Tuesday, December 20, 2016

It was dogma that there was no addiction before puberty. Not so for video addiction.


Tuesday, December 13, 2016

The Adversarial Legal System

The adversarial system originated in the disputation methodology of a church based philosophy. It was a method to arrive at some truth or conclusion on difficult questions.

1) It violates the Establishment Clause because of its religious origin;

2) it is an atavistic and ridiculous 13th Century method;

3) it has no external validation as a proper method; it does not even have established rates of inter-rater reliability nor test-retest reliability; these do not establish validity, but are necessary before testing validation;

4) it puts the verdict in the hands of fresh grads from law school, who know very little, and excludes the brightest and most experienced person in the court from participating in verdict finding, the judge;

5) empirically, it results in both unacceptably elevated rates of false positives and false negatives, contributing to our sky high crime rates;

6) it is expensive and turns a trial into a theater production, mostly to generate lawyer fees for worthless services, defrauding the tax payer;

7) it brings opprobrium on the lawyer profession, their looking like argumentative jackasses;

8) its stentorian tones, its location in a room that resembles a church, alienates the process from its owners, the tax payer, stupid people putting on a stupid show (bring back wigs);

9) it is probably irrelevant to the jury, as likely to decide a verdict on the likability of a chesty female lawyer as on the complicated facts;

10) it adds further delay in the legal system filled with lazy, do nothing, big government worthless tax sucking parasites, moving the cases ever so slowly.

Lawless, outdated, worthless, lawyer quackery, expensive, stealing of tax money. The adversarial system just sucks and should be scrapped entirely.

Inquisitorial judges, trained as judges, not as lawyers, should lead the investigation,  with judge values, not lawyer values. They should be liable for their mistakes in professional tort liability, and judged according to professional standards of due care. The lazy and slow should be fired.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Path to First Amendment Enforcement in Private Entities

You own a home. The deed has the boundary line in the middle of the street, and certainly includes the sidewalk in front of the house. If you do not shovel the snow from that sidewalk, you may be fined by the city. It is considered your property.

The sidewalk is your property. It is a public accommodation. Can you exclude people in protected classes from your sidewalk? No. If protesters with a viewpoint want to set up a picket line, in the correct time and manner, may you exclude them based on their viewpoint? No.


Facebook is a private corporation to whom the First Amendment does not apply. However, it is not the dining room of the property. It is the sidewalk. It may not exclude people, or ban, or punish people based on viewpoint. It is the ultimate public accommodation, the ultimate sidewalk portion of the property, with 1.5 billion invitees.

I support an aggregate claim against Facebook, and compensation of $10 Billion to those who have been banned based on viewpoint.

To my Gay Friends, Run. It's a Trap. Gay Marriage.

A non-religious objection to gay marriage is that it elevates friendship to the legally privileged status of marriage. That is an attack by government on the authority of the family. Gay marriage degrades the legal status of marriage, which has the sole purpose of procreation. It makes it the same as a union between any two casual friends.

The family is 10 times more effective at imparting moral behavior on its members, including adults, than government is. So the family is under attack by the lawyer profession and must be crushed. Gay marriage is only one front. There are 10 other fronts of attack.

The bastardy rate among blacks is at 70%, and marriage is dead in that group. Among whites, in the 2010 Census, it soared to a shocking and devastating 40%. There are no significant genetic differences between the races. All disparities in social pathologies are explained by the bastardy rate. Darker skin blacks from Africa, with their traditional family values, and opposing gay marriage, outperformed whites in that same Census.

Gay marriage advocates must be held accountable for the degradation of the white family, and its catastrophic consequences to the country. They have no conscience. They care only about their selfish, left wing, big government, rent seeking interests. They are not even gay advocates. They are shills for the lawyer profession, seeking to generate more work for divorce lawyers. They want to degrade the family, and to promote greater government dependency as is the case among non-immigrant blacks. They are left wing ideologues, big government advocates, not real gay advocates.

Gay marriage was a lawyer idea, not a gay idea. The members of this left wing and naive group do not know that. Because of the collapse of marriage among heterosexuals, the family law business was reeling. They came up with this idea, to plunder the assets of highly productive and well to do gays. Gays have markedly above average incomes, and must be targeted by the lawyer profession.

Being gay does not make one stupid. Complying with left wing cultural fashion trends makes one stupid. In jurisdictions with long standing gay marriage laws, very few gays are falling for that lawyer set trap. For example, in France, only a few thousand gays a year are stupid enough to get married.

In Pennsylvania, the wealthier spouse must pay the legal fees of the poorer one in a divorce. In Pennsylvania, change a diaper on kid, you are considered the parent because of care, not because of genetics. DNA testing on the Maury Show has no effect on being declared a parent, only providing care. The court takes the viewpoint of the child, "I love you, Mommy." Change a diaper, you are on the hook for child raising expenses to college graduation, or $250,000. You numskulls supporting gay marriage, and actually getting married, will be paying the fees of the lawyer destroying your family and your life. You will be paying the child raising cost of a child that is not yours, that you do not see, and that you may not even like, it's being a little entitled brat.

The rate of divorce is the same as that of heterosexual couples. Advocates who claim it is lower are making a simple arithmetic error.

Run, it's a lawyer set trap.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Term Limits


We are frustrated by politics, and are proposing to limit terms automatically, by law.

Couple of problems to consider.

1) It takes 10,000 hours to get good at any skill. We would be firing people who have learned their business;

2) Inexperienced elected officials would shift power to their unaccountable, unknown, experienced staffs, mostly rent seeking, big government lawyers;

3) incumbents are nearly impossible to get rid of, so enact direct voting on issues, in all US jurisdictions, as California Initiatives do. This is direct democracy. These drive politicians crazy.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Victims Rights Movement as Lawyer Quackery

Paul Cassell and this phony victims' rights movement is appalling. It is a Trojan Horse for increasing lawyer employment. Victims will soon get the right to counsel to navigate the complicated legal system. And, that is the real reason for this movement.

The real victims' right is the right to not get victimized. The sole path to that right is public self help, and the killing of violent criminals. These violent criminals are protected by the lawyer profession. They generate massive government make work jobs. Victims now generate nothing and may rot.

The real victims' right is to sue the police, the judges, and the juries who allowed the criminals to victimize them, in deviation from professional standards of due care. These horrible, self dealing, rent seeking, worthless government workers will not stop the criminal or they would lose their jobs. Despite the false lawyer decisions, the police does have a duty to the individual, the one that pays his salary with heard earned tax money.

The victim has a right to compensation from civil forfeitures. Instead, the police keeps all of it for itself, stealing from innocent people, and failing to compensate crime victims.

The victim who does defend himself is always the one prosecuted, and destroyed by the legal system. The criminal never gets prosecuted by lawyers like Cassell. The message is, depend on the worthless government make work police.

Cassell ignores these problems, because he is a rent seeking lawyer, trying to fleece the tax payer.

Victim statements are attestations. They are not cross examined in violation of Fifth Amendment due process right to a fair hearing.

Victims should be forced to state how they profited from their victimization. For example, they are boohooing they lost their father. This father was a child abuser. His murder was a tremendous benefit to all those around him. That benefit should be credited to the defendant.

False statements by victims should no longer be immunized, but prosecuted instead, as perjury.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Improving the Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court is a lawless abomination. It should be impeached, every single one of the traitor now sitting there.

Then pass a Judiciary Act.

1) Move the Court to Wichita, KS, roughly at the center of the nation. Get it out of the homosexual dominated, rent seeking, elitist culture of Washington DC. If you move to Iran, you will soon become very Iranian. You will imitate those around you, and fit in eventually. This explains the awful decisions of even the most conservative Justices.

2) Change the number of Justices to an even number. If there is a tied decision, the lower court decision stands, and as national policy. That lower court decision was likely obeying a prior Supreme Court decision. The even number will conserve stare decisis.

