Blog

This article in Health Affairs, estimates that national spending on health care will grow in the next 10 years to a level for which it will account for 20 cents of every $1 spent.

If you make $60,000, then you will spend $12,000 on healthcare.

I spent less than $100 on health care in 2006.

I lived.

Perhaps my knowledge of Physical Therapy has something to do with this.

Perhaps PT’s need to market their services better and everyone will save $$.

P.S. Currently, we spend $1 for every $6 on health care….

Labels: current press, health policy, physical therapy

In my Shared Items list you will find a blog entry, “Chiropractors Named in Jim Black Case.” This article outlines the details of the case.

Here is the deal: Three chiros payed $$ to a legislator in NC for the passage of 3 initiatives. One of the three passed, to allow lower co-pays for chiropractic services. It is now law.

The legislator is in big trouble, but the chiros are off the hook. They cooperated.

To me, they are just as dirty. Perhaps the bad press will hurt them, but perhaps not.

Drives me Crazy!

ILLICIT CASH
Court documents on Tuesday detailed illegal payments fromthree chiropractors to Jim Black:
Fletcher KeithCharlotte: Gave $8,000
Steve WillenGreensboro: Gave $11,000
Tom Brown,Charlotte: Gave $10,000

(Tom Brown served on the NC Board of Chiropractic Examiners until yesterday)

Labels: current press, health policy

Here is an interesting situation. The Japanese whaling ship, Nisshin Maru, located just off the coast of Antartcica has a fire on board. The ship is disabled and carrying a lot of fuel. They fire is continuing to burn, and could ultimately purge its fuel oil out into the pristine arctic sea, the breeding ground for whales and over 100,000 penguins. The ever-knowledgeable Wikipedia site can tell you about the area where the ship is disabled.

Not by chance, the Greenpeace vessel, Esperanza was nearby. In fact, they had been searching for the Nisshin Maru in an attempt to harass it. Now, they can help it. I’m sure they will be happy to tow it all the way to an angry mob of Greenpeacers ready to do some spearing of their own!

This, just 3 days after Japan threatened to pull out of an anti-whaling treaty and resume full-scale, commercial whaling for profit. In making the situation more complicated, Japan has issued a refusal of help from the Greenpeace vessel, because they are “terrorists.” The images above show both Greenpeace’s fanatical and dangerous tactics to block the catch of a whale, and an oddly placed English sign, “Greenpeace misleads you.”

The actual threat of imminent oil leakage is debatable and as of this post, some reports have suggested the ship is contained and being towed by support vessels. These reports came from Japan.

Here is what I know:

• Don’t trust people who resort to fanatical tactics.
• Don’t like people who kill whales.
• Those penguins have no idea what’s happening.

Labels: current press, environment, misc.

There were travel issues yesterday. I never thought I’d get stuck in Augusta due to snow. Leave it to their airlines.

They were even nice enough to offer me a re-scheduled flight taking off 180 miles from my home, which subsequently was cancelled when Boston-Logan shut down. Oh well, who has plans anyway?

I work hard to make a blog entry just about every day. About half of what I write gets posted to the Metro Spirit Blog. Please make sure you link there for updates as well. For convenience, I placed a widget on this page’s sidebar to show recent posts in the Metro Spirit Blog, so you can check there as well.

Remember, if you don’t use a news collector program like Google Reader, you can sign up for e-mails of my blog entries as an alternative.

Please don’t be shy about comments, I want to know which posts are enjoyed and which ones I should just keep to myself!

Thanks for Reading!

Labels: misc.

I am a big fan of the Back to the Future movie series, having seen the first one in a theater on opening night. One of my favorite scenes in when Doc comes back to get Marty at the end of the first movie and goes rummaging for trash to put into his “Mr Fusion” appliance. This trash into energy thing always seemed to me like a cool idea.

It’s here.

The US Army commissioned this project at Purdue University. The result is this device which takes trash of all sorts and reduces it, in the process, producing 90% more energy than it consumes. The resulting energy is used to power a generator. That sounds a bit like old Doc Brown’s Mr Fusion to me. 2015 here we come! Now, who is working on the Hover Board?

Labels: environment, misc.

Last year, a Whippet named Vivi, got loose and ran away after the Westminster Dog Show while getting ready to board a plane at Kennedy Airport. She had won an Award of Merit at the show. She, presumably, was in desperation mode trying to avoid the plane flight home as these can be very stressful to dogs. She succeeded, but in the process was lost. Vivi was last seen doing 25mph down runway 16. She was wearing a sweater, and many people looked, but no one has found her. The reward is up to $20,000.

The Purpose:

Astute readers will notice, the Tag Line for NPA Think Tank has changed. I decided to change this in order to truly reflect my purpose in writing. I hope you enjoy!

And…The Load: The BackTpack.

The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) sent a press release telling all about their endorsement of this oddly designed and named backpack. I went to the homepage to look into what sort of research this backpack went through to gain the endorsement of a professional organization such as the APTA. Obviously, not much. In fact, the designer even included a personally conducted survey that is not published anywhere but her own site in the “research” list.

I’m sure the design is fine, and indeed seems to make sense biomechanically. However, at a time when the Physical Therapy profession is striving for autonomy and basing the argument largely on our ability to practice based off solid scientific evidence, an endorsement by the APTA of this product seems out of place. I do think children should not be required to carry ANY heavy loads, especially home-work.

Finally, I pretty sure no kid I know would wear this.

Labels: back pain, current press, physical therapy

I found this on the Freakonomics Blog, well worth republishing:

This stuff breaks my brain. Check out this link here, and a bio page. The beginning of the monster that is Google. I wish I knew that guy…

Labels: misc.

Since bird conservation has unintentionally become the story of the day, here is a good one.

I love the underdogs. Most interesting about this article is than in less than 1 week, hatchling #15 was able to find safety in a flock of similarly behaved birds. Quite intelligent and very different from the human tendency to hide and become recluse when on your own. Which brings me to tomorrow’s topic…

Labels: current press, misc.