Free Republic

While the healthcare industry promotes enhanced transparency, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is taking a step in the other direction, shutting down the once-public National Practitioner Data Bank, reports The Kansas City Star. As a result, the public can no longer access information on malpractice and disciplinary actions against thousands of doctors. "We have a responsibility to make sure under federal law that it remains confidential," said Martin Kramer, spokesman for the HHS's Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the Data Bank. The HHS defends the shutdown, noting that the names of doctors were getting leaked...

Government Bailouts, Pump Priming, Interference, Whatever you want to call it, it Doesn't Work, & the numbers have already been crunched, & documented. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx By Meg Sullivan August 10, 2004 Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years. "Why...

At yesterday's United States Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing on "Medical Research and Education: Higher Learning or Higher Earning?", most of the testimony focused on pharma industry support of continuing medical education (CME). ..... ...... With the billions of dollars of industry money flowing into CME, who is guarding the integrity of the CME process?," asked Nissen. "Current oversight by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) is largely ineffective. The ACCME has strict rules governing educational activities, but appears uninterested or incapable of enforcing them. I am unaware of any communications companies that have lost their accreditation...