October 16, 2009
Nurse whistleblowers face jail time for reporting quack to medical board
Health reform: More details emerge on White House-DSCC-industry alliance
Ben Smith has an interesting story in Politico about the alliance between the White House, high-ranking senate Dems, and health care industry lobbyists; a pact that launched a thousand TV spots:
A lot of people wondered why the White House gave the Senate Finance Committee the lead role in crafting health care reform legislation. The Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) would have been a more obvious choice.
I doubt it's a coincidence that Finance Chair Max Baucus's chief of staff, Jon Selib, played a key role in creating the coalition that steered millions of industry dollars into the push for reform. The White House swears there was no quid pro quo. But it goes without saying that if industry is paying to pass reform, industry expects a say in what kind of reform we get. Nobody every has to say "I'll pay for your ads if you kill the pubic option" or anything blunt like that.
At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.Two groups were created in that meeting: Americans for Quality Stable Health Care and Healthy Economy Now. These groups have since run millions of dollars worth of ads advancing the president's health care reform agenda. The pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA is the largest single contributor to the $24 million project, according to Smith.
The role Baucus’s chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina played in launching the groups was part of a successful effort by Democrats to enlist traditional enemies of health care reform to their side. No quid pro quo was involved, they insist, as do the lobbyists themselves.
A lot of people wondered why the White House gave the Senate Finance Committee the lead role in crafting health care reform legislation. The Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) would have been a more obvious choice.
I doubt it's a coincidence that Finance Chair Max Baucus's chief of staff, Jon Selib, played a key role in creating the coalition that steered millions of industry dollars into the push for reform. The White House swears there was no quid pro quo. But it goes without saying that if industry is paying to pass reform, industry expects a say in what kind of reform we get. Nobody every has to say "I'll pay for your ads if you kill the pubic option" or anything blunt like that.
GOP-linked PR flack charged under the PATRIOT Act for air rage
Politico reports that veteran PR flack David Bass, a protege of notorious strategist Frank Luntz, has been charged under the PATRIOT Act for running amok on an aircraft in an altered state of consciousness:
David Bass – the Washington P.R. executive charged with a federal felony for alleged drunken behavior on a flight into Washington Reagan National Airport – says he was “out of it” on allergy medication and did nothing more than demand a glass of wine.Bass told Politico he was out of his mind on Benadryl. Bad luck. Also bad luck that he acted out in front of an FBI agent:
“They refused to serve me wine because they said I appeared drunk,” Bass told POLITICO Thursday morning as news that he’d been charged under the U.S. Patriot Act rolled through Washington.
Police met Bass’s flight when it landed at Reagan. In a sworn affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, FBI Agent David Wiegand said that Bass had appeared drunk and abusive on the flight, demanding alcohol and refusing flight attendants’ orders to sit down.
According to Wiegand, a flight attended “stated that Bass refused to obey the instructions issued by the flight attendants and ‘disrupted everyone’ in as much as he entered the aircraft's galley several times and crawled over the person seated next to him in order to access the overhead storage compartments and the aircraft's lavatory. [The flight attendant] said that Bass’s behavior was so disruptive that [she] moved the passenger seated next to Bass to a different seat.”
Among other things, the affidavit stated that Bass made “mean faces” at flight attendants.
Contrarian Double-X hires sociopath as friendship expert
The self-proclaimed feminist website Double-X shrewdly hired noted sociopath Lucinda Rosenfeld to write its friendship column. This is precisely the kind of fresh, contrarian perspective we've come to expect from the Slate/Double-X brand.
Double-X racks up a lot of hits by hiring anti-feminists to diagnose the ills of contemporary feminism. Retaining a psychopath as a friendship guru is the logical next step.
Before taking the gig at Double-X, Rosenfeld produced a substantial body of anti-friend literature, including a novel about friends who despise each other (the official website even lets you stick pins in a flash voodoo doll!). She's also the author of How to Dump a Friend (2001) and Our Mutual Friend: how to steal friends and influence people (2004). Clearly, she's perfect for the job.
Double-X racks up a lot of hits by hiring anti-feminists to diagnose the ills of contemporary feminism. Retaining a psychopath as a friendship guru is the logical next step.
