Oxford Analytica, via Forbes, tells us that just three diseases — malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis – receive 76% of the funds available for research and development.

I’m all for helping out developing nations, but then again, I’d sure like to see cancer get licked.

You know when you’ve made a bad documentary when liberal Reuters can’t support you:

Three New York rescue workers injured in the September 11 attacks got the best treatment Cuba can offer in Michael Moore’s film critique of U.S. health care, the Cuban doctors who attended them said this week.

The 9/11 responders spent 10 days on the 19th floor of Cuba’s flagship hospital with a view of the Caribbean sea, a sharp contrast to many Cuban hospitals that are crumbling, badly lit, and which lack equipment and medicines. . . .

But the hospital where SiCKO’s patients were treated is an exception in Cuba, where patients of many other hospitals complain they have to take their own sheets and food.

Yeah, Cuba’s health care system is sooooooo much better than ours.

Speaking of Big Government Healthcare, in the UK a woman dies waiting for brain scans

At least, a recent study suggests that aspartame (APM), which is the primary ingredient in today’s diet drinks due to the hysteria over saccharine, will do so:

The results of this mega-experiment indicate that APM is a multipotential carcinogenic agent, even at a daily dose of 20 mg/kg body weight, much less than the current acceptable daily intake. On the basis of these results, a reevaluation of the present guidelines on the use and consumption of APM is urgent and cannot be delayed.

Quote of the Day:

Wal-Mart’s advance into health care is a testament to private-sector industriousness. While others whine about America’s health care “crisis,” and back monstrous government programs to solve it, Wal-Mart is actually making care more affordable.

Wal-Mart will place in-store medical clinics in up to 400 stores in the next two or three years. If successful, there could be clinics in as many as 2,000 stores by 2014, fully half of their stores.

With low prices that are the Wal-Mart standard, the clinics will particularly help the poor. Yet they will be operated by local hospitals or independent professions.

Wal-Mart’s actions shows a continuing commitment to meet the health-care needs of the public, as it follows on the heels of significant prescription drug price cuts introduced last fall.

Already, Wal-Mart has brought low-cost health care by selling 30-day supplies of more than 300 generic prescription drugs at some stores for $4. Almost a third of those $4 prescriptions are bought by the uninsured. Customers have saved $290 million through the program just since September.

Tell me who you would trust more with your health care, Wal-Mart or Hillary? As for me, I’ll opt for the answer provided by capitalism over big nanny government any day of the week.

Tennesseans use more prescription drugs than any other state — an average of 17.3 prescriptions per person in 2005 according to BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Yet the state of Tennessee ranks 47th when examining the health of its citizens!

Consequences of improper drug use in Tennessee include an annual $761 million cost for adverse drug events, and $593 million for accidental poisonings in 2003.

Tennessee ranks second in drug spending, at $1,192. That’s what happens when crackheads call ambulances when they need a fix and we give them methadone instead of sending them to jail.

… from Liberal England. Bravo!

You know that health care in America is in trouble when companies start outsourcing medical procedures:

Carl Garrett, a paper-mill technician in Leicester, N.C., is scheduled to travel Sept. 2 to New Delhi, where he will undergo two operations. Though American individuals have gone abroad for cheaper operations, Mr. Garrett is a pioneer of sorts.

He is a test case for his company, Blue Ridge Paper Products, Inc., in North Carolina, which is set to provide a health benefit plan that allows its employees and their dependents to obtain medical care overseas beginning in 2007. …

Garrett’s medical care alone may save the company $50,000. And instead of winding up $20,000 in debt to have the operations in the US, he may now get up to $10,000 back as a share of the savings. He’ll also get to see the Taj Mahal as part of a two-day tour before the surgery.

His two operations could cost $100,000 in the US; they’ll run about $20,000 in India.

If this takes off, the medical community in America will have to address its shortcomings. Hopefully it won’t be too late, like that of the Big 3 auto makers.

So once again, it will be the free market that provides the solution to a “national crises”.

Of course, try suing a hospital in India for leaving a sponge in your chest cavity — or for operating on the wrong knee.

