Call in the MythBusters!

OK, Mythbusters team: I have a myth for you to bust: people being gravely injured by flying hot-dogs.

From KSHB-TV Action News:

Coomer says Slugger tried to throw a hot dog behind his back. Instead of sailing out of Slugger’s hand, the suit says, “Slugger lost control of his throw, or was reckless with his throw, and threw the hot dog directly into Plaintiff”.

No, that's not the implausible part. This is what I want to see put to the test:

The suit says Coomer suffered a detatched retina and developed a cataract in the injured eye, and that he expects to have future medical expenses because of the injury.

That must have been some hot dog, or Slugger should probably be pitching from the mound instead of tossing snacks to fans. A hot dog weighs what, 3 ounces? Sure, there are monster dogs are maybe 4 ounces, the "quarter pound dog." But we're talking baseball park franks.

How much force does it take to create the kind of trauma associated with retinal detachment? How fast would that hot dog have to be traveling to impact with that force?

Unless, of course, Slugger was
hurling something like this:

I mean, sure, if it's a 12 foot long fiberglass set piece, I could see where that could do some damage. Or that Oscar Mayer car/van thingie. But this guy says that Slugger threw it, by hand, from behind his back.

Man, if Coomer wins this suit, the Royals better have Slugger pitching next season.

When I was a kid, I'd probably have stood my little brother out in the back yard, and hurled franks at him until he was blind. But we've grown up, and my brother served in the Army and can kick my ass. Not to mention his proficiency with firearms of various sorts.

But Jaime and Adam could fire hot dogs at watermelons, or catapult them at water balloons. And then there are the variations: does a steamed hot dog hit as hard as a grilled dog? Was it actually a stale bun instead of the franfurter? Does relish affect the flight path? I see a very messy warehouse by the end of the session.

And what causes a retina to detach? Yes, trauma to the head and face is at the top of the list. No surprise there. We've seen all those medical dramas on TV. But so can extreme near-sightedness, and cataract surgery... wait, didn't the lawsuit mention the alleged victim had cataracts?

Victim has cataracts. Victim has a detached retina. Maybe this could be an episode of HOUSE. He could send the team scurrying to break into the guy's optometrist's office to see if he'd already been diagnosed with cataracts before going to the game. I can see him sneering at Cuddy; "He's SCAMMING you; he's just trying to get Major League Baseball to pay because his insurance won't cover it!" Pouring over video of the game, they find footage of the stands showing the alleged victim crushing a hot dog against his own face in all the confusion. Commercial. Confronted with the overwhelming facts, patient relents. The activist that House called in the first half of the show agrees to make Coomer a health-care crisis poster child, and an abashed Congress instills a single-payor system like the rest of the civilized world. Roll end credits.

You do know House is fiction, right?

Or maybe it was a one-in-a-million shot and that hot dog really did cause his retina to detach. Shit happens. I'd still like to see Jamie and Adam work out if it's PLAUSIBLE.

Either way, perhaps the Royals can still help the guy out: they need umpires, don't they? Coomer would be a natural!

Wendell Potter Comes Clean

A lot of people have been citing various studies in the discussion of health care.  The studies all show that Nationalized Health Care is bad for America.

And they were all manufactured by Wendell Potter.  Bill Moyers interviewed Potter, who comes clean about his complicity.  Wendell was head of corporate communications for Cigna, one of the largest private health insurers in the country.

He finally had an epiphany when he was visiting family, and attended a "health care fair" in rural Virginia.  Instead of providers handing out literature, he found people lining up in the rain to receive treatments in animal stalls at the local fairgrounds.  They had come from as far as Georgia.

He discusses his part in the highly publicized case of Nataline Sarkisyan, a young woman whose liver transplant was denied, resulting in her death days later.

He also details how he cherry-picked from all sorts of studies to make it appear that countries with national health systems didn't perform as well as our system.  He created the term "socialized medicine" in order to cast a negative image of what are actually superior health care systems.

He made sure that everything you know about government run health care is false.

