Media Bias Redux

As those of you who follow this blog will recall, a few days ago we had a discussion about media bias in the comments section.

I just posted below and on The Amarillo Independent Web site a story about John Hicks no longer being chief executive at Baptist St. Anthony's Health System.

When I referred to media bias and how different media outlets handle the actual information, this is a perfect example. I normally don't paste in totally a story from the Amarillo Globe-News, but I have known them to change their content on their Web site. Here is how they handled the story:

John Hicks, the only person to serve as chief executive of Baptist St. Anthony's Health System since its 1996 formation, announced today he will leave the hospital. A news release from BSA didn't give a reason for his departure.
"We are fortunate to have a strong and experienced senior leadership team at BSA, along with quality physicians and nursing staff, so we anticipate a smooth transition with no impact at all on patient care," board Chairman Bob Schneider said in a statement.
Bob Williams, a longtime vice president for BSA and High Plains Baptist Hospital, will assume the role of interim CEO.
-- Staff writer David Pittman

The fact is that Hicks did not "announce today he will leave the hospital."

The opening paragraphs of the story and the Indy reflect the tone of what happened and of the news release.

I can't think of a better illustrates than this of how when different media handle a story with their own bias you get an entirely different perspective on what happened.

New England Journal of Medice holds health reform roundtable

New England Journal of Medice holds health reform roundtable

Posted using ShareThis

The Republican Base

Hey righties! Here is an experiment you can include in the new "Jesus Approved" science textbook for Texas!

Glen Beck is f***ing crazy. He describes himself as a rodeo clown, which is a disgusting insult to real rodeo clowns who actually face down charging bulls.

Glenndie just cries on his teevee show.

But last night was too weird for even his bizarre sociopathic performance art.

No sh*t, he boils a frog alive on his show trying to make a point about . . . I dunno.

How much does this jackhole make again? And this is on a "news" network?

Just sayin' . . .

-Prodigal Son

What should medical center be?

Last week we wrote about how the board and top management of Baptist St. Anthony’s Health System did not take salary cuts while the hospital laid off some 50 workers.
We have since heard that the hospital also approached doctors who take emergency call, sending a letter to them asking them to take a 20 percent pay cut. We are working on obtaining a copy of that letter.
Earlier this week, we also broke a story with ProNews 7 about how the Amarillo Area Foundation rejected Mayor Debra McCartt’s attempt to get the Harrington Regional Medical Center and AAF together to try to settle their differences.
About the only things that BSA and Northwest Texas Healthcare System agree on are that smoking is bad for you and they don’t want to be part of the HRMCI.
Last year, BSA launched a multipronged war against Northwest. The hospital rattled a saber by recruiting the highly regarded emergency physician group, placing a helicopter in Guymon, Okla., and making noises about seeking designation as a trauma center. BSA also spent thousands of dollars to build a new neonatal intensive care unit
No one openly made a case that Northwest was below par in either emergency care or neonatal intensive care. And it’s because they couldn’t.
Both of those services are well known in the region, not just Amarillo, to be excellent. Neonatal ICU was supported by Texas Tech University’s medical school.
The decision to launch this competition was irrational at best and mendacious at worst. And BSA is a nonprofit institution that gets tax breaks for being a responsible corporate member of the community.
The fact that Northwest is a for-profit isn’t a reason for the hammer-and-tongs competition. In fact, it’s the wrong thing to do.
McCartt did the right thing by trying to bring these two organizations to the table with a mediator. It brings to mind a wonderful quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin in the play and movie “1776”: “There is no idea so dangerous it can’t be talked about.”
Clearly something is amiss.
I can’t tell you what is wrong. If someone could, I’d love to know what it is. For a city that places such a premium on getting along, these breaches are a mystery.
As I understand the history of the medical center, those forward-looking folks 40 years ago wanted the medical center to be modeled after Texas Medical Center in Houston. But the big city’s medical center is structured in a quite different way from Amarillo’s. First, none of the hospitals has a seat on the TMC board. In addition, the TMC runs the infrastructure: the common laundry, maintenance of the roads, lawns and the common utility system that provides steam and air conditioning.
The heavyweights at the table in Houston, without a seat at the board, at least don’t have that sandbox in which to fight, were they inclined to fight at all.
The list of institutions that are part of TMC reads like a Who’s Who in medical care. Who hasn’t heard of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which is part of the University of Texas? Or, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Memorial Hermann or the Methodist Hospital?
People can accuse me of being a lot of things, but unrealistic isn’t one of them. What Amarillo has isn’t what Houston has. But it had the potential to emulate the model.
Hindsight is 20-20, of course.
I don’t think it’s too late to regroup and try again.
Texas Tech is doing its part by buttressing its services and academic medicine capabilities.
But the lack of leadership, the vacuum of a vision that is embraced by the entire medical community and the region, is evident.
Who will step up and openly ask the key question for Amarillo? Although a friend posed this to me, I’ll put it in the open: What is a medical center?
And, I’ll add my question. What vision does Amarillo have for a medical center and who is to lead the way toward that vision?
Now, who will step up and answer these questions?

