Arkansas Blog

This is from a guy who for years ran around, fat as a hog with chicken grease on shirt who is now telling us how to live.

Much as I hate to say it, I agree with what the RevGov on this issue. We do exercise too little. We do eat the wrong foods and too much of them. Some of us still smoke and do it around others who don't.
But there is another factor in the high cost of health care. We are too insistent on immediate relief via surgery and our doctors are too inclined to perform the procedures for relatively minor and transient problems, especially during the perimenopausal stage of a woman's life. Some women prefer to have a C-section rather than go through normal labor and delivery and their doctor obliges.
Parents doctor shop if the family doctor says the best way to treat a 13-year-old boy's feminine looking chest is to get him to lose weight and exercise to tone the chest wall muscles. Someone will perform surgery to remove the fatty tissue.
We ask for the latest drug being advertized in the magazines.
We want all the latest testing available done immediately, even though we have no symptoms.
Our doctors read our x-rays, tell us we have a broken arm, perform surgery to repair it and send the x-rays to another doctor to read AFTER the emergency surgery.
Or they send us to a hospital to have tests done and only later do we find that there is a well-respected freestanding testing facility which performs the test at a much lower cost. Talk to the doctor about it after the fact and he'll assure you that your insurance will cover the hospital charges.
Yes, I know I've gone on and on. And yes, I could add much more.
But tell me, what has happened to our common sense?

"...until Americans change their fondness for bad habits - eating too much, exercising too little, and smoking."

What. No condemnation of dancing? Wow! Has he mellowed since he left the pulpit....

I'll help the Huckster out here since he won't confess:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Red wine might work to protect the brain from damage after a stroke and drinking a couple of glasses a day might provide that protection ahead of time, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

Not that I miss the man, but the Huckster sure hasn't spent too much of his time in Arkansas lately, has he?

I bet they were real sorry to see him leave Oklahoma, too. The Tulsa World in particular seemed to take a dim view of his smartass comments about damming the Illinois River. imagine that.

doigotta, you make some excellent points, but one of the main reasons C-sections are done so often now has to do with insurance liability, I believe.

Caught Imus this morning on MSNBC. He had some harsh words about Governor Huckabee, who is scheduled on his show tomorrow morning. He stated that all Huckabee do is go across the country talking about his weight loss and he was tired of hearing it and that Huckabee was looking bad.

I was in Fayetteville last year to see a friend graduate with her PhD, and we were honored to have Rev Gov speak at the graduation ceremony for those receiving advanced degrees. He decided that rather than honoring the room full of people that had worked for years for MS and PhD degrees it would be better to spend his time selfishly promoting his stupid book. It was really quite offensive.