Let's spend our health dollars wisely with sound information and under the guidance of professionals.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
More than 25% of Medicare Costs...
Dr. Dean Edel reported on Friday, August 12 that 27% of all Medicare costs are devoted to a patient's last year of life. Just think of this particular fact and estimate the rate of aging baby boomers needing similar care... Wouldn't it be important that physicians and other health care providers be able to counsel the elderly to properly plan such issues as health care directives, living trusts, and power of attorney authorizations? This has nothing to do with...death panels. It is the uncertainty and the lack of directions/instructions forced on the living by those terminally ill or unable to care for oneself that is most difficult to bear.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Governor Quitter and the Free Speech Dilemna
The woman, who was one heart beat, or really one errant carcinoma cell away from the presidency; who ducked and dodged the first six weeks of her VP candidancy; takes a mysterious return home trip to give birth; deflects the reality of her teen daughter's pregnancy; has the audacity to accuse the Administration and Congress of developing "death panels?" Oh, and I forgot, what about the hands off policy on her own kids? I apoligize for this run-on rant, but it seems appropriate for this woman.
I suppose this woman is suffering from PTSS after the 11/4 election. Factor in two infants in the household, chain reaction like sucession of ethic violation charges, and the lure from the Fox chamberlains of book and talk show deals is enough to distract one from their primary responsibility in elected office.
The NYT Opinion Column offered the most succinct view on this woman's latest outrage.
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New York Times 8/10/2009 Timothy Egan
Palin’s Poison
In Egypt, 43 percent of people think Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks in America, a poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org found last year.
In the United States, six percent of Americans say the moon landing of 40 years ago was staged, according to Gallup.
And in Alaska, the former governor, a woman who was nearly a heartbeat away from the presidency, now tells followers that “Obama death panels” could decide if her parents and her baby, Trig, who has Down Syndrome, will live or die.
The United States, like most countries, has long had a lunatic fringe who channel in the flotsam of delusion, half-facts and conspiracy theories. But now, with the light-speed and reach of the Web, “entire virtual crank communities,” as the conservative writer David Frum called them, have sprung up. They are fed, in the case of Sarah Palin, by people who should know better.
For a democracy, which depends on an informed citizenry to balance a permanent lobbying class, this is poison. And it’s one reason why town hall forums on health care, which should be sharp debates about something that affects all of us, have turned into town mauls.
The lies and shouts have had the effect that all crank speech has on free speech — stifling any real exchange. In my state, Representative Brian Baird, a veteran of more than 300 town hall meetings during his 11 years as a Democratic congressman from southwest Washington, has decided not to hold any such forums this recess after receiving death threats.
But is it any wonder that some are moved to violent threats, given the level of misinformation being injected into the system? If you really believed that Obama was going to kill your baby and euthanize your parents, well — why not act in self defense?
Here’s what Palin said on her Facebook page Friday, in her first online comments since quitting as Alaska governor.
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society’ whether they are worthy of health care.”
This is pure fantasy, fact-free almost in its entirety. The nonpartisan group FactCheck.org said there was no basis for such a claim in any of the health care bills under consideration in Congress. One House bill would pay for counseling for terminally ill patients — something anyone who has lost an elderly loved one of late, as I have, will find essential.
Palin was given some cover Sunday by the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a master of slipping innuendo into his arguments. Defending the “death panel” post on ABC’s “This Week,” Gingrich said, “you’re asking us to trust the government.” By such reasoning, American foreign policy is not worth its word, the currency is worthless, and the moon landing was indeed a fake.
The last time Gingrich went so far was when he called Justice Sonia Sotomayor a racist. He retracted it then. We’ll see what he does now. As for Palin, she should follow her own advice to the media of a few weeks ago — lay off the kids and “quit makin’ things up.”
Sunday, August 9, 2009
This should not be considered a trend, but golf takes on a secondary role here. There's a bit of irony that the golf club is called "Clearview".
After Battling Racism, Veteran Found Peace on His Golf Course
David Maxwell for The New York Times
Bill Powell said he was motivated to begin building his golf course in 1946 after his rights under the G.I. bill were denied.
EAST CANTON, Ohio — Every corner of the modest two-story frame clubhouse he owns and operates, every tee and green of Clearview Golf Club, the 18-hole course he designed and built, bears the imprint of Bill Powell. Sown 63 years ago in an act of defiance, nurtured by the sheer force of will of the man whose vision gave it birth, the club stands as a monument to a golf giant who has battled racism in relative obscurity most of his life.
