NYT: BushCompanies panicked, & related to -->WaPo: Kaiser Kriminals
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Mort Zuckerman
Nov 30, 2008, 5:08:21 AM11/30/08
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NYT: BushCompanies panicked, & related to -->WaPo: Kaiser Kriminals
To: Kathleen <janmu...@earthlink.net>, emcsw...@nasw.org,
zerh...@od.nih.gov, Spin...@yahoogroups.com, kshe...@calea.org,
fit...@gmail.com, patrick.f...@usdoj.gov,
model...@sbcglobal.net, jdr...@nejm.org, let...@courant.com,
Jgerb...@cdc.gov, michae...@po.state.ct.us,
con...@po.state.ct.us, executiv...@nytimes.com, managing-
edi...@nytimes.com, news...@nytimes.com, the-...@nytimes.com,
biz...@nytimes.com, for...@nytimes.com, me...@nytimes.com,
nati...@nytimes.com, dv...@cdc.gov, brigidc...@optonline.net,
tr...@hotmail.com, illino...@aol.com, jle...@courant.com,
tinaj...@yahoo.com, jhorn...@fff.org, thomas...@usdoj.gov,
thoma...@po.state.ct.us, kur...@washpost.com,
georg...@washpost.com, p...@allegorypress.com,
commissi...@po.state.ct.us, FalN...@aol.com,
brans...@comcast.net, vts...@comcast.net, o...@po.state.ct.us,
freet...@charter.net, scott....@po.state.ct.us,
govern...@po.state.ct.us, attorney...@po.state.ct.us,
randall...@usdoj.gov, robert....@yale.edu
Cc: fra...@ucia.gov, dr-ahma...@president.ir,
eugener...@washpost.com, hor...@courant.com,
bmi...@newstimes.com, tr...@hotmail.com, rast...@aol.com,
billc...@gmail.com, amcg...@rms-law.com, rjmu...@aol.com,
paulcrai...@yahoo.com, sidney_b...@yahoo.com,
criminal...@usdoj.gov, karla.d...@usdoj.gov,
christophe...@usdoj.gov, richar...@yale.edu,
harol...@yale.edu, james.p...@yale.edu, inq...@aldf.com,
ly...@idsociety.org
Subject: NYT: BushCompanies panicked, & related to -->WaPo: Kaiser
Kriminals
Date: Nov 30, 2008 5:04 AM
ARTICLE BELOW
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/washington/30labor.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
===============================================
[[This NYT article is related to the "WaPo Kaiser Kriminals" going on
the
offensive (complaint sent yesterday), although I don't know why yet.
They both are related to what's going on in Lyme Land - the
Congressional
hearing and the new IDSA panel. Both investigations are intended to
refer to the Department of Justice to be prosecuted as crime. I can
tell
from my site statistics. These two announcements are related and they
have
to do with "Lyme Disease."
That tells me that the bad guys know they lost the Lyme Wars- which
*I* won, virtually by myself, having solved both aspects of the cryme
single-handedly, except for: 1) The Forschners obtained the Dearborn
booklet
for me (fraudulent testing scheme to set up the RICO on BLOOD), and 2)
the
NCI's and the US Army's Paul Duray - he works for both - having
revealed what
was wrong with the lymphocytes of Chronic Lyme victims. I looked for
years
for a structure of Pam3Cys (OspA), and first found it in a Korean
medical
journal, one not referenced by PubMed.
These articles have to do with both the companies and the "government"
deflecting guilt and trying to get out of paying for the long
term disability of chronic Lyme. Lyme is more costly than AIDS.
The ActionItem, then, is to follow up on the info I gave the CT "US
Attorney"
in 2003. His job would have been to find out how Kaiser became
involved
in New York Medical College (ALDF.com), and why there are Russian
scientists
studying the mechanisms of cyst/spheroplast reversion by Borreliae
there.
As an aside, whenever one says "US Attorney" in Corrupticut, one is
reminded of dirty, drunken, slutty, whoring crimes by the CT
Republicans,
DCF, and their National Gulags RICO. In other words, cops in
Corrupticut
are the worst low-life filth the world has ever known. They
literally
*porked* for "a string of pediatric jails across the country."
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org ]]
================================================
The New York Times
November 30, 2008
Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule,
strenuously
opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much
harder for the
government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to
which workers
are exposed on the job.