Topical Tune

A little ditty for Friday Night:

The Health Insurance Scam

No one in either party has the guts to do what needs to be done to fix health care: remove the middleman. Get rid of "health insurance" and "health maintenance organizations." Eliminate everything but catastrophic care coverage.

I know: I'm a maniac. I'm insane. How can I possibly say that?

I can say that because, once upon a time, I worked as a patient accounts administrator at a major hospital. No, I'm not proud of it, but I was young, and I needed a steady job. My job was to collect money from insurance companies that had already agreed to pay. To do that, I had to know how each and every plan worked.

The thing about using insurance companies to manage our health care system is that the concept is stupid.

in·sur·ance: coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril

Insurance is supposed to be a hedge against possible loss; for example, your home. The insurer is betting that your home won't be damaged. They collect fees from a lot of different people, but only a small number will ever need to collect. That's called "spreading the risk." More money comes in as premiums than goes out as claims.Not everyone will need to collect, so premiums stay low.

Originally, the only health insurance was basically catastrophic care coverage. Not everyone will need catastrophic care; not everyone will have a health crisis of such proportions that they will need a prolonged hospital stay. It's a sensible risk to insure against this kind of health care need.

But everyone gets sick at some point; a cold, or the flu. A cat bite. And virtually everyone will need to see the doctor on some sort of regular basis; for exams, or minor injuries such as cuts, sprains, and even broken bones. For this kind of need, the risk can't be spread, because everyone is going to file claims. So they have to get the all money to cover the individual from the individual.

Look at it this way: once upon a time, an exam cost you $50. You chose the doctor, he collected the fee. 2 people, no middleman. You got $50 of value, and the doctor earned $50 for that amount of service. Everyone is happy.

Then insurance companies got in the game; they collect the money that would otherwise be used for your medical care through the year from you (or your employer, or both of you), and they pay for the care for you. For them to make money, they have to pay out less money than they collect from you.

If they take your fifty and pass it to the doctor, there's no profit. So they start with the doctor: 'let us keep $5 of the 50, and we'll send you 20 additional patients; you'll make more money." Well, that seems OK. More business at a smaller profit, you make money on volume.

Then they turn to the patient and say, "Hey, we're covering most of the cost, so you should kick in $5. That's fair, isn't it?

The insurance company is now collecting $10 on each exam, your doctor making $5 less per exam and works more to make it you, and you're paying an extra 10%. Oh, did you miss that part? Remember, once upon a time, that $50 was yours; but now it goes to the insurance company first. Still your fifty bucks, only now you're "co-paying" another 5 bucks. Sucker.

Next year, the insurance company claims the cost of the exam is now $60, your "co-pay" is only $6, and they pay the doctor $43 dollars, but send him another 10 patients.

This is were it gets good:
Your doctor is now seeing a lot more patients; and you suddenly are waiting a long time to see him, because he's running behind. He's mildly apologetic, but look, here's all these patients!

Since you can't get satisfaction from the doctor, you complain to the insurance company: you're paying all these premiums, and you're waiting around for care. So the insurance company goes to the doctor and tells him that he must meet Quality Assurance guarantees: if a patient waits more than a half hour for the exam, they'll deduct 10% from his fee. And to help him maintain Quality Assurance, he'll need to hire a Quality Assurance Nurse at his cost. But to make up for it, they will guarantee to send him at least 200 patients a week for exams, and make him a Preferred Provider physician. Of course, to do this, the doctor must spend much less time with each patient, and must get patients in and out much more quickly. He hires a couple of medical technicians to measure blood pressure, respiration, and so on.

The insurance company creates a new level of service; for a mere 15% increase in premiums, you'll have access to the doctors on the Preferred Provider system, with guaranteed shorter waits.

That $50 exam used to include everything; but now that the doctor is only collecting $35 (he's paying a QA nurse and 2 medtechs now), he's charging additional fees for urine tests and bloodwork. Your insurance company raises your premiums 3% to cover that. That's 3% for the entire package, by the way, not on the cost of the visit. And they add a buck to the "co-pay."

