Sarah Palin Seeks Charity to Pay for Kids’ Braces

Sarah Palin recently went on Fox News and publicly admitted that she could use some help in paying for her kids’ dental expenses. “Do you even know how much a set of braces costs these days?” asked Palin as she made her case for asking folks who impersonate her to help shoulder some of the financial burden of raising kids in today’s economy.

Palin was referring to Julianne Moore, in particular, who is slated to play Palin in the upcoming movie “Game Change.” “If I have to grit my teeth any harder on this one, I’m gonna need to see a dentist myself,” quipped Palin, as she explained that she is tired of impersonators making money off her and not seeing a dime of the profits. “If I got a dime for every Sarah or Bristol Palin joke Kathy Griffin told, I’d be a millionaire,” she said.

Sarah Palin claims that it has been hard to get health and dental insurance ever since she quit her job as governor of Alaska. “Jeez, Louise. When I was governor,” said Palin, “the sky was the limit when it came to public benefits. I loved the fact that I could get top-notch insurance for my entire family paid for by Alaskan taxpayers. Now, I’m not saying that the insurance we get from Fox News is shabby, mind you, but the deductibles and co-pays are killing me.”

Knowing now what she knew then, Palin was asked why she doesn’t give more support to the teachers in Wisconsin who have lost their ability to bargain for better health insurance benefits, Palin said “Because. We don’t live in Wisconsin.”

Advance Care Planning Initiative Kills Trees Not People

The debate over whether advance care planning is actually another way to describe death panels is rearing its ugly head again since regulation started January 1^st. The few folks who are still fuzzy on exactly what the intent of the regulation is are claiming that it will cause some folks who are facing some tough decisions, such as whether or not to continue life-sustaining treatment, to just say the heck with it and have their caregivers pull the plug.

While that is not the case at all with this particular piece of legislation, what most people should be concerned with is how many trees are going to be killed by going forward with the initiative. Yes, I said trees will die and plenty of them, which will probably get the anti-tree huggers folks all riled up with their discourse on hippies and climate change weirdos, but that is a debate for another time.

The point I’m trying to make is that the real losers in any piece of historical legislation are always the trees. Just to start the process, you need bills, and bills are always written with the least amount of brevity because, let’s face it, everyone has an opinion as to what they want the bill to say and Senators and Representatives are no exception. Speaking of which, you don’t have one bill, you have a House bill and you have a Senate bill on the same subject. In the case of this proposed legislation, each of those initial bills counted out at over a thousand pages each.

Then you have the combined bill which finally came out to around 2700 plus pages, give or take a subsection. I’ve worked at law firms all my life, and I’ve seen one draft of a brief of say 30 pages get sometimes up to ten or more re-writes before it is filed with the court. If two or three attorneys are working on the case, each of them has to have a copy of the brief and subsequent drafts. Let’s just say that at the end of the day, it is no longer considered a brief.

But let’s get back to the end-of-life planning phase of the Health Care Reform Bill. To start the process, there are pamphlets to give out at doctors’ offices to inform patients of their rights. One can only imagine the hundreds of man hours it took to come up with just the right wording on that pamphlet and the re-writes to get it just so. Telling someone they have options when it comes to dying can be a tricky business. It’s not something you jot down on a cocktail napkin the night before at Joe’s bar and then go into work the next day and punch it up for your editor’s approval.

After perusing the pamphlet, a patient may make the decision to take advantage of their options, in which case, there are forms to fill out. Consider this. Just filling out the forms to become a patient at a doctor’s office entails filling out and reading about a dozen forms, so imagine the paperwork involved in deciding whether or not you want to continue living when it comes time to make that decision. It would be insensitive to offer less paperwork to allow someone to make a right-to-death decision than it does to visit say a proctologist would it not?

 The doctors who care for the patients have to fill out more paperwork to advise governmental authorities of their involvement with the plan, and, of course, insurance companies will want to be informed of what’s going on, considering the windfall they get if someone decides to cut short their drain on resources to keep them alive.

