Category: Health

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Why Obama Won’t Propose Single-Payer Health Care

It Took a Nixon to Open the Door to China

Why on earth has Obama and the Democratic leadership ruled out the “single-payer” model, the one Canadians love so much?

I’m sure he wants Americans to believe that he is not a fanatic, a radical, who intends to impose a socialist regime on the country. I’m sure he knows that this perception is ridiculous. I’m sure he knows that the insurance industry and some doctors’ organizations and conservative talk radio and Fox News and the Republicans will spend millions and millions of dollars to try to convince Americans that Canadians hate their health care system (in spite of some studies that show up 97% of Canadians would not trade our system for theirs) and that Canadians are dying in unparalleled numbers because we can’t get doctors or treatment (in spite of our longer life expectancy) and that our breast implants are not as firm or ample as good old all-American breast implants.

So why has Obama rolled over on this one? He’s afraid of a brutal, divisive fight. He wants to be bipartisan. He wants to unify America.

I always thought that if a liberal Democrat took George Bush’s approach to the Iraq war and applied it to health care, the U.S. would have a single-payer, universal health care plan in a matter of months. Nobody wanted the Iraq war. Nobody thought it was a good idea. Nobody believed Saddam had anything to do with 9/11. Did that stop Dick Cheney? Not on your life. He just steam-rolled the idea through Congress and the Executive branch and refused to compromise or bend until he got his way. Above all, he threatened to paint every wavering Democrat as an unpatriotic wimp if they didn’t join in.

Now, if an idiot could do that with a bad idea– why can’t a genius like Obama do it with a good one?

To answer my own question: because Cheney’s opponents were intelligent, reasonable people who were not given to hysterics and mudslinging. They wanted to compromise. They wanted to seem even-handed and fair to President Bush.

Obama’s opponents are well-funded shrieking harpies who will lie and distort and stop at nothing to take political advantage of any issue.

Perhaps it is going to take a Nixon (or a John McCain?) to change America’s health care system for the better. (The story is that if a Democrat had tried to establish diplomatic relations with “Red” China the way Nixon did in 1972, the Republicans would have revolted en-masse and created a constitutional crisis of insane proportions. But Nixon, who was trusted by the conservatives, was able to achieve remarkable results because everybody thought that if old arch-cold-warrior Nixon thought it was okay, it must be okay.)

Why doesn’t labour approach the problem of influencing government the way conservatives do? What they would need to do is create a foundation (or several of them, each of which appears to be independent of the others) called the “Ruthless Capitalist Institute” or something, and find some stooge entrepreneurs to staff it and fund some stooge college professors (maybe at Oral Roberts University) to do “research” and then make presentations to Congress on how investors would make even more money if they employed only unionized labour.

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Dear George Will: About Canadian Health Care

George, I know you strive to be fair and balanced though your basic worldview is conservative.  As a Canadian who “suffers” under our single-payer system, I would ask a very simple, very important question: having lived under a single-payer system for almost fifty years now, could you persuade a majority of Canadians to give it up, and let a “market-based” system prevail?  Do you think most of us believe that will drive down health care costs and give us more “freedom”?

George Will on Health Care

Most Canadians I know can’t even believe that there is a debate on this issue in the U.S.  We are all mightily impressed that America believes it’s system is better and everyone else is wrong even though Americans seem to know nothing about any system but the one that is failing them now.  It’s possible that everyone else is wrong.  Sometimes everyone else is wrong.  It’s also possible that the sun orbits the flat earth.

Anybody can find a few Canadians who don’t like our system, and few horror stories of delayed care and inept management.  No reasonable person can deny, however, that the U.S. system costs astronomically more to administer, and that almost all Canadians receive basic health care without the slightest impediment, and that the actual results in Canada are better than in the U.S.

Furthermore, I have no idea of where you would find any proof that Canadians do not have a choice of doctors or hospitals or treatments.

True– we can’t choose to opt out.   But Americans can’t really opt out either.  They can’t!— an American without insurance will still receive treatment at any nearby hospital.  Who pays for it?  Everyone, through taxes and astronomical charges for treatment for the insured.

Isn’t that the basic principle of insurance?  Any of us could suffer a serious illness or injury.  Why not agree to contribute to a plan that covers everyone?  Especially since we all know that those who “opt out” will still receive medical care one way or the other, but certainly less efficiently.