3) If the Court is to violate the constitution by its judicial review, make the number of Justices a legislative number, such as 500. All judicial reviews, including Marbury v Madison, violate Article I Section 1, granting law making power to a legislature.

4) Exclude anyone who has passed 1L from the Supreme Court. Exclude all people who ever attended an Ivy League School. They are all dirty traitor scum. Select the Justices from random people on local jury pools. I don't care if the Congress selects wine besotted bums puking in the gutter, who dropped out of special ed classes. There will be an upgrade in policy making, and more readability of decisions.

Monday, November 7, 2016

Intelligent Atheism, Not Stupid Atheism

As to atheism, I am an intelligent atheist, not a stupid atheist as most left wing atheists are. I do not bash religion in any way. I even respectfully accept the prayers of others for my soul. Religious people like me for my respect.
1) Religion is in all cultures, no exception. That means, brain based, with some evolutionary advantage.
2) I am with Weber, religious societies are richer societies. He studied Calvinism. I generalize his findings to Ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh had all the assets and powers. 100,000 men were idled by the yearly flooding of agricultural lands by the Nile for 6 months. That means drinking, fighting and trouble. Probably some Sephardic Jew persuaded him that if you pile rocks and correctly point the hole at the top, for your soul to be pointed at a star, you can achieve immortality. Bam, 100,000 guys have jobs the rest of the year, and the wealth is redistributed in the first government make work project. That project is still bringing in $5 billion to Egypt after 7000 years. What atheist project can claim that kind of value? Religious tourism. Weber is what you studied in 12th Grade Am History class, whether you ever heard his name. Wealth is a sign of God's grace, so work hard to get rich.

3) It does comfort people. It explains to the average person why they should do good, and not live the Roman orgy lifestyle, "You are being watched." It does a much better job of reducing crimes and abuses than the legal profession.
4) A fat kid is holding a magnifying glass between the sun and an anthill, and burning the ants. Realistically, an ant is more likely to grasp the mathematical formulas of Newtonian optics explaining the concentration of light and heat by the lens than we are to understanding the entity that produced a universe now 15 billion light years across, its laws of physics, and its growing at an accelerating pace, let alone the reasons for doing so. The intellectual distance is far shorter for the ant, even with CRISPR technology producing Einstein ants, and robot ants 1000 times smarter than they are. I prefer to be humble.
A babified explanation of a thin lens.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Tales of Conduct Disorder 2


The authorities who failed to execute this man at age 16 are fully responsible for the 7 subsequent murders committed by this man. Conduct disorder is a disability of morality and of empathy. Its sole remedy is the death penalty.

Here is the sad tale.


'...The gruesome revelations are a stark contrast to Kohlhepp’s professional image. On the surface, Kohlhepp was a polished Realtor who ran a successful South Carolina real estate firm upstate. In a company brochure, Kohlhepp portrayed himself as a tech-savvy professional committed to helping people buy and sell homes in Greenville and Spartanburg counties.
“At Todd Kohlhepp & Associates we feel that it’s important for our clients to know a little more about who’s working for them besides a name and number,” read the first part of his bio.
Beneath it was a picture of Kohlhepp dressed in a pinstripe suit, smiling broadly, next to a list of his business qualifications. He boasted that he was a licensed pilot and that his company had “One Focus … Results!”
But there was no mention of Kohlhepp’s criminal history and why he was a registered sex offender.
Details from his childhood — particularly his conviction for the 1986 rape of a teenage girl in Tempe, Ariz. — hint at a deeply troubled individual who harbored violent tendencies from an early age, according to court records obtained by the Arizona Republic.
Records showed that when Kohlhepp was 15 he went to a neighbor’s house, held a .22-caliber handgun to the 14-year-old girl’s head and demanded that she follow him, the Republic reported. Once back at his home, Kohlhepp duct-taped the girl’s mouth, restrained her hands and raped her — then told her he would kill her and her younger siblings if she called police, according to the paper.
The girl reported the rape to police, and Kohlhepp was arrested on kidnapping and sexual assault charges, court records showed. He took a plea bargain, pleading guilty to just the kidnapping charge, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

An extensive psychiatric evaluation of Kohlhepp, then 16, revealed a sometimes suicidal teenager who saw himself “as a loner, hostile toward other children and not wanting to be around people,” according to a report first obtained by Greenville Online.

Kohlhepp’s parents had divorced when he was a baby, the report said, and he was raised mostly by his mother and stepfather. After they separated in 1982, Kohlhepp began acting out, destroying his room and breaking mirrors so that his mother would send him to live with his biological father.
The report also detailed other alleged violent acts from Kohlhepp’s childhood. He destroyed his bedroom with a hammer, hit other classmates, was caught “Cloroxing” a goldfish, shot a dog with a BB gun and was dismissed from the Boy Scouts because he was too disruptive, the report said.
A teenage Kohlhepp described his father as “a lier [sic] and preoccupied with guns” who allegedly taught the boy how to “blow things up and make bombs,” according to the report. He had occasionally considered killing his father, whom he accused of physical abuse, but also “had this rage turned back at himself,” the report said.

In the 1987 report, Kohlhepp told the psychiatrist that when police were outside his home to arrest him after the rape of the 14-year-old girl, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, but it jammed. “At this point, he laughed somewhat inappropriately,” the report said. “He stated ‘Someone doesn’t want me to die yet.’ ”

Kohlhepp seemed conflicted about the rape, alternately describing it as something he was ashamed of but also something that he had done to “get back” at his father. The report went on to say that Kohlhepp did not appear to suffer from hallucinations, delusions or other cognitive deficits; in fact, he seemed to be in the “normal intellectual range” and “tended to minimize his problem and expressed hope that he would go back to school and get a GED.”

The psychiatrist said there was “convincing evidence” that Kohlhepp had borderline personality disorder. “Throughout the interview, one got the feeling that if he were pushed to any limits, he was potentially explosive,” the psychiatrist wrote. The psychiatrist also warned that Kohlhepp’s “severe underlying emotional issues … could result in emotional deterioration in the future or continued aggressive behavior toward others in the future.”

Kohlhepp was released from prison Nov. 24, 2001, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections. Records also showed that he received postsecondary education and vocational training while in prison.
At some point, Kohlhepp moved to South Carolina and built a real estate business (his real estate license is listed as valid through June 2017, according to the state’s Labor, Licensing and Regulation Department).

When Kohlhepp applied for his South Carolina real estate license in 2006, he explained his sex offender status in a two-page letter filled with details that contradicted court documents regarding the 1986 charges, according to the Independent Mail:
Kohlhepp wrote, in his 2006 letter about the 1986 incident, that he had been in a heated argument with his girlfriend, they were both 15 at the time, they ended their relationship and afterward chased his dog and returned to his house.
Police showed up at the home, after having been called by the girl’s parents, who were concerned they could not reach her by phone, Kohlhepp wrote.
He explained in the letter that the kidnapping charge stemmed from a firearm he was carrying and because “I had told her not to move while we talked this out.”
Kohlhepp said he had been carrying a gun because he was concerned about crime in the Phoenix area and chalked it up to a youthful mistake.
Kohlhepp was granted a real estate license about three weeks after he applied, the Independent Mail reported. “Our community has been deeply disturbed by this,” Nick Kremydas, chief executive of South Carolina Realtors, told the paper. “The alleged acts of this person are not representative of us.”
State records showed that Todd Kohlhepp & Associates had two offices, one in Moore and another in Greenville, and that Kohlhepp supervised nearly a dozen agents. It is unclear whether any were aware of his private life. On Saturday, a call to the phone number listed for the company went to an answering machine, where Kohlhepp’s voice promised, with a slight Southern drawl, to return calls as soon as possible.
Listings for all of the properties and agent bios on his company’s Web page redirected to server error messages. By Saturday afternoon, an agent profile page for Kohlhepp on the real estate site Zillow appeared to have been removed, and a slew of negative reviews had been posted to his company’s Facebook page.
Brown reportedly worked for Kohlhepp cleaning houses and had arrived at his Woodruff property with her boyfriend to help clean it up when Kohlhepp pulled a gun on them, according to CBS News.
Brown and Carver were reported missing after the Anderson, S.C., couple didn’t show up to dinner with a friend on Aug. 31. No one heard from them after that. In mid-October, The Washington Post reported that the couple’s family members were disturbed by messages that began appearing on Carver’s Facebook account.
The family suspected that his account had been taken over by someone sinister. As The Post reported:
Suddenly, the page exploded with content, as if it had been hacked. It would appear to be flooded with spam, but a closer inspection revealed many of the posts to be related to the couple.
News stories about the missing couple appeared in rapid-fire succession, along with other stories about missing people. Strange, violent images and memes began being posted on the Facebook page.
“If I weren’t crazy, I’d be insane,” read one. Another read, “Sometimes late at night I dig a hole in the back yard to keep the nosy neighbor’s guessing.”
. . . On Oct. 1, one user commented on the marriage announcement, “Where the hell is Kala Brown???” to which Charlie’s Facebook account responded, “kala is with her husband charlie.”
On another post, a user asked where Kala was, to which Charlie’s account responded “who the f––– are you to question me about my girlfriend?”
Carver’s Facebook account has since been deleted.
Kohlhepp’s next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 19, according to court records.
Travis M. Andrews and Sarah Larimer contributed to this report.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Medical Malpractice Defense Points Not Usually Considered

