Muslim doc whose Nebraska clinic infected patients, killing some, blames Islamophobia, seeks N.Y. license

Posted on December 29, 2012 by creeping

via Doc whose Fremont clinic infected patients with hepatitis seeks N.Y. license to practice – LivewellNebraska.com. h/t Jihad Watch

Dr. Tahir Ali Javed, whose Fremont cancer clinic infected dozens of patients with hepatitis a little more than a decade ago, has applied for reinstatement of his medical license in New York.

Javed, 47, fled to his native Pakistan 10 years ago, when the severity of the hepatitis outbreak became known. His medical license in Nebraska was revoked. He surrendered his New York license.

In Pakistan, Javed became a public health official and reportedly blamed the situation in Nebraska on anti-Muslim sentiment.

Unsanitary practices in the Fremont clinic led to hepatitis C infections in at least 99 patients, several of whom died.

A Fremont-based group called the HONOReform Foundation grew out of the tragedy. It promotes sanitary practices in health care settings. The “One and Only” campaign that it advocates seeks to educate nurses, doctors and others of the importance of using syringes and needles only once.

Javed could not be reached for comment. His Omaha attorney, Michael D. Jones, said he hadn’t had contact with Javed in years.

Antonia Valentine of the New York State Education Department, which rules on restoration of medical licenses, confirmed that Javed has applied for reinstatement.

Valentine said in an email that the application will be investigated and referred to two committees before the New York Board of Regents rules on it. It’s unclear when the ruling will be issued. Valentine declined to provide further information.

Steve Langan, executive director of HONOReform, said, “Sick people were injured, some of them died, and no justice has been done.”

The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office pursued the revocation of Javed’s medical license in 2003. It accused him of unprofessional conduct and gross negligence for allowing staffers to reuse syringes, which contaminated large bags of saline with hepatitis. The saline was used to clean out implanted devices that administer chemotherapy and other medications to cancer patients, infecting patients with hepatitis in the process.

The allegations said Javed had been warned multiple times that his office used unsanitary practices in administering the drugs and continued to allow it.

The Attorney General’s Office also accused him of exploiting a patient to conduct a sexual relationship with her. The attorney general alleged that Javed, a cancer specialist, gave the woman a false diagnosis and told her not to seek treatment elsewhere because other providers would inform her insurance company and she wouldn’t be able to get insurance again.

Documents indicate that Javed admitted to little. The exploitation accusations were dismissed. Javed chose not to contest the case against him and agreed to a settlement in which his Nebraska medical license was revoked in September 2003.

New York records show that Javed surrendered his medical license in that state in 2004, after he chose not to contest the Nebraska allegations.

Travis Bennington, a Fremont attorney who co-wrote a book on the case with one of the victims, Evelyn McKnight, said Javed fled to his native Pakistan before any criminal charges could be filed. McKnight is a co-founder of HONOReform.

Jean Schafersman of Hooper, Neb., whose son was fighting cancer when he was infected with hepatitis from treatment in Javed’s clinic, expressed astonishment over Javed’s New York application.

“How does that work?” she asked.

 

John C. Goodman: Why the Doctor Can’t See You

The demand for health care under ObamaCare will increase dramatically. The supply of physicians won’t. Get ready for a two-tier system of medical care

Are you having trouble finding a doctor who will see you? If not, give it another year and a half. A doctor shortage is on its way.

Most provisions of the Obama health law kick in on Jan. 1, 2014. Within the decade after that, an additional 30 million people are expected to acquire health plans—and if the economic studies are correct, they will try to double their use of the health-care system.

Meanwhile, the administration never seems to tire of reminding seniors that they are entitled to a free annual checkup. Its new campaign is focused on women. Thanks to health reform, they are being told, they will have access to free breast and pelvic exams and even free contraceptives. Once ObamaCare fully takes effect, all of us will be entitled to a long list of preventive services—with no deductible or copayment.

Here is the problem: The health-care system can’t possibly deliver on the huge increase in demand for primary-care services. The original ObamaCare bill actually had a line item for increased doctor training. But this provision was zeroed out before passage, probably to keep down the cost of health reform. The result will be gridlock.

Take preventive care. ObamaCare says that health insurance must cover the tests and procedures recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. What would that involve? In the American Journal of Public Health (2003), scholars at Duke University calculated that arranging for and counseling patients about all those screenings would require 1,773 hours of the average primary-care physician’s time each year, or 7.4 hours per working day.

