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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (98405)	2/6/2007 12:09:51 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 362638

Ting, Tang, Walla Walla Bing Bang

To: SiouxPal who wrote (98405)	2/6/2007 12:32:38 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 362638

Hey, remember when I told you that, if you ever showed up in my hospital, the best thing I could do for you would be to get you transferred out hellafast? Well, I've decided we can keep you if you come in with a knife in your chest. I am in awe of what 2 of our surgeons (and I should include the ER doc) just did, and I say that as the son of a surgeon. We had this guy come in thru ER the other nite. Don't know all the whys and wherefores, but this guy chugged a bottle of wine, (cuz his wife didn't feel like a glass, I think). Then, he went into the kitchen, got a big knife, and went outside. Proceeded to stab his elf several times. (Elf died, but that wasn't good enuf for him.) We heard, that, at the end, he simply left the knife in his bod, and then began to bang himself against a wall. OK, so he comes into ER with this knife sticking out of his breastbone. Gets whipped off to OR really fast; I'm not even sure they bothered with X-rays. They open his belly to visualize the knife, and than with extreme caution, got it out, without starting any new bleeding. Then they started on his belly, but, once they got the blood sucked out, couldn't find a source for the flowing blood, so they cracked the chest. At first, just looked like the pericardium, the sac around the heart, was filled with blood, so they cut a window in it to drain it. (Unchecked, by itself, with no other events going on, cardiac tamponade can kill.The sac is so filled with blood that the heart gets squeezed, and blood flow both in and out gets impaired). Uh, oh. Squirt squirt...the heart had a 10mmcut. So, one doc plays Dutch Boy at the Dike, and the other sews up the hole. May have been 2. Now, this was all done with a beating heart. We don't have a bypass machine; they couldn't stop the heart to work. And, I'll bet neither has worked on a heart since they were residents. They bring honor to their profession. Ain't a hospital in the country that could have done any better.

To: SiouxPal who wrote (98405)	2/6/2007 7:49:23 AM
From: Ron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 362638

Edwards Details His Health Care Proposal By JOHN M. BRODER WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — John Edwards proposed a detailed plan on Monday to provide health care coverage to the 47 million Americans who now go without, becoming the first major presidential candidate to do so. Mr. Edwards’s plan is ambitious and expensive, adding as much as $120 billion a year to the nation’s health care bill. Money for the proposal would come from increased taxes on well-to-do families, from new fees to be paid by companies that refuse to provide health insurance for their workers and through steps to streamline the delivery of health services. Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, was the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee in 2004. The Edwards plan is a pastiche of ideas that have been introduced at the state and federal levels, including some that have been derailed by opposition from business groups, doctors and health insurers. Mr. Edwards, in an interview on Monday, described the American health care delivery system as dysfunctional and said that incremental steps would not cure it. “This proposal embraces the concept of shared responsibility to provide universal health care,” he said. The plan would be partly financed by eliminating tax cuts for households earning more than $200,000 a year, cuts that Congress approved in the Bush administration. Mr. Edwards said he would also offset the program’s cost by using the estimated $15 billion in capital gains taxes that go uncollected each year by requiring brokerage houses to report capital gains from taxpayers’ stock sales to the Internal Revenue Service, just as interest and dividend income is reported now. Mr. Edwards also said that billions of dollars could be saved by making the health system more efficient and investing more in preventive care. The Edwards plan would provide tax credits or subsidies to low-income families who cannot afford health insurance, expand Medicare and the federal program of health care for children, and create a federal health insurance agency that could become the basis for a single-payer system that would eventually do away with private health insurance. Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies the American health care system, praised Mr. Edwards, saying he was the first candidate in the 2008 presidential race to offer a credible and comprehensive plan to cover the uninsured. But Mr. Altman also said the plan faced high practical and political hurdles. “This is a plan that borrows from different approaches in an attempt to cut through the paralysis in Washington between left and right for many years,” he said. “None of these plans are easy or without issues that others can attack you on.” Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, Mr. Edwards’s two most prominent rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, have not yet released detailed health care plans and declined to comment on the Edwards proposal. One provision of the Edwards proposal certain to draw fire is a requirement that companies provide health insurance for all workers or pay 6 percent of their payrolls into a government fund to buy insurance for them. This type of “play or pay” program was an element of former President Bill Clinton’s failed 1994 health care plan that was shaped in large part by Mrs. Clinton. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger included a similar mandate for employers in his universal health care proposal for California residents. The plan by Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, calls for employers who do not provide health coverage to pay 4 percent of their payrolls into a government health insurance fund. The National Federation of Independent Business, a powerful lobby that represents small-business owners, said such mandates amounted to a job-killing tax on small companies. “Health care mandates are a nonstarter for our members,” said Stephanie Cathcart, a spokeswoman for the federation. Mr. Edwards also proposed creation of regional health insurance markets, to use the purchasing power of millions of consumers to drive down health insurance premiums. The concept is similar to that in Mrs. Clinton’s 1994 plan to create health insurance purchasing alliances. Mr. Edwards’s proposal would also strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to monitor new drugs after they reach the market, a provision generally welcomed by experts. But it also includes restrictions on drug companies’ advertising directly to consumers, which is vigorously opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. nytimes.com Now, let's see what the others come up with. This is interesting.