Members of U.S. Military have no Recourse if they Suffer from Poor Medical Treatment

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Military patient being moved between Walter Reed and National Naval medical centers (photo: Pablo Mercad, Walter Reed)

 

Serving one’s country not only means putting yourself in harm’s way before a foreign enemy, it also means putting your health in the hands of a military health system that has no real accountability for making fatal mistakes.

In the civilian world, a patient who is misdiagnosed and harmed by such a mistake can sue their doctor for malpractice. But this recourse does not exist with the military’s health providers, who can miss a serious medical problem with an individual and not worry about being taken to court, or even have their mistake shared with other patients.

About 1.3 million active-duty service members have to use the military’s healthcare system for care. For those who experience poor treatment, they are “virtually powerless to hold accountable the health care system that treats them,” according to Sharon LaFraniere at The New York Times.

“They are captives of the military medical system, unable, without specific approval, to get care elsewhere if they fear theirs is substandard or dangerous,” LaFraniere wrote. “Yet if they are harmed or die, they or their survivors have no legal right to challenge their care, and seek answers, by filing malpractice suits.”

Up until 18 months ago, most military personnel couldn’t even file complaints about poor medical treatment. But even though that avenue is now open, the complaints are mostly just filed away and don’t see the light of day, nor are they shared with the public because “investigations at military hospitals and clinics are confidential.”

Part of the reason for that, according to LaFraniere, is to prevent the 2 million or so civilian relatives of those service members from seeing the results, since they are not barred from filing malpractice suits. Even the military personnel themselves are not informed of the results of any inquiry that may have been undertaken in response to their complaints.

Cheryl Garner, a retired military intelligence officer told the Times: “There is just no transparency. You can’t sue. You have no insight into the process. As active duty, we just don’t have much recourse.”

Compounding the problem is the fact that the hospitals themselves don’t follow regulations. “Military hospitals often fail to conduct safety investigations that the Defense Department mandates when patients suffer serious harm or die,” wrote LaFraniere.

Potential whistleblowers are also dissuaded for calling attention to matters they see as being detrimental to patients. Medical workers who do speak out about problems with patient care often suffer reprisals.

In a project that has helped to reduce patient injuries, some military medical officials are adopting a program called I-PASS, which is a system of training and communication tools to improve transfer of patients between medical providers. About 80% of serious medical mistakes that are detrimental to patient health and wellbeing occur as a result of miscommunication between caregivers during the handoff of patients from one health care facility to another, according to The Joint Commission, a non-profit group of more than 20,500 U.S. health care organizations. Nine civilian hospitals have already partnered with military medical officials to implement the program. To date there has been a reported 30% reduction in patient injuries caused by medical errors as a result of the employment of I-PASS, according to a study performed by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, both of which helped develop the program.

-Danny Biederman, Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Service Members Are Left in Dark on Health Errors (by Sharon LaFraniere, New York Times)

Military Partnering with Civilian Hospitals to Reduce Medical Errors (Health.mil)

Search Tells You If, When, and How Much YOUR Doctor Was Paid by Big Pharma

on 4 March, 2015 at 9:03 pm

Is your doctor on the payroll of the mega pharmaceutical companies? If you want to find out if your doctor’s aggressive push for Viagra could be stemming from financial interests, there’s a government website that can do just that.

The Open Payments Data website presented by the government reveals to you the depths to which your personal care provider could be controlled by Big Pharma’s institutions. From physicians to teaching hospitals, you can even identify the company making payments.

Is your doctor on the payroll? This is a really awesome tool to tell whether or not your current or perspective healthcare providers are hiding their vested interests.

Watch also: John Oliver Exposes The Outrageous Practices Of Big Pharmaceutical Companies

Source theglobalelite

Will Uncle Sam get your IRA?

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Pat Heller

I have written a number of times that I expect the U.S. government will eventually take or somehow get control of all assets in private retirement accounts, including precious metals individual retirement accounts. The basic reason for this expectation is that the U.S. government is running up tens of trillions of dollars of debts and unfunded liabilities. The trillions of dollars of private retirement account assets are just too big a target for the politicians and bureaucrats to leave alone.

