WhackyNation

Now that the alarms have gone out coast to coast, the people who watch the American diet are devoting much more time to putting the heat on adults to tighten their belts literally and to watch their calories, or else.

Foremost in the fight against obesity in the population is the venerable American Heart Association and all its members across the nation. They aren’t kidding. They have put the screws to us chubby adults in particular — adults who believe unwisely that calories should be swallowed, not counted.

If you’re more than a few pounds overweight these days, you had better pay attention to the advice of the Heart Association, its doctors, and its nurses and workers wherever you are, because, if you’ll pardon the expression, what they have to tell us carries a lot of weight.

For many months now, the association has been saying that we shouldn’t take in any more cholesterol in a single day than you’ll find in one egg. And they are also saying that we should absorb no more salt in a single day than would measure any more than a level teaspoon.

We’re told by the medicos and their collaborators in the American Heart Association that the great heat in the new diet is on cutting back those saturated fats that clog the arteries. However, I have a problem with these dictums that are designed to keep the rest of us from an early date with the Grim Reaper.

The warnings, the diets, and stuff like that are fine and, in fact, life-saving. I’ll acknowledge that, and I’m sure you will, too. But I’m afraid that the latest warnings about diet and over-eating are aimed primarily at adults like me. I think the association is too late!

We need to concentrate on better diets for infants and the very young. Bad eating habits that lead us onto the road to obesity and all the serious ailments that come with it are learned in the first few years of life and are actually prompted and promoted by parents and other adults who keep teasing the young children to eat more “because it’s good for you, Dear”!

An overfed baby may draw raves from Uncle Ned and Grandma Mary. But the poor kid is already gearing his muscle, his mind, and his impulses to be a chow hound. A child must think that ramming food down his throat must be the right thing to do, since Mama and Papa, as well as Uncle Joe and Aunt Polly, tell us we should.

So, what the Heart Association and all its workers need to do is to quit pointing an accusatory finger at chubby adults. They should be aiming that finger and their warnings at those who prepare meals for the small fry. I think a “junior heart association” should be created to show new mothers and dads how to hold down the cute double chin in little sweetie pie!

Oh, by the way, you flabby adults who think that food alone is your problem should know that the Heart Association also warns you to cut down on the consumption of alcohol, because it contributes to over-eating. So, my dear chubby friend, put away those bottles of bourbon, scotch, and vodka, ‘cause they’re gonna help put on the pounds.

When I went to bed the other night, I was in a good mood, despite the chilly winds blowing up in a fury and the threat of foul weather. I slept like the proverbial rock. No silly dreams. Nary a sneeze nor a running nose. And no midnight phone calls.

Then, after a great breakfast, courtesy of my loving wife of 65 years, my roommate and I settled down to what I hoped would be a pleasant day. Happy 24 hours ahead. But, no! As I read the morning newspaper, my smile turned to a frown. An article on Page 1 informed one and all that we could expect snow; then, it went on to report that some medical researchers had said it was OK to shovel snow, but “for heaven’s sake, don’t jump out of bed to shovel it, because that could be curtains for your heart.”

Holy Toledo, Batman! That bothered me not a little. However, I calmed down after realizing that I would not be fool enough to “jump out of bed just to shovel snow.” Just as my temper calmed down, another page in the same newspaper announced that other medical researchers said drinking decaffineated coffee could play a role in boosting the bad cholesterol in a person’s body by 7 percent or more!

I said it again: Holy Toledo, Batman! That did it! I had a strong suspicion that my very own doctor had planted that piece in the morning newspaper because he had run out of ideas on how to get to me. After I suffered a stomach ulcer, he took away my cocktail hour. Then he removed the wine list from my dinner menu. He knew I was a chocoholic , so he banned all candy, laughing like this — Hah! Hah! Hah! – as he did it. Sugar and salt, he said, were definite No-Nos. Then, with another series of Hah-Hah-Hahs, he put me on a diet that sounded like Mahatma Ghandi’s fast.

However — and this is the point of this entire essay — he didn’t rule out decaf coffee. In fact, he recommended that I quit drinking regular coffee and turn to decaf whenever I felt the need for a breakfast drink. Of course, the breakfast drinks he really favored were grapefruit juice, orange juice, milk, and stuff like that there.