Finally– this is one gripe I do have about conservatives in general:  I think they are far more likely than liberals to persist in believing something long after it has become overwhelmingly clear that the results show they are wrong.  Example:  McCain actually stated at one time that Obama’s idea of talking to Castro was ridiculous because, with his long experience, he knows that it wouldn’t work.  Excuse me!  Exactly how many more years must the embargo continue before it “works”?  That is absurd.  Why not just admit that the embargo has failed and try something new?  Liberals, who have a mind-set that entertains alternative realities, are by nature more inclined to consider other possibilities.  McCain would still be in Viet Nam.  McCain will be in Iraq for 100 years (a joke really– the oil won’t last that long and then we will go back to indifference to human oppression).  And McCain will continue to believe that through some miracle, health care costs can be reduced by letting it “compete in a free market”, as if  dying of cancer is a commodity that could be sold to a hedge fund.

For the record, I’m not sure the Canadian system couldn’t stand a few modifications, and I am very interested in Obama’s hybrid ideas.  Not sure about them– but– as a liberal– I can consider the possibility that different points of view have something to contribute to our ultimate success on any issue.  Hey George, why not be the first reasonable conservative to admit that, as a family values kind of guy, you would like to see all of the nation’s children covered, and it clearly– the results show!– isn’t happening under your free market system.

Sincerely,

Bill Van Dyk

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Period Period

Things I didn’t know until now:

“We don’t want to confront our bodily functions anymore,” Ms. Andrist said. “We’re too busy.” Doctors say they know of no medical reason women taking birth control pills need to have a period. The monthly bleeding that women on pills experience is not a real period, in fact.”.

NY Times, April 20, 2007

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The Most Important Thing You Will Ever Read About the Government and Diet

The excerpt from the article here makes it pretty cut and dried.

The government came to the honest conclusion that the increase in consumption of raw meats and dairy products after World War II resulted in a significant increase in heart disease. So it recommended that people cut down.

The dairy and meat industries vigorously objected. They had enough power and influence to force the government to alter the independent findings of it’s scientific and regulatory bodies and put out a lie to the general population: go ahead. Consume. Enjoy. It won’t hurt you.

From NY Times, January 28, 2007

No single event marked the shift from eating food to eating nutrients, though in retrospect a little-noticed political dust-up in Washington in 1977 seems to have helped propel American food culture down this dimly lighted path. Responding to an alarming increase in chronic diseases linked to diet — including heart disease, cancer and diabetes — a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by George McGovern, held hearings on the problem and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called “Dietary Goals for the United States.” The committee learned that while rates of coronary heart disease had soared in America since World War II, other cultures that consumed traditional diets based largely on plants had strikingly low rates of chronic disease. Epidemiologists also had observed that in America during the war years, when meat and dairy products were strictly rationed, the rate of heart disease temporarily plummeted.

Naïvely putting two and two together, the committee drafted a straightforward set of dietary guidelines calling on Americans to cut down on red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm, emanating from the red-meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee, and Senator McGovern (who had a great many cattle ranchers among his South Dakota constituents) was forced to beat a retreat. The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten. Plain talk about food — the committee had advised Americans to actually “reduce consumption of meat” — was replaced by artful compromise: “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

A subtle change in emphasis, you might say, but a world of difference just the same.

First, the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement.

Second, notice how distinctions between entities as different as fish and beef and chicken have collapsed; those three venerable foods, each representing an entirely different taxonomic class, are now lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient.

Notice too how the new language exonerates the foods themselves; now the culprit is an obscure, invisible, tasteless — and politically unconnected — substance that may or may not lurk in them.

Do you think government guidelines don’t have much influence?  The meat and dairy industry certainly thought they did.

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Panderemic

This is in the New York Times, March 28, 2006:

The vaccines produced every year to prevent seasonal flu are unlikely to be of any use in warding off a pandemic strain. But a flu shot could provide at least some peace of mind, by preventing the false alarm that could come from catching a case of garden-variety flu.

Being older than 11 years old, I tend to look somewhat askance at warnings of pandemics. That’s because I’m old enough to remember that there were warnings about swine flu and Legionnaire’s Disease, and SARS, and people talked seriously then about “pandemics” and “millions dead” and whether or not you should buy yourself a tight-fitting face-mask. More from the New York Times:

Some health officials have recommended stockpiling two to three months’ worth of food, fuel and water in case a pandemic interferes with food distribution or staffing levels at public utilities, or people are advised to stay home.