I am not a lawyer, but I know where they live. Matters are 100 times worse than any one realizes with the lawyer profession.I would want to make the following defense points.  I would appreciate knowing any lawyer rebuttal.

1) Four Elements that must be proven in a tort case.

Duty
Breach
Injury
Injury Caused by Breach

2) Even lawyers forget the fifth. Unforeseen intervening cause. Any plaintiff conduct remotely related to the injury should be brought up, and a motion to dismiss should be made at every procedural step. Examples, smoking, non-adherence, family effects, outside stress.

3) In terms of breach due to a deviation from professional standards of due care, the courts will allow minority views in a subject that is not completely settled, and no medical subject is completely settled.

4) The tort is based on a theory of chain of causation. Great in the 13th Century, total lawyer quackery today. Lawyer quackery violates the Fifth Amendment procedural due process right to a fair trial of the defendant, even in a tort case.

A doctor sued BMW for a bad paint job and was awarded $4 million. The Supreme Court affirmed the Fifth Amendment  due process rights of defendants in torts.

The current view of catastrophes is that multiple factors cluster in a space and time, for example 12 of them in an airplane or car crash. The prevention of any one may prevent the entire catastrophe, often. The chain of causation is a myth. If followed enough, it ends at the Big Bang, and the court should try to collect from the entity that caused the Big Bang. The lawyer is ridiculous and stupid. They start with high IQ's and end up doing stuff from 1275 AD. I call that stupid, except they take in $trillion and damage the economy far more than that.

5) I urge defendants to personally attack the other side, and to share their own misery with the other side. The most powerful attacks are in the trial and in motions to the trial judge. Find a factual mistake anywhere, in the resume of the expert, in the out of court social media postings of all parties, in depositions. Adjectives and opinions are legally immune. I think this person is evil, stupid, greedy, etc. All are adjectives and immunized by the First Amendment. False facts are criminal and criminality should result in dismissal, and in sanctions, such as prison, all legal costs to the assets of the perjurer, exclusion of the testimony, disqualification. Disqualify the plaintiff lawyer, disqualify the experts, then even disqualify the judge.

No defense lawyer will ever do that. You may have to hire a personal lawyer to terrorize the defense lawyer. The latter makes no money until reaching trial. They are paid less than HMO doctors, and may actually lose money on overhead by insurance companies. Your personal lawyer should also threaten the insurance company for paying the defense lawyer too little, as form of insurance fraud, or insurance bad faith. Defendant thought he would  getting the Dream Team, from the slick brochure, got the dead time of losers.

6) If court tactics fail, try regulatory tactics. File complaints with all licensing boards, all Disciplinary Counsel. Even if dismissed, the other side will be spending time and worry in continual investigations. Make it so no amount of money is worth the plaintiff case. They may have to hire lawyers to deal with these investigations. File discrimination complaints, for example, the lawsuit is because the defendant is white, and male.

I find defense lawyers far more detestable than plaintiff lawyers. That is because they pretend to be on your side, but are working only for themselves, even if that means hurting your interests. They are the ones with duties to you. They are the ones with professionalism. They are the ones who betray both. Legal malpractice claims have totally insurmountable obstacles, and are a waste of time. So any understandings can only come before hiring or approval of a defense lawyer. Bring your personal lawyer with you, in your meeting with your defense lawyer, as if you were meeting the FBI. It is that bad.

The above apply to the innocent or controversial defendant. If the defendant is clearly at fault for a serious injury, a quick settlement is in the interest of the doctor, of the  patient and of the profession. A guilty defendant using the above tactics is abusing the system, and should be punished for doing so.The overwhelming fraction of medical malpractice defendants are found, not guilty. So most medical malpractice claims are invalid. This is true even in defendant judicial hellholes. In Philadelphia, a true judicial hellhole, 70% of the medical defendants are found, not guilty. The problem is that the cost of litigation has had an impact on health care. Almost all obstetrical wards have closed in Philadelphia, despite the statistic. As a result of lawyer perfidy, a woman is lucky to get a space in the hallway of the remaining services to deliver a baby.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Statement on Nurse Practitioners with Independent Prescribing

 

 

If any member of the legislature were having crushing chest pain, and had shortness of breath, with a family history of premature  deaths by heart attacks,  would they want to be seen by a cardiologist or by a nurse practitioner filling out a form on the electronic record? Why are the lives of black people on Medicaid worth any less than that of the legislator?

The movement to allow nurse practitioners to prescribe unsupervised, will result in a two tiered health system, one for whites, one for blacks. It stems from racial animus. The aim is to raise the mortality of black people even higher than it is already.

Their role is falsely justified by lack of access to medical care. There is no doctor shortage. There is a shortage of doctor time. Half of that time is consumed by regulatory quackery. Regulatory quackery is a rule that has not been shown to improve patient outcomes. Its intention is take up doctor time with worthless procedure so that fewer payments are made for real patient care by government and by insurance companies. Because regulatory quackery has consumed $trillions and prevented the real care of millions of patients, it is the greatest financial fraud crime  in the history of mankind. Examples of regulatory quackery include, the electronic medical record, pre-authorizations with all out, implacable resistance to paying for any care, including cheap generic medications, almost all accreditation standards, privacy destroying patient registries, such as those for pain medications, pseudo-scientific and false practice guidelines.

Nurse practitioner programs are so competitive that only people with nearly perfect grades get in. Most qualify to get into medical school. They have chosen to bypass that harder road to clinical competence, to begin making money earlier, and with less student debt. That corner cutting should not be rewarded with independent prescribing privileges.

As a result, they know one quarter that specialists know, and half as much as primary care physicians. They are fit only to prescribe for patients doing well, needing routine refills without any change. They are fit to diagnose routine, common and mild disorders. They are fit to administer first aid and nursing care.

New patients with serious or life threatening conditions should not be evaluated by them. They can read off checklists, but have none of the skills that come from the experience of doctors.

Even after 5 years of experience, because they have not been challenged by difficult experiences of physicians, they will require supervision.

A patient commented on the internet. A nurse practitioner insistently called the growing lesion on his arm  an "age spot" for a year. The patient demanded to see the dermatologist. The doctor arrived at the door, and from that distance, stated, “That is a squamous cell carcinoma. It has to come out.” Squamous cell carcinoma is a common skin lesion in the elderly.