 

And all of this time is time spent searching for problems and talking about the search. If the screenings turn up a real problem, there will have to be more testing and more counseling. Bottom line: To meet the promise of free preventive care nationwide, every family doctor in America would have to work full-time delivering it, leaving no time for all the other things they need to do.

When demand exceeds supply in a normal market, the price rises until it reaches a market-clearing level. But in this country, as in other developed nations, Americans do not primarily pay for care with their own money. They pay with time.

How long does it take you on the phone to make an appointment to see a doctor? How many days do you have to wait before she can see you? How long does it take to get to the doctor’s office? Once there, how long do you have to wait before being seen? These are all non-price barriers to care, and there is substantial evidence that they are more important in deterring care than the fee the doctor charges, even for low-income patients.

For example, the average wait to see a new family doctor in this country is just under three weeks, according to a 2009 survey by medical consultancy Merritt Hawkins. But in Boston, Mass.—which enacted a law under Gov. Mitt Romney that established near-universal coverage—the wait is about two months.

When people cannot find a primary-care physician who will see them in a reasonable length of time, all too often they go to hospital emergency rooms. Yet a 2007 study of California in the Annals of Emergency Medicine showed that up to 20% of the patients who entered an emergency room left without ever seeing a doctor, because they got tired of waiting. Be prepared for that situation to get worse.

When demand exceeds supply, doctors have a great deal of flexibility about who they see and when they see them. Not surprisingly, they tend to see those patients first who pay the highest fees. A New York Times survey of dermatologists in 2008 for example, found an extensive two-tiered system. For patients in need of services covered by Medicare, the typical wait to see a doctor was two or three weeks, and the appointments were made by answering machine.

However, for Botox and other treatments not covered by Medicare (and for which patients pay the market price out of pocket), appointments to see those same doctors were often available on the same day, and they were made by live receptionists.

As physicians increasingly have to allocate their time, patients in plans that pay below-market prices will likely wait longest. Those patients will be the elderly and the disabled on Medicare, low-income families on Medicaid, and (if the Massachusetts model is followed) people with subsidized insurance acquired in ObamaCare’s newly created health insurance exchanges.

Their wait will only become longer as more and more Americans turn to concierge medicine for their care. Although the model differs from region to region and doctor to doctor, concierge medicine basically means that patients pay doctors to be their agents, rather than the agents of third-party-payers such as insurance companies or government bureaucracies.

For a fee of roughly $1,500 to $2,000, for example, a Medicare patient can form a new relationship with a doctor. This usually includes same day or next-day appointments. It also usually means that patients can talk with their physicians by telephone and email. The physician helps the patient obtain tests, make appointments with specialists and in other ways negotiate an increasingly bureaucratic health-care system.

Here is the problem. A typical primary-care physician has about 2,500 patients (according to a 2009 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), but when he opens a concierge practice, he’ll typically take about 500 patients with him (according to MDVIP, the largest organization of concierge doctors): That’s about all he can handle, given the extra time and attention those patients are going to expect. But the 2,000 patients left behind now must find another physician. So in general, as concierge care grows, the strain on the rest of the system will become greater.

I predict that in the next several years concierge medicine will grow rapidly, and every senior who can afford one will have a concierge doctor. A lot of non-seniors will as well. We will quickly evolve into a two-tiered health-care system, with those who can afford it getting more care and better care.

In the meantime, the most vulnerable populations will have less access to care than they had before ObamaCare became law.

Mr. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis and the author of “Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis” (Independent Institute, 2012).

 

