AMA opposes health plan

This could be a stormy summer if the debate over Obama's health care plan hits Congress in the coming weeks. As it is, battle lines are already being drawn up and salvos are being fired by both sides. And not just by Republicans and Democrats: recently the American Medical Association (AMA) weighed in on the latest details of Obama's so-called "public insurance plan"… and they're against it.

In spite of the fact that the AMA is the country's largest physician's group, it doesn't have as much political pull as it used to have in the old days, but there's no doubt that the organization's non-endorsement of the Obama plan will (thankfully) make it more difficult to pass.

It's probably tough to tell from reading the paper or watching the TV news these days, but there are actually people out there who know more than President Obama. And the AMA's opposition to Obama's health care plan is based on something that the President has very little of: experience.

The Obama Administration has just begun to leak the specifics of the healthcare plan, and after seeing the initial broad strokes, the AMA has concluded that health care should still be "provided through private markets as they are currently."

"The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans," the AMA said in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee.

And it's true: the end result of the Obama proposals would be to tear down the current health care system of private health that's taken care of the majority of our nation's 350 million people… all so we can be sure that the 10 million or so of the population (and that's being generous) that don't have insurance can be cared for - at massive expense to the taxpayer.

All of these debates are going to heat up, and Obama is going to make his case for the plan at an address to the AMA in Chicago. But finally, it's not just talk radio pundits and the odd Republican pointing out the obvious flaws in the Obama plan, but the doctors themselves - the people who will be at the sharp end should this plan come to pass.

One bone of contention is government mandated physician participation. The government would strong-arm doctors into accepting the plan by requiring doctors who currently accept Medicare patients to be a part of the new public health plan.

The AMA has said that it won't back a plan that mandates physician participation since "many physicians and providers may not have the capability to accept the influx of new patients that could result from such a mandate." Which, of course, makes sense: while the government plan will expand coverage, it has no provisions for expanding the infrastructure or size of the current healthcare industry. The result will surely be system overload virtually overnight.

Clearly, we're headed for a showdown. And unfortunately, I think that it will be the AMA and doctors that blink first - or will be forced to blink. After all, the doctors can hardly wage a scorched earth political campaign against the same Democrats whose help they need to increase the fees for Medicare. So of course, the true power rests not in the hands of the people, but the government. And bigger government is always part of Obama's grand plan.

Can sleep habits lead to depression?

Teen depression could be linked to sleep habits according to a new study done at the Columbia University Medical Center. The statistics of the study show that kids in middle school and high school who are allowed to stay up past midnight on weeknights are 42 percent more likely to be depressed than kids whose parents mandate bedtimes of 10 pm and earlier.

This is the first study to examine the impact of lack of sleep on teens. But if you ask me, it hinges on some questionable research. I can tell you from personal experience that there's a pretty significant gap between when my parents told me I had to be in bed and the time when I was actually asleep. So I wonder how accurate the study's statistics really are.

And of the big disparity in the amount of sleep that was discovered? The late-night kids got about seven and a half hours of sack time. But the early-to-bed kids got an average of eight hours and 10 minutes… about 40 minutes more. Forty minutes less sleep can cause depression? Come on.

In my day, books and vinyl records kept me up past bed check. For today's kids, it's the Internet (Facebook, instant messages) or texting on their phones. Different vices-but still nothing to get depressed over.