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November 15, 2009 FOX News

Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong interview slash debate about the American Medical Association's reversal on Medical Marijuana this week, also included Ann Coulter and Geraldo Rivera.

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November 15, 2009 FOX Wands Sykes Show
Discussion on the American Medical Association reversal this week on Medical Marijuana

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November 11, 2009 CNN

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

From the LA Times read more...

They're released data from the earliest cases of swine flu deaths, showing that people over 50 who were admitted to the hospital were likelier to die. This has a different curve from seasonal flu deaths, where adult deaths are typically people over 80:

An analysis of more than 1,000 California patients hospitalized with H1N1 flu during the first four months of the pandemic found that infants were most likely to be admitted, and patients 50 and older were most likely to die once admitted.

In the first four months of the pandemic, H1N1, like the seasonal flu, was especially severe in older people, who are more likely to have underlying health conditions, says lead author Janice Louie, a public-health medical officer at the California Department of Public Health.

However, Louie says, unlike seasonal flu, older people are far less likely than children and young adults to contract the H1N1 flu in the first place. For that reason, the study won't lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add healthy older people to the list of priority groups for H1N1 vaccine, director Thomas Frieden told reporters Tuesday.

Of 1,088 patients hospitalized with H1N1 flu in California, 11%, or 118 patients, died, and 30%, or 340 patients, were admitted to intensive-care units, Louie and her co-authors report in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. In patients 50 and older, the death rate was up to 20%, compared with about 2% in hospitalized patients under age 18.

The study focuses on patients who were hospitalized between April 23 and Aug. 11. Whether H1N1, or swine flu, will eventually mutate and cause more severe illness is not yet known, Louie says: "Influenza is pretty unpredictable."

Nearly a third of all the hospitalized patients in her study were reported to have no underlying conditions, such as lung disease, associated with an increased risk of flu complications.

But a disproportionate number of them were obese, an observation that also has been made in other countries, the authors write. Obesity doesn't appear to be a risk factor for seasonal flu.

Of the 361 patients whose body mass index – or BMI, a number based on height and weight – was known, half were obese, and half of those patients were morbidly obese, defined as having a BMI over 39, or roughly 100 pounds overweight.

Either you get a mild case - or it almost kills you, and they still don't know why:

Swine flu is mild for most people, but some become so gravely ill that they require sophisticated techniques, equipment, and aggressive treatment in intensive-care units to survive, according to three new studies.

"This is the most severely ill that we've ever seen people," said Anand Kumar, lead author of one of the studies and ICU attending physician for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority in Canada. "There's almost two diseases. Patients are either mildly ill or critically ill and require aggressive ICU care. There isn't that much of a middle ground."

Some of the patients Dr. Kumar and his colleagues saw were so sick they had to be saved with a technology similar to one used for patients undergoing heart bypass.

The studies of critically ill patients in Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, published online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest that intensive-care units could be stretched as a second wave of H1N1 swine flu builds in Northern Hemisphere countries such as the U.S.

American public-health and hospital officials have expressed concern that the country's intensive-care facilities may not be up to accommodating the swell of patients they could potentially end up with in large-scale outbreaks.

An advisory panel to President Barack Obama warned in August of one scenario in which as many as 300,000 patients could require intensive care, occupying between half and all of ICU beds in affected regions at the peak of infection. Such a scenario "could place enormous stress on ICU units, which normally operate close to capacity," the panel warned in a widely publicized report, which also said as many as 90,000 people could die of the disease.

The patients analyzed in the three JAMA studies deteriorated very rapidly after entering the hospital, quickly progressing to respiratory failure, shock, and organ dysfunction and failure. They spent prolonged periods on mechanical ventilators, and some required frequent "rescue therapies," or treatment to save them from life-threatening conditions.

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(Blue Cross to America - Don't Get Sick)

Why don't they get it? Why is it, every time the question of Universal Health Care comes up a wave of hysteria breaks over the country like an Indonesian Tsunami? It's been that way in 1941. It's been that way in 1945. It's been that way in 1948. It's been that way in 1949. It's been that way in 1961. Do I have to go on?

