Travis In Austin

I just remembered, gun manufactures and dealers were given immunity from civil damages if they negligently allow their guns to get in the hands of criminals. This was after the maker of the Bushmastwr ,223 auto had to pay 2.5 million to one of the D.C. Sniper's victims. Atomic energy related fields have a great deal of immunity and limited liability. The construction industry has been able to limit liability with statutes or repose. Most ski area states eliminate any action against a ski resort operation.

If you want the FACTS about this debate I suggestnyou go here. http://vaccines.procon.org If you want a good example of how conspiracy arguments get started and eventually debunked, here is a great article http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2014/02/22/is-the-cdc-hiding-data-about-mercury-vaccines-and-autism/

Congress has given numerious industries immunity from civil liability in various forms, either limited liability such as recovery from a fund, limited liability, or blanket immuniry. The best example is tobacco. Others include airlines/aviation, insurance companies, banking,automobile manufacturers, etc., etc.,

Ditto

I think it is greatnyou still have a drive in Theater, none around these parts.

The unpainted are a greenish white are they not?

Houston elevators are particularly troubling. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/elevator.asp

Do you ride elevators? OK...I said I would not engage with the horse crowd on emotional issues I don't understand. We have a death in Houston almost weekly of a bicyclist. The most often given reason...which I understand and have experienced...is "they were invisible." Not to a machine, they wouldn't be. Even if not 100% effective simple bicycle alerts would save a lot of lives. Dave Yes, almost every day. But elevators are regulated, the subject of extensive legislation, uniform standards and mandatory inspections. I think that may be where the concern lies, the eventual major expense and regulation the more autonomus the vehicle becomes.

Sprint branding is already taking place. The final announcement/approval of the new company won't be made until July I believe. The manager at the store in Ft. Oglethorpe, GA seems pretty optimistic (probably why he has become a manager), and is rather knowledgeable. Not like others I've met over the years.They are receiving inventory from other stores and warehouses. I think that is right Bruce, Sprint finalized the deal to sublease in a large percentage, but not all, of the remaining stores. The remaining stores are all part of the new company that is owned by General Wireless. They kept the inventory and warehouses they wanted in their deal. The inventory in the closed stores and closed warehouses is owned by the previous incarnation of the company and will go to offset some of the massive debts owned by that entity. This article have a pretty good roadmap of how things have progressed through the bankruptcy process. http://www.thestreet.com/story/13130825/1/radioshack-set-to-put-intellectual-property-last-store-leases-on-the-auction-block.html

Now that's funny. She got that the first night she was there and says she has no recollection oh how it got there.

Unfortunately, no. Almost 1800 were saved when they were purchased out of Bankruptcy a couple of months ago. Prior to that sale the court approved the closing of about 1450 unprofitable stores. RS tried to get their largest secured creditor to allow them to close down their unprofitable stores but they refused. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and the court approved the closing of about 1790 stores, and the sale of about 1780 that will continue to operate as the new RS. They are linking with a cell carrier, which may be Sprint, and will be updating the stores in phases along the lines that Bruce mentioned. The way to look at it that almost 1800 stores were saved. Without a buyer they would have all been closed. The stores where they were blowing out inventory and closing are seperate from the new RS that continue to operate. They were divided in Feburary, the stores getting the ax had assets under the control of the court and approved to be liquidated. The new RS probably has more inventory then they really want and so didn't make any kind of an offer for the inventory. All of that inventory had to be gone by the end of the month in order to avoid lease payments. The company was losing over a million a day going into bankruptcy, it is a miracle that any stores survived. They are essentially a cell phone store that also carries parts, over 50 percent of their revenues had been coming from cell phone sales. They were terribly mismanaged after 2000 and this will be the second time they will emerge from bankruptcy because they failed to keep up with the times. Maybe the third time is a charm. Travis

Congratulations! The Ninth may be the greatest symphony ever, but it's also a challenging work to grasp. Still, you'll know after each of the four movements that you have heard a gigantic work of exceptional experience.Any Beethoven work, especially with an odd-numbered symphony (I can do more detail if you want), will be well worth hearing and seeing. Interested to know the significance of odd numbered symphonies by Beethoven. Travis

Saw these on Saturday.

I can't answer your docs per 1000 question without researching it, but the steady increase in med school enrollments leave little doubt that it's increasing, unavoidably. Again. the lead time is very long. DO production increased GREATLY, beginning in the 1990's, and this may have helped save physicians' and medical schools' bacon by making emerging shortages less severe. DOs are increasingly seen in ordinary practice situations and more recently in medical leadership, including in academic medical leadership positions. Moreover, DOs go into primary care and rural practice to a much greater degree than MD docs, so the big DO increase has surely reduced pressures on the MD establishment for more docs in primary and rural health care. That's been a long struggle by DOs to finally gain prestige and acceptance where they and their hospitals were once pariahs among MDs. It took HUGE and deeply dedicated DO leadership to accomplish this! That is also true of the battles that family physicians had to wage to establish themselves as a fully trained, accredited, and respected specialty, and to leave the old GP behind. The podiatric profession has also had to fight its way upward to achieve similar success in moving from nails and calluses to demanding foot surgery. A final note: Medicare has played a very important role, by contributing key supporting dollars to hospital residency programs regardless of discipline or specialty -- DO and podiatry programs, for example. It's still too oriented to in-hospital training, however. 27 physicians in active patient care per 10,000 in population. This does not include D.O.s. One quarter of U.S. physicians in active patient care were educated in foreign medical schools. I guess between foriegn medical schools and D.O.s the system is keeping up.

