Saturday, February 5, 2011

Med School Obsolete

By their own actions, the medical community, the AMA and licensing boards have made it known that it only takes a few years to be able to do their job. No med school required! After all, the typical procedure at a medical office now is a cursory observation and/or history, maybe look at some lab results indicating something high or low and write a prescription for drugs out of a manual. In fact, 90% of office visits end with only a new prescription or renewing an old one. And 50% of medical office visits never involve an M.D.! They allow a four year "Assistant" to do the diagnosis and treatment; i.e., P.A. ('Physician's Assistant')- 2-year minimum, or a N.P. ('Nurse Practitioner')- sometimes a Master's required. And this is legal and legitimate enough to charge the same fees as if you were seen by an actual "doctor." So, they are telling us that most of the work they do requires no medical school or medical doctorate degree. They are not needed for what they mostly do - write drug prescriptions. In fact, why not just let the pharmaceutical companies send them directly to you? Oh yeah, they do. Just go on-line or call an 800 number and get a free sample of the latest drug. Some system!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

End the Tax Cuts for Wealthy

I’m no economist but I’m a small business owner. Company profits pass to my personal return. If the company makes more money, taxes increase AND profits, too. If I reinvest profits (expansion and jobs), it’s an expense and I pay less taxes. So how do these ‘economists’ figure increased personal income taxes (back to original rates) mean less jobs? They’re only on profits. Do they believe a business owner prefers to lessen business (income) in order to reduce taxes? A basic business rule is ‘only hire employees who produce in excess of their pay.’ Expanding workforce, if the market warrants, is expanding business profits, and, yes, taxes in proportion. Politicians who spin facts are just what the Tea Party wants out of government. Take special interests out and put integrity in so we can be fiscally responsible and actually increase jobs. Lessen spending but hold the highest tax brackets responsible for reinvesting into the economy they earned from, not allowing them to hoard money from those making under $250,000. Those under $250,000 are the unemployed, losing homes, insurance, health care, retirements and savings. Shame on you, Jack Kingston and cohorts. Has anyone considered that a gradual increase back to normal is something the ‘wealthy’ could handle? They are the only ones whose taxes were reduced and are certainly not without houses, income, insurance, retirement, etc. The tax cuts were intended to encourage investment back into the economy, which obviously never happened! There’s no indication that theory will ever work.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Greed 101

The problem must start in the schools. Is it all the scholarly business schools, Harvard, Wharton, etc, that teach the idea of greed til the well dries up? In business, I always believed the customer comes first. Look at any small Mom and Pop store in downtown, USA and you find a place that puts the customer first and finds a way to make the customer satisfied and happy. Reputation matters. But go to some large corporation and ask the 'CEO' who is most important and they all assuredly shout, "The Stockholders!" They truly believe that the bottom line and the stockholders are more important than the customers. And that works temporarily. But eventually, when you piss off enough customers, the bottom falls out and the stockholders lose big time. Just ask the US auto industry. Imagine what you would think if you asked Mom or Pop who was most important and comes first in their business and they said "Me!" Exactly. We think how stupid and arrogant these overpaid CEO's are. They run the businesses into the ground or out of the country for profits and lose the customers in the process. Way to go, college professors. Teach the next generation of business admins how to sift the assets out of the corporation before it goes under. Oh, that's right, you already taught that course!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Lower Medicaid costs with Food Stamp Rules

Let's make a change to help the needy get healthier and save money in the process. Food Stamps should only be used for fresh fruit and vegetables and meat, chicken and fish. Nothing else. No canned foods, no processed foods, no packaged and preserved foods. No snacks, soft drinks or other junk food. If these people are 'starving' and need food, they'll gladly eat what this would cover. We surely would notice improved health if this is all they ate. They could drink water, it's free in most communities to these people who are also on Medicaid, i.e., we also have to pay for their health care! If they loose weight, lower sugar intake and increase nutritious foods, their health will improve and we will all save money in the Medicaid systems! Why is this a hard decision? It is a no brainer. We need politicians with guts to push this through in every state and federal budget.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Value of Vertebrae

So many people overlook the major importance of the vertebrae, those oddly shaped bones of the spine. They hold us erect as the beam of our body, they allow for core muscle attachment sites, they allow movement in all directions while still protecting the fragile spinal cord. Like other 'long bones', they create red blood cells in their marrow. They allow junctions for the ribs to attach while they are protecting the heart and lungs and other major upper organs. But the biggest value is that they subtley stimulate the numerous nerve roots as we move and thus enhance the functions of all organs and muscles. Did you know and were you aware of these values of the vertebrae?

