2centsworth.info

Another illuminating New York Times article (December 30, 2006) entitled The Spine as Profit Center. The article raises questions about how many of the 500,000 spine operations performed each year actually benefit the patients, and whether the surgeons performing the procedures are influenced by financial conflicts of interest.

It turns out that not only are the surgeons well paid to perform the operations but that many of them are also investor/owners of the companies that provide the expensive hardware used in these operations… The article states that patients and their insurers are charged around $1,000 for a single screw… Which actually costs less than $100 to manufacture. Note that the surgeons decide where the hardware is purchased, not the hospital. In fact, the surgeon-owned companies frequently do not actually make the hardware at all. In many cases they simply buy a screw from industry supplier for $65 to $100 and mark it up to $1,000 before it is “sold” to the surgeon’s patient.

It should be emphasized that a typical back operation needs a lot more than one screw. In one example provided in the article a complete “set” of hardware for the procedure would cost the patient $7,800.

Another example of “soft corruption”… Pretty “hard”, of course, if it is your back that was “screwed” up in an unnecessary and expensive procedure.

I read a brief article… buried in the back of today’s Wall Street Journal (Thursday, December 28, 2006) about our recently resigned Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton.

I am sure she’s done nothing illegal… After all she is a lawyer and a Washington political appointee… But reading the article did make me a bit queasy.

The reason for the article is that Royal Dutch Shell just announced that they had hired her as their general counsel, presumably for the sort of munificent salary that goes with that sort of job these days.

Now call me cynical but do you think that job offer was in any way related to her role as Secretary of the Interior?

Or the fact that during her tenure the Department of Interior, erh, omitted to bill the oil industry for royalties they owed the US taxpayer? To the tune of, some minor amount…. Oh yes, there it is… $10 billion (according to the General Accounting Office). And yes, Martha, Royal Dutch Shell was one of the biggest beneficiaries.

The general counsel job is, I gather, the Big Oil equivalent of stuffing a few twenties down her cleavage after the lap dance.

This is the sort of “soft corruption” I see as endemic in our government and business elite. Nobody handed Ms. Norton an attache case of hundred dollar bills, they may not have explicitly offered her a job… But she knew she would be “taken care of” after she left office.

UPDATE: In the New York Times (Dec. 30, 2006) Business section there is an article U.S. Official Overseeing Oil Program Faces Inquiry. This is all about, you guessed it, the Department of the Interior again. The Department of Justice is investigating whether the director of the multi-billion dollar oil trading program was being paid by oil companies hoping for contracts under the program. (So maybe the attache cases of cash aren’t so far fetched.)

The director of the program, Gregory W. Smith, and three subordinates are suspected of steering huge oil trading contracts to favored companies. As the article states… If the allegations prove correct, they would constitute a major new blot on the Interior Department’s much-criticized effort to properly collect royalties on vast amounts of oil and gas produced on US land or coastal waters. In other words, once again, the taxpayers are being ripped off and GW’s appointees and the oil industry are benefiting.

The NYT article then goes on to point out that the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service is now the target of multiple investigations by Congress and the Department’s own inspector general.

This is an apolitical public service announcement for everybody that is sick and tire of listening to these automated customer service phone systems (I suspect the irritation transcends all political, religious, ethnic, and racial bounderies!).

Most of us have been confronted by these automated phone systems asking us to press a particular number on the phone keypad depending on which category of disgruntled customer we are. And one frequently finds that your particular beef does not correspond to one of their automated bins… And you really, really want to talk to an actual human being even if he is in some third world country and barely speaks English…. But you have to wade through interminable layers of “Press 5″, “Press 2″, etc. to actually get to a live person.

Somebody has set up a website GetHuman.com which tells you the secret key combinations that allow you to get to speak to an actual person at a lot of large organizations. Actually, that is a little too optimistic… First you will probably hear “We are sorry but all of our associates are assisting other customers at this time but your call is important to us so you just sit there while we play you some elevator music…”

But at least GetHuman.com will help you skip the thicket of keypad options.

Our dear leader, George W. Bush, is out there calling up the glorious memories of World War II and urging us to “stay the course” in Iraq (which he continues to associate with 9/11 and the war on terrorism; go figure).

I would suggest that reminding us of World War II was a bit risky. It’s been 5 years since 9/11. My recollection is that 5 years after Pearl Harbor we had clearly won the war.

