I want everybody to comment on this.  The cure for the health care Crisis has started. It's called free enterprise. 1.) You can go to Walmart and buy a month's supply of your prescription for $4.00. 2). You can go to a drugstore clinic and get medical care. 3.) You can barter with your doctor if you try. How about some comments from readers on what they have discovered in the free enterprise system of health care?

I hope you realize that you will mired in interminable genealogical and historical research that no one else will care about but is highly important for a reason that only Einstein could appreciate. You will notice that people tend to go to sleep when you tell your latest ancestral tale. I was lucky, I transmitted the sickness to my son, who as a tenured mathematician actually emulated  and invented original techniques, one of which was to interview everyone on his mother's side and write a huge professional genealogical narrative for posterity. Actually, for me, the value of genealogy is encapsulated by the notion of identity.  Just as when we identify with fictional literary or media characters, I identify with each ancestor and then study the historical context of the person. Unfortunately, when I discover their deaths it makes me sad. I persuaded a history teacher that he should have his students do their genealogy, for example, and relate to the times. I muse that I am my great  grandfather Lt. Andrew Jackson Grayson marching up the banks of the Tennessee River at the Battle of Shiloh or my great grandfather Ephraim Hambujer who I boast had 5 wives and 11 children. I tell this to guys asking for GU/sterilization referrals to try to talk them out of it. And I ponder whether I am burdened or blessed with myths and traditions or cerebral disturbances that I don't recognize.  Is there a universal unconscious? Are there archetypal universal myths? What  about instincts? The neurologists say that all is in the neurons and neurotransmitters.  Really? Oh well, I will lean back and be Fiddler on the Roof for a while, I think

I forgot to mention a few other 
pejoratives: how about plutocracy or congressional-industrial complex?  How
about government of by and for crooked corporate managers? I was thinking a
counterfactual thought; suppose the Fortune 500  managers were all jailed
and water-boarded. Picture that in your mind's eye. What would happen to
Western civilization, I wonder. I suppose we would all die of famine and
pestilence. It is entirely possible that the planetary overpopulation of 6.5
billion is corporate-dependent. It's as if there is a secret written
corporate mission statement somewhere that for the sake of profit the planet
must have ever-increasing population growth.  For example, where would the
Mafia be without victims? They would be destitute. Likewise, corporations
need more and more business. I wonder if they have corporate-free countries
anywhere. Cuba? Antarctica? 
Just musing  ------

Viewpoint: Real Preventive Medicine is Around the Corner

“DALLAS--(Business Wire)--

U.S. Preventive Medicine®, the leader in disease prevention services, today

applauded U.S. President Barack Obama’s call for modernizing the health care

system by investing in prevention initiatives aimed at controlling costs and

improving the health of Americans.” (24 March 2009)

What a marvelous idea! All we have to do is to prevent sickness, injury, and death, 
and the cost of medical care will go down. The economy will be saved. I don’t know 
why I didn’t think of this sometime during the last 61 years of my medical practice 
since I escaped from the University of Illinois Medical School.

I must admit, I have been a spectacular failure at curing chronic alcoholism, binge 
drinking, illegal drug usage, bungee jumping, cigarette smoking, chronic obesity, 
gang banging, motorcycle riding without helmets, and promoting the use of automobile 
seat belts, the use of heavy, safe cars with multiple air bags, and the prevention of all
 types of metastatic cancer.

If the President would instruct us old-timers on these matters, maybe the overcharging by 
the medical profession would stop and the national debt would be cured. 
Now that would be what I call preventive medicine.

  I'm trying to figure out this collapse of the economy. If we're broke where is
the trillion dollars to stimulate it? The Congress must be nuts. And Ron
Paul says to end the Fed. Then what does he replace it with?  I had a patient
tell me the other day he's on this earth for such a short time anyway he's
not going to pay any attention.  Remember the movie Network?  Beale said
what you can do is go to the window and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not
going to take this anymore!"  I guess that means don't pay your
taxes.....like the new secretary of the treasury.

The rage now is red wine for long life. One of my kin says "The way our retirement fund has nose-dived it's a really good thing that we DON"T drink red wine because I think we can only afford to live another year or two at this rate!!!!"