Will Uncle Sam get your IRA?

Will Uncle Sam get your IRA?

An early attempt by the government to take control of such assets came soon after President Clinton took office. As now structured, income taxes are not paid on most retirement accounts until the assets are withdrawn. This event to collect income taxes usually occurs years down the road.

In the early 1990s, that concept was turned around. The proposal was to impose a 15 percent tax on all existing private retirement accounts, then tax new contributions also at the 15 percent rate.  The payoff for taxpayers was that any future withdrawals would be tax free.

A new plan was presented to the House Committee on Education and Labor in hearings on Oct. 7, 2008, by Professor Teresa Ghilarducci. This proposal was for the U.S. government to seize all private retirement assets and replace them with Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration. The only assets that would be allowed into these new Accounts would be U.S. Treasury bonds paying 3 percent interest (indexed for subsequent Consumer Price Index changes).

Further, the plan called for 5 percent of payrolls to be withheld, on top of existing Social Security and Medicare tax withholdings, for deposit into these GRAs.  The last feature of this proposal is that upon the death of the account holder, part of the remaining assets would be forfeited to the U.S. government. That was a huge change where all private retirement account assets, up to now, go to the heirs.

The one bonus to bribe Americans to go along with the nationalization of private retirement accounts was that the assets would be converted to government bonds as of their value at a designated earlier date when most paper assets such as stocks, bonds and currencies were mostly at a higher value than they were in October 2008. Given the opportunity to recoup some of the losses that retirement accounts had suffered in 2007 and 2008, this was a definite enticement.

In September 2010, the Departments of Labor and Treasury held joint hearings to advocate that, upon retirement, the assets in private retirement accounts would be converted into annuities, where the residual assets upon death would ultimately all be retained by the U.S. government.

In January 2014, during his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed the establishment of the MyRA. This is initially a voluntary program for lower-income Americans to set aside some after-tax dollars to earn income that can later be withdrawn tax-free. However, there are several limitations. First, these accounts can only own U.S. Treasury debt that pays the same interest rate as the Thrift Savings Plan’s Government Securities Investment Fund. This fund was paying less than 2 percent at the time of the President’s proposal. A second major limitation is that accounts could not exceed $15,000 in total value. Further, these accounts cannot exist longer than 30 years.

Starting two months ago, a small number of these MyRA accounts have been established.
 

Investment writer Doug Fabian has described an all-too-plausible scenario that he expects to happen before the end of President Obama’s term. He anticipates that there will be some major financial crisis in the United States, greater than the Great Recession of last decade, where investors will see the values of their stocks, bonds and other assets mostly plummet.

This could be triggered by any number of incidents. As some examples, Greece could leave the European Monetary Union, which would force many major American and foreign banks to write down tens of billions of dollars of bonds that they are now carrying at face value.  The developing fall in demand for upper-end U.S. housing could expand to all housing nationwide, leaving U.S. banks with massive bad debts that risk their survival. Or local, school district, regional, and state governments all across America could be forced into bankruptcy after the Governmental Accounting Standards Board issues their pronouncements in June requiring these entities to more fully report the extent of their tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities for employee pensions and retiree health care benefits. There are many other possible crises, but this gives you an idea of how massive a financial crisis could occur.

At the time when such a financial crisis hits, private retirement account assets will almost all drop in value – by a lot.  If, or when, this occurs, there will be a huge groundswell from people who no longer have enough wealth to retire. Mr. Fabian theorizes that this will be the perfect time for the federal government to modify MyRA accounts to accept unlimited asset transfers from existing private retirement accounts. By the federal government offering people the opportunity to get credit for the value of their assets before the financial crisis was triggered, Fabian expects that a high percentage of Americans would voluntarily be eager to turn their retirement assets into loans to the U.S. Treasury.