Before taking the gig at Double-X, Rosenfeld produced a substantial body of anti-friend literature, including a novel about friends who despise each other (the official website even lets you stick pins in a flash voodoo doll!). She's also the author of How to Dump a Friend (2001) and Our Mutual Friend: how to steal friends and influence people (2004). Clearly, she's perfect for the job.
Dr. Dave Gorski reports on a stunning miscarriage of justice: Two nurses face possible jail time because they filed an anonymous complaint against a doctor who was peddling natural remedies out of the ER of their small rural hospital in Kermit, TX.
The quack turned out to be a vindictive quack. When the Texas Medical Board informed Dr. Rolando Arafiles, Jr. that he was under investigation, he lodged a complaint of criminal harassment with the Winkler County Sheriff, who worked tirelessly to unmask the anonymous tipsters:
To find out who made the anonymous complaint, the sheriff left no stone unturned. He interviewed all of the patients whose medical record case numbers were listed in the report and asked the hospital to identify who would have had access to the patient records in question.This is a a caliber of detective work scarcely seen outside of TV cop shows, especially for non-violent, non-crimes like complaining to a medical board. How did Dr. Arafiles get such vigorous policing from the Winkler County Sheriff's Department? Dave wonders if Dr. Arafiles and Sheriff Robert Roberts, Jr. are buddies. I think I found the answer. According to a lawsuit filed by the nurses, Arafiles and Roberts were--wait for it--associates in the herbal supplement business!
At some point, the sheriff obtained a copy of the anonymous complaint and used the description of a "female over 50" to narrow the potential complainants to the two nurses. He then got a search warrant to seize their work computers and found a copy of the letter to the medical board on one of them. [New Statesman]
In theory, the Texas Medical Board allows anonymous tips, but privacy protections are so weak that the sheriff was able to figure out who blew the whistle.
The nurses, Anne Mitchell and Vickilyn Galle, were charged with improper use of official information, i.e., the state alleges that they improperly divulged confidential patient information in their complaint to the medical board. In fact, complaints to the medical board are HIPAA-exempt, which means that the nurses didn't have to get patient permission to share medical information with the board.
Dr. Arafiles was familiar with the workings of the Texas Medical Board, having already been disciplined in 2007. That time, the board fined him $1000 for failing to properly supervise a nurse practitioner and ordered him to educate himself on ethics, medical records and the treatment of obesity.
The Texas Nurses' Association has set up a legal defense fund for the Kermit Two, which you can support by clicking here. Dave is encouraging his readers to write polite letters to the Wikler County District Attorney's Office protesting the charges.
Drug policy FAIL: LSD for cluster headaches
Newsweek has an interesting feature on LSD as an experimental therapy for cluster headaches. Cluster headaches are excruciatingly painful and often resistant to existing treatments. Anecdotal reports suggest that LSD can help sufferers.
Unfortunately, US drug laws preclude clinical trials. LSD is a so-called Schedule 1 drug, which means that the Drug Enforcement Agency has decreed a priori that it has no medical application.
The DEA is a law enforcement agency dedicated to drug prohibition. It has neither the expertise nor the inclination to evaluate the medical potential of controlled substances dispassionately. What if the DEA is wrong about the medical value of LSD? We'll never find out because it's illegal to do research on Schedule 1 drugs.
Update: In theory it's possible to apply for waivers to study Schedule 1 drugs, but according to Newsweek, "[t]hese drugs are so restricted by the DEA that researchers at the country's top universities find it almost impossible to get the permission and funding necessary to study the substances in humans." Legal clearance for a large scale clinical trial is inconceivable in the current climate.
Unfortunately, US drug laws preclude clinical trials. LSD is a so-called Schedule 1 drug, which means that the Drug Enforcement Agency has decreed a priori that it has no medical application.
The DEA is a law enforcement agency dedicated to drug prohibition. It has neither the expertise nor the inclination to evaluate the medical potential of controlled substances dispassionately. What if the DEA is wrong about the medical value of LSD? We'll never find out because it's illegal to do research on Schedule 1 drugs.
Update: In theory it's possible to apply for waivers to study Schedule 1 drugs, but according to Newsweek, "[t]hese drugs are so restricted by the DEA that researchers at the country's top universities find it almost impossible to get the permission and funding necessary to study the substances in humans." Legal clearance for a large scale clinical trial is inconceivable in the current climate.
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