The Media, Trump and Independence Day

I had to chuckle when I read the reports on Independence Day celebrations in this morning's Times. The coverage of the national celebration in Washington, arranged for the first time in decades by Mr. Trump, was from an Associated Press article. The President gave a patriotic speech with no political references, celebrating our heroes of space exploration, civil rights, and so on, with a significant tribute to our military. Each branch was singled out, recounting their history and various heroic achievements, and was accompanied by patriotic renditions by the Army band and chorus along with military displays, primarily warplane flyovers.

 

This seemed to me when I listened to large parts of the President's speech that it was pretty standard Independence Day fare expressed by our nation's leader. But where Mr. Trump is concerned the press is the press. I would judge the article to have been about 75% negative. After the first paragraph it described the confusion of the staff and the concern over possible poor turnout. In fact, there was a large enthusiastic crowd but the article's implication was that a significant portion of it was manufactured, and that many of the attendees were there simply because of curiosity or custom. About half the article was devoted to the inevitable protestors and their activities with interviews recounting their complaints. The report I heard was that there were a tiny handful but you sure couldn't tell that from what was reported.

 

Compare that with the following article about the local annual Mayor's Independence Day celebration which was given substantial space and 2 photos. The attendance was meager, and the celebration was all military. It was organized by a retired military officer, the keynote speaker was the Commander of the local VFW, there were representatives from veterans of various wars and a traditional American flag was blessed and then raised. In the article there was nary a disparaging word.

 

So, in Mr. Trump's case the celebration was primarily for personal aggrandizement, was received with a lukewarm contrived response, and was excessively militaristic. The local celebration was a big deal, despite its attendance by 50 people, and appropriately honored our military heroes and flag.

 

So, the major media congratulate themselves for "speaking truth to power" and can't understand the skepticism of us folks in flyover country. We get the picture folks. 

 

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The Census and Citizenship, Legal and Illegal

 

 

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I don't get the problem with asking about citizenship in the census. The question was asked to everyone in every census until 1950 and then thereafter in the "long form" which was given to every 6th person until 2000. The question was stopped under President Obama.

I have checked the census forms for my grandfather in 1930 and 1940 and his answer to the citizenship question was in the negative. No problem with that. Many people are in the country legitimately who are not citizens. The Dems who are dead set against the question fear that it will inhibit people who are here illegally from responding to the question. I'm not sure why that would be since there would be no inquiry into legal status, just citizenship. They would just answer like my grandfather.

But the whole controversy brings up the issue of whether we should be counting people who are here illegally in the census in the first place. The census count is used to determine each state's number of congressional representatives whose most important task is to determine where federal funds should go and how we should be taxed to pay for them. And if states which encourage illegals and have large numbers of them have more influence in congress than those who don't I see an obvious problem with that.

Furthermore the numbers of each state's electors in the Electoral College is based primarily on the number of it's congressional representatives. This in turn means that people here illegally are essentially voting in our elections for President and Vice President.

Bottom line is that I do think it's important that we make an actual determination of the proportion of our population who are citizens. But much more critical to me is knowing the actual numbers and general whereabouts of people who are here illegally since, if they are counted, they can have a significant impact on the decisions made in our House of Representatives and Presidential election. How we could ever accomplish that task is hard to say since some are fighting tooth and nail even to prevent asking the citizenship question.

 

Our Conflicted Immigration System

I  just returned from a 2 week trip to Italy and Switzerland. It was a great trip but it's nice to be home again.

 

At the airport in Geneva we left from the part of the terminal dedicated to international flights. At the baggage check in counter we were asked to show our passports, and again at the check in line, once more at a passport control area and finally when boarding the plane. In the U.S. we arrived at a part of the terminal dedicated to international flights, and here the process involved first scanning our passport photos against a facial recognition camera, then going through another gate where our passports were inspected and questions were asked about our trip, and finally through customs where our passports were checked again.