David Maxwell for The New York Times
Powell will receive the P.G.A. Distinguished Service Award, the P.G.A. of America’s highest honor.
His wife, Marcella, second from left, and his children worked with Powell, second from right.
David Maxwell for The New York Times
The Clearview Golf Club is on the National Register of Historic Places.
On Wednesday in Minneapolis, on the eve of the P.G.A. Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club, a national spotlight will illuminate Powell’s many life achievements when he receives the P.G.A. Distinguished Service Award, the P.G.A. of America’s highest honor.
The great-grandson of Alabama slaves, Powell will be there to accept it. He is 92, his once-imposing frame slightly bent by time and by a stroke a decade ago. His wide shoulders and thick arms are reminders of the fine athlete he was. His speech survived, as did a powerful presence that emanates from deep-set eyes that smolder or sparkle, depending on the topic.
To feel the heat that burned down the barriers in the days beforeJackie Robinson donned a Dodgers uniform, ask Powell about the circumstances that led to his building a golf course from scratch after returning from World War II, in which he served as a tech sergeant in the Army Air Corps.
“I was denied the rights accorded me in the G.I. Bill,” he said, his eyes widening and his anger rising. “I was denied this right. Here’s a guy of color that was captain and coach of his golf team in high school, captain of his football team, and when I come and try back to get a loan, they tell me, ‘Bill, go there and get a loan.’ ”
No local banks would grant a loan to Powell, who grew up in Minerva — a small town about 20 miles east of Canton — where he caddied from the age of 9. In an era when blacks could not stand in line with whites to apply for a job, when the Army was segregated, Powell was reminded of the deep societal differences between England and Scotland, where he had been stationed, and Ohio.
It hardened his resolve, as Powell said, “I had just left a country where I was treated like a human being, so how was I supposed to be satisfied to be treated like dirt?”
He borrowed money from two black physicians, one from Canton and one from nearby Massillon, and from his brother, Berry Powell, who mortgaged his home. Bill Powell bought the original 78 acres he had spotted when driving with his wife, Marcella, down Route 30 — one of the earliest east-west access highways in the country — and they went to work. It was in the spring of 1946, and Powell was 29.
He did much of the heavy work himself, clearing brush, pulling out fence posts and hauling away stones in a wheelbarrow. He seeded the fairways by hand, sometimes helped by Marcella, who died in June 1996 after 56 years of marriage.
Their three children also did their part: Billy, the oldest son, now deceased; Lawrence, now the golf course superintendent; and Renee, a fine golfer who played on the L.P.G.A. Tour in the ’70s and early ’80s and is now the head professional. While supporting his young family with a nighttime job as a security guard at the Timken ball bearing factory, Powell finished the first nine holes of the course in two years. It opened in April 1948. After Powell bought another 52 acres, the back nine opened in 1978.
Standing in the afternoon shade of a massive oak on a hill near the first tee last week, Renee Powell smiled as she pointed down the first fairway of the course, which is one of just 15 on the National Register of Historic Places.
“He and my mother planted most of the trees you see there bordering the first hole,” she said. “When you think about what he was able to accomplish here, with everything that was arrayed against him, it really is quite amazing.”
At times Bill Powell wondered if what he was doing was worth the trouble. But quitting never occurred to him.
“As soon as someone told him he couldn’t do something, that was when you knew he could,” Renee Powell said.
That is a characteristic Powell shares with other successful entrepreneurs. Even now, he will wave off an offer of help and climb out of his golf cart to fetch a club from his shop. He admits he was once gruff, even caustic, at times, but jokes about it.
“I love everybody now,” he said, eliciting a stifled chortle from his daughter. “I do. I just love everybody.”
He smiled and added, “Listen, when you’re walking down that last hole toward the big clubhouse over yonder, you don’t want to have a lot of enemies.”
Powell no longer plays golf, but people play it because of him. Smiling under a snappy linen Hogan cap, he chatted on Thursday with some of the women from the Clearview Ladies Golf Association, asking about their health, calling each by name.
He has made peace with some of the angry memories, but Powell is not content. Still rankled by bigotry and injustice, he nonetheless hopes today’s younger generation will put an end to the lingering differences.
“We are such a heterogeneous society,” he said. “We need to learn to coexist. If you take the best thing from each different part, then something good has to come of it. For all the bad that we have, we have a beautiful country. Why else would everybody be trying to come here?”
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