You get the picture - everybody reading this blog gets the picture. Everybody with half a brain gets the picture. And we all know who the enemy is. The ones thumbing their noses and laughing and dreaming hysteria up.

I've been running entries regarding the historic aspect of this argument for months now. I am always turning up new items that point out just how old this question is and just how insane the argument against it has become, and just how scared the Insurance industry has become and how well entrenched they are to wage war.

But in case you were curious to hear more - I found an episode from the radio series "America United" which was moderated by a David Brinkley. This show is from November 13, 1949. It features CIO spokesman Harry Reid (no relation), Nathan Robertson of the Labor Press Association, A.L. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and W.R. Williamson, referred to as a "consulting actuary"(in actuality, a spokesman for the Insurance Industry).

Reid kicks it off:

Harry Reed (CIO): “Well, of course we have arrived at this present situation that confronts us for the simple reason that the group that has assumed responsibility for medical care has completely failed to live up to that responsibility. Any group that assumes responsibility, any voluntary group in our country, is required by the people to carry out the responsibility. The American Medical Association, to which you referred, has stifled the overwhelming desire of the medical profession itself throughout the country to give the people health care. So now the people are turning to the only agency that is left to them and that is the Congress to obtain this needed health care. Inasmuch as Free Enterprise has failed in this instance, we turn to our government for assistance. That is the time-honored method of the American people.”

Sixty years ago. The argument and the fears are the same - exactly the same. Only the faces are different and the check books are fatter.

Other than that. The Health Insurance lobby and their warm regard for people boils down to this - "We like your money - it's you we're not crazy about."

Don't get sick.

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("Um . . I know this is a bad time but . . . .you're not covered.")

Note: This is a re-post from June.

The endless debate on Health Care. Every time the subject is brought up, screams of "Socialized Medicine" pop up - and somewhere, the ones doing the loudest screaming appear to come from the American Medical Association. Curious, that.

Case in point - this rather historic debate between Walter Reuther (yes, that Walter Reuther) and Dr. Edward R. Annis from the AMA from February 23, 1961. The gist of the debate centered around the Kerr-Mills bill, which had been introduced as an alternative health care plan.

Reuther: “And what bothers me, instead of being against all these things, instead of calling everything socialism, why don’t you sit down with other people and see if we can’t together find a practical mechanism?”

Annis: “Mister Reuther. . . .

Reuther: “Now the Kerr bill will not do the job, because only nine states come under the Kerr Bill. In the state of Kentucky they only provide, under the Kerr bill, three days of hospitalization. Now what happens at the end of that? Well, the person is either thrown on the indignity of the Public Charity or they’re pushed off to some poor farm. This is 1961. I think that’s not a rational sensible way to meet this problem."

The case for some kind of universal Health Care has been going on since somewhere after the Stone Age. Reuther, a staunch union man, makes the case for Universal Health Care. While Annis, a man with somewhat suspicious motives, is adamantly against it. Although he doesn't come right out and say as much, his argument is peppered with the buzzword "Socialized Medicine" and it's clear where his loyalties lie.

Needless to say, he was no supporter of Medicare when it came to light in 1964 and became law in 1965. He was also no supporter of the warning on cigarette packs saying it would be bad for business if people stopped smoking. But that's another story.

There is an interesting postscript at the end of this broadcast. CBS began a series of "Letters To CBS" and Smith reads some of the letters that poured in after the first hour of the debate from two weeks earlier. One writer, a doctor who chose to remain anonymous, supplied a copy of a letter allegedly circulated by the AMA to doctors, urging letters of condemnation of CBS and the concept of Universal Health Care as a step towards Socialism.

Even then, the fear card was being played for all it was worth.

And the racism keeps on coming.

The election of our first black president has brought with it a strange proliferation of online racism among conservatives.

And we've got the latest example.

On Sunday night, Dr. David McKalip forwarded to fellow members of a Google listserv affiliated with the Tea Party movement the image below. Above it, he wrote: "Funny stuff."