Email sent to Jeff@Amazon.com: You need to address this allegation of fraud

Here.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Name Mispronunciation as a Micro-Aggression and a  Evidence of Bias

I suggest an alternative scheme.

Eventually, this idea will be enforced in judge made law and precedent setting. Schools may face ruinous litigation for the mispronunciation of a name. Today, employers face the same for an off color joke at work. Both employers and school systems are mere pipelines from the tax payer and consumer to the pockets of lawyers, mostly, with some crumbs going to injured plaintiffs.

I propose that the naming of a child with an unusual or difficult to pronounce name be deemed evidence of child neglect. The same should go for misspelled names. Hospitals delivering children should assist parents to spell names correctly. The name is Antoine, not Antwan. The French province is called Brittany, not Britney.  It is established that people with such names are less likely to be hired or to be admitted into schools. They are a signal for bad attitudes, low performance ability, and dangerousness, wrongly or correctly. This problem is a problem of the American South, not of blacks alone. The Spears family is white, but from the South. It says, raised by parents who do not know how to spell.

Based of the great economic performance of African immigrants in the 2010 Census, a really impossible to pronounce name, with tongue clicks and other impossible sounds is associated with a great employment prospect, and a curve busting student. So that is likely to result in a form of reverse bias, and superior performance.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Reply to Government Propaganda Article.

The_Economic_Burden_of_Prescription_Opioid Overdose, Abuse, and Dependence in the United States, 2013The

You forgot some things to deduct from your cost analysis. 

1) The productivity and tax payments of people able to get to work because of opiate pain relief;

2) The value of the 200 crimes a year not committed by the deceased drug addicts;

3) the value of the deaths of criminals to families that will not be exploited, injured, and abused by the deceased.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Productive and Non-Infringing Restrictions of Second Amendment Right to Have a Gun

Half the murderers, half the murder victims, half the suicides are legally drunk. The most prevention of gun violence would come from restricting access to guns to people with evidence of alcoholism. Such evidence would include convictions for drunk driving, public intoxication, and alcohol induced liver disease.

Paranoid people kill 10% of murder victims around the world, or around 2000 people a year in the US. That number includes almost all rampage killings. It is in the nature of paranoia to not believe there is anything wrong with oneself. So even people doing well in treatment will try to stop treatment, and will relapse.

In the absence of drug induced paranoia, marijuana is associated with lower rates of violent crime. So, its use should not exclude people from their gun rights.

None of these policies are in place. They have the potential to cut the overall murder and suicide rates by two thirds, without infringing on the Second Amendment. They would withstand the strictest of scrutiny. There are no racial differences in the risks of mental illness.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Venezuela, Here We Come

As government grows, so does poverty and shortage.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-12/tent-cities-full-homeless-people-are-booming-cities-all-over-america-poverty-spikes

Past a Low Amount of Money, Increasing Wealth Yields Asymptotic Value, Mostly in Esthetics

The Versailles Palace remains a very beautiful place. At the time of its construction, it would be deemed unfit for human habitation today. Only technology adds the value of utility beyond esthetics. The poorest person in our nation has electricity, and goes to the bathroom indoors in the winter.

As wealthy people, we should therefore invest even more in technological development, to exponentially increase our wealth.

One easy place to get money is from the $trillion wasted on a legal system in failure, in every law subject. The nation should have the research and development budget of a technology company, around 20% of revenues. We have to, or we will be overtaken by Chinese and Indian wealth.

The most opulent hotel in the world, today.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Obama Succeeds in Denying Access to Care. Doctors Now Spending Twice as Long on the Electronic Record as on Patient Interaction


The Obama Administration achieved what they wanted. To cut clinical care. They imposed electronic record mandates. Now doctors spend twice as long on the record than on patient interaction. Organized medicine is collaborating. The article is in plain English.

This a review of the problems of the electronic record and their one solution. It would save $70 billion a year, and potentially end co-pays. Here.

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2546704

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Personal Patient Experiences with Alpha Stim

Totals:

Responders:

On Label:

Off Label:
1) An older woman had the compulsion to climb the stairs precisely 60 times a day. She had severe back pain. She had a heart attack, with heart damage. She could potentially suffer heart failure. She got Alpha Stim 20 minutes day, set at 1 for one week, then at 2 for one week. Her compulsion was gone. I stopped the treatment for 2 weeks, and there was no return of her obsessive-compulsive disorder. There was no substitute compulsion, as sometimes occurs. The compulsion has not returned for 4 months. She requested to continue regular treatments for anxiety and for insomnia. I restarted treatment at her request.

2) An adolescent had a form of autism, once called Asperger Syndrome. He had a very high level of rage, despite high doses of a major tranquilizer, with high blood levels. If he did not get what he wanted, he jumped from a high balcony. I asked him what was the date today. He replied, that is a stupid question, and walked out. He had two treatments at a level of 1. He said, he would go to the pool, for the first time of the summer. The bus was 45 minutes late, but he just paced and waited. He went to the pool. He had two more treatments, and a home visit. Instead of being destructive and assaultive, his mother reported he started talking to her about his interests, such as computers and games. After a year, but only a month on Alpha Stim AID, he went home. He was asking for the treatment, and for an extension of the time to 30 minutes. It is unclear if he liked the treatment or access to the internet offered to him while on it.

3) A woman is received Alpha Stim M treatment for neck pain. After several treatments, she reported no improvement in her neck pain. However, her tinnitus (ringing in the ear) of many years was completely gone.


Non-Responders:


Bibliographies:

On label reports here.


Off label reports here

Sunday, August 21, 2016

The Serious and Insurmountable Problems of Evidence Based Medicine

Evidence based medicine has problems, 1) delineation by academic professors with half the clinical experience and therefore half the insider knowledge of clinicians; 2) obsolescence; 3) based on wrong statistical application; 4) violation of the rules of statistical testing by exclusion criteria, in all studies; 5) misapplication to individual patients (a treatment killed 99% of patients who had it, this patient has done well on it, follow guidelines and stop this effective treatment?); 6) ignorance of the individualized dose-response curve; 7) conflict of interest by scientists inherent to all professions; 8) tyrannical, left wing, big government bias of medical academia and of organized medicine. Medical science is fake news. 

1) Something works in medicine. It spreads around the world in months. When patients are doing well, medicine is a highly paid, piece of cake. It is almost like stealing. When patients are not doing well, it is a living hell of time, effort, and extremely low pay for doctors. So the incentives are in the right direction. Doctors may be trusted to want patients to do great. And the loss of work by patients' cures is not a problem due to the shortage of overly busy doctors.

2) A couple of years later, an academic doctor sees this response, designs a study, writes a research proposal, gets funding, carries out the study, writes up the results, waits for its publication. So, 7 years has passed. A number of studies accumulate. A committee reviews them. They enter a textbook, as accepted practice. It has now been longer than 7 years, by the time a guideline is written based on published studies. Meanwhile, the docs are doing almost nothing the way they were 7 years ago. The standard of care has moved on, except in the minds of guideline writers, government officials using guidelines like laws. These officials only want to slow clinical care to save money by piling bureaucratic procedures, and by denying dark skinned people that white people are getting.

3) On the first day of high school statistics class, coin tossing is discussed. That event is described by the binomial distribution statistic.

4) Studies comparing the fractions of responders to a treatment and to a placebo are supposed to represent the larger population. The parametric statistic is used to compare the fractions. The parametric statistic is the one whose formula describes a bell shaped curve, a common distributions of populations. Before carrying out such a test, one must show that 4 assumptions have been fulfilled. The most important is random selection. So any selection bias, such as an exclusion criterion, makes it so that the test is not even allowed to be done, let alone have any validity. All studies have exclusion criteria and violate the central assumption of parametric statistical testing. The populations in these studies do not represent those in the clinical setting. Doctors do not have exclusion criteria in their practices. Imagine excluding suicidal patients from a depression treatment study. That is routinely done in the FDA approval of new anti-depressants. Worthless.