Arkansas State Fluoridation Mandate

Arkansas State Fluoridation Mandate is Underfunded, Wasteful, Complex and Shortsighted   After an article written by Sarah Wire of the Arkansas Gazette, appeared Sunday February 26, 2012, regarding the costs of Arkansas’ recently-passed fluoridation law, four things come to mind: It’s underfunded, wasteful, too complex and shortsighted.  It was a huge mistake to fast-track this legislation without hearing from water industry professionals. Underfunded: Projections of $500,000 to cover 34 Water Systems which was raised to 2 million dollars still is not even close. It has been estimated that it will cost CBWD (Eureka Springs) $1.23 million to add the fluoridation equipment and necessary infrastructure. Some legislators have said they were told by lobbyists for fluoridation that the mandate would not cost the taxpayers or increase customers’ water bills, yet Delta Dental has only agreed to fund $763,605.  The article stated that Mr. Ed Choate would ask Delta Dental Foundation for a pledge of 10 million dollars. Don’t you think it would be easier and much more logical for a dental insurance company to offer 10 million dollars of dental insurance or treatment to the children of Arkansas or lower rates so more people could afford dentistry? Instead they want to waste that money on forcing everyone to have hydrofluosilicic acid, aka fluoride, and interfere with water districts which are concentrating on providing safe drinking water. Arkansas children are not lacking fluoride they are lacking dentists that provide dental care. If they are so concerned in helping the poor children why do most dentists not take medicaid? They brag about their free dental clinic for the uninsured once a year in Little Rock, which has been fluoridated for over 50 years. If water fluoridation was working, we wouldn’t be having an epidemic of tooth decay in Little Rock. Dentists are still making tons of money in their private practices! Beyond the fluoridation start-up costs, there are continued chemical costs ($20,000 a year for CBWD), engineering costs, training, monitoring, management, repair and equipment replacement costs to keep the fluoridation flowing. Added to that is the cost of accelerated corrosion to water distribution pipes/systems/infrastructure due to the highly corrosive nature of the fluoridation chemicalhydrofluosilicic acid. Then there are health and safety compliance costs, environmental regulatory related costs, and municipal liability costs assumed when a community decides to fluoridate and chooses what fluoridation chemical to use. The cost of treating dental fluorosis caused by water fluoridation should also be considered. One in ten children nowadays have objectionable fluorosis from fluoridation for which they seek dental treatment. The treatments can range from $500 per person for simple microabrasion and bleaching to $20,000 per person for caps or veneers. Delta Dental WILL NOT pay for treatment due to damage from fluoride. It is pure propaganda for the dental groups to claim savings of $38 for each $1 invested in fluoridation. Wasteful: Even if fluoride was helpful to teeth, distributing any drug in drinking water is the most expensive and wasteful method. Quote from a Arkansas engineer “As a civil engineer, I know that people drink only 1/2% (one-half percent) of the water they use. The remaining 99½ % of the water with this toxic fluoride chemical hexafluorosilicic acid, (which is waste material flushed directly from industrial smokestacks) is dumped directly into the environment through the sewer system. The company CEO would be arrested immediately if they dumped this toxic waste into a river. The only way they can do it legally is to run it through the community water system first. For example, for every $1000 of fluoride chemical added to water, $995 would be directly wasted down the drain in toilets, showers, dishwashers, etc., $5 would be consumed in water by the people, and less than $0.50 (fifty cents) would be consumed by children, the target group for this outdated practice. That would be comparable to buying one gallon of milk, using six-and-one-half drops of it, and pouring the rest of the gallon in the sink. Fluoridation surely is in contention as the most wasteful government program. Giving away fluoride tablets free to anyone who wants them would be far cheaper and certainly more ethical because then we would have the freedom to choose which prescription drug we take. Also, there is significant cost to taxpayers for the continual federal/state public health marketing and promotion of water fluoridation. After adding all these costs into the “mix”, water fluoridation actually saves us NOTHING. Fluoridation ends up costing taxpayers more money than it ever saves. Complex:  Rep. Kelley Linck said it was presented as a simple bill, but in reality it becomes quite complex. It seems Delta Dental is making decisions on safety equipment based on cost, not on what’s best for water employees who handle the chemicals or consumers’ safety. Delta Dental Committee consists of Ed Choate, President of Delta Dental; Dennis Sternberg, Executive Director of Arkansas Rural Water Association; Jim Ferguson P.E., Director of Engineering, Central Arkansas Water; Glen Greenway, P.E. with Arkansas Department of Health; Lynn Mouden, DDS, former Director of Office of Oral Health and Board Member of Delta Dental Foundation and Edie Arey, who is Professional Relations Director for Delta Dental. These are the people charged with the responsibility of giving the water operators the necessary tools to perform their highly important jobs safely and properly while in 34 different water districts they are refusing to pay for needed equipment with a very simple budget. The Arkansas Department of Health adopted the phrase “Simpler is Better”. Shortsighted:  Legislators who passed this law clearly do not understand the complex nature of water chemistry. They do not understand that every chemical you add to a treatment process directly affects other chemicals you use in your disinfection process. They don’t fully understand the science of adding a highly acidic chemical like fluoride,  (pH 2 to 3), to the treatment process which will depress the water pH and make it necessary to add additional chemicals to raise the waters pH again into good quality water parameters. As you can well see, after the fluoride is added, it requires MORE treatment, MORE equipment, MORE chemicals and MORE money. We have spoken to several people from the water industry who told us,”This couldn’t be a worse time to implement a change in a water treatment process. On April 1, 2012 Federal Regulation Stage 2 Disinfectant and Disinfection Byproduct Rule (S2DBPR) goes into effect. It establishes new criteria which tightens regulations on trihalomethanes (TTHM) and Haloacetic Acids (HAA5) which are Federally regulated carcinogens.” One of the best ways to lower disinfection byproducts in treatment plants which exceed the limit is switching from free chlorine in the disinfection process to producing chloramines when leaving the plant and into the distribution system. The addition of ammonia, at the proper ratio is what produces the chloramines. The correct ratio of ammonia to chlorine will produce monochloramines, which is what you are looking for in the water chemistry makeup. This is where an operator must practice due diligence in  monitoring all his chemical feeds. If the ratio is off, it creates dichloramines and trichloramines which have a tendency to break down forming disinfection byproducts. Trihalomethanes above the major contaminant level damage the liver, kidneys and affects the central nervous system. Haloacetic Acid is a carcinogen that causes cancer. “The changes in treatment process to meet the new (S2DBPR) and building new structures and adding mandated fluoridation is not a one-shoe-fits-all process. It takes a strict scientific approach and proven water industry standards to produce a clean, safe pleasant water supply to drink, bathe, cook and enjoy.” We would like to think that the Representatives and Senators wouldn’t have moved so swiftly and so convincingly if they would have allowed professionals from the water industry to testify before the Arkansas Legislature, which would have allowed them to make an informed decision. Securing the blessings of liberty, SecureArkansas@gmail.com SecureArkansasNetwork.org

