Tag: Dipak Desai

Shorties Lake

Latte Economy Revisited: It turns out that more Americans think it is important to create jobs — and specifically manufacturing jobs — than worry about the deficit. Dave doesn’t think we have a Latte Economy; he thinks we have a “Cake or Death” economy.

Education Researchers Don’t Need Statistics: A real scientist looks at the “good kindergarten teachers will help your kids earn more money” study. Unfortunately the figures don’t add up.

Left of Center, Maybe: Great quotes. “If we were a right-of-center nation, you could win an election by saying you planned to eliminate Medicare and Social Security. After all, this would be an effortless way of leaving the unprecedentedly bloated defense budget intact while still cutting big ‘gubment.’ Instead such a proposal is grounds for getting you burned in effigy.” Also, “The reality: the majority of Americans are actually progressive whether or not they call themselves that. Poll after poll finds when Americans are asked how they feel about issues like the minimum wage, protecting the environment, gay rights and even gun control – the majority agrees with the Left.”

Follow up: Dipak Desai’s competency hearings are beginning.

You’ve got to read this and pass it on!: Ok, if you’ve been reading me for a while you probably know all this, but MoveOn’s got the top 5 Social Security myths. And they’re delightfully blunt about the motives of the people who keep spouting them.

Speaking of which, talk to Granny about where she gets her information on the health insurance reform bill: It turns out that a lot of senior citizens are very misinformed.

Funny Thing, Most of Us Get Fired for Not Doing Our Jobs: Five years ago I said “If you have moral problems with doing your job, you must quit. Today. Otherwise, you are saying your morals only matter when they inconvenience others. A vegan waitress knows she will have to serve meat unless she works in a vegetarian restaurant; a recovering alcoholic realizes he should probably not go to bartender’s school; pacifists normally don’t enlist in the armed forces.” This week a judge said yeah, you don’t have a right to only do the parts of your job that you like, and you don’t have the right to re-write your professional guidelines to suit your moral qualms.

It had been months since I linked Pandagon and now I’m doing it twice in one post: Some conservatives are in a tizzy that President Obama is sitting down to an interview with Barbara Walters and a few of her friends… on her daytime show aimed at a mostly SAHM audience. Here’s a little secret — it turns out that women have had the ability to vote since 1920, and the sort of women who can take the time to watch daytime TV have the time to get to the polls.

Fine, how do YOU want to measure it??: 10 key indicators show that yes, global climate change is real. That’s what most scientists call global warming these days so freak snow doesn’t confuse the small-minded.

It sure would have been nice for someone, like say the news media, to have pointed this out in 2002: Hans Blix on the fact that he found no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq because there were none.

How nice for somebody, I guess: Health insurer Aetna made more money last quarter — even though they had less revenue — because of lower costs (that is to say, less paying for actual health care).

And finally: an interview with Isaiah Mustafa, “The Old Spice Guy.” Turns out he’s got some acting parts that involve wearing a shirt. Also turns out he’s a P90X guy.

Life Imitates Monty Python

First, it was the news that Scotsmen were “universally unhealthy” and indeed “living dangerously” when it came to their lifestyles. Sadly, the first thing that popped into mind was that they were universally bad at tennis as well:

Punchline here, if you are unfortunate enough not to remember this.

Then mere hours later, I stumbled upon an item about bearded women taking on the “good old boy” network in France. Please forgive me for automatically thinking of this:

Makes it hard to take the world seriously.

In Closing: proposed stupid laws (LIEberman really thinks there’s an internet “off” switch someplace that the President could pull??); smart judge; gee, what could possibly make somebody nervous in an airport?; Desai pleads not guilty; bank closure 82; earlier school day == more teen car crashes (can we hope that the insurance companies actually do something good for us and pressure school districts?); and for Japanfilter, the Ikaros Solar Sail. Don’t fly too close to the sun, guys.

A Couple Quick Follow-Ups

Remember Dipak Desai? Prosecutors want to bring criminal charges. [Update: 28 charges brought, including racketeering] What will this do to the drug companies’ appeal? I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that if what happened was a criminal act, then this is no different than suing Smith and Wesson over a handgun death. Except of course for the fact that the drugs weren’t the problem.

Just yesterday we were talking about the jobs report (no, not the Apple Computer kind of Jobs). Today the federal government released it’s own version of the report. It was, well, uninspiring. Ok, no, really it sucks, and so says an actual economist. Sure, 431,000 jobs were created, but 95% of them were temp positions with the Census. That leaves only 41,000 jobs that are likely to be around at Christmas, and for a change it’s a more pessimistic number than ADP reported.

Why Your Medical Bills Go Up Next Year

And, Why Your Doctor Won’t Get a Penny of That Money

Maybe some of you recall my posting a picture taken from the 3rd floor of the Clark County Courthouse. Perhaps you wondered why I was there. I had been called to jury duty. Now that the trial that I was in the jury pool for is over — except for appeals, of course — I think I can safely comment on the case.