The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in
assessing
the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather
and analyze
“industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during
their working
lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy
process of developing
standards to protect workers’ health.
Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay
needed protections
for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.
With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan,
President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the
transition “as
smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from
trying, in
its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.
The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious
rules the Bush
administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal
with issues
as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment.
One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national
parks and wilderness
areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in
deciding
whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered
species.
Mr. Obama and his advisers have already signaled their wariness of
last-minute efforts
by the Bush administration to embed its policies into the Code of
Federal Regulations,
a collection of rules having the force of law. The advisers have also
said that
Mr. Obama plans to look at a number of executive orders issued by Mr.
Bush.
A new president can unilaterally reverse executive orders issued by
his predecessors,
as Mr. Bush and President Bill Clinton did in selected cases. But it
is much more
difficult for a new president to revoke or alter final regulations put
in place
by a predecessor. A new administration must solicit public comment and
supply “a
reasoned analysis” for such changes, as if it were issuing a new rule,
the Supreme
Court has said.
As a senator and a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama sharply
criticized the regulation
of workplace hazards by the Bush administration.
In September, Mr. Obama and four other senators introduced a bill that
would prohibit
the Labor Department from issuing the rule it is now rushing to
complete. He also
signed a letter urging the department to scrap the proposal, saying it
would “create
serious obstacles to protecting workers from health hazards on the
job.”
Administration officials said such concerns were based on a
misunderstanding of
the proposal.
“This proposal does not affect the substance or methodology of risk
assessments,
and it does not weaken any health standard,” said Leon R. Sequeira,
the assistant
secretary of labor for policy. The proposal, Mr. Sequeira said, would
allow the
department to “cast a wide net for the best available data before
proposing a health
standard.”
The Labor Department regulates occupational health hazards posed by a
wide variety
of substances like asbestos, benzene, cotton dust, formaldehyde, lead,
vinyl chloride
and blood-borne pathogens, including the virus that causes AIDS.
The department is constantly considering whether to take steps to
protect workers
against hazardous substances. Currently, it is assessing substances
like silica,
beryllium and diacetyl, a chemical that adds the buttery flavor to
some types of
microwave popcorn.
The proposal applies to two agencies in the Labor Department, the
Occupational Safety
and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health
Administration.
Under the proposal, they would have to publish “advance notice of
proposed rule-making,”
soliciting public comment on studies, scientific information and data
to be used
in drafting a new rule. In some cases, OSHA has done that, but it is
not required
to do so.
The Bush administration and business groups said the rule would codify
“best practices,”
ensuring that health standards were based on the best available data
and scientific
information.
Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of
Commerce, said
his group “unequivocally supports” the proposal because it would give
the public
a better opportunity to comment on the science and data used by the
government.
After a regulation is drafted and formally proposed, Mr. Johnson said,
it is “all
but impossible” to get OSHA to make significant changes.
“Risk assessment drives the entire process of regulation,” he said,
and “courts
almost always defer” to the agency’s assessments.
But critics say the additional step does nothing to protect workers.
“This rule is being pushed through by an administration that, for the
last seven
and a half years, has failed to set any new OSHA health rules to
protect workers,
except for one issued pursuant to a court order,” said Margaret M.
Seminario, director
of occupational safety and health for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Now, Ms. Seminario said, “the administration is rushing to lock in
place requirements
that would make it more difficult for the next administration to
protect workers.”
She said the proposal could add two years to a rule-making process
that often took
eight years or more.
Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of
the House
Committee on Education and Labor, said the proposal would “weaken
future workplace
safety regulations and slow their adoption.”
The proposal says that risk assessments should include industry-by-
industry data
on exposure to workplace substances. Administration officials
acknowledged that
such data did not always exist.
In their letter, Mr. Obama and other lawmakers said the Labor
Department, instead
of tinkering with risk-assessment procedures, should issue standards
to protect
workers against known hazards like silica and beryllium. The
government has been
working on a silica standard since 1997 and has listed it as a
priority since 2002.
The timing of the proposal appears to violate a memorandum issued in
early May by
Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff.
“Except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Bolten wrote,
“regulations to be finalized
in this administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008,
and final
regulations should be issued no later than Nov. 1, 2008.”
The Labor Department has not cited any extraordinary circumstances for
its proposal,
which was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 29. Administration
officials
confirmed last week that the proposal was still on their regulatory
agenda.