Ahem. Did you read this? Are you scared now? Have you scheduled a trip to the grocery store to stockpile three months worth of food in your basement? No? Are you crazy? This is a serious newspaper which prides itself on credible reporting based on factual research and accurate information. This newspaper is accountable, damnit!

This newspaper is seriously quoting “health officials” as recommending that you stockpile food in your basement because this pandemic might be so serious that it will seriously impact the food supply chain.

The article said nothing about arming yourself against roving bands of desperate mutants.

Am I crazy? Even the usually-sober CBC has been hyping avian flu for the past several months, frequently bandying about the phrase “global pandemic”.

I often recall a phrase from a Michael Moore’s documentary, in which he alleges that the government and media seem determined to frighten people, for two reasons. Firstly, to scare you into obeying them because, they would have you believe, only they can save you. Secondly, — and this may sound counter-intuitive– but they also want to scare you into consuming. They need you to feel that your life is insecure or inadequate unless you have acquired all those valuable things that other people are trying to take away from you. Our “way of life”– a clever euphemism for “extravagant toys”. [added November 2009]

But then I think, ah, no– this is the famous New York Times, and the CBC, for heaven’s sake, not ABC news…

The New York Times goes on to describe how “some experts” are afraid that this particular flu virus might mutate in humans and spread very, very quickly, and might even reach Arctic communities that can only be accessed by dogsled, like the Spanish flu.

The Spanish flu of 1917-18 was real. That is the nightmare our “health officials” worry about. Millions of people really did die. The threat of nuclear war in the 1960’s was more real than even the alarmists thought. The generals really were– and sometimes still are– psychotic lunatics. They were really prepared to bomb the entire planet into oblivion rather than surrender to any kind of Soviet ultimatum.

Pardon me if I observe, however, that people really did die of flu back then, and not just of Spanish flu. They died young, of any of dozens of illnesses or infections or injuries, most of which we have managed to overcome lately with basic nutrition, hygiene, safety precautions, and decent health care. Are we really vulnerable to a large scale “pandemic” of anything? In fairness to the New York Times, that same article quotes some “health officials” as believing that the likelihood of a pandemic is very small.

Nutrition and medical care today are way, way better than they were in 1917. Counter-point: about half of the people infected with avian flu (who caught it directly from birds) die. Counter-counter-point: what sometimes happens during these scares is that every random flu-like illness suddenly becomes attributed to the high-profile threat.

There is a subtext. Nobody who seriously believes in the threat of avian flu believes the government should have less authority to force people to be vaccinated or shutdown air ports, or arrest people.

I do wish I could bet against the CBC on the issue. It wouldn’t have to be a decisive yes/no type of bet. I would just like the CBC to carefully and publicly state what it thinks the odds really are– and put money behind it. They benefit from hyping the threat of a pandemic by getting interested listeners, who can’t wait to hear about the latest potential disaster.

There should be five million dollars on deposit with a neutral third party. If we get an pandemic, the CBC gets to keep their money and the listeners.

But if there is no pandemic– as there never was a SARS outbreak, for all the ink spilled about that business– skeptics like me should get paid for putting up with the bullshit for so long.

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The Real War

Number of Americans who died in 9/11: 3,000

Number of Americans who have died of AIDS: 500,000

[added 2011-07]

Amount we will spend trying to prevent another 9/11: hard to say how much when you add in all the new weapons systems, all the health care costs for veterans, replacement costs for weapons used, etc., etc., etc., etc.: — certainly over $2 trillion. Afghanistan alone is approaching $1 trillion dollars, for which we will have the gratifying experience of seeing it swirl down a sinkhole a few short years after we inevitably leave.

Amount spent to stop people dying of AIDS: $150 billion

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All of the Health Care we can Afford

A nurse recently told me that we could no longer afford our current health care system. I was just starting to think about her point when we were sidetracked by other people and other conversations. I wanted to ask her, though, what exactly she thought the solution was. She’s a nurse. She sees first-hand the health care system in action.

Our health care system here in Ontario, and in Canada, is a publicly-funded, universal, regulated system. Every citizen of Canada is covered, automatically, for all necessary health care, except for prescriptions, and experimental or unapproved treatments. That part is great. You get sick, you go to your doctor and she recommends treatments and books you into the hospital and, if you’re lucky, you get cured and get home. All without having to reach for anything in your wallet except your OHIP card.

