news hysteria – Weary Wretch

Death Panels

I received a 7 page double sided letter from CMT. Care Management Technologies, which sounds real official. It is part of Missouri Department of Social Services that monitors drug claims, diagnoses and ER visits. It is also part of Missouri Medicaid Audit and Compliance Unit (MMAC, read Death Panel). Probably a whole lot more, but I’ll come back to that.

The purpose of the letter was to bring to my attention that a patient I saw and gave narcotic medication (opioid narcotic, gasp) to who had also received narcotic prescriptions from 5 other doctors. Of course 2 of the others were hospitalists that had taken care of the patient while he was in the hospital.

I had given the patient one hydrocodone tablet while we were waiting for lab results in the ED. No other medication was given by me and no scripts were given by me.

In contrast, he received 334 tablets from the 4 other physicians over a 3 month time frame. That sounds like a lot, but it is 25% less than the maximum recommended dose over 98 days.

And, the pain the patient was being treated for was metastatic prostate cancer. Prostate cancer metastasizes to bone and is the most excruciating cancer pain known. There is no cure and treatment options include estrogen hormone supplement and castration to lessen testosterone which stimulates the prostate cancer to grow. Otherwise the only thing modern medicine has to offer is relief of pain.

So, you must be wondering why I am going on about all this trivial and complex issue. If you remember, we have suffered a few years of Obama Care and the rationing of health care that was predicted to result. Here is evidence that the pundits were right to predict that the “Death Panels” were coming. And, they are here. Actually, they’ve been here for a lot longer, they are just more functional since Obama.

And last week, President Trump signed the “Omnibus Budget Act” leaving Obama Care intact. And, President Trump vowed to stop all the opioid abuse, like my giving this patient one pain pill in the emergency department.

I have been writing about the pending doom of this opioid hysteria for a couple of years. Again will I stress;

There is no opioid crisis, there is only opioid hysteria.

There is a crisis of poor law enforcement, poor government regulations, poor prescribing habits and poor management of psychiatric health issues in America.

There is no opioid crisis.

Venting from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

Budget and Taxes

February, 2018

I was listening to NPR on the way to work today. NPR, you may think means National Public Radio, but it doesn’t. It means National Platform for Ridiculousness.

I listen because I want to know what the enemy is doing.

So, it was about all these liberals complaining about the excessively high budget and taxes Congress and Trump were passing. I know, I know. Who’d of thought liberals would complain about high taxes and a big budget, but they were. They interviewed this “expert” about what the American people thought about such abuses. He said something to the effect,

“When our country was beginning there was a Boston Tea Party to protest the excessive taxes coming out of Washington.”

No pause, that might have indicated that he realized that Washington (or America for that matter) didn’t exist at that time or that the beef was with the King of England.

Why do physicians get sued even when they did the right thing correctly, and idiots like this are allowed to spew stupid gibberish like this?

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave. All childish invectives used in this post are appropriate and true.

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/09/584640265/bipartisan-budget-agreement-spends-too-much-money-for-most-conservative-republic

Weary

Our Cars, and Our Guns

December, 2017

They are coming after your guns, but did you know they got your car first?

Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the US (1963-69), was responsible. He felt that there was a need to fix something, as all Presidents do. Not only did he bring us the “War on Poverty” (which we are loosing/have lost) but he brought us the “War on Highway Disease.”

Betcha ya haven’t heard of that one, have you? But, you probably are very aware of the effects of this major government boondoggle.

I doubt that ‘ol Lyndon was even aware that highway fatalities were a significant issue and I believe that a staffer told him something like, “Hey Pres, here is something that you can use as a legacy and endear yourself in the liberal heart for evermore.” Or something to that effect.

He/they felt that there were entirely too many deaths occurring on our nations highways and started a campaign to correct the problem. Things like raising the drinking age to 21y instead of 18y, seat belts, padded dashboards instead of metal, collapsible steering columns, break-away/collapsible plastic bumpers, head rests and a host of other expensive improvements. And, crash dummies to test these innovations.

Believe it or not, LBJ started the FARS (sounding very close to farce, but its real). Fatal Accident Reporting System.

The concept was that cars cause injury and death, not accidents. Heard anything like that before? Its kind of like, “Cars don’t kill people, people kill people” was a phrase that just didn’t make sense to them. The problem was not that cars were being used inappropriately, such as under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or that poor judgment/skill was a factor in the accidents and injuries. The problem was that cars were unsafe. Cars were the inherent problem.

Slowly, very slowly, the effects of this campaign became more noticeable to the masses. For instance, the crash-test dummies became public figures. Caricatures of these inanimate objects were used more and more in advertising campaigns in wildly satirical manners. They became the joke. People began to realize that there was a price to pay for all these “improvements” in the safeness of their cars. The masses came to realize that while nice to have, some of these improvements were not worth the increase cost of the vehicle. These “improvements” became the joke.

Not to change the topic, but a pickle suit or an anti-suicide smock, Ferguson, turtle suit, Bam Bam suit, or suicide gown is a tear-resistant single-piece outer garment that is generally used to prevent a hospitalized, incarcerated, or otherwise detained individual from forming a noose with the garment to commit suicide. Read straight jacket.

