by Julie Weed NY Times June 6, 2009
To read, go to Permalink .
This is a thought-provoking piece. I am not a fan of boutique practices, but we definitely need to give patients TIME.
It's the platonic ideal of the Free Doctor and Free Patient. Download Plato Physician .
Witch Hunt is coming to a TV near you!
MSNBC: Sunday night - April 12, 2009
10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Pacific This documentary produced by Dana Nachman and Don Hardy and narrated by Sean Penn chronicles the unraveling of a small town's justice system. The main
characters in this new non-fiction film are working class parents, moms
and dads, who were all wrongly convicted of child molestation in the
early 1980s in the town of Bakersfield, California. Each of these
falsely convicted people was recklessly pursued by the same Kern County
District Attorney who remains in office today. "Witch Hunt" is a true
crime drama, where the real criminals were the authorities, themselves.
Starting in 1984 at the height of child molestation hysteria, the local District Attorney used this sensational crime in order to get himself elected by preying on these innocent families and convincing an easily swayed public of their crimes. These innocent citizens served unwarranted lengthy prison time from 6 years to 20 years in some of California's most horrendous prisons, ultimately resulting in tremendous hardships for themselves and their loved ones leaving everyone emotionally and psychologically damaged for life. Miraculously, after lengthy court battles and the uncovering of evidence left out of the initial trials, each person was finally exonerated. However, they have yet to receive an apology from those who wrongfully convicted them. "Witch Hunt" promises to be a heart-wrenching story about wrongful persecution, an unbalanced justice system, coercion, and at the same time, endurance and hope that this type of injustice can be stopped.
It is the story of John Stoll, Jeffrey Modahl, Brenda and Scott Kniffen, Marcella and Rick Pitts, Jack and Jackie Cummings and their children and families whose lives were ruined and turned upside down for decades by a system they trusted. John Stolll and Jeff Modahl have now dedicated their lives to helping other falsely convicted innocents to get their day in court.
"Witch Hunt" is directed and produced by first time feature
filmmakers Dana Nachman and Don Hardy. The film is narrated and
executive produced by Oscar winner Sean Penn ("Mystic River").
My pulse kicked into overdrive when I read the subject line of a recent e-mail from a friend: “Bad News.”
As seen in local newspaper, February 28, 2009
This woman is one of the 13.2 million uninsured young adults in the U.S. That is more than the population of Cuba and many other countries.
Alanna Boyd [pictured above] is an uninsured 28-year-old receptionist in New York City. She had the misfortune to wind up in a NYC hospital with a bout of diverticulitis. This fine article was on the front page of the NY Times on Wednesday, February 18, 2009. Boyd's bill was $17,398 after spending just 46 hours in hospital last October. “My first reaction was to start laughing — I just kept saying, ‘No way, no way,’ I could have gone to a major university for a year. Instead, I went to the hospital for two days.”
Open your heart and read this important article: For Uninsured Americans -- Do It Yourself Health Care.
What if she were your kid? Your sister? What if this were you?.
The Commonwealth Fund conducted a survey of chronically ill adults in
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the
United Kingdom, and the United States in 2008 and found major differences in health
care access, safety, and efficiency, with U.S. patients at particularly
high risk of forgoing care because of costs and experiencing errors or
inefficient, poorly organized care.
To view the salient points of the survey see: CF Report.
Here is NY Times editorial: The Wrong Place to Be Chronically Ill.
This is an important study and the results while impressive are not surprising t providers and patients in the United States.
Please comment on blog or send to DJE.
A 21 year-old college student runs the elevators at the Capitol on which the U.S.senators ride. Whenever the Senate is in session, he is on duty. He is presently struggling with $255,000 of medical bills incurred by his
mother before she died in April 2007 from an aggressive form of brain cancer at age 61.
A local hospital and its collection agency have been hounding him in an effort to collect from his mother’s estate. To pay the bills, he must sell the Maryland home where he lived with his mother.
This article highlights the problems of the uninsured, from which members of Congress are usually insulated. The leading Democratic presidential candidates say all Americans should have coverage as good as what Congress has.
This is a sad American story. Many are left outside the health care system. Any physician who practices here knows the crazy-quilt pastiche of insurance plans (federal, state, private, HMO etc.) just doesn't work; yet change seems too daunting.
Read this piece for a reality check. Uninsured Intrudes at the Halls of Power
Shannon Brownlee, a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, gave two important talks at Williams College on October 10, 2007. Her visit was sponsored by the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Brownlee's stories,
essays, and opinion pieces about medicine and health care have appeared
in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times
Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, Time, Discover, BusinessWeek,
Washington Monthly, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The
Wilson Quarterly.
The October 10th presentations focused on her important new book: "Overtreated: How too much medicine is making us sicker and poorer." Her talks addressed the overuse and misuse of drugs and medical technologies. It is a more rounded and factual presentation of Michael Moore's health-care shockumentary "Sicko" -- with a proposed solution!
Here is a pdf of her talk: Download brownlee_williams.edt.pdf
In "Laws," Plato discusses the difference between free and slave doctors. This is germane to Ms. Brownlee's description of an ideal physician. Download plato_physician.pdf