PSA:Support Insurance Industry Profits

"SiCKO" Film Screening in Canyon, TX, Tuesday, 9/22/09, 7pm!

You're Invited
to a
FREE Public Screening
of
Michael Moore's
Urgent, U.S. Healthcare System Documentary, "SiCKO"
(http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/about/synopsis/)

When: Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Where: West Texas A&M University Campus, Jack B. Kelley (JBK) Student Center Legends Club, (JBK is building 2 on this map: http://www.wtamu.edu/about/campus_map.aspx)
Sponsored by: The WTAMU Democrats
Contact: lcaidalphabravo@yahoo.com

"This one is likely to strike home with anyone, left or right, who has had serious illness in the family."
-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

C-U there! Tell your friends!

Sincerely,

Lisa Caid
lcaidalphabravo@yahoo.com

It's called Faux News for a reason

Talk about Fox New and ethics? Look at the producer in the green shirt.

It's not what I wanted but I'll take it.

The Senate Finance Committee released their Health Care Bill today. We have to start somewhere.

Another AGN drivel editorial

I can’t believe how poorly understood the health care issue is — or perhaps how so committed to the Republican-conservative viewpoint and agenda that a newspaper would want to spread disinformation. But the editorial in the Sept. 15 Amarillo Globe-News (http://www.amarillo.com/stories/091509/opi_opin1.shtml) did just that.

Here are some specific problems.

“He (President Barack Obama) needs to go all the way - by inviting Republicans into the White House, and to consult with them personally with their ideas on how to improve the system.”

Iowa’s Sen. Charles Grassley, the blowhard GOP hit man on health care, was part of meetings at the White House last May. The visit was not only well documented in the media it was also posted on Grassley’s own Web site. Here is the interchange between Grassley and a reporter:

QUESTION: Thank you, Senator. Will you talk to us about your White House visit last week,

please?

GRASSLEY: Yes. I can tell you a lot about it. I won't quote any other person present. There was four of us there. No staff. The president, the vice president, Senator Baucus, and me. We went more of our time talking about health care reform, more about process than

substance.

The president made very clear to me that he wants a bipartisan proposal -- I mean, a bipartisan product. And I think he best indicated that by saying that he did rather that a bipartisan one and get part of what he wants than getting all that he wants -- all of what he wants with a partisan vote.

And there was just good change, good atmosphere. The president is very disarming. You feel very much at home. You know, so anything else you want to know, ask me.

The editorial goes on to tout Rep. Mac Thornberry’s column in the Globe-News and suggest Mac has the right answer: tort reform. The editorial said, “One idea for improving the system, said Thornberry, is to set up ‘health courts’ in which doctors and hospitals are ‘judged by their peers.’”

Mac’s suggestion isn’t original. In fact, it will protect screw-up doctors more than ever. New Mexico has this system and, believe it or not, it’s administered by the New Mexico Medical Society. Not many patients win at this level and if they go to court after that, they have and even poorer chance of prevailing.

And none of this addresses that the tort reform in Texas hasn’t lowered costs; that good studies have shown that the effect of tort reform-defensive medicine accounts for less than 1 percent of the total GDP devoted to health care.

But I have a suggestion: If the medical community wants national tort reform, here’s what the public should get in return – (1) All the information in the National Practitioners Data Bank becomes public record; (2) All complaints filed with every state medical board becomes public record, as do all of the adjudication process, including testimony and exhibits. Let’s treat it like a real court case; (3) All hospital (no exemptions for private, government, military, or any hospital) peer review records become public (including morbidly and mortality committee information); and, (4) Hospitals will be required to compute and post case-mix adjusted morbity and mortality rates for all attending physicians on staff.

That’s change I can believe in.

Damn Liars

When will they start telling the truth?

Posted Sept. 9 - 9:55 p.m. - I can’t help but wonder about Rep. Charles Boustany, Jr., M.D., R-La., who gave the lame Republican response to President Obama’s speech on health care. Like every other Republican, he condemned “government-run health care.” Just like our own Mac Thornberry, he parroted the GOP talking points like a good little junior congressman, just as he was told to do by Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and others.

“The president had a chance tonight to take government-run health care off the table,” he said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t do it.”

