Health Care Pt II

According to several sources, 20% of the nation's health care costs are incurred in the last year of the patient's life. Clearly this is ineffective medical treatment ‘cause the patient dies. Sometime or other, we are all going to die. If we are lucky, we die peacefully and suddenly in bed, at home. Most people aren't so lucky. They get sick before they die. Naturally friends and family take the sick loved one to the hospital. Since the elderly patient has medicare, the doctors do every sort of expensive test and procedure, because they can bill for it. It doesn't really matter whether all this care cures the patient or not, because it's all paid for.

To curb this waste, doctors should not be paid if the patient dies during treatment or before release from the hospital. In fact, if the patient dies within 30 days following treatment, the doctor shouldn't get paid, because the treatment was obviously ineffective. This scheme won't solve all problems, but it's better than what we have now. It also gives doctors an incentive to keep patients alive so that their bills do get paid.

Where are the GM suits?

The AP reports that GM's AUDITORS are expressing doubts about GM's survival. Auditors? Plain old bean counters? Where is senior management on this? They are supposed to be running the company which requires them to understand how much money they are making or losing, and where sales are going. Sounds like GM's suits are so clueless that the bean counters have a better idea of where the company is going than the suits do.
Bailout money is wasted unless every single clueless suit is fired.

Health Care Pt I

America spends too much on health care. We devote 16 % of GNP to medical services while our Japanese and European competitors spend only half that amount. Cost of American automobiles is inflated by $1000 a car to pay for autoworkers health care. This is just one reason the Detroit carmakers are taking Federal bailout money. We cannot afford any more health care costs and we certainly cannot afford extra taxes to fund more health care.

Of the staggering sums poured into medical care, fully one quarter goes into administration (paper shuffling) according to C. Everett Koop, ex U.S. Surgeon General. The insurance companies and medic(care/aid) try to discourage claims by demanding lots of paperwork from doctors. They hire lots of clerks to review this paperwork and reject as much as possible. The doctors and hospitals buy computers and hire specialists to fill out the paperwork so they can get paid. Each insurance company strives to make it's claim forms harder to accomplish to reduce it's payout. There ought to be a single nationwide ONE PAGE claim form, acceptable to all insurance companies AND the US government. It should be simple enough for a doctor's personal computer to fill out and file over the internet. Companies should be required to pay within 45 days from submission of claim form unless they file fraud charges against the doctor in court, or, the patient dies. Federal legislation or regulation can accomplish this much.

Levine vs Wyeth, The Supremes raise Medical Costs

Levine suffered a terrible injury, resulting in amputation of her arm, after administration of a drug by an approved-on-the-label but risky manner that went wrong. She sued Wyeth, the drug maker, for the label wording that approved the riskier manner of application. The label language was approved by the FDA, and in reality, nobody EVER changes FDA approved label language for fear of never ending million dollar lawsuits. Levine won in state court, Wyeth appealed to the Supreme Court, and lost. They are liable, for millions in damages.
The Wyeth lawyers argued the case on "preemption", the doctrine that federal (in this case FDA) law and regulations override state law, and thus Wyeth cannot be sued in state court.
In actual fact, Wyeth manufactured the drug in accordance with all FDA regulations. Any ordinary person knows the ultra cautious FDA won't approve anything with any real risk attached. By complying with the onerous FDA approval, inspection, and labeling requirements, Wyeth did everything an ordinary person would expect a company to do. Didn't do them any good, they have to pay off, big time.
This case will encourage more suits by tort lawyers against doctors, hospitals and drug companies. This kind of jackpot justice is one reason why US health care costs twice as much as health care in every other first world country.

Patent Reform

There is a patent reform bill before Congress. Reform is needed because the patent system now discourages new product development. It's common wisdom in the field that what ever it is, you will be sued by patent trolls, as soon as it makes any money. Research In Motion (RIM), the blackberry people, had to pay $600 million to a patent troll last year.
The reform is 68 pages long, written in old high lawyerese, meaning that only experienced patent lawyers can tell what it means. The bill's sponsors include Sen Charles Schumer and Patrick Leahy, neither of whom is confidence inspiring.
One needed reform is to disallow patents upon "business methods", which currently covers trivia like one click or two clicks to place something into your internet shopping basket. Another is to outlaw patents upon software. Software used to be considered a branch of mathematics, and mathematics was never patentable, it was considered natural law. Another needed reform is a cheap and simple process for throwing out patents that are prior art or obvious to anyone skilled in the art. The patents in the $600 million RIM case were all prior art or obvious. Plus they were software patents.
The normal way out of depressions, like the one we are in now, is thru technological invention. New desirable products (telephone, electric light, automobiles, radio, record players, TV, personal computers, cell phones, Ipods) come on the market and people start spending money on them. The current patent system discourages technological innovation by loosing patent trolls upon the innovators.

Cyber Security

According to MSNBC the plans for the airframe and avionics package of Marine One were found on the Internet at an IP address in Iran. The finder points a finger at a defense contractor who allowed a file sharing program to be installed on the machine holding the sensitive Marine One files.
Wow. First of all, it's a breach of security to connect computers with classified or sensitive information to the internet at all. It's a breach of security to have classified on computers that are not in a locked secured area. And it's a super breach of security to have a peer-to-peer file sharing program on any computer. Three strikes and you're out.
If this checks out, that contractor ought to have their security clearances revoked for cause.
And we would all be more secure if we didn't run Windows.

Pitch meets Snowy

Pitch is that black sticky stuff that builds up on circular saw blades. Once coated with sticky pitch, the blade slows down from the friction and is liable to grab the work and hurl it at you. Kickback it's called, and it is scary. Trees, having about a billion years of evolution to perfect their biochemistry, can make some really tough stuff. Pitch defies paint thinner, alcohol and WD-40. However there is an answer
Snowy Color Safe Bleach, a powder, comes in cardboard boxes. "Contains sodium perborate, sodium carbonate and sodium silicates". Works like magic. Fill a cookie sheet with hot water, add a generous amount of Snowy, and submerge the blade in the mixture. Only takes a couple of minutes and the pitch softens up and comes off with a little scrubbing with an old tooth brush.
Makes a blade cut like new.