Back to the “War on Highway Disease”, we will soon have the NERF car, the highway version of a pickle suit. NERF being the trade name owned by Hasbro of the foam impact toys that can be used by children (or children-like adults) unsupervised without risk of harm. Then our cars won’t be dangerous and traffic fatalities will plummet.

So, when you hear, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” you’ll understand why I get a little nervous.

From your crash-dummy, grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

The Great American Eclipse Eclipse

8/22/2017

No, NO! Calm down, it’s OK. We survived the Great American Eclipse. No alien hordes descended on the Heartland, as predicted.

The eclipse predictors said we would experience an influx of up to 800,000 visitors to the NW Missouri – NE Kansas area. It was estimated that there would be an increase of 14,000 inbound flights to Rosecrans Regional Airport. Land owners were dedicating their pastures to camping facilities, for a reasonable price of course. The local law enforcement agencies canceled leave and scheduled extra personnel for appropriate shifts to cover the event. It was rumored that the Bridge over the Missouri river would be closed because it was feared that gaukers would stop on the bridge to view the event, possibly causing it to collapse from the excessive weight. And, that the Interstate would be closed for the same reason. The Children’s Hospital sent a dedicated mobile ICU and crew to await the tragedy that was expected to become some hapless child, in fear that transfers would be delayed with the traffic congestion from eclipsers. The local EMS board studied the local traffic routes that would need to be taken by EMS personnel responding to mass casualties. For them, leave was canceled and extra staff was on hand to deal with the mass hordes. The local retailers over stocked the shelves in order to, well you know. Our local mega-market had a stocking crew of about 150 loading the shelves out of boxes that lined the aisles so full you almost couldn’t walk down them. The airport across the river, yep the very one that was supposed to get 14,000 extra inbound flights, sold tickets to allow visitors onto the flight deck to watch the eclipse. They sold out. There were digital signs along the highways texting drivers that the eclipse was coming 8/21 and to expect high traffic loads.

Our neighbors found out that a University professor had done his own calculations and determined that the very best viewing site was in the corn field on our property’s southern border. They established a viewing site in a waterway between 2 cornfields. They hung a banner from the derelict windmill that proclaimed it “The Great American Eclipse Park.” They tied balloons filled with helium to the corn plants lining the waterway and had a porta-potty brought in.

In our county, we have 42 feet of top soil. That’s why we always caution visitors to not pull off rock roads if it has been raining or else you may never see your car again. Well, it rained for 2 days and waterways are designed to funnel water from the rain through it’s middle to the nearest creek. Needless to say it was wet.

The eclipsers set up tents to view the eclipse on Monday because it was cloudy and might rain. It did.

It rained, it was cloudy and there was little to no eclipse viewing. Oh, it turned dark and all, but lacked the beautiful cut of the moon traversing the sun and coming to a head with the “diamond ring” that was shown on TV and cable for the past many months.

Actually, that’s not all that busted.

There was no 14,000 inbound flights of private and commercial flights bringing solar seekers to the great Midland viewing area. In fact, had they arrived, assuming a coordination of flight plans, that would have meant about 8 flights per minute for 30 hours. Not likely for our little airport.

There were very few campers taking advantage of the unimproved campgrounds. Expectant farmers went bust.

There were no more than the usual cars on the roads to read the text messages about the increased traffic that wasn’t there.

The ER and EMS were busy, but no more than our usual busy and essentially no eclipsers. No sunburns, dehydration, alcohol overdoses, drug overdoses and no burnt corneas. No riot in the streets.

And I missed it. I had my bags all packed and ready to go. The Mother Ship landed and I slept through it. I guess I’ll have to wait for the next eclipse to get back home.

Your grumpy alien Uncle/Brother Dave.

The Needy Daughter

I was listening to a report about the Hillary e-mail fiasco the other day. They said that Hillary had provided 30,000 e-mails to the FBI resulting from their subpoena but she reported that 33,000 had been lost or deleted.

Hillary was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. She explained that the lost or deleted e-mails were just personal e-mails about Chelsea’s [then] pending wedding. Chelsea was married on 7/31/2010.

So here we go.

Let’s say that Chelsea and Hillary were e-mailing heavily for the year before the wedding and about 6 months after. That is about 25 months or 43 e-mails a day. Almost 2 per hour, 24 hours a day for over 2 years.

Every day.

Not considering that there must have been a few days in there that either Chelsea or Hillary might have been preoccupied with other things. Being Secretary of State and all.

But this is a very conservative estimate because the Clinton’s were heavy Blackberry users and most of their back-n-forths would have been by voice, voice messages, texts, etc. And some, probably quite a few, days they would have been in each other’s company. If one could conceive that Hillary and Chelsea might e-mail each other while in the same room, maybe that’s a mute point.

Social recluse that I am I just can’t be held as an example, but I get maybe 43 e-mails a year. And have trouble keeping up with that many.

What the multi-tasker Hillary must be.

Running a household of one (Chelsea is off with hubby-to-be and Bill’s off being Bill), e-mailing her daughter (and I presume others) about her upcoming wedding, and running the foreign affairs of one of the largest, most complex countries in the world. And running her own home server to boot.

Your skeptical grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy

https://www.state.gov/secretary/115194.htm