Five years after 9/11 I doubt that anyone other than Dick Cheney thinks we are even close to winning in Iraq or the war on terrorism. If we’d had GW running things in 1942, we’d all be speaking German or Japanese at this point.

I doubt that even the most rabid Republican thinks that the history books will ever put GW in the same league as Roosevelt. Or if they do it will be because of his “New Deal” program of tax cuts benefiting the obscenely rich. [And while we are on the subject of WW II, I don't recall anyone suggesting that Truman was a war profiteer.]

When it comes to GW and “stay the course”, an analogy that is more appropriate would be the Titanic.

We had to put Sushi to sleep a few days ago and I suspect it will be quite a while until the heartache eases.

Sush’ had a good run for her money… No one ever knew her actual birthday but I know she was at least 18 years old and may have been a year or so older than that. She was half Siamese and half something else… She was purchased at a garage sale from an angry Siamese cat breeder… One gathers that Sushi’s “something else” father must have been quite the tomcat.

She had the Siamese coloring but a flatter, less angular face than a purebred Siamese. She was completely useless as a mouser. She only ever caught one and she just dropped it and let it run away. Sush’ didn’t inherit her father’s assertiveness and spent the first half of her life being bullied by Kitty and Little… I suppose she had the last laugh because she outlived both of them by a year or so. All she ever really wanted was to eat until she puked, sit in sun puddles, or sit in someone’s lap and get petted (we call that rummeling or murphling depending on which part of the family you are from).

Now that she’s gone, I take a lot of comfort from the fact that the last 6 years were probably her happiest. We’d moved to a house with a small walled garden in the back and Sush’ liked to sit under the flowers and sniff the breeze. And she got on reasonably well with the two younger cats, Milo and Billie. Billie could be a bit of trial but during the last few months of her life, Sush’ sometimes slept at the foot of my recliner in a heap with Milo. Milo and even Billie seem to be missing her.

So why do I like cats…

We don’t really need them for controlling rodents any more. The vet bills can be outrageous. Even outdoor cats insist on using the damn catpan. They scratch the furniture. Knock things off the shelves. Leave half dead chipmunks and birds around the house. They expect you to open doors to let them in… And then demand to be let out about 5 minutes later. Milo and Billie lose their collars and tags about 3 times a year. They yell for food and then turn their noses up a what you give them.

One reason I like them is that they are so damn independent (with the possible exception of Sush’ who really did seem to need people… Although I suspect if she’d ever got lost she would have simply charmed some other family into being her slaves) and straightforward. Cat’s do not pretend… If they don’t like you then “to hell with you and the horse you rode in on…”

And they purr… Sush’ wouldn’t catch mice but she was a champion at purring. And she was really good at being comfortable. She was an expert at finding the warmest, comfyest spots. Our current house has steam radiators and in the winter Sush’ would be wrapped so tightly around the steam inlet that I am amazed she didn’t get burned. And she loved sitting in your lap and getting rummeled. You could hear her purring across the room.

And they each have their own personality. Sush’ was sweet and mild and very gentle with children. We rescued Billie from very unfortunate circumstances and he is, not surprisingly, paranoid and uncoordinated and has a mean streak. Milo is wildly imaginative and loves the dramatic (we call it MiloDrama). Milo doesn’t “get” cat behavior. Neighborhood cats come into the backyard posturing, staring, growling and spoiling for a fight and Milo just swishes his tail, gives them a curious glance, and then floats effortlessly 6 feet in the air to the top of the fence. At which point the neighbor cats just slink away.

And the two cats from my childhood, Whiskey and Raffles (“Sir Stanford Raffles” to be exact) were brothers (Siamese, mainly Seal Point) but each had their own personality. Whiskey was the bold explorer and the most self-assured and friendly. Raffles was somewhat less confident and a bit more stand-offish with people. Whiskey disappeared when he was a couple of years old (I think he was hit by a car but Mother always thought he was killed by a fox) and Raffles got a good deal friendlier with us because he didn’t have his brother for company. Raffles may be the only cat ever to be acknowledged in an MIT thesis (mine ). Raffles and Sush’ are the longest-lived cats I have ever known. Both lived to be nearly twenty which is pretty remarkable for a cat.