Just for the record, it was 17 below last night and will be 22 below tonight in Batavia, Illinois.  It is costing us a fortune to heat the house. Are you really sure there is global warming?  On what planet?

What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?

      The Italian throws the cup and walks away in a fit of rage.
      The Frenchman takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.
      The Chinese eats the fly and throws away the coffee.
      The Russian drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no
charge.
      The Israeli sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese,
buys himself a new cup of coffee and uses the extra money to invent a device
that prevents flies from falling into coffee.
      The Palestinian - blames the Israeli for the fly falling in his
coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the
European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase
explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the
Frenchman, the Chinese, and the Russian are all trying to explain to the
Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian.

I've long been pushing for Al Gore to give back his
Nobel and all his money before he freezes to death this winter. Good thing
he wasn't elected and able to turn off all the autos and coal fueled
electric plants.  See how miracles work? And who turned off the sun spots
anyway? Actually, we need some global warming right now. There's money in
faux religions, isn't there?  I'm planning the next religion. I could use
your help in inventing some dogmatic dogma. Quick, everybody, think of a
name for a money-maker. Saint Gore's Church of the Dogma? Make a web site
for donations....

December 25th will be the annual birthday celebration of the greatest
scientist of all time, Isaac Newton. Merry Newton's Day. I deny that Santa
Claus ever existed. No, I deny that he ever should have been invented. He is
bad for the mind. You think he comes every year because it's good for the
economy or something.  That stuff you got every year was free. Right? You
think  all your goods just fell on you. Well, what happened is that you
increased the national debt before you knew there was one. I bring this up
to mention your nagging little worry  that you are leaving the national debt
to your children and grandchildren. It's true; all of a sudden it's your own
fault.  You think you own this planet. The Indians had it right, about
property. Property  belongs to the Great Spirit.  But we are certain the
world belongs to the living, not to the dead or the ones yet to be. Not to
all the living, but only to those roughly the ages of 30 to 60.  And you
thought you were just getting the hang of it. Well by the time you get the
hang of it,  your time is up. The exam is over and you haven't had a chance
to graduate. And now you realize these callow youths below you think they
are running things.   Nobody really seems to be running this train; we are
all on it for a short ride. Have a nice trip. Merry Newton's Day.

Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Beale: But why me?

Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Program Director: Take 2, cue Howard.

Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

I have at least 7 theories about modern medicine:

1. We are in the Medical Dark Ages until the maturity of gene-based dna
therapy.
2. Some of us have never died yet so the odds statistically are against it.
3. All die of something that was their fault. It's Freudian guilt..
4. Smokers I have known got frequent chest x-rays for the cough. The x-rays
caused their fatal lung cancers.
5. Lots of people die in hospitals. If they would stay away from those
places, they would still be alive.
6. I know patients who have died of placebos.
7. We are all pre-terminal.

 We are all lemmings, marching off a cliff. Consider the patients who pay $107.00 for a $3.00 hospital laboratory test. I am publishing a paper on hospital overcharging elsewhere. We are racing toward Socialism.  It is instructive to read Wikipedia about lemmings, so here goes:

"While many people believe that lemmings commit mass suicide when they migrate, this is not the case. Driven by strong biological urges, they will migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat^[5]. On occasion, and particularly in the case of the Norway lemmings in Scandinavia, large migrating groups will reach a cliff overlooking the ocean. They will stop until the urge to press on causes them to jump off the cliff and start swimming, sometimes to exhaustion and death. Lemmings are also often pushed into the sea as more and more lemmings arrive at the shore. ^[6]

The myth of lemming mass suicide is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. In 1955, Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title "The Lemming with the Locket". This comic, which was inspired by a 1954 National Geographic article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs.^[7] Even more influential was the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness in which footage was shown that seems to show the mass suicide of lemmings. The film won an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.^[8]"

Due to their association with this odd behaviour, lemming suicide is a frequently-used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences. This is the theme of the video game Lemmings, where the player attempts to save the mindlessly marching rodents from walking to their deaths."