The Labor Department said the proposal affected “only internal agency
procedures”
for developing health standards. It cited one source of authority for
the proposal:
a general “housekeeping statute” that allows the head of a department
to prescribe
rules for the performance of its business.
The statute is derived from a law passed in 1789 to help George
Washington get the
government up and running.
The Labor Department rule is among many that federal agencies are
poised to issue
before Mr. Bush turns over the White House to Mr. Obama.
One rule would allow coal companies to dump rock and dirt from
mountaintop mining
operations into nearby streams and valleys. Another, issued last week
by the Health
and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to
charge higher
co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs
provided to
low-income people under Medicaid. The department is working on another
rule to protect
health care workers who refuse to perform abortions or other
procedures on religious
or moral grounds.
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-----Original Message-----
>From: Kathleen <janmu...@earthlink.net>
>Sent: Nov 29, 2008 3:38 PM
>To: emcsw...@nasw.org, zerh...@od.nih.gov, Spin...@yahoogroups.com, kshe...@calea.org,
fit...@gmail.com, patrick.f...@usdoj.gov,
model...@sbcglobal.net, jdr...@nejm.org,
let...@courant.com, Jgerb...@cdc.gov, michae...@po.state.ct.us,
con...@po.state.ct.us,
executiv...@nytimes.com, managin...@nytimes.com, news-
ti...@nytimes.com,
the-...@nytimes.com, biz...@nytimes.com, for...@nytimes.com,
me...@nytimes.com,
nati...@nytimes.com, dv...@cdc.gov, brigidc...@optonline.net,
tr...@hotmail.com,
illino...@aol.com, jle...@courant.com, tinaj...@yahoo.com,
jhorn...@fff.org,
thomas...@usdoj.gov, thoma...@po.state.ct.us,
kur...@washpost.com, georg...@washpost.com,
p...@allegorypress.com, commissi...@po.state.ct.us,
FalN...@aol.com, brans...@comcast.net,
vts...@comcast.net, o...@po.state.ct.us, freet...@charter.net,
scott....@po.state.ct.us,
govern...@po.state.ct.us, attorney...@po.state.ct.us,
randall...@usdoj.gov,
robert....@yale.edu
>Cc: fra...@ucia.gov, dr-ahma...@president.ir, eugener...@washpost.com,
hor...@courant.com, bmi...@newstimes.com, tr...@hotmail.com,
rast...@aol.com, billc...@gmail.com,
amcg...@rms-law.com, rjmu...@aol.com, paulcrai...@yahoo.com,
sidney_b...@yahoo.com,
criminal...@usdoj.gov, karla.d...@usdoj.gov,
christophe...@usdoj.gov,
richar...@yale.edu, harol...@yale.edu, james.p...@yale.edu,
inq...@aldf.com,
ly...@idsociety.org
Subject: WaPo: Kaiser Kriminals go on the offensive (the guilty pull
the trigger
first)
>
[ARTICLE BELOW]
>
==========================================
Yeah, thanks, Kaiser. Had you stayed out of the
way there would not be so many disabled people for
the dot guv to torture and not pay for the care of,
either:
http://www.actionlyme.org/USDOJ_COMPLAINT_RICO.htm
and add to that, the suppression of the Pam3Cys (OspA
or Yale's LYMErix vaccine) immune suppression data:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PAM3CYS_IMMUNE_SUPPRESSION.htm
negatively affecting discovery in all diseases since
the early 1990.
>
The real deal is that Kaiser does not want to
be investigated by the Obama Justice Department
for the role they played for setting up the ALDF.com
and CastleConnolly.com.
>
They're deflecting the blame away from themselves
but Kaiser and SmithKline have been caught defrauding
Uncle Sam together before and were fined $87,000,000
for the relabeling of Paxil:
http://www.actionlyme.org/JUNE_13_2005_LETTER_TO_SPITZER.htm
Kathleen M. Dickson
>
>==============================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/29/AR2008112901025_2.html?hpid=topnews
>
washingtonpost.com
>NEWS | OPINIONS | SPORTS | ARTS & LIVING | Discussions | Photos & Video
ad_icon
U.S. 'Not Getting What We Pay For'
Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008; A01
Talk to the chief executives of America's preeminent health-care
institutions,
and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical
care, the
United States isn't getting its money's worth. Not even close.
>
>"We're not getting what we pay for," says Denis Cortese, president
and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. "It's just that simple."