Ruling out decaf coffee was left, then, to those persnickety medical researchers, who, I muttered with a distinct grudge, probably had a lot of money in hot-chocolate stock or some other non-caffineated products. At any rate, I told myself that I’d be willing to bet a bundle that the researchers secretly drank half a dozen cups of caffineated coffee as they pondered how to phrase their report.

Reading the newspaper article that morning reminded me immediately of the classic story about that old curmudgeon of films, W. C. Fields. He was sitting at a bar one day, when his longtime bartending buddy asked him if he would have the usual double scotch on the rocks.

“Of course,” Fields replied. Then he proceeded to tell the bartender that he had just read in the newspaper that alcohol wrecked the linings of the stomach and the entire inner body, and that it was bound to shorten a man’s life. At that, the bartender scratched his head for a moment, then asked Fields:

“Well, does that mean you’re going to give up drinking alcohol?” Without a pause, Fields grunted and shot back at the bartender:

“Hell, no. It means I’m going to give up reading the newspaper!” (I’m still drinking decaf, 40 years after the doctor died!)

Writing in the NY Post, Robert Goldberg compares the medical treatment Senator Ted Kennedy has received for his brain tumor with the treatment a citizen would receive in the socialized systems he supports such as England’s or Canada’s.

The article entitled ” How ‘Liberal’ Care Would Kill Ted” is an eye-opener.

When will we learn? It has just been disclosed that fake malaria drugs that created havoc in Southeast Asia because they failed to check the disease have now had the same deadly effect in many African nations, including Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Kenya.

The disclosure was made by an organization called Africa Fighting Malaria, described as a prominent health-advocacy group by the Associated Press. One would have thought that the African nations and the health groups there would have stayed away from the fake drugs used in Southeast Asia. But they didn’t heed the dangers.

According to the Africa Fighting Malaria organization, a sampling of the fake drugs two years ago revealed that more than half the malaria drugs being used were substandard and ineffective in preventing the disease or healing the thousands who were afflicted with an alarming death rate.

Then, just recently, medical experts in Africa tested 195 packs of malaria drugs purchased at private pharmacies and discovered “that a third didn’t contain enough active ingredients or did not dissolve quickly enough to work,” as the Associated Press reported.

The medical team disclosed that “just a third of the packets contained artemisinin, the newest anti-malarial drug from China. Last year, the World Health Organization asked drug companies to stop selling it, except in multi-drug cocktails. Why the W.H.O.’s warning wasn’t heeded in the African nations is a mystery.

The medics also said that “nearly half the drugs made in Africa — assuming their packaging was legitimate — failed the tests. So did a third of those made in Asia.” This has the makings of an outrageous worldwide misuse of so-called malaria “cures,” and it should stir worldwide anger and action.

The most important action should be the restoration of DDT, the miracle pesticide that had begun to eliminate malaria throughout the world in the middle of the last century, until the misguided environmental extremists forced political action that halted the use of DDT on swamplands and all other areas with mosquito infestations.

I must say it once again. Rachel Carson and her terribly inaccurate book, Silent Spring, and all the environmental extremists who used it in their campaign to block the use of DDT are guilty of genocide. Malaria was killing 3,000,000 people a year, mostly children, before DDT was applied to the swamplands.

In a short time, DDT brought the annual death rate from malaria down to just a few hundred and would have eliminated the disease totally in time, if the extremists had not inflicted politicos worldwide with their anti-DDT messages. As soon as DDT was banned, the malaria death rate rose again quickly to the 3,000,000-a-year figure. What a tragedy!

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has done so much to combat AIDS and other diseases in Africa, should adopt as its No. 1 order of business a new movement to restore DDT as a desperately needed pesticide to end the malaria scourge.

I am surprised that a recent medical report concerning a national calamity program that would go into effect in the event of a flu pandemic or other type of disaster has not attracted much public attention, nor, for that matter, greater attention from the print and broadcast news media.

It certainly attracted my attention, and for good reason. As reported almost unwillingly by the Associated Press, a task force of experts from universities and colleges, military and government agencies, and various medical groups issued a blueprint for action to be followed if a health-care disaster should hit — like the deadly influenza epidemic of 1917 and 1918 that took so many lives.

