The "Stimulus Bill" could be a nightmare for Lyme Suffers

Buried in the current stimulus bill is a provision for what amounts to government taking over a large portion of your medical care. We are talking about rationing.

The idea is that all of your medical records would be centralized. OK, .. HOWEVER, when you need treatment, your physician will have to clear the treatment with a government bureaucrat. You know, the same people who brought you the Fannie/Freddie Disaster

The Bloomberg article has more details. A key point in that article is

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective

Lyme disease sufferers know how hard it is to get treatment currently. If this bill is passed, it may become nearly impossible to get the proper treatment. Look at what happens with Government run health care in Canada and the UK. You can bet that the politicians in Washington will want to keep costs to a minimum. Forget about anything more than 30 days of antibiotics, if that.

Also, we all know that time is of the essence when getting treated for Lyme. This will add unneccessary time to the cycle.

One other thing, our overworked doctors will now have a huge regulatory burden placed on them.

I don't want to sound dramatic, but this stimulus bill will cause untold pain and suffering for Lyme disease suffers. Call your senators and congresscritters and tell them you oppose this provision. If it passes, then we need to work to get it reveresed. I am very pessimistic that could be accomplished.

Lyme spreads in Chester County

Lancaster Farming has an article on the spread of Lyme disease in Chester County.

A really intersting quote in the article was

“Vets are more up to date on Lyme disease than medical doctors,” Pete said of using their services for their dogs, who also have also tested positive for Lyme.

I have to agree with this. For some reason it seems that the medical community is either ignorant about Lyme, slow to treat it when they find it and unwilling or unable to provide an aggressive enought treatment regime (Perhaps large contributions by the insurance companies to our state legislators???) .

http://www.lancasterfarming.com/node/1070

Lyme Disease Pickets protest new guidelines

According to an article in the Atlantic City Press, On June 28th, Lyme Disease activists protested the proposed new guidelines for Lyme disease. These guidelines would make it much more difficult to treat patients with suspected Lyme Disease.

This is a serious disease with devastating implications for those infected and yet it seems that some are trying to minimize it and do everything they can to make treatment more difficult to obtain.

The article makes an excellent point that, if fewer cases are diagnosed due to the stricter guidelines, funding for Lyme Disease research may be cut.




Atlantic City Press Article

Wisconsin AG vs. a Lyme Doctor

OK, So it was Lyme Awareness Month in Wisconsin... Great.. However, at the same time, one of the attorneys in the Wisconsin's Attorney General's office starts an attack on a doctor who was successfully treating Lyme patients... The attack on Dr. Hoffman seems fuzzy and suspicious at best.

The link to the initial article is at http://www.publichealthalert.org./text1.htm The actual story is a PDF at http://www.publichealthalert.org./Wisconsin%20Lyme%20Doctor%20Under%20Fire%20During%20Governor.pdf

To sum up the story, it appears that the good old doc is a generous, dedicated doctor. He refused to prescribe narcotics to a patient who then went to the Wisconsin AG's office. The prosecutor is a guy named Arthur Thexton who is well known for prosecuting "alternative medicines" - (more about that later). ... Thexton then started demanding records related to treating Lyme patients.. When his office started getting innundated with out of state calls, he then tried to claim that the treatment of Lyme disease was not the issue.

By the way, there is a legal defense fund for Dr. Hoffman

contributing to Dr. Hoffmann’s legal defense fund, please contact PJ
Langhoff at info@sewill.org

Hey Wisconsin - If this is your idea of how to celebrate "lyme awareness month", why don't you just breed a couple of million infected ticks and release them??


Let's look at this a little more closely... Year after year, legislation that would allow for more aggressive treatment for Lyme dies in the Pennsylvania legislature (they did find time to give themselves and their judge friends a huge illegal pay raise though)... Why would state governments not want to provide the best treatment for people suffering from this disease? Here are a couple of thoughts...

• The insurance companies want to control cash disbursements. Lyme can be expensive to treat, especially the long term, chronic cases
• The insurance companies have lobbyists in the state house and often are substantial contributors to legislator's campaigns.
• Lyme is primarily a suburban and rural issue right now. Those areas don't always have the voting clout of urban areas.
• Those afflicted with Lyme don't yet have the political power associated with advocates for some other diseases such as aids and breast cancer.

If you do a little research into Arthur Thexton, you come up with some other interesting aspects of his career.