But that's for people with insurance: what happens to those without?

Well, we start from the $50. Add $15 for the additional staff. Add $20 for the lab fees. that's $85. Oh wait, the last contract he signed iwth the insurance company states that the billed rate to the insurance company will be 40% of his usual rate, so the new rate for people without insurance will have to be $107, so he can meet the terms of the contract.

And that's why health care costs are so damn much.

What? Oh of COURSE this is waaaaaaaaay over-simplified. It's an example. There are many other factors, too: new techniques and technologies. But all of them have become inflated in a manner consistent with this example.

Cat Scratch Fever

This is how I spent my forty-fifth birthday.

The "incident" actually started the day before my birthday; I was petting the neighbor's cat, something I've done a dozen times or so. He would purr like a garbage disposal, basking in the attention for awhile. Then he'd either leap up and run away, or he'd nip at me, without actually touching me.

You can see this coming, can't you?

This time, he bit me. A good solid, penetrating, chomp. I yelled and flung him off me, and he turned and looked at me like

"What?"

I went in; not too bad: one little puncture that was bleeding pretty well, and some bruising. I washed it off real good, and irrigated it with hydrogen peroxide. And then I more or less didn't pay any more attention to it. Last time I would pet that ingrateful cat, I muttered, and went on with my day.

The next morning - it's my birthday! I made coffee, and then my mother called to wish me a happy, we chatted. Plans? Breakfast, then Christmas shopping! Maybe I'd hook up with some friends for dinner, later.

After breakfast, I stepped into the shower, and then I saw my wrist: an angry red welt under the bite, and red streaks running up my arm.

SHIT!

I'd taken advanced First Aid; I knew that red streaks up the arm are very, very, bad!

I checked my insurance; the urgent care center around the corner is on the plan. They are also closed. I look at the red streaks. Emergency room. I got dressed, grabbed a book, and headed to the ER. (Why the book? Have you never been to the ER?)

Broward General isn't far, maybe a half-mile. I was getting just the beginning of a chill. Or was that psychomatic? I found a parking spot, walked in, filled out a form, and sat down. My name was called. I hadn't been there ten minutes.

The triage nurse clucked when she saw my arm. She called over a doctor.

"What do you think," she asked, "can I fast-track him?"

"I would. Is there a lot of pain yet? Any chills? No? Flex the fingers....good. Fast track him!"

The nurse smiled at me. "You're in. He's the chief. Have a seat, and we'll call you shortly!"

They take me in about fifteen minutes later, and I'm shivering in the early stages of septicemia.

A young doctor came into to look at the wound. He asked for my history, I gave it. He looked at me and said "You do realize that we will have to admit you to treat this, right?" I confessed that by this time, I was not surprised. "OK, then."

They gave me a robe, they drew some blood. I gave a history again. Dr. Lam came in to look. I gave the history again, she looked very stern. She felt the swollen area. "Can you feel that?" I nodded. "But I can feel the swelling when I move my hand," I replied.

"Hmmm," she pondered me. "We might need a surgical consult."

It was at this point I began to think either I was in much worse shape than I thought, or Dr. Lam liked to scare people. Well, tough. I was too sick to become scared. Chatter chatter chatter went my teeth, as I stared back at her, "OK."

"If the bacteria has colonized the tendons, surgical reconstruction is called for," she informed me.

"Yeah, that would suck," I replied through my chattering teeth. She shot me a disapproving look, and left the room. I guess I wasn't following the script.

Awhile later, an x-ray technician came in, and took me away to xray my infected arm.

As he put me back in the exam room bed, shivering, he said "Let me go get you a blanket!"

Ahhh.

About an hour later (might have been less, but it was all shivers and chattering teeth by then), she came back.

"WHEN were you bitten? This morning?"

"No," I explained patiently, "YESTERDAY morning. I didn't notice how bad it was until THIS morning."

"Sit up, I need to listen to your lungs!"