Why am I deeply interested? First, I remember my parents’ description of the wagonloads of bodies being hauled through the streets of Cleveland (and other cities) to the cemeteries for burial in the ’17-’18 disaster. Of course, their description came a few years later, when I was old enough to understand.

I was born in January, 1919, at the very tail end of the epidemic, and my parents protected me from anyone with the slightest signs of the flu. What a terrible experience that must have been for those who were old enough to understand — and old enough to be susceptible to the deadly virus.

I can remember my Mom shaking her head even four or five years later as she said something like, “Never again. It must never happen again.” Well, now the doctors and other experts are telling us that it could happen again, and they have formulated a frightening plan of action — or inaction, as it might be — to meet a new flu disaster.

The second reason I am deeply interested by the medical report is that I am one of those persons who would be treated last, if at all, by the medicos when and if a new flu pandemic should strike across America. According to the report, hospitals and other medical groups would treat men and women over 85 last or maybe not at all in an emergency.

I don’t mind saying I didn’t feel at all comfortable with that announcement. In addition, others in the “last” group to be treated also will include “those with severe trauma, those who have been severely burned and are older than 60, those mentally impaired or with Alzheimer’s, and those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease, or poorly controlled diabetes.”

Let me tell you, it doesn’t feel comfortable to know that you will be all but ignored in the event of a national pandemic. Of course, I would willingly want to see babies, children, and young people treated before me — but it’s a shocker to be told in advance that treatment just may not get to you, after all.

Maybe the public will join with me in asking why the medicos couldn’t at least issue preliminary directions for those in the “last” group to care for themselves in the event of a national pandemic. Surely this group — and those who care for them — should have instructions to follow in such an event.

For me, at the age of 89, it’s almost as if the fates missed me by a month the first time around but will make up for it at the tail end of my life span. See you in church!

Are you one of those misinformed Americans who believes the United States should adopt Canada’s system of socialized medicine? Well, you obviously haven’t read nor heard of the thousands of Canadians who have to come to the U.S. for medical services because they can’t get into the crowded doctors’ offices and hospitals north of the border.

Maybe this report from Toronto’s Globe and Mail, relayed by the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, will open your eyes:

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to U.S. hospitals over the past year, in what a doctors’ group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.

The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units. Specifically, 80 B.C. women have been sent to U.S. hospitals since April 1, 2007; in Ontario, 28 have been sent since January of 2007, according to figures from the respective health ministries.

The parade of pregnant or seriously ill Canadians crossing the border into the U.S. goes on and on, and still some of our Socialist-minded Americans keep crowing about the advantages Canadians “enjoy” with their government-run medical system. That parade includes a growing number of Canadian doctors who have moved their practices from Canada to the U.S. because of the long lines of patients seeking treatment up there.

This quotation from Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, is significant:

The problem is due to bed closings that took place a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative, and too few staff. Neonatologists are very stretched right now. We’re so stretched, it’s kind of dangerous.

“Dangerous” is right! When are the Canadians going to see the light and realize that their venture into socialized medicine has been a failure? If the present trend keeps up, most of their doctors and other medical help will have crossed the border and become part of our fine health system.

In a facetious mood, Taranto added this tongue-in-cheek comment:

Read between the lines, and you realize this is a sinister Canadian plot to take over America. Canada’s military is no match for ours, so the crafty Canucks are using infancy instead of infantry to carry out their imperial designs.

Think about it. Canadian officials send women across the border, smuggling in ‘anchor babies’ cleverly disguised as clumps of tissue. The women give birth inside the U.S., which means their Canadian offspring are entitled to U.S. citizenship. As these ‘children’ grow and mature, they receive instructions from their masters in Ottawa about how to undermine American culture.

Before you know it, your kids are stuffing themselves with liters of back bacon, downing kilogram after kilogram of Crown Royal and Labatt Blue, and belting out ‘God Save the Queen,’ as they watch hockey on television.

Taranto may have been kidding, but it seems there is more than a kernel of truth in his warning about Canadians “taking over” the U.S. That’ll be the day!

Like many other observers, I have often been severely critical of European countries for one reason or another, but I have found a reason at last to applaud them for a change — and it is a change I have long hoped to see come about in America. Perhaps it finally will, with an outburst of common sense in the federal government.