For certain procedures, like MRI scans, you might have to wait a few weeks or months, because the system is a little over-loaded.

Some people really hype the issue of waiting periods. I personally feel we should be concerned about them, and we should try to do better, but in most cases people do receive decent treatment on time. I believe the advantages of our publicly funded system far outweigh the disadvantages of the U.S. system, which is more efficient– if you have money– but leaves about 50 million people with no coverage at all.  And by efficient, I mean quick– not cheap.  The American system is the most expensive system on earth.

For one thing, it seems logical that people who visit doctors regularly (because it’s free) will be healthier than people who don’t, and therefore, less costly over-all to the system. Pre-natal care in the U.S. is ridiculously inadequate for a “developed” country. They pay sooner or later, with the higher costs of premature births and complications.

But in the U.S., you wouldn’t have to wait for certain treatments. You could have your hip-replacement or MRI or triple-bypass immediately.

But if you got cancer, for example, your private insurance company could discontinue your coverage and you could be forced to sell your car and your home and then declare personal bankruptcy. That might sound like a harshly exaggerated scenario, but, in fact, it’s not. The largest cause of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. is catastrophic health problems. It’s not an exaggeration. It’s not.

I thought about the comment, “we can no longer afford our health care system”. What exactly is the alternative?

Think about it. Our system is expensive, and it has it’s shortcomings. But right now it provides decent care for the vast majority of people. We absolutely can afford it because right now we absolutely are affording it, and paying for it. It works.

What my friend meant was that costs are escalating so much that soon we will not have enough money to pay for all the treatments available for all the possible diseases or injuries we could ever have.

So think about this: when you get really old and your organs start failing you and your hips need replacements and your eyes are filled with cataracts and your bones are brittle and you can’t process food and you need dialysis and a respirator, and so on and so on, and nobody but nobody has the courage to “pull the plug” and we decide to keep you alive forever– then yes, it’s going to get very, very expensive. I recommend the movie “Coma” for an interesting discussion of the issue.

It is possible to spend an infinite amount of money on health care.

A very large percentage of the U.S. health care dollar is spent on people who are in the last few months of their lives. I forget the portion– was it 30%?

I think she’s right in this sense. We will have to learn, as a society, that there is a time to let go. And so far, in the entire world, it appears that the Dutch are the only people to have faced this problem squarely.

At it’s heart, our system relies on a very simple concept. Most health care problems are the result of chance or accident or diseases over which we have little control. As citizens, we band together and pool our resources and agree that if any of us becomes seriously ill, we will all contribute to the costs of making him or her better.

Since the total cost of providing health care for everyone is theoretically the same no matter how the system is paid for, the Canadian system makes a lot of sense. It makes even more sense when you realize that the government has a lot more control over costs in the Canadian system, because it can regulate doctors’ fees, and it can choose to not fund treatments that have no proven medical benefits.  The truth is, it is more efficient anyway.

The only obvious alternative– if we really can’t “afford” our system, is to drop people off the map. In other words, poor people will no longer receive health care. That has a cheeky kind of appeal to some people, but it’s never going to happen.

Or…. or you start charging people who can afford it for the health care they receive. But since these are the same people that would pay most of the taxes for a publicly funded system, I fail to see how that changes anything– except this: if you are reasonably well-to-do and you get cancer and require very expensive treatments, you are going to be impoverished. If you are really poor, you will probably be covered by some government plan.

And if you are really rich, you will be able to afford extended private insurance coverage.

But if you are in the middle, you will be screwed.

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Dr. Sell – Are You Mad?

Not even mental health experts agree on this. The American Psychiatric Association, which supported the government, argued that mental illness is a physical disease that should be treated like any other. “The brain is an organ just like the liver is an organ and the heart is an organ,” said Dr. Renee Leslie Binder, a psychiatrist who advised the association on its court brief. “If someone has an infection, you don’t tell them to breathe deeply. You give them antibiotics to fight the infection. When someone has a brain disease, the main form of treatment is medication.” New York Times, June 21, 2003

Rather mechanistic view of the brain, don’t you think? All of your behaviours, your personality, your fantasies, your desires, your hopes and dreams– are all the result of chemical processes and physical properties. The brain is not really different from your liver or your heart. If this is true, somewhere in the distant future, we will be able to fix your brain.