 

Contrast this with the bizarre irony of our immigration system in general. We are all aware that millions of individuals are in our country who have no legal right to be here. Thousands are regularly sneaking in unobstructed. The new strategy of claiming asylum is an obvious ruse. Those fleeing their homes in Central America because of intolerable violence or political persecution have escaped their dilemma once they have crossed the border into Mexico. There is no need to come an additional 1000 miles to the U.S. Yet, as is common knowledge, they are being encouraged, given transportation and coached what to say on arrival. Clearly they are being attracted for socioeconomic reasons, which is understandable, but not legal. We are told that many more individuals who have entered the U.S. with visas are simply ignoring the restrictions. Employers are hiring illegals with impunity.

 

In the past, prominent officials, including liberals such as President Obama, Joe Biden, and both Bill and Hillary Clinton, have publicly commented on the bad effects of illegal immigration and have promised to address the issue. And yet today many in their party, with little resistance from a great many Republicans, seem to be actively encouraging it. Illegals who have committed crimes are being sheltered from immigration authorities. Legal challenges abound against holding individuals at the border or even to inquire about citizenship status in the census. Political correctness demands that we refer to them as undocumented instead of illegal. Efforts by Mr. Trump to fulfill his campaign promises on this matter are being denounced as being heartless or racist.

 

So I ask you, what exactly is the point of all the folderol we went through on coming back to the U.S. from Europe.  

 

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Trump's Offer to the Sanctuary Cities

Mr. Trump has now demonstrated why he is regarded as having great skill in deal making. Our country is in a period of deep political division and no subject is proof of this more than the illegal immigration issue. Many of us, probably a substantial majority, feel that unsupervised and unrestricted immigration is a major problem which we wish our political representatives to resolve. However a great many others feel just the opposite and have done everything possible to retard and obstruct any such resolution. These latter proponents argue that immigrants are a blessing, both economic and social, and consider the resulting diversity to be a great virtue. They make little distinction between legal and illegal immigration, considering those who skirt the established process as being simply undocumented. In addition they welcome those who come claiming asylum and resist the solution of encouraging asylum in Mexico where there is similarity of language and culture, free from the racial animosity which is claimed to be rampant in the United States.

 

This political battle has led to the present stalemate in which our country's usual immigration procedures are being overwhelmed. Efforts to reinforce our control over immigration are being resisted and great numbers of asylum seekers and others coming illegally are entering into the population at large. Many communities view this phenomenon as a negative, complaining of the rapid cultural disruption, including illegal activities, as well as a financial strain on their resources. Others, however, including our largest state, see it differently, offering compassion and sanctuary from federal authorities.

 

So now we have a grand political compromise being considered by the President. In his proposal asylum seekers, both those coming through the points of entry as well as those caught entering illegally, can go to those areas where they are received positively and, one would presume, there would at the same time be freed up resources for the immigration authorities to retard their filtering back into other areas where they are considered problematical. The initial response from many Democrat politicians and liberal media sources has been critical of the idea, accusing Mr. Trump of using the problem for political purposes. However with such statements they risk being considered as insincere and hypocritical.

 

We often hear it said that the individual states and communities are laboratories where new ideas can be tried out, which if successful can be imitated by the rest. Communities which declare themselves to be sanctuaries, and who consider such influxes to be on balance beneficial should welcome the President's offer. In doing so they can serve as examples to the rest of us about how to work out the social and economic implications. Additionally they could free up their new residents from the constant anxiety of living in secret and could even allow voting in local elections. It seems to me that our bitter ideologic conflicts are to this point largely theoretical. As someone with something of a scientific background, there seems no better way to come to a consensus than such a practical experiment.

 

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The TAVR Procedure and Other Medical Advances

During my 50 years of medical practice I've witnessed some pretty dramatic changes. As examples I can still recall the amazement I felt the first time I saw the results of coronary angiograms before and after angioplasty showing blockages eliminated. Likewise when I first viewed a 3 dimensional echocardiogram showing the ventricles contracting and the valves moving inside the heart. These things have advanced greatly and are now commonplace, matter of fact techniques but were breathtaking events at the time.