The change in Europe has been reported by the Washington Post, and it makes a lot of common sense. It involves action principally in France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain to bring the force of law to bear on the fashion industry, fashion magazines, and any other medium that promotes thinness, extreme dieting, and other habits that result in anorexia and bulimia, leading to death in many cases.

According to the Post,

“The French National Assembly approved unprecedented legislation that would make the promotion of extreme dieting a crime punishable by up to two years in prision and fines of up to $47,000.” One French authority estimated that “as many as 40,000 French people, mostly young girls and women, suffer from anorexia.”

Also, according to the Post,

“Spain has banned models with less than a specified body-mass index. Italy has barred girls younger than 16 from its runways and started requiring all models to present health certificates proving they do not suffer from eating disorders.

‘New laws in Britain require models with anorexia or bulimia to prove they are being treated for the disorders before they can participate in London Fashion Week next September.”

The French government’s action has already resulted in positive action. France’s fashion industry has agreed to and signed a pact that commits it to a program to combat anorexia. That program will promote “healthy body images in advertisements and on Paris runways, although the agreement is nonbonding and sets guidelines, rather than issuing requirements.”

It has been estimated that cases of anorexia and bulimia in the U.S. far exceed the 40,000 figure in France. So do the number of deaths related to those eating disorders. It remains for Congress to recognize the need to take action. That action should be aimed at fashion and other magazines, newspapers, and television networks and stations.

In addition to Congress, the medical profession, psychiatric associations, dance studios, and many other agencies should join the fight to banish excessive dieting and the glorification of slimness. As already noted, young girls should be the primary target, but some boys and young men in dance companies are victims of the dieting craze, too.

Of course, the actions in European countries were bound to elicit the protests and opposition of the fashion industry, fashion magazines, and some other quarters on the grounds that government has no business making anti-dieting rules. But the death toll has grown so large in Western countries that governmental action is a “must.”

It might also be a good idea for the schools to include courses detailing the deadly effect of excessive dieting and the habit many bulimic girls have of forced vomiting after meals to eliminate the food. Maybe religious organizations should also join the movement to eliminate anorexia and bulimia.

I’ve encountered so many unforgettable people and incidents in my years as a newspaper columnist and editor, critic-at-large, and TV/Radio commentator that it is difficult to categorize them by their importance and special significance. But there is one that is indelibly imprinted on my mind and will be there forever. It began with a letter from a woman who wrote to me while I was serving as a TV commentator.

Throughout my years as a newsman, it’s been hard to startle me. But this letter alarmed me, because the writer said she was preparing to kill herself and that, in doing so, she might take others with her, although she did not identify who the “others” could be. My immediate thought was that I hoped the “others” did not include children. Now, I knew from experience that most suicide threats, if not all of them, are simply cries for help and that the person involved really hopes someone will appear to dissuade them from the deed. But this letter was so well written that it seemed to me to be more than a threat of suicidal intent.

The letter writer said she had been a mental patient — as so many of them are — and had once nearly killed her own child. She also said she had no family nor friends and that she had just recently lost her job. Her husband had died years ago and her two children were being cared for by others who were miles away. She didn’t explain how she came to be separated from her daughters nor if she had divorced before her husband died.

The woman said she was about to destroy herself, but she provided me with no name nor an address, leaving me virtually helpless to act. But I knew instinctively what I had to do. I took her case to the Crisis Clinic and its psychiatrists. With their advice, I tried to reach the woman with a direct appeal on a KIRO-TV newscast, since there was no return address on her letter. Since she had written directly to me, I hoped she was a regular listener and that I might reach her with a telecast.

The producer of the newscast gave me a good spot up front, and I made my appeal directly to her, telling her that I and many others at the station cared deeply about what happened to her. I told her over the air that help was immediately available to her at the Crisis Clinic or some other psychiatric facility and that I would like to talk to her.. It was important to buy time, but I didn’t tell her that.

It worked! Two days later, she called me at the station and, in a quiet but deeply troubled voice, told me she had taken my advice and that she had sought professional treatment and was on her way to a mental-health clinic. I remember saying a quick prayer of thanks to heaven for a life I hoped had been saved. I never heard from her again, but a friend at the Crisis Clinic told me that a woman fitting the letter writer’s stated case had been in, had received psychiatric care, and appeared to be dissuaded from any thoughts of suicide. My friend said he was quite certain that she would never again be suicidal.