How will you know if your brain needs fixing?

You don’t want your brain “fixed”?

Well, that is the issue, isn’t it. Who gets to decide? Who decides if your brain needs to be fixed?

Dr. Charles Thomas Sell was charged with Medicaid fraud five years ago. When he appeared at trial, he cursed, spat, and screamed, according to the New York Times. He was deemed “emotionally disturbed” by the judge and incarcerated in a hospital. Not fit to stand trial, mentally.

The government– the prosecution– asked the courts to allow it to force Dr. Sell to take medications for his illness. They believed that the medications would make him sane. They wanted to help Dr. Sell. After curing him, they could put him on trial and then imprison him for his crimes.

Of course, if Dr. Sell needs medications to make him sane, it raises the possibility that he was not sane when he committed his crimes. Is the prosecution willing to argue that he is sane enough to stand trail because we have cured the insanity that caused him to commit crimes? I somehow doubt it.

Is this a little like the police charging someone with a murder committed with a high-powered rifle. After discovering that he couldn’t shoot straight, they decide to send him out for fire-arms training before they put him on trial? Or an impotent man charged with rape. Can they require him to take Viagra before going on trial?

A similar case was ruled on in Ontario in June 2003. A 47-year-old gentleman named Scott Starson, who is regarded as something as whiz in physics, had asked for the right to refuse to take medication which, he claimed, prevented him from working on his physics. Starson wrote a paper on physics in 1991, with the collaboration of a Stanford physics professor. However, his doctors and his mother felt that he should be ordered to take medication for his mental illness. Starson believes that the medications his doctors want to forcibly inject him with slow down his brain. He says that that would be “worse than death”.

Here’s the clincher. At a hearing, Starson’s doctors admitted that none of the medications had helped him in the past, and that they could not be sure that any of the medications would help him in the future. Not only can we try to force you to let us mess with your mind, but we can even do experiments on it.

The courts in Ontario ruled otherwise. Mr. Starson, it ruled, has a right to think for himself.

What if we had a doctor of society who said that our society was sick? We engage in a mad pursuit of dubious gratifications. We exploit poor people and oppress the powerless. We sell tools of murder and destruction. We destroy the environment.

What we need is for a doctor of society to decide that our society is no longer capable of making rational decisions and, therefore, it should be fixed. All Third World Debt is forgiven, and we will move to a 30-hour work week, with six weeks guaranteed vacation every year. How do you like that? This doctor goes to court and asks a judge to give him the power to fix society.

So who gets to decide?

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You are Insane

According to two studies, the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area Program (1980-85), and the National Co-morbidity Survey (1990-92), about 30% of all Americans will experience mental or addictive disorders in a given year and 50% will need mental health services in their lifetimes.

According to the February issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry, those numbers are too high. What a relief to find that out! The “correct” number of people who experience mental or addictive disorders in a given year should be about 18.5%. I didn’t see a corrected number for the second piece of data.

So if you ever thought that most people are nuts, you’re not too far off. The professionals agree with you.

Makes me wonder what would happen if the plumbers did a study showing that 50% of all homes need some plumbing. Would you rush out and hire a plumber to come in to check your house to see if it was one of the 50%? How likely do you think it would be that your house, indeed, was one of the needy homes, if you asked a plumber to check it?

Some car repair shops urge you to come in for free brake inspections. You bite. You bring your car in and wait twenty minutes while a repairman inspects your car. The repairman should probably be working on someone else’s vehicle up there on another lift, but he stops his work to look at your car. The impatient owner of the other car is reading three-month-old newsmagazines and drinking stale coffee in the waiting room. But they already have his car on the lift, so you get priority. Now imagine, if you can, that the mechanic comes back into the office and walks up to you and says, “everything looks hunky-dory down there.” Right.

Now you may believe that unlike car repair shops, psychologists and social workers aren’t after your money. They work in those professions because they want to help people. Right. And pop stars are in it for the love of music. And politicians because people begged them to lead. And lawyers because they love justice. I’m not saying they’re not. Necessarily. Just that their perspectives on the necessity of their professions might be influenced every so slightly by their pecuniary interests.

But psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers are not plumbers. They do not work with fixed physical properties of objects. They work with your mind. They would like to believe that theirs is a “science”, beyond argument, and demonstrable with evidence and proofs. The assumption is that personal spiritual or philosophical values are secondary to the eternal and scientifically grounded principles of psychology and sociology. You can be manipulated. Fixed.

