2006-05-24

The Senate has voted to increase fines on businesses that hire “undocumented” illegal immigrant workers. That’s all well and good, but now they need to actually enforce the law. That’s where the problem has been in the past, not a lack of laws against hiring illegals.
Employers would face fines as high as $20,000 for hiring [...]

2006-05-23

The Federal government is predicting that there will be a serious shortage of physicians trained to treat life threatening medical illnesses in the intensive care unit in the near future.
The federal government predicted Monday that the supply of doctors who specialize in treating critically ill patients probably won’t keep up with the demand of [...]

2006-05-22

Add the Illinois cities of Bloomington, and Normal to those that now have new bans on smoking in bars and restaurants on the books.
Even in pouring rain and biting cold, Lisa McQuillen walks halfway around the building for a cigarette during breaks from her register at a smoke-free Bloomington grocery store.
McQuillen says she’ll [...]

2006-05-19

Here’s an idiotic article about how millions of dollars a year are spent on what the authors conclude are unnecessary medical tests. Their conclusion is that some of these tests were ordered to make money, and some were ordered as part of a screening program that may not have been necessary for some of the  [...]

Two partners at the famed plaintiff’s law firm of Milberg Weiss have been indicted for bribing people to file class action lawsuits against companies that they owned stock in and lost money on.
Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, the law firm that has won more than $45 billion for investors in securities-fraud cases, and two of [...]

2006-05-17

Fresh from their “victory” in killing off medical malpractice reform for at least the fourth year in a row, the Democrats in the Senate have successfully filibustered a medical insurance reform bill which would have allowed small businesses to band together and buy medical insurance for their employees as a group. The bill would also [...]

2006-05-16

Even though I consider myself to be a good libertarian, I don’t really have any problems with this particular proposed legislation.  While I don’t believe it will accomplish much, since children will still be able to access these websites at home, I also believe that school computers should not be used for non-educational purposes, like [...]

2006-05-15

Chris Rangel looks back at the effect that passing medical malpractice reforms including a monetary cap on noneconomic damages (ie pain and suffering) has had on medical malpractice premiums, the number of lawsuits filed, and recruitment of physicians in the state of Texas. And, not surprisingly (unless you’re an ambulance chaser), the number of [...]

2006-05-12

The media are falling all over themselves trying to portray the NSA surveillance of phone calls as questionably legal, and a violation of the public’s privacy rights.
 
PRESIDENT BUSH faced new and potentially damaging allegations about the secret surveillance of Americans last night after reports that his Administration has covertly collected domestic phone records of tens of [...]

2006-05-10

The Times of London has this interesting piece today about a 14 month old  leukemia patient in the Palestinian Authority who is unable to receive adequate treatment for their cancer due to the terrorist group Hamas having been elected to run the PA. Of course, the lesson here is that actions have consequences. The Palestinians [...]

An altercation in the Iraqi parliament broke out when a Shiite Muslim’s cell phone went off and played a Shia chant. It’s a little distressing to me that with all the work that still needs to be done as far as putting together a coalition government that something so minor could produce this effect, but [...]

2006-05-09

About 5000 digital x-rays were lost when this hospital’s hard drives crashed. (via Healthcare blog)
The crash of computer hard drives has vaporized thousands of digital X-ray files, and St. Anthony Hospital officials are busy providing patients with new X-ray information.
The hospital has sent letters to 900 patients to tell them that a hard-drive failure by [...]

Hamas terrorists opened fire on a funeral procession for (a now deceased) terrorist from Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party. While I don’t like to see innocent people getting hurt, it really does my heart good to see thugs going after each other. If we’re lucky, soon there won’t be any left.

Three unarmed bystanders were wounded Tuesday when Hamas [...]

2006-05-08

Yes, given the fact that New England liberals keep re-electing Ted Kennedy no matter how abyssmal his ethical history is, I’d say this article was spot on. And,  it’s really quite sad.
 

Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s decision Friday to return to drug-abuse rehabilitation after a traffic accident appears unlikely to have an impact on his political fortunes, [...]

Yesterday was International Laughter Day, where we were all supposed to celebrate the health benefits of laughter by finding something funny to laugh at.
Today the whole world will be laughing — literally.
The first Sunday in May marks International Laughter Day, a holiday established in 1998. Now, eight years later, cities all around [...]

2006-05-05

As I keep trying to explain to patients, drug counterfeiting is increasing tremedously in its popularity. And, the liklihood of encountering fake medications is increased when one is buying their medications from a  pharmacy outside of the United States. For example, I recently saw a patient who was travelling in India for several months. He [...]

According to this Associated Press piece, doctors are starting to rebel against managed care plans and refusing to participate in them. While it’s still not a huge number, it’s understandable why this is happening.
The proportion of physicians who don’t participate in managed care plans is rising in a development that may signal a trend toward [...]

2006-05-04

While it really would have been more satisfying to me to see Moussaoui executed, that is really what he wanted, because he believed he would go to heaven as a martyr. So, in this situation, life in prison is actually the best sentence we could hope for.
Zacarias Moussaoui claimed victory over America after a jury [...]

2006-05-03

D.J. Drummond has a few choice words to the illegal immigrants who took  part in the rallies on May 1 in an attempt to show America how we can’t possibly live without them.
The lessons for the illegals? Three of them:
1. We do not need you nearly as much as you think. A lot of us [...]

John  Hawkins takes a left wing blogger named Talking Dog to task for spouting nonsense about the tax cuts passed by the Bush administration not doing anything to stimulate the economy.
For example, take this snippet from a post at The Talking Dog about the extension of Bush’s tax cuts:
“The GOP official statement is that it [...]