Sebelius: Decrease in Human Beings Will Cover Cost of Contraception Mandate

By Fred Lucas

March 1, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a House panel Thursday that a reduction in the number of human beings born in the United States will compensate employers and insurers for the cost of complying with  the new HHS mandate that will require all health-care plans to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception,” Sebelius said. She went on to say the estimated cost is “down not up.”

Sebelius took questions from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health about President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal.

Because the Catholic church teaches that sterilization, contraception or abortion are wrong and that Catholics must not be inolved in them, the regulation forces Catholics–and members of other religious denominations that share those views–to act against the teachings of their faith. Numerous lawsuits have already been asserting that the rule violates the First Amendment’s guarantee to the free exercise of religion. Many of the nation’s Catholic bishops have published letters saying: “We cannot–we will not–comply with this unjust law.”

Sebelius, however, insisted that the mandate “upholds religious liberty.”“The rule which we intend to promulgate in the near future around implementation will require insurance companies, not a religious employer, but the insurance company to provide coverage for contraceptives,” Sebelius told the subcommittee.

The Catholic bishops have called for the regulation to be rescinded in its entirety, so that no employer, insurer or individual is forced to act against his or her conscience.

During the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said that contraception provided by insurance companies to people employed by religious organizations under the future form of the rule Sebelius described would not be was not free.

“Who pays for it? There’s no such thing as a free service,” Murphy asked.

Sebelius responded that that is not the case with insurance.

“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for cost of contraception,” Sebelius answered.

Murphy expressed surprise by the answer.

“So you are saying, by not having babies born, we are going to save money on health care?” Murphy asked.

Sebelius replied, “Providing contraception is a critical preventive health benefit for women and for their children.”

Murphy again sought clarification.

“Not having babies born is a critical benefit. This is absolutely amazing to me. I yield back,” he said.

Sebelius responded, “Family planning is a critical health benefit in this country, according to the Institute of Medicine.”

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), a member of the subcommittee, said after the hearing that if mandating contraception saves money there shouldn’t be a need for a mandate.

“Their argument is this: Health insurance companies will offer it for free because they make money. You reduce the number of people getting pregnant therefore you reduce the cost of pregnancy, or low birth weight pregnancies or other kind of pregnancies,” Guthrie told CNSNews.com.

“If you think about it, why don’t health insurance companies provide it now if the argument is health insurance companies are going to make a lot of money? If the health insurance companies were really acting in their own best interest, they would be giving these pills out for free, if it really saved money,” Guthrie added.

Despite the controversy over whether the mandate is constitutional, Sebelius told Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) during the hearing that the administration never sought a legal opinion about the regulation from the Department of Justice.