BluegrassBulletin.com

Cannabis Oil Bill Passes House 98-0

When the Kentucky legislature does something right they need to be congratulated.  The Senate had previously passed the medical cannabis bill and now the house has passed it 98-0.  The bill will likely be signed by Governor Beshear.

It is high time the government stopped standing in the way of people using the natural environment and the plants and animals God gave us, particularly where the use of those herbs and natural products can heal us.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.  You have gone a long way to relieving the suffering of many of your fellow countrymen. 

Dr. Gary Shearer Found Dead

Gary Shearer had his office raided by federal officials investigating the overdose and deaths of a number of his patients.  The Kentucky Medical licensure board suspended his license due to his methods of prescribing pain medication.  Last night it was reported that he was found dead.  Rumors are that it was suicide.

Gary was well known in Northern Kentucky as one of the most perceptive doctors around.  He was a master at making the correct diagnosis from a detailed examination of symptoms.  He had many, many loyal patients who were not, as the press might have you think, going to his office just to get pain medication.

As a lawyer who comes into frequent contact with doctors in handling injury cases, over the years I found Gary to be one of the more compassionate and approachable family practitioners in the profession.

After two years of investigation without a record of any criminal charges, his death is a tragedy.

Marijuana Bill Passes Ky. Senate

The medical marijuana bill legalizing studies at two Kentucky Universities with regard to the health benefits of marijuana oil has passed the Kentucky Senate and will likely pass the house.  Governor Beshear supported the measure and it will soon become the law in the Commonwealth.

It's about damned time. 

Depriving people access to a medicine that has been shown to ease their suffering because there has been a "stigma" attached to marijuana for decades was callous.  Thankfully the Kentucky legislature is about to take a very important step toward truly helping citizens rather than just the drug companies.

Kentucky Must Pass Medical Marijuana Bill

The evidence is in and the results are clear, marijuana provides significant health benefits to people when prescribed and monitored under a doctor's supervision. Any member of the Kentucky legislature who denies this health benefit to people in need needs to be un-elected.  Liberty and compassion are married in this bill.

The bill passed through the committee process but House Speaker Greg Stumbo says it might not get a vote in the full house.  What a crock.

The members of the House are elected by the people.  If a majority vote a measure up or down that action presumably represents the will of the people.  But to deny the people through their representatives the opportunity to vote on a bill is contrary to the entire democratic process.

Damon Thayer says even if the bill gets to the republican controlled Senate he thinks concerns over "abuse and recreational use" might kill it there.  Really?

There is "abuse and recreational use" of many medicines that I venture to say several members of the House and Senate take under their doctor's supervision to control their pain, to regulate their mood and to keep them from being embarrassed in bed.  Would they vote to make these medicines illegal or prevent new medicines with proven healing qualities from being prescribed in Kentucky?

What really motivates far too many legislators is not what is in the best interest of the public, but rather what they perceive to be in their best interest politically.  So it really depends upon who is whispering or shouting in their ears.

If you believe that the responsible and medically supervised use of marijuana will ease the pain and suffering of other human beings, then you should call today and let your legislators know: we want to help people and want you to pass the "Cannabis Compassion Act."  Here's how:

LEGISLATIVE MESSAGE LINE: 1-800-372-7181

LEGISLATORS EMAILS: CLICK HERE

Courier Journal Misses The Point Of Rand's Objection

The Courier Journal published an opinion piece in which they said this:

Dr. Paul — himself a physician — is trying to block Dr. Murthy’s confirmation as the nation’s top doctor because he has dared to suggest that “guns are a health care issue” and because he formed “Doctors for America,” which supports the Affordable Care Act.

But perhaps Dr. Paul, who is traveling a lot as a potential presidential candidate, has been too busy to follow the very real public health menace of firearms.

Say what? 

If a person owns a gun are they exposed to infection, a virus, dangerous levels of toxins?  How is a firearm a "public health menace?"

The answer is that they are not.  People who are hurt by the "USE" of firearms are hurt by the actions of people "USING" firearms.  Some of the people who are hurt by others through the use of firearms are the victims of criminal acts, the same as those hurt by knives, ball bats, pillows, and other items converted by a human into a tool of violence.

Other people who are hurt by firearms are hurt by negligent or reckless conduct of humans the same as those hurt by vehicles, fire, unattended buckets of water around babies, alcohol and other items misused in a way that causes injury.