I sat up, took a shivering breath. Then another. And one more. And again.

"OK, lie back down. We're preparing a room for you now. Someone will come for you in a bit."

I nodded my thanks.

About 20 minutes later, two technicians rolled an xray machine. "We need to shoot a film of your chest."

"You do?" I asked. They confirmed my name. They did. And then they did.

I was wheeled upstairs by 5pm, and hooked up to the first of many, many IV drips.

Dr L's assistant, Dr. Ruiz came up for an assessment. She told me the course of treatment, and said she was sending up an

infectitious diseases specialist, and the aforementioned hand surgeon.

Dr. S came up about a half hour later. He examined the wound, asked some pointed questions about the cat, and told me that

this was all pretty normal for a cat bite. They were giving me a broad spectrum anti-biotic until my blood results came back. If things went well, they might be able to release me the next day.


Things didn't go well. Feverish all night, and a splitting headache.

Dr. R checked in, I was still feverish. She asked about the hand specialist, and I replied that I hadn't seen them yet. Dr. S came in; the progress on the arm seemed to please him. "Good thing you came in when you did: it could have been very bad!"

He wanted to run some more tests, and by the way, they were keeping me until tomorrow at least.

"I have a 10:30 am flight!" I said. "Any chance I can be out in time?"

"10:30? That might be a little tight. You should get a later flight." He looked very doubtful.

I spent the rest of the day feverish, and struggling with a splitting headache. They gave me Tylenol. They gave me darvocet.

My fever broke. My headache stayed. After dinner, I had chills again, and my head was throbbing. Slight fever again. Argh. I managed to change the times on my flight. I can't sleep: I'm worried about getting out. I pulled the IV out, so it had to be replaced. More darcvocet. Head pounds, thud thud thud.

Now I'm beginning to doubt they'll let me out; I keep demanding pain killers, I'm feverish and sweaty. And I'm beginning to consider that even if they let me out, maybe I shouldn't get on a plane. I felt like hell.

And somewhere about then, it occurred to me that I've had this headache before. When I went most of a weekend without coffee.

But I'd HAD coffee. It wasn't very good coffee. On the other hand, what evidence did I have that it was regular coffee?

My cat-scratch fever-ridden throbbing brain finally forged a coherent theory:
People who are trying to avoid stimulants will suffer more harm from getting caffeine in their coffee than withholding caffeine from people who are on no such restriction, therefore, it's safer to simply serve decaf to everyone than to send out both kinds of coffee to patients.

So the headache had nothing to do with my raging infection.

When the morning shift nurse came in, I asked about getting REAL coffee, and explained my theory.

"Oh! Well, we just made a fresh pot of the real thing out at the nurses' station, I'll bring you a cup!" And she did.

And just like that, the headache was gone. I could think clearly again. Fever gone.

They released me at noon. By 2:00 pm, I was on my way to the airport.

Fucking cat.

John Boehner; the Bonehead from Ohio

I was watching ABC's "This Week" this morning, and watched John Boehner demonstrate why we need to route the Republicans this year.

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana

When asked if the Republicans running for office needed to distance themselves from George Bush's disastrous administration, Boehner stated "...elections are about the future, not the past."

Wow. Talk about denial.

Boehner's missing a very important fact: your future is built on your past.

The Republican Party isn't making any promises it hasn't been making for years; lowering taxes, fighting government waste, securing our borders, and so on. Stephanopolous pointed this out to Boehner. His weak response:

“There’s no question that the environment for Republicans is a difficult one. What I’ve been preaching to my colleagues now for over a year is that we have to be the agents of change. We have to prove to the American people we can deliver the change that they want and change they deserve. And whether the issue is the rising cost of health care, rising cost of gasoline prices, food prices, we have an agenda that will deliver that change that Americans want. And all they’ve gotten from the Democrats were a lot of broken promises.”