Such a scenario would be a power-grabbing politician’s dream. Instead of being thought of as a President who stole people’s retirement assets, the person in charge in such circumstances were be hailed as a savior. Unfortunately, I think the risk of such events coming to pass by the end of 2016 are high enough that Americans need to prepare their finances sooner rather than later.

Should any huge financial crisis come to pass, expect to see a surge in demand for precious metals, especially gold and silver. Other portable tangible assets such as rare coins and paper money will also likely experience stronger demand.  However, the increased demand for such assets will not be for placement in retirement accounts.  Instead, look for the surge in demand to be for assets that can be owned and possessed directly.

Patrick A. Heller was the American Numismatic Association 2012 Harry Forman Numismatic Dealer of the Year Award winner. He is the owner emeritus and communications officer of Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., and writes “Liberty’s Outlook,” a monthly newsletter on rare coins and precious metals subjects. Past newsletter issues can be viewed at http://www.libertycoinservice.com. Other commentaries are available at Coin Week (http://www.coinweek.com and http://www.coininfo.com). He also writes a bi-monthly column on collectibles for “The Greater Lansing Business Monthly” (http://www.lansingbusinessmonthly.com/articles/department-columns). His Numismatic Literary Guild award-winning radio show “Things You ‘Know’ That Just Aren’t So, And Important News You Need To Know” can be heard at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday and Friday mornings on 1320-AM WILS in Lansing (which streams live and becomes part of the audio and text archives posted at http://www.1320wils.com).  

via numismaticnews

Keeping Big Pharma in Seventh Heaven is Keeping Addicts in Hell

February 11, 2015 

by Martin G. Selbrede How the State of Massachusetts is Moving the Goalposts in Light of Dr. Kishore's Successful Treatment of Addiction to Provide Pharmaceutical Companies with a State-Funded Customer Base This is the seventh in an ongoing series of articles about Dr. Punyamurtula S. Kishore, the Christian doctor who innovated the Massachusetts Model of addiction treatment.  The previous six articles documented how conventional addiction therapies based on substitute narcotics (methadone and Suboxone®) leave only 2% to 5% of patients who won't relapse back into full-scale addiction after twelve months. The few who haven't relapsed will often take prescribed substitute narcotics indefinitely, creating life-long issues for them. In contrast, Dr. Kishore's sobriety-based approach is non-narcotic in orientation. His method doesn't lead to a miserable 2% to 5% success rate at the one-year mark, but an astonishing 50% to 60% success rate based on hard test data (rising from 37% in 1994 to over 50% in 2011 with a quarter-million patients having passed through his program). ...from Hippocrates Oath, solemnly kept by Dr. Kishore - Man cannot serve two masters. Massachusetts buried this medical miracle by incarcerating Dr. Kishore in September 2011 and withholding Medicare payments to his fifty-two treatment centers, causing their complete collapse. The consequences of the state's actions against Dr. Kishore's work permeate the previous six articles. To repeat that material, even in condensed form, would consume most of this present article. If you've not followed this series, review the earlier articles before diving into this newest article. Without the background of the earlier articles, you can fall prey to ongoing manipulation (by omission and commission) by the state and its media gatekeepers. Moving the Goalposts The first example of "moving the goalposts" in this series had reference to the cleverly-edited graphic used to hide the disastrous 80% recidivism rate occurring during the first month of conventional drug addiction treatments. Because the first-month results have simply been chopped off the graph, they don't come under consideration. This opens the door to redefining success. One moves the goalposts for one of two reasons: to block a competitor from succeeding, or to create the illusion of success for yourself. This tactic is a blatant example of the latter. Moving of the goalposts in such a way can only be effective if you are ignorant of the correct location of the goalposts. If someone comes along and blows the whistle on how dislocated the goalposts are, and what constituencies are benefiting from the reality distortion field thus imposed, he becomes a threat. If the whistleblower's success rate is many times higher than the conventional success rate, this becomes a second layer of threat. Both forms of threat to the status quo need to be quashed to maintain the blissful ignorance of the populace, to keep the goalposts at their "preferred" new location. When the media keeps the people it reputedly serves ignorant of both aspects of these moved goalposts, it becomes a key accessory to the redefinition of success. Once journalists start down that road, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to admit fault, recant, and fight against the ignorance they've been enforcing so faithfully. No one wants to admit culpability in moving the goalposts. Therefore, Dr. Kishore's clinical record is simply ignored. There are three other major respects in which crucial goalposts have been moved during the escalating drug addiction crisis taking its massive toll upon our communities. We will examine the tactics, significance, and high price we are all paying for the moving of these goalposts that should never have been moved. We will then come to understand why Solomon's maxim remains painfully valid for us today: "Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless" (Prov. 23:10). Click to continue reading this article.

