According to Dr. Barbara Starfield, health care professionals in the US are responsible for 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes, making doctors, nurses and hospitals the 3rd leading cause of death behind cancer and cardiovascular diseases. That doesn’t include the number of patients who simply experience complications stemming from poor decisions made by care providers, resulting in more physician visits, more prescriptions, more emergency room visits, more hospitalizations, more long-term visits and even more deaths — all adding up to an additional $77 billion in unnecessary expense.

The United States came close to ranking dead last out of health indicators measured for 16 countries… and further studies show that the poor rating can’t be correlated to bad health habits or lack of technology.

Introducing another 40 to 50 million people into a health care system that’s already struggling is a recipe for disaster. You want to redistribute wealth? Find a way to recover that $77 billion and put it to better use.

References

• Journal of American Medicine, July 26, 2000
• Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 225,000 Deaths Every Year
• Medical Errors, the FDA, and Problems with Prescription Drugs

Last November, I speculated on the skills Obama would need to fly our country:

Executing drastic corrections too quickly can be fatal.

The phrase “slow down” does not exist in Obama’s vocabulary. Between the Wall Street bailout, what he’s done to the auto industry, the stimulus package and what he’ll do to health care if he succeeds in getting his way, he’s dug us a hole big enough to bury the moon.

Autopilot only works if you know where you’re going.

I’ll give him credit for one thing. He has kept his promise about taking this country in a new direction. Now if he could only tell us what that direction is.

Losing your focus when you hit bad weather can be fatal.

He gave a boat load of money to Wall Street with no strings attached, punished the auto industry and wants to provide health insurance to illegal aliens and people who’ve chosen not to have it. Exactly what problems is he trying to solve?

You need both a right wing and a left wing and they have to work together.

He’s done nothing to unify Congress, although he has a perfect opportunity: If he can fire Rick Wagoner (CEO of General Motors), he can sure as hell fire Nancy Pelosi.

The person you put in the right seat needs to be prepared to take over.

Joe who? Google for Biden in the news… you won’t find anything that’s newsworthy. You will find that the English language has acquired a new word: Bidenism In the long run, I suppose his silence is a good thing.

If Obama and Congress succeed at implementing public health care — which is basically government-subsidized health insurance — will the companies participating in the program be subject to the same antitrust regulations as other public companies?

If the answer is no, then Congress is blatantly side-stepping the law. If the answer is yes, then public health care is dead before it starts.

When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

James Whitcomb Riley

Mr. President: You can do all the town forums you want and at the end of the day, I’m still going to call it a duck. If you have to spend all this time trying to sell this thing, did you ever consider there might be something really wrong with it?

About π Approximation Day

To the family of Nathaniel Turner, my sincerest sympathy.

To Leslie Schuler, if even half of the news reports are true, may God torment you in hell for all of eternity.

But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

— Matthew 19:14

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

— Cicero, 55 BC

We all know what happened to Rome, don’t we?

Have you heard about the woman from Arkansas who wrote an open letter to our political leaders? You should. I’d like to meet her just so I could shake her hand. No partisan views. No right or left. Just a plain and simple albeit lengthy “what the heck are you thinking”… a public plea for upholding the constitution… outrage at rewarding the incompetent… and a bit of insight about changes that fly in the face of the principals that make this country great.

The Letter

What’s that rumble I hear? Ah… it’s just our founding fathers turning over in their graves.

So we’re coming home from the grocery store, turn the corner onto French Road and almost hit a horse. Just wandering down the road as if a lone horse out for an evening stroll was perfectly normal.

I have no idea who it belongs to. Tried to call Mike and Zoe — they used to have a horse, but I haven’t seen it in ages. I was going to leave it be, but then I started thinking… what if the rider is laying in a ditch somewhere. Worse yet, what if he’s laying in the woods with the fox, coyotes and bears we have around here.

So I called the Henniker Police Department. Do you know how stupid it feels to tell some cop there’s a horse roaming around the neighborhood? So much so that I felt it necessary to start the conversation with “please don’t laugh, but…”. I think she may have thought I was a little crazy.

There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.

— John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

I miss you.