>
>"Our health-care system is fraught with waste," says Gary Kaplan,
chairman of Seattle's cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As
much as
half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health,
he says.
>
>Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente
chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous.
>
>Those harsh assessments illustrate the enormousness of the challenge that awaits
President-elect Barack Obama, who campaigned on the promise to trim
the average
American family's health-care bill by $2,500 a year. Delivering on
that pledge
will not be easy, particularly at a time when the economic picture
continues to
worsen.
>
>Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has already warned that
improving and expanding health care will cost money in the short run
-- money that
his Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), argues
the government
does not have.
>
>Yet among physicians, insurers, academics and corporate executives from across
the ideological spectrum, there is remarkably broad consensus on what
ought to be
done.
>
>A high-performance 21st-century health system, they say, must revolve around
the central goal of paying for results. That will entail managing
chronic illnesses
better, adopting electronic medical records, coordinating care,
researching what
treatments work best, realigning financial incentives to reward
success, encouraging
prevention strategies and, most daunting but perhaps most important,
saying no to
expensive, unproven therapies.
>
>"There is more than enough money in the system," said former House
speaker Newt Gingrich, who runs the District-based Center for Health
Transformation.
"We just are not spending it well."
>
>The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to
medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet
numerous measures
indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant
mortality,
48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in
preventable
deaths.
>
>One way to reconfigure health spending is to shift large sums into prevention
and wellness, said Reed Tuckson, a physician and executive vice
president at UnitedHealth
Group in Minneapolis. The idea is to tackle the handful of
preventable, chronic
illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes that account for 75
percent of health-care
costs.
>
>Each year, for example, the United States spends $450 billion treating heart
and artery disease. The "good news," Tuckson said, is that former
certain
killers such as heart attacks, strokes and aneurysms can now be
treated. But the
price -- of maintenance drugs, ongoing tests and procedures such as
stents -- is
high. It would be wiser, he argued, to attack underlying problems such
as smoking,
diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
>
>Since Obama's victory, official Washington has been racing to demonstrate
its seriousness about expanding health coverage to every American,
while at the
same time improving the quality of care. But few of the politicians
talk about the
difficult tradeoffs that will come with any real reform, said Kaplan
in Seattle,
whose health system follows Toyota's quality-control model.
>
>One fundamental problem is how doctors are paid, he said. Under the current
fee-for-service scheme, "the more you do, the more you make," Kaplan
said.
There is no incentive to keep people out of doctors' offices,
hospitals, imaging
centers and dialysis clinics.
>
>More tests lead to more procedures, which often result in mistakes, complications,
misdiagnoses or the use of untested therapies, said Donald Berwick,
president of
the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. "The
current system
is very hospital-centric," he said. "We wait for people to get sick,
and
then we invest enormous sums to fix them up. We should build primary
care as the
core."
>
>It is possible to change the incentives, Kaplan said. Partnering with Starbucks
and the insurer Aetna, Virginia Mason devised a new strategy for
dealing with back
pain, the leading medical complaint of Starbucks' coffee-pouring
baristas. Virginia
Mason made big money on MRIs, but there is little scientific data that
the scans
resolve the problem.
>
>So they flipped the process, trying physical therapy first. To make up for some
of Virginia Mason's lost revenue, Aetna increased its payment for the
therapy.
Today, the majority of Starbucks employees with back trouble return to
work within
48 hours without an MRI or a prescription, Kaplan said.
>
>"We've shown that you can have superior outcomes at lower costs,"
Kaplan bragged. He acknowledged, however, that the success on back
pain is "one
small vignette" in a mega-mess.
>
>Moving from pricey, high-tech solutions such as MRIs to older, low-tech approaches
such as physical therapy requires solid data and a culture change,
said Helen Darling,
president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents
large employers.
Americans are attracted to innovations, regardless of cost or whether
they have
been proven to achieve results.
>
>A whole-body scan that is covered by insurance may seem like a bargain, Darling
said. "But one way or another we're all paying" for it in higher
premiums,
increased government expenditures and even false-positive results that
lead to more
costly, invasive procedures.
>
>The members of Darling's group are in the vanguard of a movement toward
comparative effectiveness research, which evaluates various drugs,
devices and treatments
and publicizes which work best and at what cost. Ideally, doctors and
patients armed
with that data could make more rational decisions -- such as whether
to choose a
more expensive, but therapeutically equivalent, medication.