5) Clinical care differs from the comparisons of the fractions in groups. It is closer to coin tossing. Have or not have a diagnosis. Give or not give a treatment. Have a good result or a bad result. The binomial statistic is more appropriate to clinical care than the parametric. Nevertheless one is not allowed to apply parametric statistics to a population best described by a binomial distribution.

6) Dose response curve is ignored. Low doses of radiation are good for the health, for example, as in radiation hormesis. One must delineate the dose response curve of all remedies. Then one must do so in the individual patient, and this is where experience based medicine beats evidence based medicine in outcomes.

7) Most evidenced based guidelines are not only written by under-achieving, atavistic, and know nothing academics, they are written by associations with undisclosed conflicts of interest. For example, cardiologists proposed doing EKG's on all children receiving stimulants for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD). They would be doing the EKG's, and reading them. Cardiologists want to make more money, since the management of cholesterol lowered the number of cardiac problems.  Child cardiac function has not been harmed by stimulants. Once a year, a child, out of hundreds of others, reports a newly rapid heartbeat,  at rest. That child is taken off the stimulant and placed on something else. No EKG is necessary. Requiring EKG's would deter the use of stimulants, and increase the rate of accidental injuries by impulsive acts of untreated children with ADHD;

8) Most medical academics are big government dependent, left wing, anti-corporation advocates of more regulatory oversight, and regulatory quackery. Many researchers are in the Ivy League. These schools may be dismissed. Others in top state universities with high levels of taxpayer funding. So they choose the subjects to research to advance their political agenda. Then, one has to read the fine print in the Methodology Section. In a study of medical error, the rates were inexperienced residents. They were trained to do their ratings by lawyers. Most of the people claimed to have been injured by medical error were treatment non-responders, mostly because of advanced age, and multiple organ failures. So their bias is expressed by subject selection, and methods unfairness. You will never have major studies done on the benefits of caffeine, or of nicotine.

In a legal context of any kind, the suborning of quackery is a violation of the Fifth Amendment procedural due process rights of the defendant to a fair hearing. Evidence based medicine is  itself is a constitutional tort. I would urge all defendants to sue the plaintiff lawyer, the plaintiff, the plaintiff experts, guideline writers, as individuals, their universities, their chairman that failed to supervise them, their association. The association should be charged with civil RICO. That is subject to punitive damages (triple) because it is an intentional act, not just negligence. If it can be shown to have been financially self serving, it can be converted to criminal RICO, and the guideline writers should be arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison. To deter.

Stuff on civil RICO, only 600 pages.

Put this forward to the defense lawyer. He will never agree, because it would fully deter the other side, and end his business.

Update (May 7, 2017). 

Article reviews book on failure of medical research.  Bias, need for funding, pressure to publish positive results, rejection for publication of negative results, mistakes in methods.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Nixon to China, or the Immutable Law of Political Opposites

This Nixon to China phrase is a political science term. It means, that you vote for the person opposing your interests to get those interests fulfilled.This effect complicates voting choice.
Only the opponent of your interest has the credibility to get it achieved, if it is advantageous.

Who can sign a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel? A rabid former Jewish terrorist with open hatred of Arabs, of course.


Only a rabid anti-Communist could open relationships with China. George Bush II said in a debate, there will be no nation building under my administration. There was an orgy of nation building. Had Gore been elected, he would have been stymied, because he could not be trusted.





Welfare reform was achieved by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

If you want to get the US out of the Middle East and attack it on 9/11, what do you get? The US attacking many countries in the Middle East.

If you hate black people, want them impoverished, unemployed and murdered, whom do you vote for, Obama or Romney? If you want massive income inequality, and massive enrichment of billionaires, who will get that done? If you want to kill health insurance so that nothing can be covered nor paid for anymore, and now no one has any real health insurance, whom do you vote for? Obama, of course.

If you want Bin Ladin killed, instead of being allowed to escape from Afghanistan, whom do you vote for?

Say, you hate homosexuals. You wish they would suffer unspeakable and unending torment at the hands of lawyer predators. Do you support or oppose gay marriage?

That brings up this year's election. I supported Sanders to enrich the rich. I may vote for Clinton to do the following opposites of what she advocates, 1)......................; 2) .....................; 3) ................
I am going to let people fill in the blanks with the opposites of what she is advocating.




Saturday, July 9, 2016

Tales of Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder is childhood antisocial personality disorder. Its features are selfishness, fearlessness, lack of remorse unless the person is suffering personal punishment, impulsivity, lack of empathy, inability to learn from consequences. Other than that, they may be very intelligent. They have social skills in the form of manipulating people to get what they want. They are precocious in their social development. They party like people 10 years older. The crime meter starts to spin fast around age 3. Everyone, including fellow preschoolers knows who they are by then.

You have to wait for or go to the end of the recording to learn of the motivation for the car chase of this 12 year old girl.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/downtime/12-year-old-girl-takes-cops-on-100-mph-chase-after-stealing-grandmas-car/vi-AAi8EvM?ocid=spartandhp

Monday, July 4, 2016

The Future of US Health Care as Government Controls More of the Industry

Rio de Janeiro’s hospitals are running out of syringes and basic medications, and their staffs are running on little-to-no pay, with one month to go before the city hosts the 2016 Summer Olympics.

From here:

 http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/07/04/olympics-approach-rio-de-janeiros-hospitals-run-medicine/

Sunday, July 3, 2016

TSA Thugs Beat On a Brain Tumor Teenager


I hope she sues everyone involved, including the Federal government. They negligently hired thugs. They negligently failed to train them. They negligently failed to inform them they work for the public, and not the other way around. Meanwhile, these thugs are failing test contraband by inspectors. Naturally, these thugs are agents of the prosecutor and the lawyer profession.


http://wreg.com/2016/06/30/disabled-st-jude-patient-sues-airport-and-tsa-after-bloody-scuffle-with-airport-police/

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Letters to the Medical Directors of the Medicaid Pharmacy Benefits Insurance Companies About Their Refusing to Pay for Alpha Stim Treatment

I had a trouble finding their mailing addresses, not readily available on any of their websites.

I am therefore listing them here, along with the letter their Medical Directors were sent.

RE: Paying for Alpha Stim without Pre-Authorization

Dear Doctor,
Alpha Stim is an FDA approved Class II medical device, as a condom is classified.  It has FDA approved indications for depression, anxiety, insomnia or pain. It requires a prescription in the United States.

The device is reviewed here:

http://www.alpha-stim.com/

It has the pain management potential to solve the opioid overdose problem. To continue to refuse to pay for it is cruel to extremely distressed patients and unconscionable. It is also stupid. Spend $hundreds on it, save $thousands on medications that can be weaned off and discontinued.

If you pay for other medically indicated FDA approved, medical device of any kind, you must pay for Alpha Stim without a pre-authorization requirement. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) prohibits discrimination against mental health treatment.  I am attaching printed guidance from CMS on the Mental Health Parity provision of the ACA.

If you continue to refuse to fund Alpha Stim treatment, including all necessary accessories, I will be asking the federal prosecutor and the Office of Civil rights to enforce the federal law in federal court. As is my legal duty in Pennsylvania, I will also be initiating regulatory complaints against you personally. Your brazen violation of federal laws is unprofessional conduct.






UPMC Health Plan; U.S. Steel Tower; 600 Grant Street; Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Keystone First; 200 Stevens Dr. ; Philadelphia, PA 19113; Phone:(215) 937-8000

Health Partners; 901 Market St #500; Philadelphia, PA 19107

John B. Bulger, DO, MBA, Medical Director; Geisinger Health Plan Insurance Agency;
108 Woodbine Ln; Danville, PA 17821; Phone:(570) 271-8771

Gateway HealthSM; Four Gateway Center; 444 Liberty Avenue, Suite 2100; Pittsburgh, PA 15222-1222


AmeriHealth Caritas Pennsylvania; 8040 Carlson Drive; Suite 500; Harrisburg, PA 17112


Aetna Better Health Administrative Office; Aetna Better Health; 2000 Market Street, Suite 850
Philadelphia, PA 19103;  1-866-638-1232;  (HealthChoices)

Sunday, April 24, 2016

A Family Theory of History

The Families Theory of History. This is a variation of the Great Man Theory of history. 

