Posted by Tina
If you like to have background information from someone who has been a witness to the process, if you like having an informed position, you will want to read this article. Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer summarizes how the medical field has been corrupted and nearly destroyed by government intervention, beginning with the passage of Medicare. From the coding system, to financial burdens and recordkeeping, to the coming two-tiered system the doctor spells out what has become a sick system in need of wellness reform.
I hope you will read, “How Government Killed the Medical Profession” published in Reason. Dr Singer has been a general surgeon for more than three decades.
The Obama health care legislation, passed in secret through bribery and intimidation, is a “huge train wreck”, according to Max Baucus, one of Obamacare’s architects and promoters. It’s time to dump it.
Words you NEVER want to hear:
“I’m from the goofernment & am here to help.”
And good ‘ol Max Baucus is going to retire from the Senate in 2014 – after he helped craft Obumblecare. History will not treat him – or anyone else who slimed Obumblecare through Clowngress – kindly.
No worries for Max, he’ll retire on that big family ranch in Montana. He did do a couple of things right. He supported the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and opposed the Senate Democratic budget proposal and an effort to make background checks for gun purchases more difficult.
He sure messed up helping to erect Obamacare. Found out tonight the number of codes doctors must use to get paid from Medicare/Medicaid was about 13,000 pre-Obamacare. The codes included things like bitten by a duck, scratched by a turkey, hit by a basketball in the arm…it’s possitively goofy and a big waste of time and money.
Under Obamacare the number has risen to 140,000 so far.
Some might find this mildly interesting —
For a decade I worked on several Inertial Confinement Laser Fusion (ICLF) projects at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in target diagnostics. ICLF has since been shortened to Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF), a broader and more inclusive description. Nevertheless it is still lasers (as opposed to masers or particle beams) that are the primary drivers in the large ICF projects.
At that time (1970’s -1990’s) magnetic compression fusion (Tokamak) pretty much died and lost most of it’s research funding in the USA. Magnetic bottle fusion was kept alive for basic research but could not create the forces required to get a positive energy yield and create or sustain a fusion process. Neither has ICF until, maybe, recently, at the giant National Ignition Facility. (Heck, I thought Shiva and Nova were huge.)
We (that is we in the USA) have the NIF which has yielded a huge amount of basic physics research and engineering progress fruit but never the goal of clean cheap energy. I don’t know if the physicists at LLNL ever solved the problem of Broullian scattering despite pulse and wavelength tailoring and driver transformations to x-ray using holrahm targets. (This was once classified information but was let out of the bucket decades ago.)
In any case, Tokomak (magnetically compressed bottle fusion) is back. I find it exciting, even invigorating. But then, maybe I am just an idiot. I think funding research of the “counterintuitve morphology” of the genitals of ducks just a plain stupid waste of tax dollars. But, hey, maybe that is just me.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/one-giant-leap-for-mankind-13bn-iter-project-makes-breakthrough-in-quest-for-nuclear-fusion-a-solution-to-climate-change-and-an-age-of-clean-unlimited-energy-8590480.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
https://lasers.llnl.gov/
Pie, this is absolutely facinating. I’m in awe of your knowledge and would love to hear more on this subject, one that’s been near anddear to me for decades when I built my first primitive ruby laser.
Pie I think some projects are worthy of government support and this certainly would be one of them. The entire world would benefit from the development of a clean efficient energy source.
Many of the innovations that have come through military research and development derived from a need to save or protect lives or end wars but the innovations translated to practical everyday uses that were a benefit to everyone.
When our economy is working, and when our government manages our tax money responsibly and well, the American people generate plenty of dollars for some government sponsored research projects. The problem with our current open loop system is that it doesn’t include adequate vetting for worthiness and cost.
Until our government officials become more responsible I will continue to oppose writing blank checks just to fund someone’s project or hobby (so he doesn’t have to work, save, invest or risk himself to pursue his interest).
Special interest projects are perfect for private funding because the people that care about the issue will usually be forthcoming if an idea seems promising.
(Gee I guess we were probably living in the Livermore area about the same time…did you go to school there or were you a transplant or transfer from another lab?