There were 150 of us asked to fill out a 30+ page juror questionnaire, and when I saw it I immediately thought “Oh no, they do not want me on that jury!” When I got out and called my partner to let him know I was on the way home, he asked me about what had happened. I said “I can’t comment on the case, but I think I can safely say there’s a doctor who’s a witness, it involves propofol, and it doesn’t involve Michael Jackson.” He replied “Oh no, they do not want you on that jury!”

Sure enough I was called by the court and asked not to return.

Here are the facts of the story. Dipak Desai was a doctor who came to Vegas and built an “empire” on quickie colonoscopies. It all came tumbling down a couple of years ago when a cluster of Hepatitis cases was traced to his clinic. While hepatitis is a known possible complication of colonoscopy, this was an unusual number of cases. Six cases rapidly expanded to 114 cases (and counting), with tens of thousands of people needlessly exposed to disease while getting a screening exam in the name of staying healthy. Desai himself eventually declared bankruptcy, but not before a stroke, trying to flee the country (thwarted by the local Mercedes dealership!), and much handwringing over Nevada’s malpractice insurance “reform” and the fact that he only carried the $1,000,000 per incident and $3,000,000 per year coverage required by law. A small number of cases have been settled, but there are many more cases and not enough money to go around.

Now make no mistake: there are a lot of people who are very sick because of the actions of Dr. Desai, his colleagues, and his staff. But sometimes it is just not possible to make things right. So since you can’t get blood form a turnip, some very sick people and their lawyers started looking for the deepest available pockets.

The media has made much of the fact that the clinics used “single use vials” of medication more than once and may have re-used some syringes. If that’s how the Hepatitis was transmitted, then USA Today and the CDC are right that it’s the tip of the iceberg. Except that’s not how it happened; if it were, there would be clusters of blood-borne disease around every surgical center, vaccine clinic, and med-spa in the nation.

Enter the sad but true case of Henry Chanin, who at the time he was infected worked for the Mayor’s wife at the posh Meadows School. It’s the kind of place with multi-million dollar facilities, a waiting list as long as your arm, and a near 100% college admissions rate. His lawyers alleged that it was the fault of the drug companies that made the medication in the single use vials that was to blame for his hepatitis. And, since the drug companies were specifically not allowed to blame the doctors for “misusing” the product, the jury I narrowly missed being on found in Mr. Chanin’s favor and awarded him and his wife over $5,000,000.

Here’s the problem; it wasn’t the meds. My partner put it very well back in 2008 when this was a new story:

Consider that if a clinic’s management is so cheap and careless as to cut corners over a $.05 syringe which is essentially the accusation leveled at this clinic, how much risk are they willing to put patients at? Endoscopes require cleaning and disinfection. That takes time. In a busy center, there have to be enough scopes to do the procedures and still have the downtime for the devices to allow them to be properly cleaned and disinfected.

The scopes cost thousands of dollars which is a very likely place to cut corners if it’s all about the bottom line and patient care never really enters the equation. Couple that with a high volume clinic and violations of the cleaning guidelines for the endoscopes are certain to happen.

It was very likely the endoscope, not contaminated propofol.

Using “single use vials” multiple times is almost standard for many medications, and research has been done to clear a number of drugs for use in this manner. You could clog journals with thousands of studies like this and that. Re-using the syringe is not a good idea, but the drug companies didn’t tell clinic staff to do that. I think the one biggest thing in my questionnaire that got me off that jury was the fact that Allergan send representatives to my office to teach me how to sell Botox from vials that should theoretically have been single use. Well guess what, for what those vials cost, nobody is only using them only once. And strangely enough, not a single case of hepatitis or AIDS has ever been traced to a Botox party. Disclaimer: my partner used to work for the guy who filed this suit, who also happens to be quoted extensively in the link on Dipak Desai above. Yeah, sometimes it feels like the medical community in Vegas traces back to a very small number of people who all know each other.

While nobody can give Mr. Chanin his health back, blaming a drug company for a clinic that didn’t follow the instructions and according to many sources didn’t even properly clean the apparatus they put up people’s butts will only drive up everybody’s costs: drugmaker’s costs, malpractice insurance costs, liability insurance costs, doctor’s costs for drugs and insurance both. Your insurance company? They will raise your premiums. And your doctor? His costs will go up but he won’t make an extra dime.

In Closing: Natazia?; the tax revenue case for marijuana legalization; no more French Foreign Legion for American Boys if Senator LIEberman gets his blatantly unconstitutional citizenship forfeiture bill passed but you’re still clear to join Israel’s army; corporate America passing the expensive part of health insurance reform on to you (and I said something similar when??); educators can’t count; letting states protect citizens from banks must be part of financial reform along with “too big to fail = too big to exist“; on Social Security; deregulation disaster; all just a little bit of history repeating; 30 photos that that changed the world; employment is increasing, just not nearly enough; on terrorist attacks; Yoko Ono; and Happy I Suck Less Than Yesterday Day.