Notice how he glosses over the fact that the Republicans have also built up a long list of broken promises. Boehner's Congress raised its own pay while refusing to raise minimum wager, failed to reduce Congressional waste, fraud, and abuse, failed to impose budgetary restraint on itself. And the list goes on and on and on. John Boehner has no moral high ground to stand on.

Americans have lost faith in the GOP for exactly the kind of statements Boehner made this morning. The GOP has made many, many, many mistakes. Disastrous mistakes. To be fair, so have the Democrats. Everyone makes mistakes.

You deal with mistakes by acknowledging them, taking responsibility for your actions, and them taking measures to correct them. You can't do any of that by ignoring your past.

Reading Boehner's voting record, I can see why he doesn't want us to examine the past. He's voted against most major bills that would have brought relief to the middle class. He's also the clown who actually started passing out checks from tobacco industry lobbyists to House members while they were voting on tobacco subsidies. Fellow Republican Rep. Linda Smith of Washington was moved to say "if it's not illegal, it should be."*

Here are some of his statements from the show:

Fuel Crisis

"...we can produce an energy policy that will bring down gas prices."

If this is true, why haven't the Republicans pursued it in the last twenty five years? We've known that fossil fuel supplies are limited since the 1970's. And who fought imposing fuel efficiency on automakers? The GOP. Who fought imposing the same fuel consumption requirements on SUV's as passenger cars? The GOP. Who cut funding for research into alternative fuels? The GOP.

Why don't we have wind farms, or solar panels on every roof in the country? Because the GOP didn't want you to have them, period. It's only now, twenty years too late, that the GOP admits we need to look to alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

He did get called out by George when he referred to the increase in gasoline as the "Pelosi Premium," referring not to any specific action on her part but simply that it increased that much while she was in office. "Well," interjected George, "that could just as easily be called the 'Bush Premium,' couldn't it?"

"Democrats, they have done nothing to help us produce more energy here at home," he retorted.
Of course, it must be pointed out that Bush cut funding into clean energy research. He has cut such funding every year since taking office. So much for the Republican commitment to increasing clean energy.

Just another reason Boehner doesn't want you looking at the past: it shows that their actions illustrate that they are flat out lying to the American Public now.

On SCHIP:

" We stood up on principle to do the right things for the right reasons, make sure that we insure poor children first."

Which, I suppose, is why he voted against the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007. Twice.

He claims that this was because:

" what the Democrats wanted to do was to cover adults, wanted to cover illegal immigrants"

But the truth isn't quite what he claimed it was:

"This bill enables states to enroll 3.9 million children who would otherwise be uninsured. Coverage for dental and mental health care is guaranteed for the first time. While the bill makes it easier to enroll pregnant women in SCHIP, it phases out coverage for low-income parents who are currently covered in some states. The bill provides federal incentives for states to make intensive efforts to enroll more of the lowest-income uninsured children in Medicaid."*

It appears that the "adults" that the Democrats wanted to cover were pregnant women. If CHILDREN are covered, and we agree that they should be, why would we not take care of them prior to birth? We can only do that by taking care of the mother, who is carrying the infant. Giving birth to a healthy baby is markedly cheaper than trying to take care of an infant suffering from lack of pre-natal care.

Boehner also claims that he voted against this bill because Democrats:

"...wanted to raise taxes to pay for all of this."

Which is actually true. He just neglects to mention which taxes:

"The increased funding is paid for by a 61-cent increase in cigarette taxes and other tobacco taxes. The program is not open to undocumented immigrants."*

Oh, hey, that last bit flatly contradicts Boehner's assertion that the Democrats were trying to get coverage for illegal aliens.

On Taking Responsibility
Stephanopoulos also questioned Boehner about what the GOP was going to do about Representative Vito Fossella. Arrested for drunk driving in Virginia, the New York Republican was bailed out by a Lt. Col. Laura Fay, of Alexandria, Virginia. Fay, who also goes by the name Laura Shoaf, lives about 3 miles from where Boehner was arrested.

She's also the mother of Fossella's three-year old daughter. Which must be devastating news to Fossella's wife, Mary Pat, with whom Fossella has three children.

