Aging Alert! 

Visited my physician yesterday for a regular physical and due to a new federal requirement about patient education was handed the following bulletin on my health. (They actually threaten physicians with reduced future payment if they don’t hand these out) :

PHYSICAL EXAM 60+ YEAR OLD, MALE

“You can enjoy the later years of your life.  They can be a time of great change.  Retirement may be in your future.  New challenges may be seen as you explore new hobbies and interests.  You are making decisions concerning your life and future.  It is important that you make wise choices regarding your lifestyle. Your work and roles in the home and community may change.  Relationships develop and change over the course of time.  Communicate with your partner your goals and expectations of each other. You may have grandchildren.  Stress and depression can affect your physical and mental health, relationships and your self-image. You may notice physical changes such as graying of the hair, vision changes requiring glasses, decreased hearing, minor injuries taking longer to heal, decreased muscle strength, slower coordination of the reflexes, constipation, difficulties with urination, memory changes, and skin changes such as wrinkles.  These are all normal changes that occur with aging.”  

Dave Barry would say here: “I’m not making this up”.  Thanks, federal government, for the helpful guidance and for wasting my physician’s time.  

You can shoot me now…

Senator “Train Wreck” Goes Home to Montana

On April 23, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), Chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, announced that he was retiring from the Senate after six terms.  In a parting shot to the Obama Administration, he warned that health reform was headed for a “train wreck”.  If it is, the blame will rest squarely on the Senator himself, since his Committee wrote the bill.

More than any single person, Baucus himself deserves the blame for the unpopular and poorly wrought health reform legislation Obama is now struggling to implement.  Baucus vetoed Obama’s first choice for Secretary of HHS and health reform point person, former Majority Leader Tom Daschle, due to personal jealousy and rivalry, costing the administration not only decisive leadership in crafting health reform, but four crucial months at the beginning of 2009.  

Then Baucus ceded the lead on writing the legislation to Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman, who pushed aside Republican colleagues and wrote an inflammatory and highly partisan bill that ignited a political firestorm on the right which caught fire during the summer of 2009.    Failing to sense the wildfire of popular reaction against the bill, Baucus then wasted most of the fall of 2009 trying to get a bipartisan solution in the Senate.  

When Republicans rebuffed him, he turned his overmatched staff loose and they wrote the Affordable Care Act which is now law.  It was an incompetent effort, staggeringly complex, riddled with drafting errors (some nearly fatal), heavily reliant on expanding a broken Medicaid program and upon the co-operation of state governors and legislators who opposed the bill.   Baucus actually told voters in Montana that he had not read his own bill before the President signed it into law.  

Three years later, with the implementation process breaking down and key states (Florida, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Missouri, etc.) failing to co-operate, Baucus had the gall to warn the administration of an impending “trainwreck”.    If it is, the Senator’s unique combination of vanity, political tone deafness and legislative incompetence will be the main reason.  Wrong man, wrong place, wrong time.  

Want to see a real train wreck:  view this December, 2009 YouTube of Baucus on the Senate floor railing against his political opponents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Y9X5ggxzA

Hasta La Vista, Max Baucus.    

“Everything We Eat is Poison”

So says a Chinese blogger after authorities revealed arrests for food suppliers selling vendors tons of “lamb” that was really rat meat. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/03/18032096-rat-meat-sold-as-mutton-crackdown-sparks-dozens-of-arrests-in-china

Not a very effective dictatorship of the proletariat they’re running over there if rat satay is on the menu…  Yummy.

Suicides Outnumber Auto Deaths in US

This NY Times article says that suicides spiked upward sharply after our economic downturn: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/health/suicide-rate-rises-sharply-in-us.html?hp&_r=0

More people died in 2010 from suicide (38,384) than from auto accidents (33,687), increasing an horrendous 31% in a decade.   Researchers commented that suicide is “vastly underreported”, including, one might suspect, a lot of the auto accidents.  

Baby boomers had the highest rate of suicides of any generation. The suicide rate for men in their fifties rose by 50% vs 1999.   This is not surprising.   In 2004, AARP reported that 72% of boomers thought their lives would be better in five years (e.g. 2009) and only 5% thought they would be worse. 48% said they would rather be spontaneous than plan their lives in detail.

So much for spontaneity… For boomers, the 2008 crash was like a Force V hurricane blowing off the roofs of a lot of shoddily constructed homes. Only now are they finding all the bodies… 

Great Moments in Medical Education

Novartis, an otherwise high quality pharmaceutical company, has gotten caught stuffing millions of dollars into doctors’ pockets.  

 As this Wall Street Journal article suggests, Novartis’  ”medical education” program basically involved paying doctors that are high utilizers of their drugs “lecture fees” for touting the drug to their colleagues at “medical education dinners” at Hooters, among other noted lecture halls.   http://online.wsj.com/article/APdf785bb49c774922a22b58afd005fc5f.html

As Dave Barry would say here,”I’m not making this up”.

The “lecture fees” are skimpily clad kickbacks for doctors for using their products.   These practices could have been outlawed by the Affordable Care Act (aka “Health Reform”).    In one of those contortionist moments, Congress opted instead for “sunshine provisions” basically requiring public disclosure of the payments.   

As they say on ESPN, “Come on, man!”

Iraq Follows Syria into Civil War?

A decade ago, we decapitated a vicious Sunni dictator in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and attempted to replace him with a modern, broad-based democracy.  We failed.  Iraq’s new Shiite government, whom we installed so we could leave, has allied itself with the most dangerous country in the world, Iran, and is actively aiding neighboring vicious dictator Bashar Al-Assad in his increasingly futile and bloody suppression of Syrian independence fighters, largely Sunni 

The result: Syria’s civil war has re-infected Iraq’s simmering sectarian tensions, and Iraq appears to be sliding back into civil war itself.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/middleeast/with-air-attacks-sectarian-strife-intensifies-in-iraq.html?hp&_r=0

Afghanistan will almost certainly follow within two years of our withdrawal, leaving us several trillion poorer and the people we attempted to help worse off than before we intervened.  

Gen X Over the Hill?

A sure sign that Gen X hipsters have reached middle age: Billy Corgan, the whining egomaniacal frontman for the Smashing Pumpkins, is hosting BINGO NIGHTS at his suburban Chicago tea house. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324883604578398973682460716.html?mod=WSJ_hp_EditorsPicks  Sure enough, a bar in Portland Oregon has begun bingo and bourbon nights.  Stand back, culture vultures, shuffleboard, TV Guide and unnecessary surgery await… .

Our Next President?

Roger Simon has a second opinion.  http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/dr-politics-examines-hillary-89774.html?ml=co

Putin Revives Cossacks!

This recent NY Times article documents a bizarre cultural restoration in Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the reactivation of the Cossack paramilitary. . http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/world/europe/cossacks-are-back-in-russia-may-the-hills-tremble.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Putin intends to raise a 400 thousand person Cossack force to help patrol streets and contain “hooliganism”.  

The Cossacks were a mounted civil guard in the pre-Communist Czar’s armies.  They enforced civil order and also led the pogroms against the Jews and subjugated provincial uprisings among Russia’s Muslim population.   

But is it coincidental that this revival comes on the heels of mass public protests against Putin’s re-election, which raised the specter of a “Russian spring”?  Could they be expected to play a role similar to the feared Basij militia in revolutionary Iran?  The Basij enjoy special privileges and close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and terrorized participants in Iran’s unsuccessful Green Revolution of 2009.