No, Rand is correct to oppose this man precisely because he is likely a plant by the gun grabbing Obama administration who will require some sort of reporting in your medical records of all the guns you own, who will likely place "medical" restrictions on who can and can't own a firearm as a "public health" issue and who will serve Obama's ends of finding ways around the Second Amendment the same way he found his way around the "individual mandate" of Obamacare which forces people to buy a product in direct contravention of their individual liberty right to spend their money as they see fit.

The Courier taking this stance reveals that they are either as dumb as a box of hair, or complicit in the Obama plot to register firearms as a step toward confiscation. (see Connecticut) In either case they have clearlly established that their publication isn't worthy of respect.

Here We Go Again: Hospitals Blaming Lawsuits For Their Own Failures

It is either working, or the ad men who sell this kind of crap are convincing, but time and time again organizations representing doctors and hospitals blame "unfounded" lawsuits for the high cost of insurance and for their miserable failing grades.  Well, I for one don't think the public is that dumb, so here's the truth.

In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.

Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher 2014 between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.

That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second. [Scientific American]

And so how does Kentucky rank when it comes to Emergency Room care?

Kentucky's emergency rooms rank among the worst in the nation, but health officials say it's policy, not patient care, that accounts for the low score.

"The report isn't a judgment on the quality of care," said Dr. Ryan Stanton, a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which released a state-by-state report card this month.

Kentucky ranked 47th, dropping from 44th when the last report was issued in 2009. The reports covered not only quality of care but access to care, public health, disaster preparedness and medical liability.

The fear of an unfounded lawsuit can keep emergency room doctors from coming to Kentucky to practice, he said. [Herald Leader]

Now let's get this straight, fear of unfounded lawsuits is keeping better doctors from coming to Kentucky?  Isn't that just a kinder way of saying we have lesser qualified doctors here? And in that light we are still being asked to swallow the argument that the problem isn't with less qualified doctors it's with lawsuits over the harm they cause?  Give me a break.

Look, I can't stand frivolous lawsuits, they harm us all.  They make it harder for juries to believe the meritorious ones, they usually are built around some publicity seeking lawyer which harms the image of our profession and they tie up court dockets denying the timely delivery of justice to the truly injured.

But to suggest that when medical negligence is the third leading cause of death in America and Kentucky emergency rooms rate 47th out of 50 that the problem is with "unfounded lawsuits" is an insult to your intelligence.

No lawyer worth his or her salt will file a lawsuit against a doctor until he/she has submitted all of the records to a competent, qualified and recognized expert for an opinion as to causation and damages.  And then, in most cases, no suit is filed unless the medical negligence is clear and the damages worth the expensive fight.

In reality, the refusal of the medical profession to demand higher quality performance and their lax approach to policing their own profession is far more to blame.

Recently I tried a case against an emergency room doctor who admitted he was a drug addict and an alcoholic.  He had been sent to rehab by the Kentucky medical board but permitted to practice.  He fell off the wagon, was sent to an inpatient treatment and then allowed back in the ER.  So he's no risk to the public?

More and more people are treating ER's as their primary care centers so I can understand why some providers get a little bored treating the sniffles rather than real trauma, but poor care and avoidable injuries are a reality in hospitals.

But why improve care when making mistakes can also mean making a huge profit?

Johns Hopkins researchers report that hospitals may be reaping enormous income for patients whose hospital stays are complicated by preventable bloodstream infections contracted in their intensive care units.

In a small, new study, reported online in the American Journal of Medical Quality, the researchers found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient. Moreover, hospitals earn nearly nine times more for treating infected patients, who spend an average of 24 days in the hospital.

The researchers also found that private insurers, rather than Medicare and Medicaid, pay the most for patient stays complicated by CLABSIs — roughly $400,000 per hospital stay — suggesting that private insurers would gain the most financial benefit from working with hospitals to reduce infection rates.

“We have known that hospitals often profit from complications, even ones of their own making,” says Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for patient safety for Johns Hopkins Medicine and one of the authors of the research. “What we did not know was by how much, and that private insurers are largely footing the bill.” [Johns Hopkins]

Sure the medical profession has a well funded lobby and sure we all need our doctors and have a wonderful system of health care services available in the United States, and yes I am fully in support of the good doctors who are working daily to treat patients with loving care, the best in modern science and who take their duties seriously.

But failing grades, obscene death statistics and profiting off of mistakes are now matters of record, and as such are matters of fact.

Blaming lawsuits by injured patients as the cause of these disasters is a gross insult and an abuse of the public trust.

