TG-1 * Transgallaxys Forum 1

Pages: [1]

Author Topic: Doctors campaigning for single-payer national health plan  (Read 515 times)

ama

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 1116
Doctors campaigning for single-payer national health plan
« on: March 14, 2008, 11:23:52 AM »

[*QUOTE*]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Consumer Health Digest #08-11
March 11, 2008

Consumer Health Digest is a free weekly e-mail newsletter edited by
Stephen Barrett, M.D., and cosponsored by NCAHF and Quackwatch. It
summarizes scientific reports; legislative developments; enforcement
actions; news reports; Web site evaluations; recommended and
nonrecommended books; and other information relevant to consumer
protection and consumer decision-making.

###

Quackwatch and Dr. Barrett need your help.

If you haven't already done so, please read
http://www.ncahf.org/digest07/07-48.html and send a contribution to
support our work.

###

Doctors campaigning for single-payer national health plan.

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) has initiated an
Internet-based "open letter" campaign urging Presidential candidates
to implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance
system. http://www.pnhp.org/ This is a system in which a single
public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but
delivery of care remains largely private. PNHP states:

**America's current health care system is failing, denies care to
many in need, and is expensive, error-prone, and increasingly
bureaucratic.

**Private insurers waste health dollars on overhead, underwriting,
billing, sales and marketing, as well as huge profits and exorbitant
executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly
administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy.

**The resultant waste consumes about 31% of Americans' health dollars

**Only a single-payer system can eliminate the high corporate
overhead, excess profits, and enormous inefficiencies in our current
system.

**Reform could realize administrative savings of $350 billion
annually-enough to cover the uninsured, and to eliminate co-payments
and deductibles for all Americans.

**Reform could also slow cost increases by fostering coordination and planning.

Single payer reform has been endorsed by the American College of
Physicians and appears to be favored by the majority of Americans.
http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/events/state_of_healthcare/snhcbrief2008.pdf
PNHP is primarily seeking physician signers for its open letter but
is also urging all health care professionals and other concerned
citizens to add their name via
http://www.pnhp.org/letter/letter.php#form About 1,700 physicians
have signed so far.

###

FDA"hides" old warning letters.

The FDA Web site has made several changes that greatly decrease the
visibility of warning letters about products and safety violations.
Letters issued before January 2007 have been moved into a new
directory so that all incoming links to them from other sites have
been broken. This directory is also coded so that search engines
cannot index its contents. Searching for warning letters on the FDA
site is difficult because (a) the newer and older letters have to be
searched separately, (b) the search page for pre-2007 pages in not
easy to find. (c) letters are moved to the archive folder at
irregular intervals, and (d) many of the older letters are in PDF
format, which means that they will be found only if the searcher uses
specific keywords. The agency as become extremely slow in responding
to Freedom of Information Act requests. In August 2005, Dr. Barrett
asked for a document related to a warning letter. If one exists,
finding it would take only a few minutes. Barrett's Congressman has
asked twice for the document, and FDA staff members have phoned
Barrett four times during the past year to find out whether he still
wants it. But it still has not come. Bloomberg News has reported that
in May 2007, the agency had 20,365 unfilled requests, including 1,924
that were more than three years old and that the the number of
workers filling requests has been cut even though the backlog had
been steadily rising. [Blum J. Drug, food risks stay secret as
inquiries to U.S. FDA pile up. Bloomberg News, June 19, 2007]
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a91FU255oQBM

###

British "psychic" told to tone down claims.

The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered a woman
who does business under the names "Zara" and "Freya" to stop claiming
that she is superior to other "psychics" and can cast spells that
will "solve all problems" and improve the health, wealth, love life,
happiness, or other circumstances of her clients. In response to an
ASA complaint, the woman stated that (a) she harnessed positive
energy and provided a focus through which her clients could instigate
positive changes in their lives; (b) there is a solution for every
problem, if people look for it; and (c) her role was to empower
people to find solutions for themselves. The ASA concluded that these
claims were unsubstantiated. [ASA Adjudication: Zara, 12 March 2008]
http://www.casewatch.org/foreign/asa/zara.shtml

###

Doubt cast on "brain repair" practitioner.

CBC has published an investigative report about Claudia
Gorden-Pomares, who describes herself as a neuroscientist and runs
the Brain Repair Institute out of her home in Alberta, Canada.
Gorden-Pomaris claims she can sure autism and epilepsy and correct
various other brain-related problems. Her alleged treatment, which
she calls Monitored Multi-cortical Activities for Additional Pathways
and Synapses, relies on scents and other sensual stimulation to get
the brain to repair itself. Her protocol, which costs $5,000 for the
first six months and $3,000 for subsequent six-month periods, is
claimed to produce "98% success" in from three months to three years.
CBC's investigation concluded that: (a) there is no scientific
evidence that the program works, (b) scientists whom she claims
support her do not back her claims, and (c) universities from which
she claims to have graduated said that they did not issue degrees to
her. [Selling hope: Can this Alberta woman fix the damaged brain? CBC
News, March 3, 2008]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/autism/selling-hope.html

###

Other issues of the Digest are accessible through
http://www.ncahf.org/digest08/index.html. For information about the
National Council Against Health Fraud, see
http://www.ncahf.org/about/mission.html. If you enjoy the newsletter,
please recommend it to your friends.

To help prevent this email newsletter from being filtered out as
spam, please add broadcast-chdigest@ssr.com to your address book or
other "whitelist."  To unsubscribe, send a blank message from your
current e-mail to chdigest-unsubscribe@ssr.com and reply to the
message that asks for confirmation. To change your address,
unsubscribe from your old address and resubscribe by sending a blank
message to chdigest-subscribe@ssr.com
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Board Chairman, Quackwatch, Inc.
Chatham Crossing, Suite 107/208
11312 U.S. 15 501 North
Chapel Hill, NC 27517

Telephone: (919) 533-6009

http://www.quackwatch.org (health fraud and quackery)
http://www.allergywatch.org (under construction)
http://www.acuwatch.org (under construction)
http://www.autism-watch.org (guide to autism)
http://www.cancertreatmentwatch.org (under construction)
http://www.casewatch.org (legal archive)
http://www.chelationwatch.org (chelation therapy)
http://www.chirobase.org (guide to chiropractic)
http://www.credentialwatch.org (under construction)
http://www.dentalwatch.org (guide to dental care)
http://www.devicewatch.org (under construction)
http://www.dietscam.org (under construction)
http://www.homeowatch.org (guide to homeopathy)
http://www.ihealthpilot.org (guide to reliable information))
http://www.infomercialwatch.org (guide to infomercials)
http://www.mentalhealthwatch.org (under construction)
http://www.mlmwatch.org (multi-level marketing)
http://www.naturowatch.org (naturopathy)
http://www.nccamwatch.org (under construction)
http://www.nutriwatch.org (nutrition facts and fallacies)
http://www.pharmwatch.org (under construction)
http://www.ncahf.org (National Council Against Health Fraud)
http://www.chsourcebook.com (consumer health sourcebook)

Editor, Consumer Health Digest
http://www.quackwatch.org/00AboutQuackwatch/chd.html

Donations to help support Quackwatch can be made conveniently through
PayPal or Amazon via
http://www.quackwatch.org/00AboutQuackwatch/donations.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[*/QUOTE*]
Pages: [1]