Fossella is clearly guilty of violating several laws; Stephanopolous asked if the GOP had asked Vito to step down. Boehner, predictably, dodged the issue.

"This is a personal matter," he intoned, "between Rep. Fossella and his wife."

Had he spoken with Fossella? Yes, he did. Did you ask him to step down. "This is a very personal issue and I think it's really between Vito, his wife and family, and his constituents," Did Boehner have an opinion? "I'm sure that they'll resolve it in a way that's satisfactory for them and for us."

Boehner wouldn't admit to an opinion, wouldn't define the matter as a moral lapse, and flatly said that he wasn't demanding any course of action from Fossella, or event setting a deadline towards making a decision. Sounds like his views on Iraq, doesn't it?

So to summarize Boehner's interview:

• The Republican Party will not take any responsibility for its past actions.
• The Republican Party denies responsibility for its past failures.
• The Republican Party will lie about why it voted against expanded health care for children in low income families.
• The Republican Party will not hold its elected officials to a basic standard of ethics, nor force them to be accountable to the Party for their lapses.

Mr. Boehner wants us to forget that he and his party has continually lied to us, and broken virtually every promise that the Party - and Boehner personally - has ever made to the American public.

No, Mr. Boehner, this election should judge the Republican Party- and you - on its past; and I think your record, and the recent actions of the Grand Old Party, will be found wanting.

Defede tells it like it is.

Amen, brother.

http://cbs4.com/local/jim.defede.defede.2.694888.html

CIGNA Healthcare kills someone, and we helped.

The headline on CNN reads "Teen dies hours after liver transplant approved."

17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan had been in the fight of her life. She had leukemia, one of the most malicious forms of cancer. But she was holding her own in the battle, with the help and support of her family; her brother donated bone marrow.

But complications arose; between the chemo for the cancer, and the imuno-suppressant drug regime meant to prevent rejection of the bone marrow, her liver failed. Fortunately, liver transplants have become much easier to get because doctors have learned that you can divide a liver and not only will it function, it will grow.

So doctors sent a letter to CIGNA Healthcare explaining the need for the procedure; without an immediate replacement, Nataline would die.

CIGNA replied that there was lack of evidence that the procedure would work, and rejected it. Eventually, as Nathaline's health deteriorated, after she slipped into a coma, after she was reduced to a vegetative state, and only after hundreds of protestors rallied outside their Glendal headquarters, they relented and grudgingly agreed to cover the procedure.

Nataline finally went in for transplant surgery, after weeks languishing in a vegetative coma due to her failed liver. She died hours later.

When the doctors made the request of CIGNA, her six-month survival chances were estimated to be 65%. She might well have died anyway; it's no secret that her health was poor.

But without the liver, she had NO chance. WITH the liver, she had a good chance.

We Americans have made a terrible mistake; we've turned our lives over to heartless corporations whose primary purpose isn't our well-being, but paying out dividends to their stockholders. Yes, these huge conglomerates provide healthcare, but only as a way to make money to pay their stockholders.

We pay insurance companies like CIGNA in the belief that when we really need them, they will be there for us. We spend significant portions of our income so that if things get bad, our insurance companies will step in and get us through it.

But it's a lie. Companies like CIGNA will pay - but only if THEY think it's a sound investment. "You'll die without it? Hey, you might die anyway, and our dividends will be less, and that will upset the stockholders!"

We need to stop participating in health plans run by corporate machines that are designed to produce profits for a select few; while a shift to non-profit health plans may not completely eliminate this kind of calculated culling of our ill children, but at least it won't be for the purpose of lining someone's pockets.

CIGNA's delay in approving the procedure substantially contributed to the death of a 17-year old girl. But we put CIGNA in a position to do that. WE decided that our health should be a commodity to be brokered, WE decided that our well-being should be bought and sold like a side of beef.

CIGNA made a life or death decision, without considering either life OR death. And we let them do it.

Last year, CIGNA reported 16.7 billion dollars in revenue. How many people died for that?

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