Larry, that is very interesting background on the doctor numbers and the ramp up time to educate more of them. Hard to understand why they didn't see the numbers because social security saw it coming, people are living longer and population is increasing. It would be interesting to know the numbers of psysicians (MDs and DOs) per 1000 people, or whatever benchmark, in 70, 80, 90, 00 and 10. I also wonder if a catastrophic crunch was avoided by granting D.O.s full medical privileges, and pathways to residency and fellowship programs? If so, are we approaching that same situation again?

Yes........... there has been a trend towards diversification of healthcare delivery vehicles. No........... this is also a real matter of the ACA and its perspectives on the definitions of care and which populations will be getting care, who pays for care and who gets care paid for by others. The ACA now determines benefits and defines cost benefit outcomes. Bureaucrats now define clinical care plans. The elderly population faces some cold choices. Here we discourse on simple eyecare medicine. Look into elder care. Look into hospice and palliative medicine. Did you know that if you die under hospice care that there are no formal inquiries? If you die in a nursing home - there will be no autopsy? We are talking about carte blanche when it comes to elder care. Imagine when assisted suicide gets enacted? If gov't policy demands a lower standard of care and the practice of that care has no oversight and minimal consequences - what happens to quality of care, the quality of life? You spend your entire life being healthy and your are healthy. You are living an active retirement and you suffer a simple accident. You break a hip. The best medical solution is a hip prosthesis. But - the ACA says you're too old. Makes no difference that you are otherwise in excellent condition, you have no comorbidities. You do not get your procedure approved. You now get to be crippled at best. So, yeah.......... politics now plays a huge roll in healthcare, its quality, its delivery and its economics............. and IMHO, it is not very well done in any regard. Medicine by gov't committee is not medicine. You'd better be wealthy if you want to retire and remain healthy. That may be true on other types of care, but the opthomologists and optometrists have been in a turf war for over thirty years. Kentucky passed this legislation back in 2011. The market forces indirectly related to insurance may have helped push the legislation to passage for KY, but the Governor who signed it said it was all about availability of care. Back to the title of the thread, where is the data that this is inferior eye care?

California is the third state to enact such legislation. Oklahoma did so back in the late 90's. What peer reviewed studies are there, not mere speculation from advocates from doctor/optometrist groups, about the complication rates of various eye laser procedures performed by each group? I'm glad to see that the real issue in this debate has been acknowledged to be one of training and qualifications, not insurance or the Affordable Care Act.

These new professions were designed to make up for a shortage of doctors that existed and was growing long before the Affordable Care Act. The problem seems to have originated with some seriously flawed studies in the seventies and early eighties commissioned by the US Department of Health and Human Services and its Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee. They predicted that there would be too many doctors by the year 1990, and that doctors had already been delivering “inflated volumes of service.” So, medical school expansion was not supported. Of course, they were dead wrong (pardon the macabre pun). LarryC would know everything there is to know about those studies, why medical schools didn't expand, etc. He was a member of that committee at various times IIRC.

These new professions were designed to make up for a shortage of doctors that existed and was growing long before the Affordable Care Act. The problem seems to have originated with some seriously flawed studies in the seventies and early eighties commissioned by the US Department of Health and Human Services and its Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee. They predicted that there would be too many doctors by the year 1990, and that doctors had already been delivering “inflated volumes of service.” So, medical school expansion was not supported. Of course, they were dead wrong (pardon the macabre pun). Finally, an intelligent, reasoned and FACTUAL, response to this post. Travis

Did you bother to read the link smack dab in the middle of the originak post Carl?In case you didn't, let me quote the first few sentences for you. "The bill permits qualified optometrists to administer flu shots and two other vaccinations to adults and to perform some minor procedures. In another legislative move that could help ease the physician shortage in California, lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly in favor of expanding the scope of practice for optometrists. The California State Senate on May 22 approved a bill that would allow optometrists to perform minor eye surgeries and administer vaccinations to adults. The senate voted 34-4 to approve Senate Bill 622, which was authored by Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina)." From that article Maynard gives us a warning that people in California are at risk of inferior eye care. He is entirely wrong about that by the way, according to the California legislature. So, pray tell, how do you discuss the merits, or lack thereof, of a California bill, introduced by an optometrist, without politics? If legislation isn't "politics" there are a number of current legislative matters from several states I am dying to bring up but thought inappropriate as being "political." But if posting about legislation and putting your spin on it is considered appropriate I am cool with that. I have 5 or 6 bills ready for discussion, like "open carry" in Texas for example. Travis

Dr. Who, you are correct, everyone does have a first patient, client, project, whatever. With laser surgery it is usually the engineer who designed the machine who teaches the physician how to use it for the first time. FJD, you are hit the nail on the head, there is disagreement among opthomologists about whether optometrists should do cataract laser surgery. Here is a link to an opthomology site, Opthomology Review, discussing the pros and cons of optometrists doing cataract laser surgery. http://www.reviewofophthalmology.com/content/i/1840/c/33272/

It is about money, and fights between care providers, like it had been since the AMA was created. http://calwatchdog.com/2013/06/17/sen-hernandez-authors-bills-to-benefit-his-optometry-business/

You are apparently way behind the times of terms of where medical care is going in the US that predates the ACA by a decade. Look up Physican's Assistant and Nurse Practitioner and get yourself up to date.

Some great facts here, not sure if the product works or not. Minermark's suggested repellant is NOW recommended by the CDC, I hope it works for me. Edit: Now, not "not" http://www.megacatch.com/mosquitotraps.html

I am going to give this a try, I hope it works. Apparently different mosquitos react differently to different things. Citronella has little to no effect here.