But if Boustany is so against “government-run health care,” where would he be if he examined how he got educated and trained? First, he got his bachelor’s from either Louisiana State University in New Orleans or the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, La., according to different sources. He got his medical degree from Louisiana State University Medical School in 1982, according to his own Web site. Oops. That’s government-run health care.

According to the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners Web site, which doesn’t show where he did residency and fellowship training, he has no complaints filed against him although Politico reported he was a defendant in an unspecified number of malpractice suits. However, the Web site gives little other information about him, such as verifying whether he is board certified.

He spent some time in Rochester, NY, according to Wikipedia, but that doesn’t indicate what he did there. But, he worked at Charity Hospital of Louisiana. Funny thing about Charity: It’s owned by the State of Louisiana and was for many years the primary teaching hospital for LSU medical school. Oops. That’s government-run health care.

The president said he will start to call out the opposition to health care reform for their lies. Obama did so when he referred to the Whacko-in-Chief Republican Sarah Palin and her “death panel” trash talk. She did so again today in the Wall Street Journal, which now lacks credibility with Rupert Murdoch at the helm.

So I join the president and it starts here and starts now.

If Boustany finds public, i.e., government-run health care, such an anathema, let him turn in his public college and med school degrees.

Kudos

I should give kudos when kudos are due.

Jon Mark Beilue: Country's ingorance is scary sometimes

Holy F**K! Enough!

Be warned . . . I ain't holding back here . . .

Have you had enough yet? We busted our asses getting democratic majorities in the senate and house, AND the white house.

Is it me, or have the grassroots become expendable? We must give up OUR position on single payer and the public option to make a few MINORITY PARTY hairy-eyed republican anarchists in the senate and David f**king Broder comfy cozy? And then the rethugs shit on whatever pops up anyway. Rahm Emmanual's response to us so far has been, "Unhappy? Go somewhere else then!"

Republicans have been absolutely batshit insane since Feb 20th. Rather than discourage the fringe haters, they have whipped them into a frenzy, only for the purpose of torpedoing Obama. Reasonable repubs? WTF are they? I don't read any reasonable repub LTE's in the paper. Just the haters.

It's Obama Derangement Syndrome. . . only veeeeeery deranged for real.

Well . . . it has been seven months. Obama has had an enormous pile of steaming disaster handed to him by the MASTER of f**king everything up and then running out the back door, but the first big initiative is health care.

We need medicare for all. We need the public option, and it is useless to try to talk to someone frothing at the mouth, and calling you traitor! Socialist! Nazi! Dixie Chicks lover! (Sorry . . . flashback to 2003 there . . .)

Thanks to Liberalator for bringing up calling the white house.

I am changing my message, and it is this, "Mr. President, no affordable public option or medicare for all, no money or vote from me in 2012. PERIOD!"

Care to join me? 202-456-1414

-Prodigal Son

NOW, President Obama!

In conversation with my son awhile back, he put me on to something I should have been doing for months but hadn’t thought of. It’s something all of us must be doing, and encouraging their friends, relatives and co-workers to do.

He said every Monday morning he calls (and now I also) the White House comment line and politely but firmly tells the answerer that candidate Obama said he would work to pass Universal Health Care, Single Payer and get us out of Iraq. He (and I) tells the answerer that we have already compromised from Single Payer to Public Option, and can’t see that he is laying his presidency on line for either. My son (and I) says “please tell the president that NOW is the time to draw the line in the sand, and rise or fall with the bill to make Health Care Universal with the Public Option."

Start calling today. The White House number is 1-202-456-1414. Ask to leave a comment. Be prepared to wait five or ten minutes for your turn, and then politely but firmly DEMAND THE PUBLIC OPTION (or single payer, your choice) and anything else you want to add. I also go to www.Whitehouse.gov , click on “CONTACT us” in the upper right hand corner and pass on the same message – every week! It is easy, is not intimidating, costs nothing but a little time, and is vital.

The president needs to hear from millions that there is no option but the Public Option – add your name to that list of progressives/liberals that is speaking out.

Telephone: 1-202-456-1414, ask to leave a comment
www.Whitehouse.gov, click on “CONTACT us

LIBERALATOR

Journamalism! WOO!

Proving that the rich and connected part of America is immune to unemployment and economic downturns, meet your sparkly, newest, 27 year-old TODAY show correspondent . . . Jenna Bush Hager!

Qualifications? She has "White House experience", LOL.

Oh, yeah. . . she has ghost-written two books, and is a reading coordinator at an elementary school, so naturally she will be reporting on, wait for it . . .

Education.