Twenty families put Hitler in power, and did great during the war. They each gave him $5000 (like $500K today) for his campaigns, and made $millions off government contracts. The Allies hanged the Nazis by the hundreds. Those families stayed untouchable, and were actively recruited by our government, despite having been the real cause of WWII.

Bush represented West Texas oil families. They did well, when he killed their Takrit competitors and their puppet, Saddam. They did well when gas prices went from 99 cents under Clinton, to $4 a gallon. 


Reagan represented California real estate families. They did well. Inflation made their investments soar in value.


Bill Clinton? Bill is Tyson Chicken. Clinton enacted a law banning the dumping of blood into a river by packing plants. At the next biennial election, he got his chain yanked, and lost the governorship. He gets back into office, and amends the law. Beef packing plants may not dump blood into a river. Chicken processing plants may.


Soros and the homosexual billionaires pulling Obama strings have done well under his carpet bombing of the economy, driving all money into the stock marker due to 0% interest rates. Obama also wiped out the small bank competition of his sponsors. They could not survive the regulatory requirements of Dodd-Frank Act. 


Unless I am missing something, Sanders and Trump are not puppets for any set of families. Both are extreme and frightening. However, they have no nasty "families" behind them.

Friday, April 15, 2016

A Potential Solution to the Problem of the Unemployability of People with a Felony Conviction, or Even Those with a Misdemeanor Conviction

In Pennsylvania, one may deny a job if the felony conviction is relevant to the job. A pedophile may may be denied a job in a daycare center, but may work as a cashier. A thief may be denied a job as a cashier, but may work in a day care.

It never works out that way. And no felon has challenged the denial of a job not related to the conviction. Thank the lawyer profession for the unemployability of former felons. Employers are not willing to risk litigation for negligent hiring, should the worker commit a tort. The lawyer profession must be crushed if this problem is to be solved. Naturally, this burden falls heaviest on black people.

Here is a list of the collateral civil consequences of a criminal conviction. There are 50,000 of them. Thank the lawyer profession.

http://www.abacollateralconsequences.org/

I have several patients with some petty infraction, committed years ago, who cannot find a job, and are living in poverty despite skills, and even licensed craft skills, such as electrician.

I have advised them to read this article, and to consider going into this business on their own. Guy made $250,000 a year. And, this activity is a win-win-win-win for everyone.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/high-end-dumpster-diving-matt-malone/

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The Solution to the Problems of the Electronic Medical Record is Simple, Saves $Billions, and Helps Patients, not Insurance Companies: Video Recording, Period, and Nothing Else



Authors: David Behar, MD, is an adult and child psychiatrist in the Philadelphia area. Brian P. Moquin, Esq., is the president of Digital Abacus Corporation in Silicon Valley and has a law practice, doing civil litigation.


The electronic medical record (EMR) has been touted as a panacea for health care, by reducing costs and errors, increasing efficiency, improving access to care, leading to better diagnoses through data mining. EMR has been a dismal failure, difficult to use, with no interoperability, and focusing practitioner attention away from the patient.

Consider the EMR in psychiatry. An EMR template must be filled out for each patient visit. Patient sobs that her boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident. Facing a screen, I reply, “How is your appetite?” the next item on the template. Our relationship has become that with the staff at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Because of the data-gathering demands imposed by EMR, ordinary human sympathy has been replaced by impersonal form filling. These demands also turn a ten-minute medication visit into a fifteen-minute visit: in contrast to its promise, the adoption of EMR has added millions of hours in waiting room delays. While this is a nuisance in psychiatry, increased waiting times for the emergency room is unforgivable.

The problem is that EMR is not an innovation: EMR has replaced the piece of paper with a screen that shows a picture of that piece of paper. The input is still by the keyboard of a 1945 Underwood typewriter. The major difference is that the EMR forces the doctor to do his own transcribing, and doctors have poor transcription skills. Burnout, delays in access to care, frustration result.

One of the stated goals of EMR is to be the “single source of truth” regarding a patient. The set of fixed, predetermined fields (including check boxes) miss most information from each encounter. Problems in mapping a patient’s statements onto the predefined fields of an EMR, as well as the lack of free-form text areas in many EMR templates, virtually guarantee that an EMR will be incomplete, inaccurate, sometimes dangerously misleading. The EMR paradigm forces the health care practitioner to conform the information provided by the patient to a structured data format that offers little or no ability to capture subtleties, ambiguities, and qualities that are not easily quantified. To wit: I had to stare at a beautiful teenage girl because her pediatric record, three times, indicated her penis was anatomically correct, and her testicles had both descended. I just accepted her “No” when I asked if there was something really unusual about her. In short, the EMR paradigm ignores the realities of the practice of medicine as not an exact science.

We can do better.

A Solution: The Real Electronic Record (RER)

We propose a simple fix: the video recording of each medical encounter is stored, with no typing or dictation. We call this a “Real Electronic Record,” since it is an actual recording of the medical encounter. At the end of each patient encounter, the doctor also records a one-minute summary of “What We Found Today” and “The Current Plan of Action,” providing a brief recap of the visit for quick review.

There are currently 1.2 billion outpatient medical encounters per year with an annual cost of more than $700 billion. The estimated cost of storing HD video recordings of all of these encounters is approximately $400 million per year. If records must be preserved for seven years, the total cost would come to $2.8 billion per year. That seems like a lot until one realizes that the HITECH Act of 2009 included $20 billion in incentives for hospitals, physicians, and for infrastructure.

We do not advocate video recording against the will of the patient. Those refusing might have to pay a higher fee for record keeping.

Using Real Electronic Records, the doctor would spend no time transcribing data into an electronic format, instead devoting that time to patient treatment. We estimate a savings of 10%— $70 billion per year—which could be used to lower health care costs or to increase doctor productivity, allowing doctors to see more patients. The arrival of the uninsured could lead to a collapse of the system; consequently, freeing up doctor time is crucial.

With a RER, the patient could review her encounter on demand through a secure Internet portal, and videos will soon become searchable, allowing for direct data mining.

The RER will reduce malpractice claims and defensive medicine, saving another 5-10% spent on worthless care.

The $70 billion in savings should be returned directly to patients in the form of no co-pay. That offer is wildly popular with every patient whom I have ever asked.

Most importantly, when a patient sobs that her boyfriend has just been killed, the doctor will be able to hold her hand, look her in the eye, and express ordinary human sympathy, rather than having to transcribe information into an EMR. That means both patient and doctor can stay human.
References:
Kennebeck, SS, Timm, N, Farrell, MK, Spooner, SA. Impact of electronic health record implementation on patient flow metrics in a pediatric emergency department. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2012 19:443-447. (Longer ER waiting times due to EMR.)

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012. Table 168: Ambulatory Care Visits to Physicians’ Offices and Hospital Outpatient and Emergency Departments: 2008. Available at
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0169.pdf. (1.2 billion visits per year.)

Health Care Cost and Utilization Report: 2011. Health Care Cost Institute, Inc., Sept. 2012, p. 3. Available at
http://www.healthcostinstitute.org/files/HCCI_HCCUR2011.pdf. ($709.2 billion in 2011.)

This assumes that the average medical encounter is 15 minutes in length, yielding 300 million hours of video per year. The estimated cost was calculated based upon current storage, equipment, connectivity, electricity, and data center facility costs. (Storage cost estimate.)

