Live Long and Prosper -- Jack LaLanne

LaLanne proved that eating right and exercising can lead to a long and happy life. Imagine if that idea caught on? What would that do for our national healthcare bills? If we stopped practicing our suicidal behaviors, it is estimated our national heathcare expenses would DROP by One-Third.

No other approach to healthcare can save us as much -- and do it free.


Jan 24 2011

Jack LaLanne, Fitness Pioneer, Dies At 96

Famous for encouraging people to exercise regardless of their age, LaLanne passed away Sunday at his California home.

Before Jazzercise, before spinning, before kettle bells, Pilates, Wii Fit, Zumba or the Shake Weight, there was Jack LaLanne. The seemingly tireless fitness guru who taught the world how to get in shape for nearly 80 years died on Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, California, due to respiratory failure resulting from pneumonia. He was 96.

"He was surrounded by his family and passed very peacefully and in no distress ... and with the football game on Sunday, so everything was normal," daughter Yvonne LaLanne, 66, told Reuters.

LaLanne spent his life encouraging couch potatoes to be fit, helping to jump-start the modern fitness movement while proving that it's never too late to get in shape. Though a modest 5' 6", LaLanne had an oversize personality and the monster heart of a salesman when it came to promoting exercise. From swimming from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf while handcuffed and pulling a 1,000-pound boat at age 60 to slapping the cuffs on again and pulling 70 people in 70 boats for more than a mile through Long Beach Harbor a decade later, LaLanne never stopped encouraging Americans to push themselves and their bodies in search of peak fitness.

Born Francois Henri LaLanne in San Francisco on September 26, 1914, to French immigrant parents, The New York Times reported that LaLanne spent his early years on his parents' sheep farm in Bakersfield, California. Pimply and nearsighted at age 15, LaLanne described himself as a junk-food-junky-scarfing high school dropout whose life was changed one day when his mother took him to a women's club for a talk on nutrition and health.

Inspired, LaLanne began hitting the local YMCA to lift weights, ditched the sugary snacks and began studying Gray's Anatomy to learn about the body's muscles. By the time he was 21, he opened his first fitness studio and launched "The Jack LaLanne Show" in 1951 in the San Francisco area, going national eight years later with the workout program in which he used such primitive props as broomsticks, a chair and a stretchy rubber cord.

The show aired in various incarnations through the mid-1980s and LaLanne became a favorite guest on late-night and radio talk shows, where he would eagerly show off his physical prowess, doing fingertip push-ups and other stunts most men half his age could not perform. In addition to the TV show, LaLanne opened a string of fitness studios across the country, invented and sold exercise machines, and in recent years famously marketed the Power Juicer, a mixer that blends raw vegetables and juices into healthy shakes.

LaLanne was such an institution that he was often asked to do cameos in films and TV shows, including "The Addams Family," "Mr. Ed," "Arli$$," "The Simpsons" and the 1990 Leslie Nielsen horror spoof "Repossessed."

Just What Dr. Obama Ordered

Miscalculation is the rule, not the exception, when it comes to national healthcare programs. Seems the experts missed by a mile when they ordered the H1Ni flue vaccine. Can the experts do better when they run a national healthcare plan that covers every problem? Not likely. No. Impossible.

Maybe next year the flu experts will order too little of the flu vaccine. Then, when the results from this year and next year are averaged, the numbers will look good. Right on the money. On the other hand, no one will know if the vaccine saved lives or not. Nevertheless, we will spend money like the world is about to end.

U.S. has 71 million unused flu vaccine doses

* Grassley says he is worried about wasting tax dollars

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - The United States still has 71 million doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine that have not been used, but it is not yet time to throw them out, the federal government said on Monday.

States and other providers should hang on to the vaccine and continue to offer them to people until drug companies can start distributing seasonal vaccine for the coming influenza season in the autumn, said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Bill Hall.

Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance committee, released a letter on Monday that he sent to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking her how much vaccine was left over and when it would expire.

H1N1 swine flu is still technically causing a pandemic and health officials say anyone who has not been vaccinated should still try, in case it causes a third wave of serious disease.

Health experts consider swine flu likely to join the mix of seasonal flu viruses and it will be included in the seasonal flu vaccine for 2010-2011, which will also contain two other flu strains.

When the the H1N1 virus started spreading in April, HHS and its agencies, along with commercial flu vaccine makers, rushed to formulate and make a vaccine.