My fav quote from the fruit of Dubya's loins, "It wasn't something I'd always dreamed to do," she said. "But I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change."

Shorter; It's so AWESOME to be handed a surprise f**king job offer on a famous Teevee show out of the blue without any experience whatsoevah! Totally!

More from Gawker:

"Jim Bell, Today's executive producer is already giving quotes about how he's not using it as political grease for a future shot at trying to Frost/Nixon old Daddy Dubya. Watch that D:

"Bell said Hager won't be covering politics. He said he didn't consider the job as a down payment for a future interview with her father, who has been living quietly in Texas since leaving office earlier this year. Attacks on NBC News by conservatives for the liberal bent of MSNBC also had nothing to do with it, he said. "I hope to focus on what I'm passionate about because I think I'd do them best job on them - education, urban education, women and children's issues and literacy," Hager said."

MMM, HMMMM, riggghhhhht. . .

Look, I am gonna go out on a limb, and say that Jenna is probably a nice person (never met), and I know that legacy hires always trump competency and experience (Liz Cheney, anyone?), but seriously, she has only been a teacher for a couple of years.

What is her cred regarding education? Or Journalistic digging? Or . . . anything relating to the average American's struggles with paying for crushing school loans for example?

-Prodigal Son

The Audacity of Business as Usual

So much for all that hope and change and shit:

Bernanke to Be Nominated for Second Term as Fed Chief

Exactly how bad do you have to screw up these days to be held accountable for anything?

Depression Continued

This morning, I wanted to go into some more detail about what is happening now, and what to expect in this economy. Stuff that must be fixed before any real recovery can happen.

BTW . . . you won't see this reported on the Jon and Kate networks. LOOK OVER THERE! Sarah Palin also said something crazy again!!!

Real Estate: sobering numbers to consider here;
13% of homeowners are behind or in default, and notice from the chart that over half are fixed prime rate loans. People who used to have middle class jobs, and good credit. This is now a Prime foreclosure crises.


Mortgage modification has failed. There I said it. Chase has my mortgage, and when I applied for the Presidents "Home Afforable Modification Program", Chase lost my paperwork 3X, and then tried to stick me in a lower interest rate ARM . . . with them collecting a massive fee. I told them to go to hell. Peter Goodman had a great article about this in the Financial Times

"But for the loans in question, servicing fees range as high as 2%-3%. In some cases, Chase, or Washington Mutual previously, modified interest rates on the loans down to 3%, while keeping the servicing fee flat. This essentially strips cash flow from the mortgage note holders and diverts it to the servicer, a tactic that doesn’t sit well with owners of the impacted bonds."

Get it? You get your mortgage rate lowered to 3%, but it's an ARM, and the bank takes 2-3% in fees. IOW, you are not paying down your mortgage that much.

SOLUTION 1: Without giving judges in bankruptcy court the option to reduce payments for a period, we will still be in free fall.

SOLUTION 2: Have the government use FNMA to refi anyone who is 1 month delinquent, in foreclosure, or unemployed. You get a 40 year fixed at 3%, no points. When things improve, the gov can sell these mortgages to the banks, or keep it.

Tomorrow I want to discuss unemployment.

In the meantime . . . has anyone else experienced boolsheeet with their bank regarding their mortgage or modification?

-Prodigal Son

Winding Down the USA

This country is in a depression.

Just because it does not look like the 30’s does not mean it is any less significant for those suffering. As of this week, I have been without a professional gig for six months now. Unemployment insurance has run out.

AND THERE ARE MILLIONS OF YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS LIKE ME. 6.4 million.

Wish I could be upbeat, but things are hard-core. The tax firm acquisition did not happen due to various seller-related issues, (it may happen with a different firm down the road, my partner and I are looking now), I am down to my last few thousand in the bank, although I still have not tapped my 401k yet. Still making house/car payments, but I gotta have some fresh income starting yesterday, or I am gonna have to start peeling off some retirement funds, withholding plus penalty or no.

I have not been sitting around waiting for something to happen. My family has cut back till it hurts. Thank goodness for local grandparents who can pay for the little fun stuff. Pop sure can't right now.

I have sucked it up and am waiting tables at a steak joint at nights now. I made $50 last Saturday, LOL. That's what I use to make in an HOUR. 41 years+ old, and back to college kid wages with a family and a mortgage.

I have applied to over 250+ jobs, interviewed for 3. Wanna know what ELSE keeps me up at night? At what point do I become 'damaged goods'? Ya know, "This guy has not found a job in 'X' months, must be something there . . . let's take a pass". Tell me it does not happen every day.