>
>Former Senator Thomas A. Daschle, Obama's choice to head the Department
of Health and Human Services, endorsed the use of comparative
effectiveness data
in a book he co-authored.
>
>Better data may also address what Dartmouth College researchers describe as
large, "unwarranted" variations in medical spending. Analyzing
Medicare
payments for patients in the final two years of life, the school's
Institute
for Health Policy and Clinical Practice found that similar care --
when adjusted
for differences in age, race and diagnoses -- cost as much as $93,000
at the UCLA
Medical Center and as little as $55,000 at the Mayo and Cleveland
clinics. The national
average was nearly $53,000.
>
>With those sorts of variations, the Dartmouth team concluded that as much as
30 percent of medical spending -- or $700 billion -- does nothing to
improve care.
>
>Even if only a third of that could be invested in critical programs, "imagine
the possibilities," said Peter Orszag, head of the Congressional
Budget Office,
who was nominated last week to be director of the Office of Management
and Budget
in the Obama administration. "Given the scale of it, I am puzzled as
to why
we are not doing more to improve the efficiency of the health system."
>
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>
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>© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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To: Kathleen <janmu...@earthlink.net>, emcsw...@nasw.org,
zerh...@od.nih.gov, Spin...@yahoogroups.com, kshe...@calea.org,
fit...@gmail.com, patrick.f...@usdoj.gov,
model...@sbcglobal.net, jdr...@nejm.org, let...@courant.com,
Jgerb...@cdc.gov, michae...@po.state.ct.us,
con...@po.state.ct.us, executiv...@nytimes.com, managing-
edi...@nytimes.com, news...@nytimes.com, the-...@nytimes.com,
biz...@nytimes.com, for...@nytimes.com, me...@nytimes.com,
nati...@nytimes.com, dv...@cdc.gov, brigidc...@optonline.net,
tr...@hotmail.com, illino...@aol.com, jle...@courant.com,
tinaj...@yahoo.com, jhorn...@fff.org, thomas...@usdoj.gov,
thoma...@po.state.ct.us, kur...@washpost.com,
georg...@washpost.com, p...@allegorypress.com,
commissi...@po.state.ct.us, FalN...@aol.com,
brans...@comcast.net, vts...@comcast.net, o...@po.state.ct.us,
freet...@charter.net, scott....@po.state.ct.us,
govern...@po.state.ct.us, attorney...@po.state.ct.us,
randall...@usdoj.gov, robert....@yale.edu
Cc: fra...@ucia.gov, dr-ahma...@president.ir,
eugener...@washpost.com, hor...@courant.com,
bmi...@newstimes.com, tr...@hotmail.com, rast...@aol.com,
billc...@gmail.com, amcg...@rms-law.com, rjmu...@aol.com,
paulcrai...@yahoo.com, sidney_b...@yahoo.com,
criminal...@usdoj.gov, karla.d...@usdoj.gov,
christophe...@usdoj.gov, richar...@yale.edu,
harol...@yale.edu, james.p...@yale.edu, inq...@aldf.com,
ly...@idsociety.org
Subject: NYT: BushCompanies panicked, & related to -->WaPo: Kaiser
Kriminals
Date: Nov 30, 2008 5:04 AM
ARTICLE BELOW
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/washington/30labor.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
===============================================
[[This NYT article is related to the "WaPo Kaiser Kriminals" going on
the
offensive (complaint sent yesterday), although I don't know why yet.
They both are related to what's going on in Lyme Land - the
Congressional
hearing and the new IDSA panel. Both investigations are intended to
refer to the Department of Justice to be prosecuted as crime. I can
tell
from my site statistics. These two announcements are related and they
have
to do with "Lyme Disease."
That tells me that the bad guys know they lost the Lyme Wars- which
*I* won, virtually by myself, having solved both aspects of the cryme
single-handedly, except for: 1) The Forschners obtained the Dearborn
booklet
for me (fraudulent testing scheme to set up the RICO on BLOOD), and 2)
the
NCI's and the US Army's Paul Duray - he works for both - having
revealed what
was wrong with the lymphocytes of Chronic Lyme victims. I looked for
years
for a structure of Pam3Cys (OspA), and first found it in a Korean
medical
journal, one not referenced by PubMed.
These articles have to do with both the companies and the "government"
deflecting guilt and trying to get out of paying for the long
term disability of chronic Lyme. Lyme is more costly than AIDS.
