Direct Patient Care - then New-Old type of Medical Practice

I saw an interesting new website, jointhewedge.com. It's trying to develop a listing of doctors accross the country who are joining the growing movement of direct patient care - essentially a cash based practice. Although still small in number increasingly doctors are considering this difficult step as the only way of getting out from under the oppressive thumb of the so called health care planners who are destroying medical practice and patient care in the face of all common sense.

This is medical care on the old model which existed when I started, infinitely better than what we've got today. I'm not talking about all the new technological development which has been amazing, but the essence of the doctor-patient relationship.

These days more patients with high deductables and health savings accounts are looking for doctors whose fees are more affordable and comprehensable, and at the same time who will provide more time and personal attention to their concerns. This is the point of the website.

I hope I get some pushback on this comment since it's an important subject which is likely to be increasingly common as the government introduces even more new drastic regulations and changes to medical practice.

Who's interfering in our politics?

It's a tempest in a teapot, but I'm struck by the irony of commentators decrying the idea of Russia interfering in our political process by releasing the DNC's embarrassing emails. Well somehow Hillary's Russian reset didn't work and President Obama's whispered reassurance to Vladimir never really clicked. So we can't really control what the Russian's do. But isn't the real issue that one of our major parties was the one egregiously interfering in our political process by secretly working against one of its candidates?

Ron Blustein's Well Tempered Clavier Synthesizer

An old friend of mine just surfaced, Ron Blustein. We were friends from residency days in the late 60's at SF General. In those days a bunch of us collected most nights at our house in the Mission District to listen to and make music.
Ron is a musical prodigy. He could pick up almost any instrument and play it with proficiency. Back then Indian music was all the rage. Ron got a sitar from somewhere and played it like Ravi Shankar. He could do anything.
We lost contact for t...he most part but Ron through the years has turned composer. He's done all sorts of stuff which can be played on a synthesizer, but most notably he has done a collection of 24 preludes and fugues in every key that are astounding to me. Of course famously Bach started this with the Well Tempered Clavier, but Chopin and Shostakovich also did it and now Blustein! Of course Bach did it twice.
For anyone interested I added a link to a sample.

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Hillary is not the problem. It is the Democrats!

I wouldn't call Hillary dangerous and sinister as the Dems are referring to Trump. It's more that she is consumed by ambition and will go to any length to achieve her goal. And like her boss, Obama  I think she is smart enough but incompetent. But Hillary is not the problem for me, it is the modern Democrat party which has embraced big government.
I agree with our founder's idea of government as a necessity which must be kept limited. You think government is compassionate? It is not. It is collection of politicians and bureaucrats, each with their own interests. It is for the most part impersonal, inhumane and wasteful.

We all have our own experiences but I have seen what government can do from the inside. I started in medicine just before Medicare and have watched the whole sorry mess develop, decade by decade. Government regulation and policy has virtually destroyed medical practice. Don't think that this is just your doctor's problem. If you're concerned about the high cost, inefficiency and maldistribution of medical care look to the government takeover.
For those of you who think that doctors are dropping Medicare because of greed, think again. It's not an easy decision to let go of a large portion of your paying customers. It's what you have to do to get paid that's the problem. For those of you who don't care to have your doctor sitting in front of a computer entering data instead of taking the time to listen to you, join the club. Your doctor hates it too.
Now I'm not against regulation per se. Life without it would be chaos. But what we've got now has gone far, far beyond all common sense. So for those who are satisfied with the government's fingers in every part of your life, and want more of it in the future, and want to give your hard earned money to pay for it to boot, vote for Hillary. For my part I'll take a chance on Trump. He isn't your standard politician and that's fine with me.

Trump, the Emails and the Russians

The Democrats are telling us to pay no attention to the DNC's hacked emails. The important thing is that the Russians did it.

Yesterday Trump joked that since the Russians are hacking things that they might be able to supply us with Hillary's deleted emails. The Democrats and the media were aghast. I heard one accuse him of treason.

You see when they asked Hillary to turn in her emails she didn't want to bother everyone with silly stuff about Chelsea's wedding and her yoga classes, so she deleted a whole bunch of that personal business. But she didn't delete her emails like you and I would by pressing the delete button. She got rid of them so that even the FBI forensic experts couldn't retreive them.

So some of us are curious about what other little things were in those emails. If the Russians really hacked her servers then they have those emails and us Americans don't. I don't think it's really treason to ask the Russians that if they have the emails to share them with us. That's only fair.

The liberal news media might give us their spin on the story, but I think the regular guys and gals are going to figure this one out.

Let's Make a Deal. The Terror Watch List and the No Fly List.

Trump apparantly is going to meet with the NRA about selling guns to those on the Terror Watch List or the No Fly List. This will be an interesting test of his deal making ability.

The NRA has stated emphatically that it opposes selling guns to terrorists. Who in their right mind wouldn't have that same opinion. Obama and Clinton love to beat that straw horse as if the 2nd amendment supporters want terrorists to have guns.

 

The problem is in the details. I looked up the No Fly List on Wikipedia and the article is full of Kafkaesque stories about people being mistakenly on the list who didn't know they were on it, were unable to find out why they were on it, and had to go through all sorts of hoops to get off it. The ACLU has won lawsuits against it. The Orlando shooter was on it but was taken off it in 2013 so was able to buy his guns. How did this failure happen. I'm sure it's not that easy but do we just say it can't be helped?

 

So what about these lists. How do you get on them? How do you know if you're on them and why? If there's a mistake how do you get off them? It seems to me that in this era of jihadists going after "soft targets" the general public has to get involved. In our society we can't criminalize someone who hasn't yet committed a crime or for speech or beliefs but we should be able to know who among us is sympathetic to the jihadists so we can keep an eye on them.

 

So instead of the President and Hillary angrily berating their political opponents about their supposed callousness, why didn't they use their time in office to address these problems and work out a "deal" that everyone can agree about. It'll be interesting to see what Trump comes up with.

Trump and Pocahontas

So some liberal Indians and the RINO's think "Pocahontas" is an insult. No Dummies, Pocahontas is an early American legend. Trump OBVIOUSLY is using the term as shorthand to remind us that Lizzie claimed she was a minority to gain status and that Harvard publicized her claim to proved they had a "diverse" faculty. Trump is not putting down Indians, he's if anything respecting them by calling out a fraudulent claim to be one.

ANYTHING Trump says will be construed as racist by the liberals. Republicans should not be buying into their racist cant. SHAME on Mitt Romney and his friends. I used to think he was a nice man, but he has a screw loose in his brain.