Agag

Agag and the Amelekites are not common household subjects of discussion, but there is a lesson to be learned from their biblical history. Agag was the title of Amalek king(s) and his people, the Amelekites picked off, robbed and murdered the elderly, infirm, and weak stragglers among the Israelites. For their ruthlessness, cruelty and haughtiness,  the Amelekites - in turn - were later slaughtered.by the Israelites.

The lesson taught with respect to the Amelekites has application to our health system.  As insurers, health systems and providers abandon their responsibility to care  for the elderly, infirm, weak and those who cannot defend themselves, they may provoke society to punish them (and those who accept their support in order to fund their election campaigns) for their ruthlessness, greed, cynicism, arrogance and cruelty.

Have we created our medical schools, licensed our practitioners, created non-profit health systems, provided franchises for insurance companies, and subsidized all of these institutions so that an injured person who is brought to a hospital emergency department writhing in pain may be told by the physician consultant called by the ER that he will not render care to this unfortunate person because he doesn't accept that person's insurance? Is Agag still walking among us and setting the standards for our health system?

Sorry,But

 A  serious family medical event has taken priority over the blog "Our Health System."

Should Teachers Get War Zone Pay?

I will start with a warning: a number of years ago, a family member was a teacher in a New York "fortress" primary school. Watching that family member's experience (I have taught at the university and post-graduate level and in my experience, that does not involve comparable stress exposure),  I concluded that some classrooms expose teachers to extraordinarily and unreasonably high levels of stress.


In a recent blog, I described the findings by a Nobel award-winning scientist, that telomere length is a critical factor in cellular health (particularly among women) and that stress is a common factor believed to shorten telomere length. Is someone willing to study telomere length among teachers in high stress level classrooms, demonstrate whether the telomeres are statistically significantly shortened (compared to a control group), and if they are, propose a fair compensation system for teachers' classroom battlefield physical damage?  Does anyone really want to know the answer to those questions and then have to deal with the consequences?

60 Minutes - Softball Questions About Counterfeit Drugs

If you listened to the 3/13/2011 CBS' 60 Minutes' interview with the FDA Commission about counterfeit drugs, you didn't hear the difficult question, the real question, as to the difficulty that the FDA has with pharmaceutical product manufacturing and counterfeiting abroad.  Had the question been asked, perhaps the FDA Commissioner would have acknowledged that the FDA is not given sufficient money through the Congressional budgeting process to supply the systems and hire the people to take frequent hard looks abroad for shoddy pharmaceutical manufacturing processes and counterfeiters.  Those who provide our Representatives and Senators with campaign funds do not want a strong FDA regulatory process, notwithstanding that FDA regulation is a matter of life preservation for many Americans. They would rather provide election financing, pay the small fines, hire the law firms to defend themselves and let the counterfeiters skim off some of their profits.  They are unconcerned with Americans' welfare; they are concerned with corporate profits and executive bonuses.

60 Minutes: why aren't you addressing the significant issues?

Health Care in America: What Would Jonathan Swift Have Done?

After observing Washington, D.C. and state capital railings and political warfare against reforming American health care, I turned to Jonathan Swift for perspective. My readers might find his insights disturbing, familiar, and insightful. Remember, though, Gulliver's Travels and his other works (available free) are were not written for young children.