I have related her story, as I have on several other occasions, with the fervent hope that other similarly troubled minds with intentions of suicide will be encouraged to seek help. Most importantly, I’d like to reach those families who have a young person with disturbed behavior who needs attention — before it’s too late.

The rate of teen-age suicides has never been higher. We must do all we can to bring it down or eliminate the act altogether. If you’re reluctant to seek private professional advice, call the Crisis Clinic or one of the many Mental Health Clinics in your area. Mental illness is a curse ONLY if you and I do nothing about it.

A cancer study published by the reputable New England Journal of Medicine has ignited a national controversy because it has been discovered that the study was funded in part by a prominent cigarette-manufacturing firm, the Liggett Group. The study purports to alleviate the chronic condition of lung cancer by promoting widespread CT scans (popularly known as Cat Scans) to warn smokers early on.

As could have been expected, many scientific critics have contested the conclusions drawn by the study and have severely criticized publication of such a study by a company that has profited immensely from cigarette sales. In effect, the conclusion made by those who conducted the study is that you can go on smoking cigarettes as long as you continue to have Cat Scans done — a ridiculous conclusion.

To better understand the chicanery of the entire enterprise, it is necessary to know that the study was promoted by a rather obscure charity called the Foundation for Lung Cancer:  Early Detection, Prevention, and Treatment.

At this time, it is not possible to predict the outcome of the controversy and how legitimate scientists will act to refute the study and punish the Liggett entrepreneurs. But it certainly isn’t the first time that a selfishly interested firm has hidden its promotion of a so-called “scientific study.”

Cat Scans are extremely expensive. I should know. I’ve had several of them already as my dedicated physician has successfully used them in my case to track laparoscopic surgery that was utilized to heal and apply a stent graft to an aortic aneurysm that once threatened to erupt and end my life.

Earlier on, another bright surgeon successfully healed an intestinal problem, then took me aside and said to me: “I have a bit of advice for you: Do you want me to go on taking care of you or do you want to consult your nearest undertaker? Quit smoking.”

That was many years ago. Frightened by the surgeon’s remark, I quit smoking, and I am alive today because of his advice. Having said all that, I can add that, if you are a steady cigarette smoker, the way to save your life is to quit smoking altogether, not to rely on Cat Scans for warnings — as the Liggett Group meant to advise.

The Liggett case, which I prefer to call a scientific “scandal,” should be a strong message to Congress that it’s about time it recognize the danger of cigarette or cigar smoking and to outlaw tobacco. Now I realize that is a tall order, given the fact that so many members of Congress are from tobacco growing and selling states.

But a ban on the tobacco industry would save many more lives than Cat Scans for the entire population ever could. Such a ban should include stopping tobacco imports from other nations. Isn’t saving American lives worth such action?

In the present boring, repetitive, and often embarrassing presidential campaign, we hear principally on the Democratic side that Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are constantly repeating the promise that they are dedicated to the spirit of “change” in the federal government.

Obama is banking his entire campaign on the elusive word. And just exactly what are the changes he would make in the presidency if the voters put him in the White House? Don’t expect the Liberal minions in the nation’s print and broadcast news media to help define what Obama’s so-called “changes” will be, so I will do it for them.

Whether it’s health care, education, the economy, or any other aspect of American life, Obama promises he will bring changes, and his proposals have a very familiar ring to them. Primarily, his changes will involve no changes at all but, simply, the increased growth of Big Government and Uncle Sam’s involvement in every aspect of your life.

Ditto Hillary. The language both candidates are using daily in their campaigns is quite understandable because it is merely a repeat of the Socialist legislation that originated with FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. It says, in effect, “don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen, the federal government will take care of you and run your life, whether you like it or not.”

Take the health-care issue, for example, which both Obama and Clinton have hammered again and again. Like it or not, both of them will force a massive governmentally controlled health-care program on every living soul in America, regardless of their age and circumstance.

Don’t worry about paying for the government-sponsored health-care program. “The other guy” will pay the tax burden to support health-care for everybody. Neither Hillary nor Barack has learned from the tottering Canadian example that government-run health care just doesn’t work.