The crazy thing is that the career path I was on is dead. Every week I get a call from a former peer asking about what is out there. Nada. My headhunter says more hiring freezes and more layoffs coming. The financial sector is hemorrhaging jobs like crazy even now. Except at the top. Except the f*ckers who caused this economic cardiac arrest.

I have a buddy whose daughter has a chronic lung condition, laid off three months ago, and who had to choose between his house in Richmond or COBRA payments for his kiddo last month. He is living in a three bedroom apt now with his wife and 2 kids.

45 years old.

Can you imagine? Seem real yet? Ask yourself, “If my income was wiped out for six-twelve months, how would we get by?”

My kids are healthy, my wife and I are healthy, so we have the only important thing anyway. House and Car, etc. are just stuff.

But . . . can anyone here define “Middle Class”? Seriously, WTF does that mean anymore?

As a financial guy, I did the following to offset any tough period. . .

3 months salary in bank . . . CHECK
Controlled little debt . . . CHECK
Used cars, keep after paid off . . . CHECK
Did not buy more house than I can afford . . . CHECK
Life Ins . . . CHECK
Will/Medical power of attorney, etc . . . CHECK

And it was still not enough . . .

Last question: IF YOU CALL YOURSELF CHRISTIAN, WOULDN'T IT BE THE CHRISTIAN THING TO HAVE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE? To, ya know, have one less thing on your neighbors mind while he tries to survive financially?

Tomorrow I want to talk about what our economy looks like and what that means, but for now;

Reach out to your buddy without a gig, buy him/her a beer. Joke about better times, do not talk about your upcoming vacation to the Caymans.

-Prodigal Son

Long, but worth watching

H/T: The Market Ticker

Have the Whackos Won?

Well, the wackos have won a partial victory, led by Wacko-In-Chief Sarah Palin.

By grabbing onto the propagandist rhetoric of the worst kind, Palin undercut one of the better provisions in HR 3200, calling end-of-life counseling "death panels."

The proposed legislation was nothing of the sort, of course. It was a provision that allowed the reimbursement of counseling for terminally ill patients. The measure would've opened options for hospice care, either at home or in an inpatient facility, and other opportunities for enhancing the quality of life near the end of life. It also would have paid for counseling and some legal help in preparing for the end-of-life.

Instead, Palin and other right-wing extremists used the same fear-mongering tactics that stampeded this nation into Iraq — Vietnam with sand— and the Patriot Act, which gave Dick Cheney an extension on your phone and a tap into your Internet.

Palin was aided and abetted by a group known as "Patriot@FaxDC.com," which is blast faxing members of Congress and spewing its stupidity at newspapers. This outfit is a huge offshoot of the Tea Party movement that started last spring.

Take a gander at the e-mail The Amarillo Independent got today:

Alert: Part of the controversial Obamacare proposal pending in Congress that discusses "end-of-life" counseling and medical procedures that could be rationed based on the age of the patient and other factors was written by suicide advocates who argue openly for the "right" to death, according to reports.

The sources for the Obamacare provisions have been documented on a blog for Family Research Council Action and discussed by prominent pro-life columnist Jill Stanek.

"Come again that promotion of euthanasia isn't part of Section 1233?" Stanek wrote in her new explanation of the dangers of Obamacare. " Kudos to FRC's The Cloakroom …for drawing attention to the fact that the two authors of Section 1233 are major proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide."

The authors include an Oregon congressman who has argued for assisted suicide before federal courts and an organization that openly boasts it helps "thousands of clients each year by ... guiding their search for a peaceful, humane death...."

FRC Action reports on its website the group "has been getting some heat" for its criticism of the plan.

"Today comes (a) smoking gun … with the group Compassion & Choices coming out defending the questionable rationing portions of the bill and admitting THEY ACTUALLY WROTE THE LANGUAGE!" FRC Action said.

Can you believe this stuff? There is not one documentable name for the source of these allegations. There is a regurgitation of garbage published by the right-wing Family Research Council, the folks who want to censor your television watching, but not one reliable source.

My column in the Aug. 13 issue talked about propaganda and public relations.

I support Pres. Barak Obama's agenda strongly but I wish he had been more calculating in the way he had introduced health care reform and more aggressive in the way he defends it now.

One problem at hand is that the vocal minority has taken charge of the conversation. The other problem is that the attack on health care reform is concurrent with an attack on the elected officials of the federal government.

As a progressive, I think we need insurance and health care reform tied together. And as a compassionate human being I don't believe all government workers are bad. But, as I look at the members of Congress and their behavior and their self-serving activity that has turned them into a “ruling class” I share the anger with the right-wing wackos.

Well said!

Pass it on! The perfect answer to "guvment cain't do nothin!"

"click here"

The Liberalator