Dying is a messy business. Having watched my father endure the process involving three hospitals and a SNF in the final month, I have been impressed with the primitive nature of medical record keeping today even in the most efficient and effective of medical institutions. My father had a long history of problems with bleeding ulcers resulting in extreme surgery to remove most of his stomach. Lately he had been under the care of an HMO with a Medicare plan. There was no central depository of his medical records. One of the facilities, the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, sought valiantly to locate all of his recent records, but limited staff in other facilities resulted in significant delays in obtaining vital information.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Rhode Island and the FDA’s Office Criminal Investigations managed to squeeze a half a billion dollars out of Google for publishing online ads for Canadian pharmacies selling low cost drugs to consumers in the United States. Google had blocked similar ads from other countries, but not Canada. Peter F. Neronha, the U.S. Attorney proudly proclaimed that the investigation and settlement was a significant step in curtailing the activities of “rogue pharmacies” to reach U.S. consumers with drugs that may be unsafe and/or unlawful. Note, he didn’t say “actually unsafe and/or illegal.”
Earlier this month the Colorado Court of Appeals issued an opinion affirming a trial court award of well over a hundred thousand dollars in attorneys fees against a physician when his case was dismissed on motion as being premature to exhaustion of his administrative remedies. In the case, Jimmie R. Crow, M.D. v. Penrose - St. Francis Healthcare System, No. 09CA2667 (Aug.18, 2011) a panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals found that a “tort reform” statute recently passed by the legislature meant what it said it meant and that it was required to be broadly applied to all cases dismissed on motion under Rule 12 of the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure.
One of several interesting aspects of the massive (291 pages) 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in State of Florida [and 25 other states] vs. United States Department of Health and Human Services, et al. , ____ F. 3d ____ (11th Cir. 2011), filed this month is a paradox of timing. The majority of the three member panel conceded that, under the Commerce Power, the government had the power to require people seeking medical attention to first obtain health insurance (assuming that it would be available at that juncture) before receiving the services. Yet at the same time, the panel insisted that it would be unconstitutional as a violation of individual liberties to require those individuals to obtain insurance in advance of the need, which is stochastic in nature.
What can I say? I have been scooped by Forbes on my own case, but I do have the missing pieces it refers to. It seemed somewhat unseemly to discuss my own case against Lincoln Financial Distributors regarding Continuing Education of brokers regarding long term care insurance mandated by state Departments of Insurance. It may perhaps explain the paucity of posts in July and early August as we were preparing for a nasty arbitration in Detroit. More to come on this case. Here below is the blog article by Bill Singer of Forbes.
Is there a sexual gratification component in gun ownership? Just a question. It was only back in the 1960s when the United States Supreme Court held that a Connecticut statute banning any discussion of birth control was deemed unconstitutional. Last May the State of Florida passed a bill making it illegal for physicians to ask questions of patients about gun ownership, more particularly gun availability in the household. Pediatricians, long concerned about the availability of danger in homes, have taken to ask questions about gun access for children in the home along with other dangers such as “swimming pools” in the back yard. The espoused intent is to suggest to parents that precautions be taken to limit child access to guns in the household, by having them properly stored.
There is a lot of news this week about sex offenders in nursing homes. In Boston, MA, the State Supreme Judicial Court determined that a Mass. law prohibiting registered sexual offenders from living in nursing homes was unconstitutional as applied to a certain “John Doe” because it did not permit him to demonstrate that he was not risk to safety of the other 11 residents. Mr. Doe was a level three (most serious) offender convicted of abusing two young boys in 1992. He is 65 years old and suffers from Asperger’s disorder, glaucoma, heart attacks, seizure disorders, poor hygiene and “disorganized communication.”
Recently there have been calls from the right to have Justice Kagan to recuse herself from deciding the constitutionality of the Health Care Reform bill passed by Congress and referred to derisively as “Obamacare.” The principal basis seems to be her service as the Solicitor General of the U.S. representing the Obama administration in appellate proceedings before her elevation to the Supreme Court. The argument is that she must have provided some guidance on the constitutionality of the Act before leaving office.