They refuse to accept the fact that a great many Canadians come to the U.S. for their serious surgeries or other serious health problems. Why do they do so? Simply because the doctors, hospitals, and clinics in Canada are so overwhelmed with patients who don’t have serious health problems that the Canadians have no choice but to cross the border.

The irony of the entire situation is that, when Canadians get their operations or other treatments in the U.S., they return to Canada and get paid for surgeries or treatments they go in the good ole U.S. of A.! Some national health program that is, eh? In fact, Canada, like most European countries, offer clear proof of the monstrosity that government-subsidized medicine has become.

Concerning Obama, in particular, have you noticed that he sounds more like FDR did in his heyday than FDR did? Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you see my point. Change? What Obama and Clinton want to do is go back to the same old Socialist dogma preached by FDR, LBJ, and other Democratic presidents.

I am deathly afraid that if either Barack or Hillary wins the presidency, his or her insistence on “change” that is not change at all will finally push America toward the goal of total Socialism — something the Democrats have been yearning for since the early days of the New Deal. Will Americans awake in time to avoid that terrible denouement?

It goes without saying that it is vitally important to be physically fit, to exercise frequently, and to eat sensibly. But I think the experts on dieting have gone way too far with their mania for narrow waists. So have the news media, magazines, advertising agencies, the fashion industry, the movie industry, and television.

The national dance is now aerobics, and the only math many people learn and use is counting calories. A nationally recognized pediatrician who is acknowledged to be an expert on proper diets for young and old alike has told us what we have always known. Our children, he said, eat too much and exercise too little.

I wish the medical and food experts in our land would decide to talk about the other side of the coin — those individuals who refuse to eat or who have nothing to eat. The first group is made up mostly of teen-age girls in high school and college who are anorexic or bulimic — or both.

Because of the mania for slimness, these girls stop eating altogether or they gorge themselves, then give it all up by inducing vomiting. Nobody tells these girls, but they are seriously ill and do nothing to cure their illness. The terrible truth is that too many of these young anorexics and bulimics go to their graves at an early age.

Then there are those millions in poverty-stricken families, who must think it’s a cruel joke to be told they should eat the right foods! Their problem is economic, rather than medical, but if their condition is not ameliorated by an adequate supply of food, they, too, will suffer the same fate as anorexics.

With reference to anorexia and bulimia, the medical and research professions have tried to come up with a cure, but they have made virtually no progress in that regard. The reason is that the problem needs to be solved by psychiatrists, not medical doctors. Anorexics are, in fact, psychotics, who believe they are always “too fat,” even though a look in a mirror should convince them that they are wasting away.

In recent years, some advances have been made in the treatment of anorexics and bulimics, but much more must be done — not necessarily by psychiatry but by the news media, magazines, films, television, and the fashion industry. These elements in our society insist on exaggerating the importance of “slimness,” dieting, and starving one’s self to be popular.

Perhaps what is needed is a decision by psychiatric sources to appeal to all the news media, the film and entertainment industry, and the fashion industry to start playing down the importance of “slimness” and dieting and start offering sensible, reasonable tips on eating and exercise. It can be done, and it should be done.

If you don’t think the need for a sensible approach is important, you should know that estimates of the number of young people suffering from food disorders has ranged as high as 12 million in the U.S. alone. Since the great majority of those stricken are teens, the potential damage to America’s young generation and the nation’s future is great.

I think the experts, the media and especially the fashion and advertising moguls should get off the backs of the chubby kids and spend more time helping the millions who won’t or can’t eat.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two candidates for the Democratic nomination in the presidential race, have both made statements in their campaigns that would increase Big Government’s expenditures in health care immensely — and simultaneously increase the tax load on all Americans.

If either one of them succeeds in becoming the next President, the nation will be in for a debt that could bankrupt the US. As if to underline that tragic potential, the Associated Press has just reported that the federal government has projected that “by 2017, health-care spending will double to more than $4 trillion a year.”

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “the 6.7 percent annual increase in spending — nearly three times the rate of inflation — will be largely driven by higher prices and an increased demand for care. Other factors in the mix include a growing and aging population. The first wave of baby boomers becomes eligible for Medicare beginning in 2011.”