• http://alkalizeforhealth.net/Lquackwatch4.htm is a scathing article about the way that Thexton's office handled the case of Stuart Suster. There are some pretty serious allegations there against Thexton backed up by the fact that Suster is now suing Thexton in Federal Court. The tone of that article can be summed up in the following quote.

Health Insurance companies, I’m sure you already know, do not want to pay for
services rendered by health professionals. If they pay at all, they pay a small
percentage of the billing. They especially don’t want to pay for new things –
and, of course, if a New York ad agency (quackbuster management) rails against
it – health insurance companies will eagerly leap into non-payment mode.

The issue is that we need a lot more research into Lyme disease. Research that is not restricted by what the insurance companies would like to see, but rather into what treatments are really effective for those people suffering from this disease. Once there is a solid set of verifiable, established evidence as to what will really work then overzealous prosecutors will not be able to intimidate those trying to provide treatment. The current environment where groups are pushing for minimal treatment for Lyme will simply cause a lot more suffering for those infected.

Reduce Lyme by reducing Deer

Solebury is going to pay to have the Department of Agriculture thin out the deer herd. The main reason for the herd thinning appears to be the damage to crops.

However, deer are one of the key factors in the spread of deer ticks and Lyme Disease (and other tick born diseases). If you can reduce the deer population, you should be also reducing the prevelance of Lyme.

Solebury is far enough from Philadelphia that they probably won't have a large problem with people complaining about the hunt. It's about 45 minutes from the city and is more of a rural community.

We live much closer to the city but the deer herd is very large. Last evening we were eating dinner and a large deer wandered through the yard about 75 feet from us. We've fenced in the entire 2 1/2 acres in an attempt to keep the deer out and thereby reduce the ticks. There are a couple of places that need patching. I see up to 5 or 6 deer at a time just outside the fence. Keep in mind that we are only 10 minutes outside the city.

We need to control the herd in our township. The problem is that, the closer you are to the city, the less people understand the need for deer control. Meanwhile the Lyme Disease epidemic continues to rage.

Sharpshooters
hired to target deer (phillyBurbs.com) Intelligencer:

"Solebury has inked a more than $250,000 contract to winnow its deer
population with sharpshooters.
The no-bid contract calls on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to kill whitetail deer, mostly at night, through the use of “suppressed rifles with high expansive ammunition, along with the aid of stands, vehicles, artificial light, night vision equipment and forward-looking infrared.”

The goal is to reduce crop and other property damage, as well as
the risk of disease from today's large deer population. "

Medical Community takes years to diagnose teen.

You see these stories all the time. A person becomes ill and their quality of life deteriorates until their life is a shambles.

Quite often the symptoms are there but the diagnosis is not made.

"There were so many children coming in with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis,"
Jones said during a telephone interview. He later determined that while symptoms
were similar, often they stemmed from Lyme disease. "I developed a knack for
treating and understanding the disease."

The article does a pretty good job of outlining the problem and the current situation. Bucks County, our home county, is in the top three counties as far as Lyme cases.


York Dispatch - York teen suffers for years before Lyme disease diagnosed:

"No one believed her. They figured she was making it up for one reason
or another. She wanted attention. She wanted to skip school. She was lazy.
But those things weren't true. Nicole Lecrone wanted help. She wanted the pain to subside, the muscle aches, the sharp stabbing pains in her stomach."

Meanwhile, our illustrious representative in Harrisburg are sitting on legislation that could help those who are suffering from Lyme and other Tick Borne diseases. The article outlines some of the bills. Note that similar bills have been brought forward year after year to die in committee. You can help by reading up on the bills and contacting your state rep and senator. Ask them to support legislation to help those suffering from Lyme Disease.

There were bills that would protect doctors who are aggressivly treating Lyme. Currently these doctors live in fear of prosecution or losing their medical licenses.

Legislation: Three proposals addressing Lyme disease treatments and
education remain in state House and Senate committees. House Bill 798 and Senate
Bill 722 would establish a task force to study Lyme disease and related
maladies. The task force would comprise representatives of the state departments
of health, conservation and natural resources, and the Pennsylvania Game
Commission. The task force would monitor antibiotic therapies and misconduct
proceedings.

HB798 was referred March 19 to the Committee on Health and
Human Services; SB722 was referred April 2 to Banking and Insurance. A third
bill, Senate Bill 573, would provide Lyme disease education, prevention and
treatment.

Check out this proposed legislation and its status online at
www.legis.state.pa.us.