In the mid-1990s I worked weekend shifts as a ‘moonlighting’ doctor in a suburban Chicago hospital. When I would show up on Friday evenings, the other doctors would always say: ‘Peter, remember, no roundtrips on weekends.’ Translated, that meant no patients admitted over the weekend should go home before Monday afternoon at the earliest. I soon understood the genesis of the ‘no roundtrip’ rule. At the crack of dawn on Monday mornings, before their regular office hours, the doctors would go from room to room, providing consultations and filling out billing cards. Over time I learned that most of the patients had never seen the physicians who woke them before breakfast and were under someone else’s care. [Illustration] This spring my colleagues and I published a study of Medicare in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing that what happened in the Chicago suburbs actually happens nationwide. Medicare patients bounce between many doctors, most of whom are unaffiliated with one another and, as a result, few patients have a single doctor who is central to the care they receive. The typical Medicare patient in one year sees seven different doctors, including five different specialists, working in four […]
OCALA, Fla. — A judge has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit claiming that CNN’s Nancy Grace pushed the mother of a missing toddler to suicide through aggressive questioning on her show will be tried in federal court. ADVERTISEMENT U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary R. Jones ruled Monday that federal court would handle the lawsuit filed by Melinda Duckett’s relatives because the involved parties are from different jurisdictions, according to court documents. The lawsuit was filed in November 2006 and names the talk show host and CNN as defendants. Grace grilled Duckett on Grace’s CNN Headline News show in September 2006 about the disappearance of Duckett’s 2-year-old son, Trenton. Duckett fatally shot herself before the network aired the pre-taped interview. Authorities, who have said they believe Trenton is still alive, have named Melinda Duckett as the prime suspect in his disappearance. Attorneys involved in the case did not return phone messages left at their offices Tuesday. CNN is a division of Time Warner Inc.
Just 14% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress. This 14% Congressional confidence rating is the all-time low for this measure, which Gallup initiated in 1973. The previous low point for Congress was 18% at several points in the period of time 1991 to 1994. Congress is now nestled at the bottom of the list of Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions rankings, along with HMOs. Just 15% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in HMOs. (By way of contrast, 69% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military, which tops the list. More on this at galluppoll.com on Thursday). It’s worth remembering that Congress is basically nothing more than a mechanism for the representation of the people’s wishes. We all can’t go to Washington. So we elect men and women and send them off in our stead. It’s not an optimal situation, it seems to me, when such a low percentage of average Americans have confidence in this system. Generally speaking, Americans have been skeptical about Congress […]
President Bush yesterday vetoed legislation to expand federally funded embryonic stem cell research, saying that scientific advances now allow researchers to pursue the potentially lifesaving work without destroying human embryos. Bush followed his veto — his third since becoming president — with an executive order aimed at encouraging federal agencies to support research that offers the promise of creating medically useful stem cells without destroying human embryos. In his veto message to Congress, Bush said the legislation crossed an ethical line. ‘The Congress has sent me legislation that would compel American taxpayers, for the first time in our history, to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos,’ Bush said. The veto came under attack from those who say the president is withholding critical support for the most promising forms of stem cell research to appease conservative Christians and other supporters who equate human embryos with human lives. ‘This is just one example of how the president puts ideology before science, politics before the needs of our families — just one more example of how out of touch with reality he and his party have become,’ Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said during a speech to Democratic […]
His famously analytical mind worked out the laws of gravity and unravelled the motion of the planets. And when it came to predicting the end of the world, Sir Isaac Newton was just as precise. He believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 – exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to a recently published letter. Luckily for modern scientists in awe of his achievements, Newton based this figure on religion rather than reasoning. In a letter from 1704 which has gone on show in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Newton uses the Bible’s Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the Apocalypse. The famous scientist The note reveals a deeply spiritual side to a man more usually regarded as a strict rationalist. Newton, known as the founder of modern physics, secured a royal exemption from ordination in the Church of England – something normally expected of academics in his day – so he would not have to follow its teachings. But he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: ‘It may end later, but I see no reason for […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