The Solution to the Problems of the Electronic Medical Record is Simple, Saves $Billions, and Helps Patients, not Insurance Companies: Video Recording, Period, and Nothing Else



Authors: David Behar, MD, is an adult and child psychiatrist in the Philadelphia area. Brian P. Moquin, Esq., is the president of Digital Abacus Corporation in Silicon Valley and has a law practice, doing civil litigation.


The electronic medical record (EMR) has been touted as a panacea for health care, by reducing costs and errors, increasing efficiency, improving access to care, leading to better diagnoses through data mining. EMR has been a dismal failure, difficult to use, with no interoperability, and focusing practitioner attention away from the patient.

Consider the EMR in psychiatry. An EMR template must be filled out for each patient visit. Patient sobs that her boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident. Facing a screen, I reply, “How is your appetite?” the next item on the template. Our relationship has become that with the staff at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Because of the data-gathering demands imposed by EMR, ordinary human sympathy has been replaced by impersonal form filling. These demands also turn a ten-minute medication visit into a fifteen-minute visit: in contrast to its promise, the adoption of EMR has added millions of hours in waiting room delays. While this is a nuisance in psychiatry, increased waiting times for the emergency room is unforgivable.

The problem is that EMR is not an innovation: EMR has replaced the piece of paper with a screen that shows a picture of that piece of paper. The input is still by the keyboard of a 1945 Underwood typewriter. The major difference is that the EMR forces the doctor to do his own transcribing, and doctors have poor transcription skills. Burnout, delays in access to care, frustration result.

One of the stated goals of EMR is to be the “single source of truth” regarding a patient. The set of fixed, predetermined fields (including check boxes) miss most information from each encounter. Problems in mapping a patient’s statements onto the predefined fields of an EMR, as well as the lack of free-form text areas in many EMR templates, virtually guarantee that an EMR will be incomplete, inaccurate, sometimes dangerously misleading. The EMR paradigm forces the health care practitioner to conform the information provided by the patient to a structured data format that offers little or no ability to capture subtleties, ambiguities, and qualities that are not easily quantified. To wit: I had to stare at a beautiful teenage girl because her pediatric record, three times, indicated her penis was anatomically correct, and her testicles had both descended. I just accepted her “No” when I asked if there was something really unusual about her. In short, the EMR paradigm ignores the realities of the practice of medicine as not an exact science.

We can do better.

A Solution: The Real Electronic Record (RER)

We propose a simple fix: the video recording of each medical encounter is stored, with no typing or dictation. We call this a “Real Electronic Record,” since it is an actual recording of the medical encounter. At the end of each patient encounter, the doctor also records a one-minute summary of “What We Found Today” and “The Current Plan of Action,” providing a brief recap of the visit for quick review.

There are currently 1.2 billion outpatient medical encounters per year with an annual cost of more than $700 billion. The estimated cost of storing HD video recordings of all of these encounters is approximately $400 million per year. If records must be preserved for seven years, the total cost would come to $2.8 billion per year. That seems like a lot until one realizes that the HITECH Act of 2009 included $20 billion in incentives for hospitals, physicians, and for infrastructure.

We do not advocate video recording against the will of the patient. Those refusing might have to pay a higher fee for record keeping.

Using Real Electronic Records, the doctor would spend no time transcribing data into an electronic format, instead devoting that time to patient treatment. We estimate a savings of 10%— $70 billion per year—which could be used to lower health care costs or to increase doctor productivity, allowing doctors to see more patients. The arrival of the uninsured could lead to a collapse of the system; consequently, freeing up doctor time is crucial.

With a RER, the patient could review her encounter on demand through a secure Internet portal, and videos will soon become searchable, allowing for direct data mining.

The RER will reduce malpractice claims and defensive medicine, saving another 5-10% spent on worthless care.

The $70 billion in savings should be returned directly to patients in the form of no co-pay. That offer is wildly popular with every patient whom I have ever asked.

Most importantly, when a patient sobs that her boyfriend has just been killed, the doctor will be able to hold her hand, look her in the eye, and express ordinary human sympathy, rather than having to transcribe information into an EMR. That means both patient and doctor can stay human.
References:
Kennebeck, SS, Timm, N, Farrell, MK, Spooner, SA. Impact of electronic health record implementation on patient flow metrics in a pediatric emergency department. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2012 19:443-447. (Longer ER waiting times due to EMR.)

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012. Table 168: Ambulatory Care Visits to Physicians’ Offices and Hospital Outpatient and Emergency Departments: 2008. Available at
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0169.pdf. (1.2 billion visits per year.)

Health Care Cost and Utilization Report: 2011. Health Care Cost Institute, Inc., Sept. 2012, p. 3. Available at
http://www.healthcostinstitute.org/files/HCCI_HCCUR2011.pdf. ($709.2 billion in 2011.)

This assumes that the average medical encounter is 15 minutes in length, yielding 300 million hours of video per year. The estimated cost was calculated based upon current storage, equipment, connectivity, electricity, and data center facility costs. (Storage cost estimate.)

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Letter Submitted to the Federal Trade Commission on the Inexplicably  High Price of Generic Modafinil Produced by Four Companies

        RE: Anomalous Higher Price of Generic Modafinil than Patented Metabolite, Nuvigil (Armodafinil)

Dear Madam or Sir:
Modafinil is a medication that effectively promotes wakefulness. It has found many uses on and off label. Its patent expired. Regulatory action took place after generic companies were paid to delay producing it, in the FTC’s Pay to Delay matter.  (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/05/ftc-settlement-cephalon-pay-delay-case-ensures-12-billion-ill)

A metabolite (break down product), armodafinil, was patented, as Nuvigil. Its maker priced modafinil higher to promote the sales of Nuvigil. I understand the logic and their right to do so. Modafinil has longer action, and less of a crashing sleepiness effect than armodafinil. Thus, the longer half life of the original molecule, modafinil, may be more desirable to doctors and patients.

What I do not understand is why other companies making generic modafinil would also price it higher than Nuvigil, a product they do not make. Nuvigil (armodafinil) 150 mg has the same strength as Provigil (modafinil) 200 mg.

Prices for 30 pills (according to Giant Pharmacy, 9/21/15).

Modafinil 200 mg, by Par, Teva, Watson (Actavis), and Qualitest: all $1000.

Nuvigil 150 mg, (armodafinil): $670.

There appears to be a concerted effort to control the pricing of modafinil that violates the anti-trust laws.  Why would a competitor not price the perfectly equivalent, or even superior, modafinil a $1 less than Nuvigil and capture the large market for this medication?

Generic modafinil is also made in India. Its retail cost in a pharmacy in India  is 80 cents a pill. People who have taken it report it to be as good as the US medication. No doubt, maker and pharmacist are making a profit at that price.

I request an investigation into this anomalous pricing situation. The argument that these are different medications is specious. Modafinil is converted into armodafinil by the liver. 

I have standing to take the place of my patients in legal disputes (granted by the Third Circuit, in Behar v DOT)

Sincerely Yours,

David Behar, MD

Maker of Provigil and Nuvigil

Teva Pharmaceuticals
41 Moores Road
Frazer, PA 19355

Makers of Modafinil (generic Provigil)

Par

http://parpharm.com/

300 Tice Boulevard
Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677
 (201) 802 4000

Teva

Teva North America
1090 Horsham Road
North Wales, PA 19454 USA
888-TEVA-USA (888-838-2872)

Watson (now Actavis)

 Morris Corporate Center III
 400 Interpace Parkway
 Parsippany, NJ 07054 USA

 862-261-7000
 Fax: +1-862-261-7914

Qualitest

3241 Woodpark Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28206
704-598-5011

Monday, April 11, 2016

Request for Waiver from Pennsylvania Regulation Mandating a Minimum of 15 minutes for a Medication Visit in an Outpatient Mental Health Clinic

I sent copies of these arguments to the Inspectors General of the US and of Pennsylvania, and to the local US Attorney, requesting investigation into and potential prosecution of  Pennsylvania for Medicaid abuse.