Lawmakers to probe Obamacare launch fiasco - National Law Enforcement

Soooo wazzup with the GOP promises to defund, destruct, and discard Obamacare? One guess. To us it means the Republicans will re-style this socialist medicine plan and offer it up as their own. Republican Party leadership harbors no misgivings about Socialism - - providing they administer it. Either way Americans lose again by another liberty stolen "legally", but not lawfully or morally - - and those are the main components that America lacks in their elected leaders.  

"Damn the Torpedoes Constitution, full steam ahead!" ... J. P. Jones Morgan

---

October 12, 2013

The Examiner

Jim KouriLaw Enforcement Examiner

Lawmakers from both houses of the U.S. Congress plan to investigate the details of the October 1, 2013, rollout of the Obamacare web site and launch of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, according to a letter from GOP officeholders sent to the head of the Health and Human Services Department on Thursday. 

▶ Issues in the Economics of Medical Care | Timothy D. Terrell *vid*

Published on Jul 30, 2014

Archived from the live broadcast, this Mises University lecture was presented at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 25 July 2014.

FDA corruption news, articles and information

The Happy Story of Boomers Retiring on Their Generational Wealth Is Wrong

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Charles Hugh Smith

This happy story is wrong on multiple counts.

The conventional view of the Baby Boomers' retirement is a happy story: since we're living longer and remaining productive longer, Boomers will not be as much of a burden on Gen-X and Gen-Y as doom-and-gloomers assume.

Not only are Boomers staying productive longer, they will draw upon their vast generational wealth as they age, limiting the financial burden on younger generations.

This happy story is nicely summarized in this lengthy piece The Fear Factor: Long-held predictions of economic chaos as baby boomers grow old are based on formulas that are just plain wrong.

In this view, the only thing needed to prop up Social Security for the rest of the 21st century is a higher tax on high-income earners, in effect moving the limit on earned income exposed to Social Security taxes from about $114,000 to $217,000.

This happy story is wrong on multiple counts. Let's start with the most egregious errors:

1. It ignores the End of Work and the decline of full-time jobs

2. It ignores the Elephants in the Room, Medicare and Medicaid

3. It ignores the inconvenient reality that there is nobody to buy the Boomers' overpriced stocks, bonds and homes when they start to unload them

Put another way: the happy story ignores the changing nature of work and jobs, the unsustainable cost trajectory of Sickcare (a.k.a. healthcare) and the inability of Gen-X and Gen-Y to buy Boomer assets at bubble valuations. Take these factors into minimal consideration and the claim that 76 million people (out of 316 million) can retire with no negative repercussions falls completely apart.

1. The end of work and changing nature of jobs: I have covered this for many years, most recently in a program with Gordon Long: The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube).

Insert end of work in the custom search box on this site and you'll get 10 pages of articles published here on that topic. For example:

Global Reality: Surplus of Labor, Scarcity of Paid Work (May 7, 2012)

The reality is sobering: 57 million people draw Social Security benefits, tens of millions more draw Medicaid, Section 8 housing credits, etc., and full-time jobs number 118 million:

The Good And The Not- So-Good News About US Jobs In One Chart (Zero Hedge)



That's a ratio of roughly two workers for every retiree and considerably less than that for workers to the total number of government dependents. As the Baby Boom retires en masse, if full-time jobs don't rise as dramatically as the number of retirees, the system fails.