Influenza vaccines are made using old and unwieldy methods that require incubating the virus in chicken eggs, and the process always takes months.

Vaccine started rolling out in October and the U.S. eventually ordered 229 million doses from its five licensed makers -- Novartis (NOVN.VX), AstraZeneca (AZN.N) unit MedImmune, Sanofi Aventis (SASY.PA), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) and Australian vaccine maker CSL (CSL.AX).

Sebelius said last month that 162 million doses were produced and distributed, but only 90 million actually got into people's arms or noses.

VARYING SHELF LIFE

"Depending on the vaccine manufacturer, the shelf life of the H1N1 vaccines range from 18 weeks to 18 months, with some due to expire on June 30, 2010," Grassley wrote in his letter to Sebelius.

"I understand that it is not uncommon for some seasonal flu vaccines to be discarded each year, but the H1N1 vaccines were paid for with taxpayer dollars," he added, asking: "How many doses of vaccine are due to expire on June 30, 2010?"

Hall said the department would respond to Grassley.

"There are approximately 71 million doses, held by states, the distributor or the manufacturers, that remain unused, and have varying expiration dates, some as long as early 2011," Hall said by e-mail.

"We have asked states to hold on to any vaccine that has not expired, in case we continue to have regional upticks in disease, another wave, or another early start to the flu season. We are holding onto that vaccine (and advising states and vaccinators to hold onto theirs) until there is sufficient seasonal vaccine (which includes coverage for the 2009 H1N1 virus) to replace it."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that H1N1 has killed at least 12,000 Americans and put more than 265,000 in hospital. People with chronic diseases such as asthma or diabetes, pregnant women and children were at highest risk.

Grassley also asked Sebelius whether HHS would try to increase distribution of seasonal flu vaccines.

ObamaCare -- How to Create a Labor Shortage

The latest estimates say ObamaCare will increase the number of insured people by 32 million. How many doctors does it take to care for 32 million people? Answer: A lot more doctors than our medical society employs. And more doctors than our schools can graduate. We face a doctor shortage.

What does America do when domestic production is not enough? We import. In the years ahead, look for a soaring number of foreign-trained doctors to enter the US medical system.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare supporters say ObamaCare will operate more efficiently than our medical community does today. Translation: each doctor must see more patients and receive smaller compensation from each. However, the cost of a medical education will continue to rise while earning potential is likely to plateau. Hence, more and more American students will choose other careers, thereby increasing the need for imported doctors.

With demand for doctors surging and the supply limited, it is certain that standards for medical competence will drop. Putting less competent doctors into the system will lead to higher malpractice awards and higher malpractice insurance premiums, which will lead to higher overall medical expenses for the US.

Meanwhile, if the US hopes to maintain its pace of advancement in medicine, the price will remain high, and ObamaCare will make it even higher.

Medical Schools Can't Keep Up

As Ranks of Insured Expand, Nation Faces Shortage of 150,000 Doctors in 15 Years

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

Proponents of the new health-care law say it does attempt to address the physician shortage. The law offers sweeteners to encourage more people to enter medical professions, and a 10% Medicare pay boost for primary-care doctors.

Meanwhile, a number of new medical schools have opened around the country recently. As of last October, four new medical schools enrolled a total of about 190 students, and 12 medical schools raised the enrollment of first-year students by a total of 150 slots, according to the AAMC. Some 18,000 students entered U.S. medical schools in the fall of 2009, the AAMC says.

But medical colleges and hospitals warn that these efforts will hit a big bottleneck: There is a shortage of medical resident positions. The residency is the minimum three-year period when medical-school graduates train in hospitals and clinics.

There are about 110,000 resident positions in the U.S., according to the AAMC. Teaching hospitals rely heavily on Medicare funding to pay for these slots. In 1997, Congress imposed a cap on funding for medical residencies, which hospitals say has increasingly hurt their ability to expand the number of positions.

Medicare pays $9.1 billion a year to teaching hospitals, which goes toward resident salaries and direct teaching costs, as well as the higher operating costs associated with teaching hospitals, which tend to see the sickest and most costly patients.

Doctors' groups and medical schools had hoped that the new health-care law, passed in March, would increase the number of funded residency slots, but such a provision didn't make it into the final bill.

"It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there," said Atul Grover, the AAMC's chief advocacy officer.

While doctors trained in other countries could theoretically help the primary-care shortage, they hit the same bottleneck with resident slots, because they must still complete a U.S. residency in order to get a license to practice medicine independently in the U.S. In the 2010 class of residents, some 13% of slots are filled by non-U.S. citizens who completed medical school outside the U.S.