Technorati Tags:
Free Market Healthcare,
Outsourcing.

WaPo reports that “smart pill” use is on the rise on our campuses and even in our high schools:

Mining 2002 data, it noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. By the time students reach college nowadays, they’re already apt to know about these drugs, obtained with or without a prescription.

The article refers to Provigil, which is the American brand name for modafinil. You may recall that the military is experimenting with modafinil for long missions.

I used to drag around due to unexplained insomnia, but now have a prescription for Provigil. The great thing about this drug is that it not only make you more awake when you are awake, it actually increases REM sleep when you sleep, thus reducing the number of hours that you must spend in bed each night.

One day perhaps I’ll post my experience like this journalist at Slate but for now I will just say that modafinil is the best drug since novocaine and I have a whole new lease on life. The only bad thing about it is that I have to be grateful to the French; they invented it in the late 70′s.

Technorati Tags: Provigil,
Alertec,
Vigicer,
Modalert,
Smart Pills,
Insomnia.

CIA Watch: how we can learn from the Mossad in fixing our dysfunctional intelligence agency.

Kerry Watch: The hubris of a billionaire’s self defense fund.

Economy Watch: US Steelmakers are expecting robust demand for the rest of the year, making it the third year in a row that demand has remained strong.

Tax Watch: It looks like Republican lawmakers will succeed in extending some of the tax cuts for another year or two.

UN Watch: U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers are having sex with Liberian girls as young as 8 in return for money, food or favors.

MSM Watch: The New York Times has once again been caught plagerizing.

Illegal Alien Watch: An Arizona sheriff is using an old tactic to find and arrest those entering our country illegally: posses.

Health Watch: Cancer resistant mice have been discovered. “When white blood cells from the mice are injected into other mice, they eradicate advanced tumours and provide lifetime protection against the disease. … Even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with very large tumours were eradicated.”

Looney Watch: PETA has launched an ad campaign in which PETA President and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk is quated as saying, “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.” [One supposes the same goes for cancer.]

Fun Facts for Lefties: Fidel Castro is apparently worth $900 million and ranked seventh on the Forbes magazine list of wealthy heads of state.

The largest study ever done on the American medical system has revealed a startling, nay stunning, fact.

It doesn’t matter if you are white, black, yellow or brown. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor. We all get just about the same quality health care.

Now admittedly, the study also says that the quality of care is “woefully mediocre” for all, but that is not the point. The point is that the health care crisis of the poor American underclass is a myth:

The survey of nearly 7,000 patients, reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, considered only urban-area dwellers who sought treatment, but it still challenged some stereotypes: These blacks and Hispanics actually got slightly better medical treatment than whites.

While the researchers acknowledged separate evidence that minorities fare worse in some areas of expensive care and suffer more from some conditions than whites, their study found that once in treatment, minorities’ overall care appears similar to that of whites. . . .

Blacks and Hispanics as a group each got 58 percent of the best care, compared to 54 percent for whites. Those with annual household income over $50,000 got 57 percent, 4 points more than people from households of less than $15,000. Patients without insurance got 54 percent of recommended steps, just one point less than those with managed care.

As to gender, women came out slightly ahead with 57 percent, compared to 52 percent for men. Young adults did slightly better than the elderly.

Health care has lately been wielded by the Left as the weapon of choice in fermenting class warfare in their quest for votes. The poor uninsured. The black male who can’t get treatment. The pregnant mother that is ignored by the system. The immigrant that can’t take advantage of the benefits of American medicine.

These results undermine that argument but don’t look for the MSM to trumpet this study as they do so many others and don’t look for references to it in any of Hillary’s speeches.

On a personal note, this kinda pisses me off. After becoming, according to the Democrats (although my creditors may disagree), a “rich white man”, I think I deserve something for all my hard work. You’d think I could afford better health care than I had twenty years ago when I was a bartender making about $10K a year. Why else do we have a capitalist medical system? Damnit!

Technorati Tags: Health Care,
American Medical System,
Class Warfare.