If that forecast doesn’t scare the hell out of the nation’s taxpayers, nothing will. Big government has been primarily responsible for the ballooning cost of health care, particularly in the field of health services for seniors, but not limited to the elderly population.

In case you haven’t noticed, here’s how the present predicament and the ever-increasing cost of health care has come about in all phases of health care, not for seniors alone. By usurping the authority and administration of private medical practice, as well as clinics and hospitals, the federal government has dictated the cost of all medical services/

As a result, doctors, dentists, pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals have routinely padded their bills for services because they know the feds will meet the increasingly high costs without complaint. After all, why should the doctors and all the others in the medical field protest? Whatever they charge will be paid and has been paid by the government.

That’s why all medical services and particularly those for seniors have multiplied without control over the years. And that’s why I have proposed so many times that health care should be under the control of America’s doctors — and specifically under the control of the American Medical Association.

Does that sound like a contradiction? Of course not. If doctors and hospitals could no longer charge exorbitant amounts because Big Government will guarantee them, they would instantly bring down the cost of medical services. Without doubt, if your doctor or hospital had to send you a bill you had to pay directly, instead of relying on Uncle Sam’s bureaucracy to do so, that bill would be reasonable and much lower than it is now under government controls.

We can be sure that Senators Clinton and Obama would not initiate legislation to get Big Government out of health care. Only a “health revolution” motivated by an angry public can force Congress to get the feds out of the health-care field. It’s one of the important reasons the next President should be a Republican who believes in returning health care and many other services to the private field.

Here’s a short film by Stuart Browning about an Ontario man’s struggle with his government’s failed healthcare bureaucracy after his doctor suspected he might have a brain tumor.  How can anyone watch this film and support any candidate who supports a government-run healthcare system?

The Department of Health will tell Governor Christine Gregoire Thursday that the state must educate the medical and citizen communities about the need to wash hands a lot more often than most people do.  And that’s going to cost money.  How much is not known yet, but lawmakers can expect a spending bill to be dropped in the coming weeks to fund a public relations campaign with a message along the lines of “Use soap and use it now!”

And not just any soap.  Specifically, plain soap, and not soap with anti-biotic or anti-bacterial additives.  It seems, we as a society have overused anti-biotics not just medically but also in agriculture feed products and everyday home products such as anti-bacterial soap.  As a result, some microscopic life-threatening “bugs’ have mutated and grown resistant to anti-biotics.

This information comes from Dr Maxine Hayes who, at Gregoire’s request, organized a scientific panel over the holidays to urgently study and recommend actions that state government might take to help stop the fast growing epidemic of MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus).  MRSA is now responsible for more deaths in the United States than HIV-Aids.  That report will be delivered to the governor Thursday.

MRSA is mostly communicated by skin-to-skin contact and enters the body through a break in the skin.  Since one out of three people are carriers of MRSA (where it colonizes for life in the carrier’s nose), frequent hand washing is the single most effective protection from spreading the disease.

Especially hand washing by doctors, who according to Hayes, are the worst offenders of not washing hands between patients.   Almost 80 percent of MRSA cases are communicated in hospitals.

The panel is recommending a public relations effort to educate the medical community, especially hospital administrators who face a negative incentive provided by Medicare.  Starting this coming October Medicare will stop paying hospitals for the treatment of MRSA if the disease is communicated at the hospital.  Medicare feels hospitals should bear the financial cost since the disease is spread mostly through the fault of poor hygiene procedures in the hospitals.

The panel identified the single best metric for measuring hand washing: measure how much soap is being consumed.  The more soap consumed, the more hand washing.

There is a disturbing trend that MRSA is starting to be spread more in the civilian community.  At risk communities are nursing homes, high school locker rooms, childcare facilities, to name a few.  The panel is recommending public relations efforts to educate these communities as well about the need for better hygiene.

So, for those of you who watch afternoon soaps, be prepared for state-paid public service announcements promoting, you guessed it, more soap.

I recently came across an editorial arguing that capitalism is to blame for high health care costs in America. What frustrated me the most was that it was written by a very educated person (a fellow academic). It is always depressing to see smart people make bad arguments. How are we ever going to find solutions to complex problems when even the intelligent people can’t get it right? As I usual