****************************************** HEART DISEASE CURED IN JUST 14 DAYS!
George Washington University School of Medicine's clinical associate professor Michael Mogadam, MD, can't get over how fast and cheap the long-sought solution turned out to be. As Dr. Mogadam explains… More than half of all adults with "hardening of the arteries" are actually infected with a common germ called C. pneumoniae. You catch it just by breathing, but the bug quickly spreads to your arteries, eating away at their walls. Then your body tries to patch the damage -- by slapping on cholesterol. Heart attacks actually happen when these cholesterol bandages (called "plaques") break loose from your artery walls. And that's increasingly likely if this germ keeps corroding your arteries, requiring more and more patching. Read on…
You deserve to know every single 'unthinkable' fact!
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Out of the frying pan, into the fire
You've heard of "3 strikes" laws, right? In case you haven't, the term refers to legislation which forces life incarceration on criminals once they're been convicted of their third felony. Lots of states have these measures, and the prevailing opinion is that they work at getting repeating offenders off the street and curbing recidivism.
And now, the great state of Florida is set to enact a similar law for doctors - those who are convicted of malpractice 3 times will automatically lose their medical licenses.
According to MSNBC.com, even though Florida voters approved the measure (actually an amendment to the state's Constitution) in November's elections, the law is currently bottled up in the legislature by Judge's order. Apparently, there is still some fine print about exactly how the law will work that needs to be ironed out before the more than 30,000 doctors in Florida will really have to start watching their Ps and Qs.
On the surface, this new law seems like a step in the right direction toward reducing the incidence of malpractice claims - which (theoretically) should reduce malpractice insurance rates, one of the biggest factors in the upward spiral of health care costs. A clean win for John Q. Public, right? Not exactly. Something is not quite right in the Sunshine State.
Here's what I mean: One of the biggest proponents of the law were the Florida state trial lawyers! They were lobbying for this thing since the word GO, apparently. At first glance, this makes no sense. Why would lawyers back any measure that could result in fewer malpractice suits? After all, if it only takes three convictions to revoke a problem physician's license, the lawyers could lose a gold mine in future suits against him…
But that's not the effect Florida's lawyers are anticipating the amendment will have. They think that because doctors are now held to a tighter standard of accountability, they'll fight every accusation of malpractice tooth and nail to avoid a "strike" on their record. This means more out-of-court "no fault" settlements paid by insurance companies - especially once sue-happy lawyers start shouting "malpractice" over every little thing to force these high-dollar settlements. It's a checkmate move by the lawyers…
In a nutshell, the law may have the EXACT OPPOSITE effect it was intended to have.
Beyond simply outrageously high health care costs, the law may force a far darker result: A massive migration of doctors away from Florida - a state which desperately needs them, since a significant (and growing) percentage of the state's residents are aging retirees.
Stay tuned. When I hear more on this situation (or others like it), you will too.
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ESSENTIAL DAY TO DAY HEALTH
Are you paying $80 a month for vitamins? That's more than some pay for groceries!
As you probably already know, multivitamins run the gamut from slick, TV-advertised formulas to generic, bulk retail cheapies to $80-a-month concoctions hyped by nutrition "gurus" you've never heard of before. Confusing, isn't it?
What's missing in today's glutted multivitamin market is a good, honest, easily absorbable daily formula with all the basic vitamins, minerals, and nutrients you need for day-to-day health - with a price tag that won't induce a coronary. But such a thing simply didn't exist…until now.
Do we really need another multivitamin? Well…YES!
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A tragedy and a travesty
For the last two Daily Doses, I've been lamenting the sorry state of affairs in the health care world - specifically the high cost of malpractice claims and insurance and how this translates into inflated costs for you. But I've ignored (until now) the most obvious way to curb costs associated with malpractice: Doctors should STOP MAKING MISTAKES.
I've told you umpteen times before (Daily Dose, 3/18/2003 and others) about how mainstream MDs and medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in this country, behind only heart disease and cancer. Yet year in and year out, we continue to trust them with our lives, and they continue to kill us in staggering numbers - nearly a quarter-million of us a year! (Look it up, it's true)
But medical errors don't just happen in over-crowded urban emergency rooms or in under-equipped, backwoods hospitals and doctors' offices - but also in the very best, most world-renowned medical facilities, including the one entrusted to care for the President of the United States: Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
According to a recent ABC News article, a retired Marine Colonel's teenaged daughter was killed when an Army anesthesiologist injected her with too much of an antibiotic in preparation for a routine removal of a benign neck cyst. The girl immediately went into cardiac arrest, and the needle-happy doctor gave her MORE THAN A DOZEN OTHER DRUGS to attempt to revive her. She never came to, and died 12 days later.
As tragic as this is, what's even more disconcerting is this: The doctor and his Army Brass supervisors lied for months about how much of the antibiotics he'd given the girl and how quickly - even falsifying records after her death! Were it not for the tireless efforts of the youth's father in pressing for an independent investigation (he retired from the military to pursue the matter fully), this crime and cover-up would have gone completely unpunished. As it is, the penalties doled out were more like a slap on the wrist. Following his court-martial and discharge from the military (without prison time), the offending anesthesiologist RETAINED HIS CERTIFICATION.
That's right - he's very likely out there somewhere, practicing medicine on us still.
Covering, not covering up,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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