If about 20% of the population really does have a disorder, you would think that someone would realize that there is a serious problem in our society that needs to be fixed. There are too many casualties. If 20% of all airplane trips crashed or 20% of all ships sank, you can bet that all travel would be suspended until the problem was found out and solved.

The other possibility, of course, is that 80% of our society is nuts and 20% fully comprehend our predicament. Our predicament is that we have built a society that, in order to gratify the voracious appetites of the rich and powerful, has driven itself into a pathological system of destructive obsessive behaviors. The 20% understand that and have opted out and carry their belongings in shopping bags and fervently wish for a happy meal tomorrow. Beyond that, who knows?

The rest of us can just keep taking our medications.

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Harold Shipman

In Great Britain, if you took a sampling of 1000 women between the ages of 65 and 74 who see a doctor regularly, you would normally find a death rate of 4.5 per year.

Of 1000 patients of Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman, the death rate was 45 per year. He began his own practice in Hyde in 1992. He was caught this year.

Uh yes… the numbers are not the result of chance or coincidence. Dr. Shipman has been injecting some of his patients with a fatal dose of diamorphine. He seems to have murdered 300 this way. Yes, does seem like it took a little while for anyone to notice.

Sometimes he would go into a patient’s file and alter significant facts, in order to establish the “illness” of which the patient died at his hands. No one noticed because the families of deceased patients do not get access to the deceased’s medical records.

A few people over the years became suspicious. The police were even called. But when the police went to the General Medical Council, which oversees doctors in Great Britain, they told them that unless an official complaint was received they could do nothing.

Since Dr. Shipman never summoned an ambulance or called for a coroner after any of the suspicious deaths, there were no records except his own, and therefore, no details about the exact circumstances of death, except those which he provided.

The local health authority investigated and found nothing suspicious. Again, it appears that they relied on Dr. Shipman’s records to verify Dr. Shipman’s performance. There is no system in place to monitor the performance of doctors. Think about that. There is no system in place to monitor the performance of doctors. In other words, a doctor could kill 300 patients and no one would be the wiser. Well, yes. That’s what happened.

The first public reports of the investigation of Dr. Shipman were met with outrage by the citizens of Hyde who felt that a good doctor was being tarred with a broad brushstroke. Obviously, the good citizens of Hyde hadn’t noticed anything odd either. Here was a doctor who murdered patients with great frequency. The patient’s families were notified of the death. The bodies were cremated or buried. Nobody kept score.

The police finally seized Dr. Shipman’s medical records. Ah, but they didn’t obtain the proper paperwork beforehand and had to return them. Imagine the police seizing a knife or a gun from a suspected murderer, and then being ordered to return it to the suspect because they hadn’t said “may I”? To get around this little technicality, the police charged him with homicide. Then they were permitted to investigate.

Altogether, as I said, Dr. Shipman may have killed more than 300 women.

Sometimes he did the killing in his office and saw several more patients before reporting the death.

Now this may sound like a bit of stretch, but ask yourself this, in connection with Dr. Shipman’s offenses: how do you know that your doctor is doing a good job? I’m serious. I mean, you know that your doctor is not likely to inject fatal quantities of diamorphine into your veins, but if a doctor in a developed country can get away with doing this to hundreds of women over a period of ten years, how much less likely is it that your own doctor can get away with being completely incompetent?

In other words, who is keeping score?

You can read the sports pages every day to find out if Delgado is earning his millions for the Blue Jays. How many home runs did he hit? What’s his batting average? Is he making a lot of errors over there at first base?

Why don’t we have the same thing for doctors? It doesn’t have to be ridiculously detailed. Just a simple table of visits, total number of operations, drugs prescribed, x-rays, cures, improvements, and… deaths.

There were signs of trouble with Dr. Shipman back in 1976 when he was convicted of stealing drugs and issuing fake prescriptions. But he was able to pay a modest little fine and move on. This was his minor league record. Mediocre. Not expected to make the big leagues.

But he worked at it and re-established himself and went on to establish a new record: 300 murders. That’s about 287 more than Klebold and Harris at Columbine. How many Nightlines do you think they’ll devote to this story? How many Newsweek Covers?

How many people are going to throw up their hands and scream, “What’s happening to our society! We should have zero-tolerance for deaths at the hands of doctors!”