Now, Tea Party activists trafficking in racist imagery are pretty much dog bites man. But McKalip isn't just some random winger. He's a Florida neurosurgeon, who serves as a member of the American Medical Association's House of Delegates.

He's also an energetic conservative opponent of health-care reform. McKalip founded the anti-reform group Doctors For Patient Freedom, as well as what seems to be a now defunct group called Cut Taxes Now. Last month he joined GOP congressmen Tom Price and Phil Gingrey, among others, for a virtual town hall to warn about the coming "government takeover of medicine." And in a recent anti-reform op-ed published in the St. Petersburg Times, McKalip wrote that "Congress wants to create larger, government-funded programs for health care and more bureaucracy that ration care and impose cookbook medicine."

I wonder how his African American patients have recovered after he treats them?

Robert Reich was out beating the drum yesterday, speaking on "This Week" and posting this piece in Salon:

If you want to save universal healthcare, you must do several things, and soon:

1. Go to the nation. You're not only a powerful orator; you're also capable of motivating, energizing, and mobilizing the American public. You must go on the road -- building public support by forcefully making the case for universal health care everywhere around the country. The latest Wall Street Journal poll shows that three out of four Americans want universal healthcare. But the vast majority don't know what's happening on the Hill, don't know how much money the medical-industrial lobbies are spending to defeat it, and have no idea how much demagoguery they're about to be exposed to. You must tell them. And don't be reluctant to take on those vested interests directly. Name names. They've decided to fight you. You must fight them.

This is the president's biggest weakness. Please, more drama, Obama!

2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat the American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid despite their cries of "socialized medicine" because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you're not on the road, you have to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough.

3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship. Universal healthcare can pass with 51 votes. You can get 51 votes if you give up on trying to persuade a handful of Republicans to cross over. Eight years ago George W. Bush passed his huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, by wrapping it in an all-or-nothing reconciliation measure and daring Democrats to vote against it. You should do the same with healthcare.

4. Insist on a real public option. It's the linchpin of universal healthcare. It's one thing to give up on single payer, and say that a public option is the best feasible alternative. But further compromise would essentially gut any healthcare plan. Don't accept Kent Conrad's ersatz public option masquerading as a "healthcare cooperative." Cooperatives won't have the authority, scale, or leverage to negotiate low prices and keep private insurers honest.

5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable healthcare. Not even a real public option will hold down costs enough to make healthcare affordable to most American families in years to come. So you'll need to tax the wealthy. Don't back down on your original proposal to limit their deductions. And support a cap on how much employee-provided healthcare can be provided tax free. Yes, you opposed this during your campaign. But you have no choice but to reverse yourself on this. These are the only two big pots of money.

6. Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal healthcare. By pushing everything at once, you take the public's mind off the biggest goal, diffuses your energies, blur your public message, and fuel the demagogues who say you're trying to take over the private sector. You have to win this.

Just try to remember: The AMA only represents a mere percentage of doctors. More doctors want single payer than don't. In the meantime, more on the proposed reform from Kathleen Sebelius:

As debate gets under way over Obama's initiative to revamp health care, Republican opposition has centered on one of the key pillars of the president's proposal: the so-called public option — a publicly funded insurance plan that would likely compete against private insurers.

A public health insurance plan, Sebelius said, will put pressure on private insurers to keep costs competitive. "And that's a good thing," she says. "I think that's a good thing for the American public. Medicare right now has lower overhead costs than private insurers."

Republicans argue that upward of 100 million Americans would opt out of private insurance in favor of a public plan if such a plan were available. That figure comes from a study by the Lewin Group, a consulting group owned by Ingenix, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, but it is a selective representation of the study's findings.

Big surprise there, huh!

"The whole idea of the public option has been difficult, in part, because some of the opposition has described it as a potential for a, you know, draconian scenario that was never part of the discussion in the first place," Sebelius says. "So, disabusing people of what is not going to happen is often difficult, because there's no tangible way to do that."