The ActionItem, then, is to follow up on the info I gave the CT "US
Attorney"
in 2003. His job would have been to find out how Kaiser became
involved
in New York Medical College (ALDF.com), and why there are Russian
scientists
studying the mechanisms of cyst/spheroplast reversion by Borreliae
there.
As an aside, whenever one says "US Attorney" in Corrupticut, one is
reminded of dirty, drunken, slutty, whoring crimes by the CT
Republicans,
DCF, and their National Gulags RICO. In other words, cops in
Corrupticut
are the worst low-life filth the world has ever known. They
literally
*porked* for "a string of pediatric jails across the country."
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org ]]
================================================
The New York Times
November 30, 2008
Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule,
strenuously
opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much
harder for the
government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to
which workers
are exposed on the job.
The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in
assessing
the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather
and analyze
“industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during
their working
lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy
process of developing
standards to protect workers’ health.
Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay
needed protections
for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.
With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan,
President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the
transition “as
smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from
trying, in
its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.
The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious
rules the Bush
administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal
with issues
as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment.
One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national
parks and wilderness
areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in
deciding
whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered
species.
Mr. Obama and his advisers have already signaled their wariness of
last-minute efforts
by the Bush administration to embed its policies into the Code of
Federal Regulations,
a collection of rules having the force of law. The advisers have also
said that
Mr. Obama plans to look at a number of executive orders issued by Mr.
Bush.
A new president can unilaterally reverse executive orders issued by
his predecessors,
as Mr. Bush and President Bill Clinton did in selected cases. But it
is much more
difficult for a new president to revoke or alter final regulations put
in place
by a predecessor. A new administration must solicit public comment and
supply “a
reasoned analysis” for such changes, as if it were issuing a new rule,
the Supreme
Court has said.
As a senator and a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama sharply
criticized the regulation
of workplace hazards by the Bush administration.
In September, Mr. Obama and four other senators introduced a bill that
would prohibit
the Labor Department from issuing the rule it is now rushing to
complete. He also
signed a letter urging the department to scrap the proposal, saying it
would “create
serious obstacles to protecting workers from health hazards on the
job.”
Administration officials said such concerns were based on a
misunderstanding of
the proposal.
“This proposal does not affect the substance or methodology of risk
assessments,
and it does not weaken any health standard,” said Leon R. Sequeira,
the assistant
secretary of labor for policy. The proposal, Mr. Sequeira said, would
allow the
department to “cast a wide net for the best available data before
proposing a health
standard.”
The Labor Department regulates occupational health hazards posed by a
wide variety
of substances like asbestos, benzene, cotton dust, formaldehyde, lead,
vinyl chloride
and blood-borne pathogens, including the virus that causes AIDS.
The department is constantly considering whether to take steps to
protect workers
against hazardous substances. Currently, it is assessing substances
like silica,
beryllium and diacetyl, a chemical that adds the buttery flavor to
some types of
microwave popcorn.
The proposal applies to two agencies in the Labor Department, the
Occupational Safety
and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health
Administration.
Under the proposal, they would have to publish “advance notice of
proposed rule-making,”
soliciting public comment on studies, scientific information and data
to be used
in drafting a new rule. In some cases, OSHA has done that, but it is
not required
to do so.
The Bush administration and business groups said the rule would codify
“best practices,”
ensuring that health standards were based on the best available data
and scientific
information.
Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber of
Commerce, said
his group “unequivocally supports” the proposal because it would give
the public
a better opportunity to comment on the science and data used by the
government.
After a regulation is drafted and formally proposed, Mr. Johnson said,
it is “all
but impossible” to get OSHA to make significant changes.
“Risk assessment drives the entire process of regulation,” he said,
and “courts
almost always defer” to the agency’s assessments.
But critics say the additional step does nothing to protect workers.
“This rule is being pushed through by an administration that, for the
last seven
and a half years, has failed to set any new OSHA health rules to
protect workers,
except for one issued pursuant to a court order,” said Margaret M.
Seminario, director
of occupational safety and health for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Now, Ms. Seminario said, “the administration is rushing to lock in
place requirements
that would make it more difficult for the next administration to
protect workers.”
She said the proposal could add two years to a rule-making process
that often took
eight years or more.
Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of
the House
Committee on Education and Labor, said the proposal would “weaken
future workplace
safety regulations and slow their adoption.”