The happy story repeats the usual falsehood that Social Security has a Trust Fund it can draw down. This is a falsehood because the Trust Fund is fiction: when Social Security runs a deficit, the Treasury funds it by selling Treasury bonds, the same way it funds any other deficit spending. If the Treasury can't sell bonds, the phantom nature of the Trust Fund will be revealed.

2. Everyone who looks at numbers rather than fictional claims knows the intractable problem is Medicare and Medicaid. In Sickcare, there are no real limits on cost, and so every attempt to impose cost discipline fails or triggers blowback. Read more

Medicare Overpays $6.7 Billion in one Year for Office Visits and Evaluations, but No Action Planned to Fix Problem

Hey look Ma, no congressional oversight here either - - let's become government-approved doctors and fill our pockets! Phrig those house-calls. They're a throwback to the days when doctors had to compete.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Federal officials allowed doctors to overbill for office visits and evaluations that cost the Medicare program more than $6 billion extra. 

But even after a government audit revealed this problem, the agency overseeing the program says it won’t take action in response.

The Medicare overcharges were discovered by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services. Auditors determined that the excess billing amounted to $6.7 billion in 2010 alone.

“The natural question that comes out of this is: Are these physicians billing appropriately?” Dwayne Grant, regional inspector general for evaluation and inspections in the Atlanta region, who oversaw the new report (pdf), told ProPublica. “We don't want to pay them too much, but we don't want to pay them too little either.”

The IG’s office said that most physicians who handle Medicare patients don’t charge for the highest rate, known as Level 5. A small, but not insignificant number—1,200—did use Level 5 exclusively. Another 600 did so more than 90% of the time.

In addition, more than half of the claims reviewed were billed at the wrong rate or lacked documentation to justify the service.

After receiving the audit’s findings, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, announced it would not review the billings of doctors who use Level 5.

The reason: It is not cost effective.

Apparently, a separate review by one of Medicare’s contractors found some overpayments among 5,200 claims, but that any potential savings were eclipsed by the cost of conducting the review.

This is not the first time that the IG found a need to conduct such an investigation. In 2012, the agency determined that, over time, doctors had increasingly billed Medicare for more expensive office visits. But no determination was made as to whether or not claims were improper.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Medicare Overpays Billions for Office Visits, Patient Evaluations (by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica)

Improper Payments for Evaluation and Management Services Cost Medicare Billions in 2010 (Department of Health and Human Service, Inspector General) (pdf)

Overbilling by Doctors and Hospitals Costs Medicare a Billion Dollars a Year (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

AMA Helps Doctors Overbill Medicare by Exaggerating Time Needed for Procedures (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Private Insurance Companies Cost Medicare $34 Billion This Year (by David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

via AllGov

Soros, HHS fund group enrolling prisoners in Obamacare

Review: The Guide to the Soros Network

Patrick Howley Political Reporter 03/02/2014

via Daily Caller

Progressive billionaire George Soros and the Obama administration help fund the Chicago nonprofit that set up Obamacare enrollment programs for prison inmates.

Republicans Opposed to Obama's Health Care Law are Willing to Take its Funding

Republican credo: "Me first, then Party, then maybe...Principle (but only if I benefit)" - works every time!

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (photo:
Carlos Osorio, AP)

Many Republican governors hate Obamacare, but some don’t hate the federal dollars tied to it.

ObamaCare's New Year's Day Surprise: Deep Cuts to Medicare

Does mean seniors should suck out all their home equity before they lose it?

Posted 12/19/2013 | Obamacare Watchdog

by Andrew Mangione – As if ObamaCare’s botched website, coverage cancellations, and higher costs were not bad enough, the Obama Administration has quietly dealt yet another blow – this time striking millions of the nation’s most vulnerable seniors.  

Social Security: The Most Successful Ponzi Scheme in History

Mises Daily: Friday, November 22, 2013 by Gary Galles

 

“We paid our Social Security and Medicare taxes; we earned our benefits.” It is that belief among senior citizens that President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he claimed that those programs “strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers.”