let alone trying to micromanage the entire goddamn United States healthcare system.

Let me leave you with this final thought. Don’t believe everything your leaders tell you. Use some common sense, as my old friend Tom Paine used to say. Think for yourself.

— Tom

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These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views–but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

— Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate

The “facts” to which they refer turn out to be not facts at all but representations about the glories of ObamaCare: “Health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. . . . Reform will mean stability and peace of mind for the middle class. . . . Reform will mean affordable coverage for all Americans. . . . Reform will also mean higher-quality care.”

What, you don’t believe it? You better believe it, or you’re un-American.

— Best of the Web Today

From the White House Blog:

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to “uncover” the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Right. There’s no informed opposition to health insurance reform, only “scary chain emails” and “disinformation” traveling “just below the surface,” whatever that means.

It all sounds very sinister though, so as agents of the government, we are encouraging all good citizens to inform on their neighbors if they may be up to something.

Donald Marron points out that another one of those great cost-saving ideas in the healthcare debate (the Independent Medicare Advisory Council) has taken a hit:

CBO estimates that the proposed legislation would save a paltry $2 billion over the next ten years, less than 1/500 of the 10-year cost of health reform.

Damn that CBO! They keep killing all these great ideas with, like, analysis and numbers and all that stuff. Everything would work out just fine if only they would close their eyes, click their heels together three times, and say, “There is no policy like reform…there is no policy like reform….”

— Greg Mankiw

I’ve been downgraded from an ear infection to a “full-blown” ear infection. Last week, the doctor at walk-in urgent care gave me an Amoxicillin prescription and told me to come back if the symptoms didn’t improve in four or five days.

They didn’t, but I went to a different walk-in clinic this afternoon to work a second opinion into the process. The doctor gave me a prescription for Levaquin to replace the Amoxicillin.

I know, nobody cares about this. I only mention it because it reminded me of something important.

I was a consultant for many years and I’m going to share with you now one of the axioms of consulting:

Whatever the client is doing, advise them to do something else.

If whatever they’ve been doing was working, they wouldn’t need a consultant, right?

Is Levaquin “better” than Amoxicillin for ear infections? No, but you see what I’m getting at.

After three months on the dole, I got a job offer from the IT director of a local non-profit healthcare association here in Orange County. I start next week. As Gerald Ford used to say, “Our long national nightmare is over.”

It’s a small IT group — 8 people, including the director. I’ve got to admit I’m a little burned out on big corporate IT shops.

I got out of hands-on programming and into leadership roles because I thought I could do a better job than the people I saw doing it. I wanted to develop teams that got things done using their skills and their collective intelligence, but in practice, you typically get locked into some corporate process standard.

A process may be good for delivering consistent results, but they may not be consistently good results. Like at McDonald’s, every Big Mac is just like every other Big Mac because they have a process for making Big Macs. But is a Big Mac a high-quality dining experience? Not really . . .

A friend and former colleague, who was also recently let go by a local mortgage company, emails to say

I’m doing well… still spending a lot of time in Bakersfield, spending time with my parents. I’ve been looking for jobs, but haven’t applied for anything. I guess I actually need to apply.

She’s single, she can afford to be sanguine.

I was in contact with at least 100 companies in one way or another – sent a resume, called, phone interviews, in-person interviews – and got two job offers. So the upside with her approach is that I could have avoided 98 rejections.

Did I mention the job is with a healthcare organization? I was laid off from my last job, with a mortgage bank, when the mortgage industry tanked. Prior to that, I was laid off from a dot-com consulting company when that industry imploded.

I’ve got a knack for getting into industries at their absolute zenith, then riding them down the drain.

But healthcare — it’s recession-proof! Isn’t it? You can’t say, “I’m going to put off getting critically ill until I have a better read on the economy.”