The proposal says that risk assessments should include industry-by-
industry data
on exposure to workplace substances. Administration officials
acknowledged that
such data did not always exist.
In their letter, Mr. Obama and other lawmakers said the Labor
Department, instead
of tinkering with risk-assessment procedures, should issue standards
to protect
workers against known hazards like silica and beryllium. The
government has been
working on a silica standard since 1997 and has listed it as a
priority since 2002.
The timing of the proposal appears to violate a memorandum issued in
early May by
Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff.
“Except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Bolten wrote,
“regulations to be finalized
in this administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008,
and final
regulations should be issued no later than Nov. 1, 2008.”
The Labor Department has not cited any extraordinary circumstances for
its proposal,
which was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 29. Administration
officials
confirmed last week that the proposal was still on their regulatory
agenda.
The Labor Department said the proposal affected “only internal agency
procedures”
for developing health standards. It cited one source of authority for
the proposal:
a general “housekeeping statute” that allows the head of a department
to prescribe
rules for the performance of its business.
The statute is derived from a law passed in 1789 to help George
Washington get the
government up and running.
The Labor Department rule is among many that federal agencies are
poised to issue
before Mr. Bush turns over the White House to Mr. Obama.
One rule would allow coal companies to dump rock and dirt from
mountaintop mining
operations into nearby streams and valleys. Another, issued last week
by the Health
and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to
charge higher
co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs
provided to
low-income people under Medicaid. The department is working on another
rule to protect
health care workers who refuse to perform abortions or other
procedures on religious
or moral grounds.
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-----Original Message-----
>From: Kathleen <janmu...@earthlink.net>
>Sent: Nov 29, 2008 3:38 PM
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Subject: WaPo: Kaiser Kriminals go on the offensive (the guilty pull
the trigger
first)
>
[ARTICLE BELOW]
>
==========================================
Yeah, thanks, Kaiser. Had you stayed out of the
way there would not be so many disabled people for
the dot guv to torture and not pay for the care of,
either:
http://www.actionlyme.org/USDOJ_COMPLAINT_RICO.htm
and add to that, the suppression of the Pam3Cys (OspA
or Yale's LYMErix vaccine) immune suppression data:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PAM3CYS_IMMUNE_SUPPRESSION.htm
negatively affecting discovery in all diseases since
the early 1990.
>
The real deal is that Kaiser does not want to
be investigated by the Obama Justice Department
for the role they played for setting up the ALDF.com
and CastleConnolly.com.
>
They're deflecting the blame away from themselves
but Kaiser and SmithKline have been caught defrauding
Uncle Sam together before and were fined $87,000,000
for the relabeling of Paxil:
http://www.actionlyme.org/JUNE_13_2005_LETTER_TO_SPITZER.htm
Kathleen M. Dickson
>
>==============================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/29/AR2008112901025_2.html?hpid=topnews
>
washingtonpost.com
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U.S. 'Not Getting What We Pay For'
Many Experts Say Health-Care System Inefficient, Wasteful
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008; A01
Talk to the chief executives of America's preeminent health-care
institutions,
and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical
care, the
United States isn't getting its money's worth. Not even close.
>
>"We're not getting what we pay for," says Denis Cortese, president
and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. "It's just that simple."
>
>"Our health-care system is fraught with waste," says Gary Kaplan,
chairman of Seattle's cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As
much as
half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health,
he says.
>
>Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente
chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous.
>
>Those harsh assessments illustrate the enormousness of the challenge that awaits
President-elect Barack Obama, who campaigned on the promise to trim
the average
American family's health-care bill by $2,500 a year. Delivering on
that pledge
will not be easy, particularly at a time when the economic picture
continues to
worsen.
>
>Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has already warned that
improving and expanding health care will cost money in the short run
-- money that
his Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), argues
the government
does not have.
>
>Yet among physicians, insurers, academics and corporate executives from across
the ideological spectrum, there is remarkably broad consensus on what
ought to be
done.
>
>A high-performance 21st-century health system, they say, must revolve around
the central goal of paying for results. That will entail managing
chronic illnesses
better, adopting electronic medical records, coordinating care,
researching what
treatments work best, realigning financial incentives to reward
success, encouraging
prevention strategies and, most daunting but perhaps most important,
saying no to
expensive, unproven therapies.
>
>"There is more than enough money in the system," said former House
speaker Newt Gingrich, who runs the District-based Center for Health
Transformation.