One provision in the law attempts to address residencies. Since some residency slots go unfilled each year, the law will pool the funding for unused slots and redistribute it to other institutions, with the majority of these slots going to primary-care or general-surgery residencies. The slot redistribution, in effect, will create additional residencies, because previously unfilled positions will now be used, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Some efforts by educators are focused on boosting the number of primary-care doctors. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences anticipates the state will need 350 more primary-care doctors in the next five years. So it raised its class size by 24 students last year, beyond the 150 previous annual admissions.

In addition, the university opened a satellite medical campus in Fayetteville to give six third-year students additional clinical-training opportunities, said Richard Wheeler, executive associate dean for academic affairs. The school asks students to commit to entering rural medicine, and the school has 73 people in the program.

"We've tried to make sure the attitude of students going into primary care has changed," said Dr. Wheeler. "To make sure primary care is a respected specialty to go into."

Montefiore Medical Center, the university hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, has 1,220 residency slots. Since the 1970s, Montefiore has encouraged residents to work a few days a week in community clinics in New York's Bronx borough, where about 64 Montefiore residents a year care for pregnant women, deliver children and provide vaccines. There has been a slight increase in the number of residents who ask to join the program, said Peter Selwyn, chairman of Montefiore's department of family and social medicine.

One is Justin Sanders, a 2007 graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine who is a second-year resident at Montefiore. In recent weeks, he has been caring for children he helped deliver. He said more doctors are needed in his area, but acknowledged that "primary-care residencies are not in the sexier end. A lot of these [specialty] fields are a lot sexier to students with high debt burdens."

As the Post Office goes, so will go ObamaCare

The government runs the mail business in ways similar to the ways it will run more and more of the healthcare business. We can see where the encroaching government management will take us. The future of healthcare is unaffordable if we follow the path set by Obama and his spendthrift idealists. However, the news about the Post Office is good news for those who own stock in Pitney Bowes.

GAO: Postal Service business 'not viable'

Happy Monday! The U.S. Postal Service's current business model "is not viable" and the mail agency should make deeper job and wage cuts, hire more part-time staff and consider outsourcing operations, according to a draft of a government audit acquired by The Federal Eye.

Auditors also urge Congress to remove restrictions on the Postal Service's ability to cut Saturday mail delivery and close post offices, according to the report, which offers recommendations similar to the USPS's own proposed 10-year business plan.

Lawmakers requested the Government Accountability Office report, set for a Monday release, as they prepare to consider the USPS plan, which was introduced last month. The proposals call for an end to six-day delivery and ask Congress to give the mail agency the ability to raise prices beyond the rate of inflation and close post offices if necessary.

The report's conclusions pleased top postal officials who are gathered this week in Nashville for the annual National Postal Forum, a convention for the mail agency's largest customers.

Postmaster General John E. Potter said Sunday he was pleased with the GAO's general conclusions, but concerned with suggestions in the report that further study of the issue is required.

"We've studied this significantly, the time for study is over, now's the time for action," he said.

Potter and his colleagues estimate the Postal Service will lose a record $7 billion in the fiscal year that ends in September and could lose at least $238 billion in the next decade if Congress fails to act.

Auditors appeared to push beyond the USPS proposal. "If no action is taken, risks of larger USPS losses, rate increases and taxpayer subsides will increase," GAO said.

The Postal Service should provide more lucrative incentive packages to potential retirees to try to accelerate attrition, auditors said. They also recommended USPS consider outsourcing more delivery routes and mail services to contractors and seek concessions on wage and benefits from its labor unions during negotiations later this year.

Lawmakers also should consider establishing a panel similar to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to independently recommend changes, the report said. Auditors suggested that more details are needed about potential delivery cuts and post office closures.

Most lawmakers and regulators have reacted tepidly to proposed changes. Potter's meetings in Nashville will be mostly with customers who could suffer from proposed cuts and price increases.

GAO concluded that the recession served as the "tipping point" that accelerated a shift away from traditional snail mail for most of the Postal Service's biggest customers, including insurance and banking companies.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who will lead postal reform efforts in the Senate, said that if GAO's conclusions are correct, "it is imperative that Congress, postal management, postal employees, customers and other stakeholders give up on old fights and biases and work together to cut the Postal Service's costs and adjust its operations to meet a changing environment."