Saturday, January 16, 2010

2010

We read a lot about the evil in the world. It seems all the media want to report is negative events and twists. It's true there is plenty, but in many poeple's world, there is a balance of good and evil. The yin-yang of the universe. Why can't news stations report equally on the positives? There is something referred to as 'critical mass,' as when a small group of monkees slowly learned a talent to use tools in order to retrieve insects from mounds. Slowly, more and more monkees were using the tools until such a large amount knew the technique that it was instantly programmed into every monkee at that point. Monkees on the other side of the planet with no contact immediately began using the same trick. In some kind of metaphysical transmission, the talent was passed to all of the species. Was it magic? Or coincidence? Who knows? But we do know that it happened. And it can help man do the same thing.
So why would we want to create a 'critical mass' of negativity and fear? Why would we want to focus attention on death, destruction, greed, sin, war, etc.? The Mayan calender has some ending supposedly in 2012. But we have heard end-time predictions before. All was supposed to collapse in 2000, but it didn't happen.
We can inmprove the world if we start with positives and stop criticizing and insulting and accusing anyone who thinks differently than us. We should be trying to help and understand others if we want to improve our own lives. In politics, media and PR 'experts' want to accuse the other side of doing nothing but harm. They accuse of failure, they condem and insult their opponents as if its a sport to win or lose a challenge. Politicians forget that the lives and future of our country depend on their actions. Should they not be offering solutions and help and positive reinforcement so we all work as a team?
Let's all start individually to think positive, help our opponents who want to help us, support the direction of our country and our world. Let's think of bringing the 'critical mass' to a new era of discovery, solutions, peace and problem solving, not problem creation.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Approach to Health

Speaking of 'Health Care', let's work on the approach, now that providing it is coming around. Remember that our country is in the bottom percentile of 'developed countries' in health grades such as infant mortality, diseases, lifespan, etc. The provision is important, as we have said, and part of our constitution is based on the free pursuit of LIFE. So it is not turning our nation 'socialist' to provide services for our citizens. (It is, however, ridiculous to provide it at our expense to non-citizens but we could make them citizens and have them pay into the fund. Christians especially should understand the concept of giving but we can be fair.) But it is the approach and not the lack of provisions that keeps us in such a bad position as it relates to health. We have all the resources and yet we kill some 200,000 to 600,000 a year, depending on your sources, simply by drugging and cutting incessantly. We want to inject every individual thinking that improves health, yet show me one double-blind random control study supporting vaccinations. We claim to be a system of medicine based on science and yet the most numerous approaches in medicine have no random controlled studies to support them, i.e., surgeries and flu vaccines. Drugs kill and yet they have to kill a certain number before we pull them from the shelf. Our society is becoming prescription drug dependent and we are the 'guinea pigs' of the experiments. We don't work on getting people healthy, we work on getting people on drugs. If drugs made people healthy then the people taking the most drugs should be the healthiest! Common sense tells us to find foods and lifestyle and not prescriptions to attain better health. It is the APPROACH to health care that needs changing, President Obama, now that we have 'coverage.' Tell your doctor you want to know how to eat so you can avoid drugs and get off of all your prescriptions. Ask your doctor how many years or hours or minutes of nutrition he or she has studied and what foods can replace the drugs you now take. If they don't know, search for a 'doctor' who knows those things. Eat, exercise, and care for the frame and brain. Maybe someday our country can be as healthy as Japan, Sweden, Norway, and other 'developed countries.'