"We just are not spending it well."
>
>The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to
medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet
numerous measures
indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant
mortality,
48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in
preventable
deaths.
>
>One way to reconfigure health spending is to shift large sums into prevention
and wellness, said Reed Tuckson, a physician and executive vice
president at UnitedHealth
Group in Minneapolis. The idea is to tackle the handful of
preventable, chronic
illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes that account for 75
percent of health-care
costs.
>
>Each year, for example, the United States spends $450 billion treating heart
and artery disease. The "good news," Tuckson said, is that former
certain
killers such as heart attacks, strokes and aneurysms can now be
treated. But the
price -- of maintenance drugs, ongoing tests and procedures such as
stents -- is
high. It would be wiser, he argued, to attack underlying problems such
as smoking,
diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
>
>Since Obama's victory, official Washington has been racing to demonstrate
its seriousness about expanding health coverage to every American,
while at the
same time improving the quality of care. But few of the politicians
talk about the
difficult tradeoffs that will come with any real reform, said Kaplan
in Seattle,
whose health system follows Toyota's quality-control model.
>
>One fundamental problem is how doctors are paid, he said. Under the current
fee-for-service scheme, "the more you do, the more you make," Kaplan
said.
There is no incentive to keep people out of doctors' offices,
hospitals, imaging
centers and dialysis clinics.
>
>More tests lead to more procedures, which often result in mistakes, complications,
misdiagnoses or the use of untested therapies, said Donald Berwick,
president of
the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. "The
current system
is very hospital-centric," he said. "We wait for people to get sick,
and
then we invest enormous sums to fix them up. We should build primary
care as the
core."
>
>It is possible to change the incentives, Kaplan said. Partnering with Starbucks
and the insurer Aetna, Virginia Mason devised a new strategy for
dealing with back
pain, the leading medical complaint of Starbucks' coffee-pouring
baristas. Virginia
Mason made big money on MRIs, but there is little scientific data that
the scans
resolve the problem.
>
>So they flipped the process, trying physical therapy first. To make up for some
of Virginia Mason's lost revenue, Aetna increased its payment for the
therapy.
Today, the majority of Starbucks employees with back trouble return to
work within
48 hours without an MRI or a prescription, Kaplan said.
>
>"We've shown that you can have superior outcomes at lower costs,"
Kaplan bragged. He acknowledged, however, that the success on back
pain is "one
small vignette" in a mega-mess.
>
>Moving from pricey, high-tech solutions such as MRIs to older, low-tech approaches
such as physical therapy requires solid data and a culture change,
said Helen Darling,
president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents
large employers.
Americans are attracted to innovations, regardless of cost or whether
they have
been proven to achieve results.
>
>A whole-body scan that is covered by insurance may seem like a bargain, Darling
said. "But one way or another we're all paying" for it in higher
premiums,
increased government expenditures and even false-positive results that
lead to more
costly, invasive procedures.
>
>The members of Darling's group are in the vanguard of a movement toward
comparative effectiveness research, which evaluates various drugs,
devices and treatments
and publicizes which work best and at what cost. Ideally, doctors and
patients armed
with that data could make more rational decisions -- such as whether
to choose a
more expensive, but therapeutically equivalent, medication.
>
>Former Senator Thomas A. Daschle, Obama's choice to head the Department
of Health and Human Services, endorsed the use of comparative
effectiveness data
in a book he co-authored.
>
>Better data may also address what Dartmouth College researchers describe as
large, "unwarranted" variations in medical spending. Analyzing
Medicare
payments for patients in the final two years of life, the school's
Institute
for Health Policy and Clinical Practice found that similar care --
when adjusted
for differences in age, race and diagnoses -- cost as much as $93,000
at the UCLA
Medical Center and as little as $55,000 at the Mayo and Cleveland
clinics. The national
average was nearly $53,000.
>
>With those sorts of variations, the Dartmouth team concluded that as much as
30 percent of medical spending -- or $700 billion -- does nothing to
improve care.
>
>Even if only a third of that could be invested in critical programs, "imagine
the possibilities," said Peter Orszag, head of the Congressional
Budget Office,
who was nominated last week to be director of the Office of Management
and Budget
in the Obama administration. "Given the scale of it, I am puzzled as
to why
we are not doing more to improve the efficiency of the health system."
>
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>© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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