Anthem Says Eye Surgeons Should Monitor Cataract Anesthesia Themselves
Royal Australian Navy Lt. Elizabeth Livingstone and Singapore Army Maj. Paul Zhao perform cataract surgery aboard the hospital ship USNS Mercy during a visit to Quy Nhon, Vietnam in 2010.
There is no way I would allow ANY doctor to administer anesthesia on me instead of anesthesiologist. This is awful and should not be tolerated.States and medical associations should organize and fight back on this, in Washington, if necessary.
Michelle Andrews, NPR
If you need cataract surgery, your eye surgeon may have to do double duty as your anesthetist under a new policy by health insurer Anthem. In a clinical guideline released this month, the company says it’s not medically necessary to have an anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist on hand to administer and monitor sedation in most cases.
Some ophthalmologists and anesthesiologists say the policy jeopardizes patient safety, and they are calling on Anthem to rescind it.
“The presence of anesthesia personnel is one of the key ingredients in the patient safety and effectiveness of cataract surgery today,” says Dr. David Glasser, an ophthalmologist in Columbia, Md., who is secretary for federal affairs at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, a professional group for eye physicians and surgeons. “An ophthalmologist cannot administer conscious sedation and monitor the patient and do cataract surgery at the same time.”
Lazy Psychology Yields Lazy Answers for Complicated Questions
Following the horrific school shootings in this country, numerous articles have been written connecting mass shootings to fatherless boys and broken homes. Most of them are associated with Conservative media and their journalists. After reading the older article from Peter Hasson at the Federalist, I had enough with this garbage.
My thoughts follow…
It has long been widely accepted, that a broken home “can” (not “does”) increase the risk of troubled children, and later, as they grow older. This is not a groundbreaking observation.
The problem with author Peter Hasson’s article is that he is taking a small view of isolated cases and drawing over-arching conclusions about broken homes. Hasson writes as if the connection of fatherless boys demands attention regarding gun violence. He does so by grossly simplifying and extrapolating inconclusive data. That’s not just bad journalism. It’s irresponsible.
Further, he invests much of the journalistic privilege in his space, writing the same oppositionist dreck attacking or distorting other voices dissimilar to his. This does readers a disservice, and does nothing to address the real-life multi-faceted problem of school gun violence in America. It only perpetuates the political quagmire this country is stuck in.
Nobody with a straight face can possibly believe that fixing broken homes is the main focus to the horrific shootings. Likewise, no one can honestly state that gun control alone without improved mental health, community family resources, and law enforcement is going to fix things.
The particular brand of gun violence going on at schools is a problem of multiple factors. It can’t be approached with any one size fits all solution, or a single focus. It deserves honest discussion about factual causes, not theories, and clearly connected causative factors. It also deserves all voices to be heard, without name calling or marginalizing any of them.
Hassan could’ve penned an intelligent and realistic essay, had he recognized the true complexity of this crisis, rather than fixate, rather bizarrely, on the importance of a good marriage.
Related links:
Click below to read two articles which are thought-out, researched, and properly reasoned.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/saving-normal/201405/the-mind-the-mass-murderer
Click below to read Hasson’s article, and another low-end offering of Right Wing dreck:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/14/guess-which-mass-murderers-came-from-a-fatherless-home/
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-desperate-cry-of-americas-boys
After Sandy Hook, More Than 400 People Have Been Shot in Over 200 School Shootings
When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Conn., and reverberated across the world. Since then, there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes, 438 people were shot, 138 of whom were killed.
The data used here is from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that began tracking school shootings in 2014, about a year after Sandy Hook.
Gunshot Victims in School Shootings
The shootings have taken place at sporting events and in parking lots, cafeterias, hallways and classrooms.
A shooting took place Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., about an hour northwest of Miami. As of Wednesday night, 17 people had been killed and the number of people injured was unknown.
Sixteen of the 239 shootings shown below can be classified as mass shootings, events in which four or more people are shot.
On average, there have been about five school shootings each month, including episodes that were not mass shootings.