All of this paperwork should have the trees of the world shaking in their roots. With all the advanced technology we have these days, you still see multiple thousand-page plus bills sitting on legislators’ desks waiting to be read. And we’re not just talking health care, we’re talking about finance reform, DADT regulations being changed, etc. If you’ve been hospitalized lately, you know that it takes the equivalent of time from just after breakfast to the noon hour to sort through all the paperwork the hospital administrators load you down with upon arrival at their facility to make sure they will get their money before your departure. And when you do check out, assuming you didn’t check the end-of-life box on the aforementioned forms, there are inch-thick piles of yet more forms to sign before they wheelchair you out of there.

Next time you want to talk death, take a moment to remember the living things that are giving their lives every day for our propensity to change something for nothing more sometimes than a misspelled word. “The Heath Care Reform Act—Senate Version”…there goes another couple thousand acres of forest.

Seattle Opens First Self-Help Health Clinics in US

SEATTLE, Washington – A group of enterprising doctors today were granted a license by the State Board of Medical Examiners in Washington State to open the first of what they hope to be many self-help walk-in clinics in America.

Based on the concept of “been there, done that” but in a more professional sense, the doctors came up with a plan that they say will revolutionize the way people are treated for minor mishaps.  The doctors claim that most people nowadays know their way around the internet pretty well. There are hundreds if not thousands of “check your symptoms” sites for them to go online and follow a series of questions to determine what may be ailing them. The doctors also claim that people are much more savvy when it comes to self-diagnosing and treating themselves with over-the-counter and existing prescribed medications, and that those same people would benefit from coming into a clinic and getting a confirmation or denial of their course of action.

“That is where we come in,” claims Dr. Stanley Morgenstern, the brainchild who came up with this most unique approach to treating those who cannot afford quality medical care but who need the ‘clinic’ experience to get well.

“I was seeing more and more patients who would ask me about this treatment or that treatment that they had read up on the internet and in more than one instance I noticed that what they were spouting to me had some truth in it.” Morgenstern said he then had several conversations with some colleagues over a multiple golf games and that’s when it hit him. “Hey, these people can follow directions. We’ll help them out and not charge them a fortune just to see a guy in a white coat do what they can do for themselves,” said Morgenstern, and that is how “Self-Check Clinics” was born.

The concept is going to be quite simple. People do not need an appointment to go into the clinic and register to ‘consult’ with a computer doctor. Once seated before a computer screen, they will be prompted automatically to fill in their name and a brief medical history and state any existing conditions they have as well as medical problems they are having at present. They will also be prompted to report any and all drugs they are taking, whether prescription, over-the-counter, or illegal. They will also be able to slip their arm into a blood pressure cup and have their blood pressure as well as temperature and heart rate readings taken automatically.

The screen will then come on asking them what their major complaint is. Dr. Morgenstern claims that these clinics will only take patients who have minor complaints, such as grinding headache, insomnia, flu other non life-threatening medical issues. Several times throughout the screen process the computer will prompt the patient to go on with the PROCEED prompt. If the computer gets to a point at any time where it senses the patient may have a much more serious problem, it will show a STOP prompt and will advise the patient to immediately see a doctor.

Some of the PROCEED prompts will look like this:

PROCEED: TO DRUG COUNTER

PROCEED: TO PICK UP YOUR DIAGNOSIS

PROCEED: TO CHECK OUT AND PAY

Some opponents of the new clinics are making their voices heard loud and clear that this is a horrible idea which will lead to misdiagnosis causing more serious medical conditions in the people who use these clinics. Dr. Morgenstern disagrees. “People have options all the time in life,” said Morgenstern. “I’ll give you a for instance. Most people suffering mild chest pains will first think they are having a heart attack. This is normal to think this way as that is location of the heart. However, nine times out of ten, it is just heart burn. Sure, they could just go over to the drug store and pick up something to ease the discomfort, but with all those products on the shelf, which one do they choose? Tablets? Time-release capsules? Liquids? It can get pretty confusing. Our clinics will help them sort out their needs from Mylanta to Pepcid. That is just one of the many things we can do for them. They will walk out of a clinic better informed of their condition and feel proud that they took part in a positive health plan for a change.”

Morgenstern continued, “Would they like to have the money to see a real doctor? Sure, maybe, but until they do, they get charged a little less for almost basically the same treatment. It’s a win-win hands down.”