RE: Waiver of Standards Request under your § 5200.48 from Your Regulation § 1153.52 (c) (1). Payment conditions for various services. “Psychiatric clinic medication visits shall be a minimum duration of 15 minutes.”

Dear Madam:
I am a Board certified adult and child psychiatrist in practice in several counties of Pennsylvania. I request to be exempted from your regulation referenced above in all my practice locations in Pennsylvania. I request to be completely exempted from the above regulation because 1) it violates the laws of Pennsylvania and of the United States, including several Supreme Court decisions; 2) it is Medicaid abuse; 3) it is unethical and represents a misunderstanding of the nature of a medication visit; 4) it hurts the interest of my patients, their families, and of the public; 5) it is pretextual (a phony and lying use of the law), and damaging policy.

Background:
Pennsylvania Medicaid now requires that all outpatient mental health clinic visits last 15 minutes. If one lasts 14.999 minutes, payment must be denied. This is an across the board, non-individualized requirement that has had adverse effect on clinical care. The real intent is to limit access to care by reducing the number of scheduled appointments in the time of the provider.

Violations of Law:
1) Affordable Care Act (ACA). Unless you are requiring that all specialties have 15 minute visits, your rule violates the spirit and the letter of the Mental Health Parity Provision of the ACA. (Section 1312,  (j) APPLICABILITY  OF MENTAL HEALTH PARITY .—Section 2726 of the Public Health Service Act shall apply to qualified health plans in the same manner and to the same extent as such section applies to health insurance issuers and group health plans.)  Here is the guidance from the CMS website, “... the law requires a general equivalence in the way MH/SUD and medical/surgical benefits are treated with respect to annual and lifetime dollar limits, financial requirements and treatment limitations, ...” and, “ the financial requirements (e.g., deductibles and co-payments) and treatment limitations (e.g., number of visits or days of coverage) that apply to MH/SUD benefits must be no more restrictive than the predominant financial requirements or treatment limitations that apply to substantially all medical/surgical benefits (this is referred to as the “substantially all/predominant test”). This test is discussed in greater detail in the MHPAEA regulation (linked below) and the summary of the MHPAEA regulation found below.”  (At https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-11-13/pdf/2013-27086.pdf  ). Time limitations decrease the number of visits that can be scheduled, in violation of parity.

2) Medicaid Abuse. The Medicaid program considers it fraud to pay for procedures that are not medically necessary. A fifteen minute duration is unnecessary in patients with no complaint, and no change in status or in prescription. Imagine a mass, non-individualized procedure. For example, a chest surgeon stents everyone with chest pain. Some have reflux, some rib arthritis. That surgeon is going to jail for Medicaid fraud. Some people need acid medication, others need anti-inflammatory for a rib muscle strain. It is required that the doctor act like a doctor and individualize care, and not carry out the same procedure on everyone coming to him. The fifteen minute requirement is a massive prescription, and represents Medicaid abuse as defined in the regulation. ( 42 CFR 455.2: Abuse means provider practices that are inconsistent with sound fiscal, business, or medical practices, and result in an unnecessary cost to the Medicaid program, or in reimbursement for services that are not medically necessary or that fail to meet professionally recognized standards for health care.)

3) Civil Rights Act of 1964. The rolls of Medicaid have more members of racial and ethnic minorities than the general population. That over-representation  is sufficient to demonstrate  racial discrimination according to the Supreme Court (Texas Dep't of Hous, & Cmity Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. 576 U.S. ___ (2015). It is self evident that minority members are being denied access to care, and that whites would never be restricted in their access that way.



4) American with Disabilities Act Amendment Act of 2008 (ADAAA). The ADA requires that all government services be made available and accessible to people with disabilities. The ADAAA expanded the covered disabilities to mental health conditions (but not to substance abuse disorders). Obstruction of access to medication management violates this law. This regulation is an obstruction to seeing more patients for shorter periods.

5) The Undue Burden  doctrine of Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678 (1977). The Court held that a state may not place an undue burden on people seeking contraception so they may have fun having worry free sex. These Pennsylvania requirements place an undue and unconstitutional burden on people seeking to treat serious mental problems. I may stand in for my patients in future litigation.

6) Pennsylvania Administrative Law Act. No psychiatrist I know received notice of the new requirements. I cannot find a comment listing, nor a transcript of hearings held prior to adoption of this regulation.

7) Violation of the Medical Practice Act of Pennsylvania. (§ 16.61 (a) (6). Unprofessional and immoral conduct.  Practicing the healing arts fraudulently, or with reckless indifference to the interests of a patient on a particular occasion, or with negligence on repeated occasions. ) The practice of mass applied care, of non-individualized care violates the fraud and negligence provisions of that section.

8) The lengthened visit time requirement did not come with any increase in fees. It therefore represents a regulatory taking in violation of Fifth Amendment Procedural Process rights.

Unethical and a Misunderstanding

1) Philosophically, a medication visit should address one complaint and should result in one change. If more than one change is made, and a benefit or damage results, it is hard to know which change caused either.

2) The idea of a mass prescription of a procedure to all patients is unethical, not individualized. Unethical care violates professional standards of due care.

Adverse to Interests of Patients, Families, and the Public:
1) Interference with the doctor patient relationship. One result has been that patients discharged from inpatient care have had to wait several months for their first outpatient visit instead of several weeks. During that time, either they run out of medication, or must have their medications renewed without first being seen and individually evaluated. Almost by definition, inpatients have engaged in dangerous acts against themselves or against others. It is a matter of time before these delays in follow up care will result in serious injury or death to patient, family or the police. At best, the prolonged time to follow up will result in greater expense and impairment from high rates of re-hospitalizations

2) Attack on the black and Hispanic family. If these children are dangerous to the rest of the family, they will require out of home placement. In a training on child abuse, your department has admitted to a disparate impact on out of home placement of race.  This regulation will worsen the disparity.

3) Inpatients and patients in partial hospitalization programs (attending from 9 AM to 3 PM, daily) have more treatment resistant problems, are more impaired, dangerous, distressed, difficult to manage, subject to far greater social stresses. Their symptoms are multi-factorial, including trauma, substance abuse, deprived upbringing, and reluctance to accept treatment. Despite neediness that may be 10 times greater than that of working outpatients, there is no minimum time for a brief medication visit for them. This proves the pretextual, phony, unnecessary nature of the 15 minute minimum visit rule.

Damaging and Dangerous Policy:
1) As a result of this policy, the number of people scheduled to be seen during any period of time, such as a day, has marked dropped. As a direct result of this irresponsible regulation, the time between discharge from a mental hospital and first follow up visit has gone from 4 weeks to 4 months. Inpatient and partial hospitalization doctors refuse to write prescriptions for more than a month’s supply. During this 4 months’ time the clinician has the choice of allowing the patient to run out of medication and to fully relapse, or to renew the medications for someone he not examined, yet. This is untenable. It is a matter of time before a serious injury or death results from these long waits.

2) Pennsylvania is suborning garbage science and quackery. There is no evidence that following the 15 minutes requirements improves care. It is in the interest of doctor and of patient to provide information on the treatment. Doctors who fail to do so get many phone calls about side effects. Patients forgetting the discussion have access to the internet. It provides specialist level information for anyone interested.

3) Doctors have a right to dignity. These denials and the frustrating obstacles placed by the state of Pennsylvania are humiliating to physicians. Uneducated clerks are cancelling their orders as if they were a joke.

4) There will be fewer visits per hour under this regulation. There has been no raise in fees. That implies the favored and privileged insurance companies will profit from the obstruction of clinical care.

5) These delays, obstructions, extended visits,  and deterrence of physicians from prescribing these medications to their mental patients, result in increased profits of the people doing the denials of payment. They represent a serious conflict of interest and unjust enrichment of politically connected insurance companies. In future litigation, discovery will seek to reveal collusions, and will result in referrals for criminal prosecution.