george conklin

Physicians in Europe are not enslaved. They do not live in slave cabins.
What is wrong with you anyway? I am glad you admit that the AMA has stopped
univeral health care coverage in the USA. It is a disgrace, but then the
concern is about wages, not values, of which it has zero. The rest of the
world lives as an employee, and so should YOU.

george conklin

Duke pays its MDs a guaranteed salary all right--a few thousand a year.
The rest is all from fees collected by the university and then paid out as
'profits.' That is all fee-for-service.

flick

Heck, there was an ad in the paper here for a doc to work at a nearby
prison, $120k a year, plus housing. Perhaps not the equal of a
well-established doc with a huge practice, but hardly a pittance.

flick 100785

brianm@phat.pharm (brianms phat

Since only 30% of physicians join the AMA, then truly the AMA is
lobbying for the benefit of a very small minority. Special interest
politics as usual. Dump the AMA.

steve harris

and #1 in costs.


As has been pointed out to you, the relatively poor results
of US health have nothing to do with US health care. If US
heath stats were based on Utah's results, for example, we'd
not only be close to #1 in the world in results, but
considerably less expensive than average for the rest of the
country, as well (I know that Utahns can bill Medicare only
about 50% for a hospital day as compared with California;
Utah is penalized for being efficient). But Utah uses
essentially the same system of health care access and
delivery at all levels, as does the rest of the US. They
also use physicians from all over the US. For example, a
fair fraction of my instructors at the University of Utah
School of medicine were Jewish, and (no) they weren't born
in Salt Lake City.

The US has many social problems which impact health of its
citizens. But they have to be gotten at directly. Changing
the health care system will not fix them. You can't fix the
problem of premature crack babies with more free incubators
and neonatal ICUs. Firearms deaths don't happen in the US
because people shot in the head in the US can't get into ERs
without insurance cards. You can't fix emphysema and lung
cancer by having society pay for home ventilators for
everybody who needs them. And so on.

SBH

hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (herman

That is MY opinion. However, the moralists seem to have
completely taken over; there are different kinds of them.
In addition, we have the police mentality, which is not
restricted to the police, which believes that protecting
people from those who just conceivably might do some harm,
with no indication of proof, is justified, and if someone
is accused, that person is guilty.

As Jefferson stated,

If the government fears the people, there is freedom.
If the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

Police do not have any legal obligation to help citizens or to
prevent crime. Neither they nor prosecutors worry about going
after innocent people, especially prominent ones.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (herman

.................

It is not obvious that medical education is better in
Europe. In graduate mathematics and science, the US is
more than holding its own in the world; I am not sure
about medicine. I do not see European physicians as
being better in other respects in many places than those
in the US.

--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

flick

<various snips throughout>


Okay. I'm not arguing that there weren't grievous errors made in Tulia, if
not a whole lot of dishonesty, starting with Coleman and going up through
that justice system.

But I WILL argue that this is not the norm.


This guy was definitely a bad cop, and the judge and D.A. also dropped the
ball here, big-time. If the justice system had worked halfway, Coleman's
cases would have been thrown out of court. They prosecuted cases where he
acted alone, without any videotape backup of what happened. Most PDs would
have put a lid on this guy.

I'm tellin' you, this type of thing is Not Normal, at all. The vast, vast
majority of federal cases (Coleman was a local cop, BTW, not DEA) have their
i's dotted and t's crossed. Even local cops and D.A.'s don't generally
waste time trying to railroad innocent people into prison. There are
genuine bad guys out there, waiting to be caught and arrested. The public
wants the crime rate down; they want the criminals caught and locked up.
nobody's very happy when their local D.A. wastes a lot of time and resources
on nonsense.

The feds are probably going to crawl through Tulia and do some locking up,
as well ;-). And they should.


Read some federal drug stuff, if possible. Watch the videotapes of agents
buying drugs, and listen to the tapes of the wiretaps. Some of the busts
they work go on for a year, even more. That's why a whole lot of federal
drug defendants don't get to trial, they plea bargain. 'Cause they know
they're caught. The feds have more resources than local PDs, usually.

I'm with you, Hempman. I'd love it if the world were perfect, and nobody
ever made a mistake. including cops.

but in all the various busts that happen daily - of every type, not just
drug-related - it's such a tiny, tiny number where these tragedies happen.
it isn't huge, staggering numbers.

we should work toward perfection here. One unnecessary death is a tragedy.
but that doesn't mean do away with laws, because cops make mistakes.

Ever stop to think about why cops make drug busts with their guns drawn?
It's because drug dealers are real nasty people, son. And often armed to
the teeth. I'm sure everybody would be happier if the local PD could just
send them a postcard that says, "Hey, you're busted, come on in." But it
doesn't work that way.

on


You can't have it both ways, son. First, the prisons are supposedly full of
drug criminals. Now, the war is supposedly ineffectual.

Just because people don't always obey laws is no reason to strike those laws
off the books.

paul flick 100785

peter h. proctor

Most docs are far too busy to get involved in AMA politics,
boards, etc. So, as often happens in such cir***stances, they get
taken over by the true-beleivers...

Same thing happened to another AMA board in pediatrics, which
issued a statement that implied the organization was in favor of
firearms prohibition. You should have seen the sh!tstorm over that
one. And there was also a lot of protest over the following
statement, which does not reflect the opinion of any physicians that
I know...

BTW, I dropped out of the organization years ago. Unlike
when the AMA opposed marijuana laws, most docs are not members these
days... Partially, this is because the AMA has become rather
unresponsive-- Now, they make their money other ways ( advertising in
the Journal and selling insurance ) and do not need physician dues any more. Dr P

peter h. proctor

Most of the salaries paid by any employer comes from money paid by
customers. What is the dif ? Dr P