Dr. Koop Speaks Out

[Originally posted October 30, 2009]

President Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, M.D., noteworthy for his public health pronouncements based on scientific facts during the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, is now 93 years old. With his penchant for truth-telling, Dr. Koop recently described a troubling aspect of the mindset of Mr. Reagan's largely conservative cabinet in an interview that was printed in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine:

"The attitude of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet was that the kind of people who got AIDS -- promiscuous women, homosexual men, drug addicts, people on heroin -- deserved what they got. Americans hadn't treated prisoners of war as badly." (DAM, Nov/Dec 2009, p. 96).

Dr. Koop is an equal-opportunity critic; in the same interview, he questioned the necessity of President Obama's wholesale reform of America's health care system. Such skepticism -- the laudable practice of looking before one leaps -- is a proper function of conservatism as a countervailing force to ambitious political agendas.

What Dr. Koop's observation about his fellow Reagan Administration political appointees confirms, however, is that the Republicans' attitude toward the defining public health disaster of the 1980s and 1990s was a matter not of principled, conservative caution but of active contempt for certain disfavored segments of citizens. It's a worthy contribution to the historical record from the former official who is still, in some minds, America's Physician.

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Epilogue: According to a Dartmouth College statement, "Former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop ’37, MD, a pioneer in the field of pediatric surgery, a leader in the fight to create a smoke-free nation, and founder of the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, died peacefully at his home in Hanover, N.H. on February 25, 2013. He was 96 years old."

A Clearer Vision

As a public service, My Two Innings today announces a revolutionary, five-step process for glasses-wearers to increase vision, reduce headaches and eyestrain, and improve personal disposition -- all in less than one minute, all without a prescription.

No, this is not a LASIK testimonial. Rather, after 45 years as a card-carrying, prescription-packing myopic, I've finally figured out how to clean my glasses. Really, really clean them. Listen, children, to my story.

Bane is not a Batman villain but the irritation that arises when one attempts to focus on the world through greasy, gritty, grubby, sweaty spectacles. Summertime is the worst.

Especially for those who look at computer screens for a living, the quest for a truly reliable cleaning method is endless. I've constantly yearned to restore my glasses to their original refractive clarity. I've dreamed of viewing the world through pristine, crystalline lenses, the way they come from the optician shop with the Magic Cloth.

I've tried the Magic Cloth. The Magic Cloth is pretty good. My way is better.

It's a five-step process. Skip any one step, and you condemn yourself to a lifetime of a heartache far worse than psoriasis. I might be exaggerating, but only a little. I might be a little OCD about this. Whatever.

1. The Application

Grasping your specs by the frame lightly, from the top and bottom edges, spritz your favorite glasses-cleaning solvent on each side of each lens. Windex, Glass Plus, or that clear stuff that the receptionist with the bad haircut sells you when you go in to get your new glasses prescription will all work well. You don't have to spray on a living room-window dose until it's dripping; a light mist that covers the lenses evenly is what you're after.

2. The Wipe

After waiting a few seconds, use your clean-ish thumb and forefinger to rub each lens lightly, smearing the solvent around the front and back of each lens with a light pinching motion.

3. The Rinse

Rinse the solvent off all lens surfaces at a convenient, nearby sink under a stream of regular tapwater from the faucet.

4. The Re-application

Here's the kicker: respray your lenses, front and back. Granted, it seems wasteful to use two doses of solvent per cleaning, but if you follow this procedure exactly, I promise you'll make it back in career earnings and reduced aggravation. Besides, wash-rinse-repeat is as American as Uncle Fester.

5. The Cloth

It can be the Magic Cloth. It can be a clean handkerchief. It can be a tissue from the box. It can be the back of a clean t-shirt from the pile of laundry that you brought up from the basement and dumped in your office because your Beloved Spousal Unit has already gone to bed. The beauty of the five-step process is that it doesn't much matter what cloth you use to perform the Final Lens Rubdown [note to self: new band name?], so long as it's not slathered with motor oil or sunscreen.

That's it. That's all there is to it. You're no longer looking at the world through factory windows. You've got your vision back. You can see!

Go forth and enjoy your new life. You can thank me later.

Healthcare Reform: It's All About the Benjamins

My continuing objection to the U.S. healthcare model, with or without the currently proposed reform legislation, is that it relies upon an obsolete, anti-growth employment model that includes four invalid, or soon-to-be invalid, assumptions:

(1) Employment is continuous, or at least sequential, and each job has a duration on the order of several months or more;

(2) Employment compensation consists of only traditional salary or wages that correspond to time served rather than value added;

(3) Employment occurs, and healthcare benefits therefore accrue, within a single political jurisdiction;

(4) Ability to pay healthcare costs and insurance premiums depends upon one's salary or wages rather than one's accumulated wealth (as does the income tax, for that matter).

In a truly innovative, venture-based economy, creative contributors might work several hours for one client, work a month and a half for another, and have an intermittent gig with a third -- and that's only in one's main line of business. There might also be a side project or two, perhaps some online sales, investment income, capital gains, etc. Or perhaps a high-mobility worker travels from jobsite to jobsite, his or her geographic flexibility across state and national boundaries, going to where the work is, representing a crucial contribution to an efficiently operating global economic system.

Having healthcare benefits associated with traditional, full-time employment makes little sense in the current economy in which traditional employment describes the circumstances of fewer and fewer citizens. The high-volatility economy simply doesn't square with the traditional workplace assumptions underlying the healthcare debate. To reconcile healthcare reform efforts with modern workplace realities, a historical perspective may, ironically, provide the most illumination.

Consider that, similar to today's venture-driven economy, many of the nation's founders, including Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, pursued multiple lines of entrepreneurial business, often simultaneously. This suggests a conceptual litmus test for evaluating today's healthcare reform proposals: would any proposed system under discussion that is still based on salary and wage income have covered Washington's leeches, Franklin's syphilis treatments, and Jefferson's extended family?