Here's a little advice to the medical profession and in particular the hospitals that might be a better cure for what ails them than blaming others:

Physicians, heal thy-selves.

ead more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/01/27/3055153/study-shows-kys-ers-are-some-of.html#storylink=cpy

 

Ky Army Hosptial Ends Opera Career With Flatulence

Think you're gonna like the government being in charge of your health care?  Ask this opera singer how she likes it.

An opera singer says her career is threatened by flatulence and incontinence after a botched episiotomy done while giving birth at an Army hospital in Kentucky.

Herbst, who has performed with the Nashville Opera, is unable to work "as a result of her incontinence and excessive flatulence," the suit says. [Breitbart]

 

The End To Modern Medicine Coming With New Deadly Bacteria

Jonathan Turley's blog may be trying to make a point about how much money the US government is willing to spend to wage war while turning a blind eye to a greater threat than the Al Qaeda, but this new threat is one we need to be preparing for NOW.

Thomas Frieden, director of the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, put it in the starkest terms to try to get someone to pay attention. Indeed, Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, has warned that we are moving into a “post-antibiotic era.” That means “an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.”

The CDC has been presenting data on the rise of bacteria resistant to carbapenems, the most powerful antibiotics that represent our final line of defense. CDC is reporting the appearance of the bacteria now in every stated and what it describes as the realization of the “nightmare” scenario for the medical field. Frieden puts the estimate now at over 2 million Americans with infections each year that are resistant to antibiotics. Of those, at least 23,000 people die as a result.

It might be worth your time to call your legislators and tell them that you want tax dollars re-directed from other less important pursuits to finding a way to combat this enemy which seens to be, so far, invincible.

New Hope For 'Vegetative State' Patients

It's a nightmare right out of Edgar Allen Poe: you are mentally awake but trapped inside a body that doesn't respond to the outside world and so you are considered to be virtually dead.  Well that might change for some patients suffering through what is often called a "persistent vegetative state".

“We hope to be able to reach patients who are trapped in their bodies,” says Lorina Naci, a researcher specializing in brain imaging techniques for patients with severe brain injury. “We want to give patients some autonomy in their lives.”

Naci’s team came up with a method for determining whether patients are not just hearing sounds, but able to think clearly about what those sounds mean and answer questions. Other studies have shown that up to 20 percent of patients in various vegetative states can hear and respond on at least some level.

But at least some of the responses seen could be dismissed as simple reflexes, or at best akin to someone in a dream state responding to stimuli. Naci says her team’s findings show that at least some can respond with clear conscious intent.

“The technique may be useful in establishing basic communication with patients who appear unresponsive to bedside examinations and cannot respond with existing neuroimaging methods,” the team wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association journal JAMA Neurology.

“Although a clinical vegetative state diagnosis implies lack of consciousness and cognition, this is not necessarily always the case.” [NBC]

Alison Lundergan Grimes And Her Trojan Horse

It's pretty obvious that Alison Lundergan Grimes is doing exactly what she's been told to do.  She's keeping out of sight and trying to raise money.  But doing what she's told is the problem.  She's the hand picked candidate of Harry Reid and together they have a plan for America, and it isn't good for Kentucky.

Weeks before Washington Democrats passed ObamaCare, Nancy Pelosi declared: “We have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it...”

That's apparently not the case, according to Majority Leader Harry Reid.

On Friday, Reid made it clear; ObamaCare is just a gateway drug to the ultimate Democratic health care high: a single-payer health care system.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, “Reid said he thinks the country has to 'work our way past' insurance-based health care ...'What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,”' Reid said. When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: 'Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.'

Remember, this is the same Harry Reid who hand-picked Alison Lundergan Grimes to run for the Kentucky Senate seat. And this is the same Alison Lundergan Grimes who supports Reid and his agenda.

Now, Harry Reid has revealed their true intention: ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for a total government takeover - it's a single-payer health care system.

"Rather than listening to the millions of Kentucky women, workers and families who want ObamaCare permanently delayed and dismantled so that the rising cost of health care can finally be properly addressed, Alison Lundergan Grimes continues to stand alongside Harry Reid as they attempt to take significant steps toward dictating Kentuckians' health care," said NRSC Press Secretary Brook Hougesen. "The fact is that Harry Reid attempted to pass ObamaCare in the dead of night when no one was looking but now Reid and Grimes are working to sneak through a single-payer, Canadian-style, government run health system onto the backs of hard working middle-class families. Kentuckians deserve better."