 

Even so for a new report I just saw from the ongoing annual American College of Cardiology meeting regarding the TAVR procedure, the technique of replacing a constricted aortic valve, the main one leading from the heart, by a device passed by a catheter from the groin instead of by a major surgical procedure. The procedure, initially restricted to those who were too frail to undergo surgery, has been  advancing in its use over a few short years. New studies reported in the meeting indicate that it is working as well or better than the surgical approach in low risk patients as well. There are some lingering questions about how long the replaced valves will function. However there is no doubt that treatment of this lethal condition, which was a death sentence at the start of my career, is being transformed before our eyes to one which will be easily treated, perhaps without even a hospital stay.

 

I've seen many other similar medical miracles in other areas, but this one caught my eye and I couldn't resist mentioning it. What a privilege it has been to be a participant in applying these advances as they've come along to patients. But mostly I have to give tribute and profess the greatest admiration to the pioneers and innovators who are inspired to seek new ways and go through the very difficult process of developing their dreams for the benefit of the rest of us.

 

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Lilly and the Price of Insulin

I just saw a New York Times article reporting that Lilly company has decided that they would be selling an authorized generic version of their rapid acting insulin, Humalog, for $135 a vial. The actual brand name version, for those paying out of pocket, is around $330 at your local pharmacy. You can print out a discount coupon from GoodRx that lets you pay $177. A vial might last the average diabetic about a month.

 

Humalog came out in the mid 1990's. The price has ramped up exponentially in the past few years. Pretty obviously they can actually produce this insulin at a far lower price. There are 2 other major companies producing very similar rapid acting insulin brands, but they all sell in the same price range. Why isn't competition working? Well I think mostly it's the same reason that medical costs generally are too high – that most of us pay for medical items indirectly and so at the point of sale the cost to the customer is only a small amount of copay. In medical care, prices are not set by the market, but instead by negotiations with third party payers, insurance companies and government. As in any negotiation the initial seller's price is set high to be  negotiated downward. Those who don't pay through third parties are left holding the bag.

 

The market works differently. Prices, except for very high ticket items like cars and houses, are not negotiated but are fixed and consumers choose from competing options. All other things being equal they flock to the lowest price, forcing prices down and in this case leaving the high priced seller holding the bag.

 

But payment for medical care is changing. Although more of us are insured, there's a great increase in high deductible insurance. I think it's this factor, and the public pressure resulting from it, that is forcing Lilly to relent. One thing worth noting in all of this is that older types of insulin, regular and NPH are still available at a price of about $28 a vial. These are less convenient but perfectly effective, so that there is no reason whatsoever for anyone to get sick or die for lack of insulin. Nevertheless, when I was still in practice, seeing a lot of diabetics taking insulin, almost everybody was paying through third parties and very few took advantage of these cheaper varieties. On the other hand in the free clinic where I volunteer, where no one has insurance, they're the only insulins we prescribe.

 

Just to put everything in perspective I want to point out that Dr Banting, who received the Nobel prize for working out the initial extraction and production of effective insulin in the early 1920's, was totally swamped by requests for his product from all over the world by desperate sufferers. He worked out an arrangement with the newly organized Eli Lilly company, which in the space of about 2 years, with the use of effective production techniques, was making enough to supply everybody.

 

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Of Men and Monkeys

Here's something that puzzles me.

If monkeys evolved into men, how come we still have monkeys.

I asked Mr. Google about it, and I find that there is lots of debate about the question. The usual response seems to be that men did not evolve from monkeys but instead both men and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor.

OK then if that's how it works, how come there were just two branches and not a whole bunch of intermediate creatures.(Maybe we do have them - they're called liberals!)

Couldn't resist kidding my liberal friends, but the question is serious even if it seems dumb to any real biologists.

 

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