Into the Void

Political Haikus

Political haikus seem to be a growing trend this year.

The Poetry of Sarah Palin. - By Hart Seely - Slate Magazine

“Haiku”

These corporations.
Today it was AIG,
Important call, there.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf

The above link is to the full text of the bailout bill, and I suggest that everybody read this bill. It was pushed through with only a couple of days debate by lawyers who have little understanding of the workings of Wall Street or The Fed. And they tacked a lot of pork barrel spending onto it to BRIBE Congress to agree to it. Unfortunately, mental health parity verbiage was tacked onto the bill with the pork. NAMI, of course, is celebrating the bill for its own sake without regard to what effect it will have, or when. Having appeased the mental health lobby, congress is off the hook as far as enacting any further legislation. Way to go!
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf

“To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health
Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986 to require equity in the provision of mental
health and substance-related disorder benefits under
group health plans, to prohibit discrimination on the
basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance
and employment, and for other purposes.”

This means that you only get parity if your employer provides your insurance AND that insurance already has mental health coverage. It doesn’t seem to require them to cover it in the first place. It also doesn’t appear to apply to private health insurance.

There is a cost exemption so to limit mental health coverage if it increases costs by some undetermined amount. The insurance companies can still deny claims bases on their definition of “medical necessity” or by their definition of “reasonable and customary” services.

??(2) COST EXEMPTION.?
6 ??(A) IN GENERAL.?With respect to a
7 group health plan (or health insurance coverage
8 offered in connection with such a plan), if the
9 application of this section to such plan (or cov
10 erage) results in an increase for the plan year
11 involved of the actual total costs of coverage
12 with respect to medical and surgical benefits
13 and mental health and substance use disorder
14 benefits under the plan (as determined and cer
15 tified under subparagraph (C)) by an amount
16 that exceeds the applicable percentage described
17 in subparagraph (B) of the actual total plan
18 costs, the provisions of this section shall not
19 apply to such plan (or coverage) during the fol
20 lowing plan year, and such exemption shall
21 apply to the plan (or coverage) for 1 plan year.”

Discrimination on the basis of genetic information only affects illnesses for which genetic tests have been developed. This bill ignores a lot of of the provisions of the ADA, while modifying ERISA quite a bit. I am concerned that this will weaken the ADA by tightening the definitions to exclude non-genetic diseases.

Specific diagnoses this bill applies to will be determined by the GAO, which has 3 years to study it and present a report. Once the beancounters are through will this bill, we’ll have no more than we had the day before the bill passed.

(h) GAO STUDY ON COVERAGE AND EXCLUSION OF
4 MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER DIAG5
NOSES.?
6 (1) IN GENERAL.?The Comptroller General of
7 the United States shall conduct a study that ana8
lyzes the specific rates, patterns, and trends in cov9
erage and exclusion of specific mental health and
10 substance use disorder diagnoses by health plans
11 and health insurance.”

I doubt this will change anything in the near future.

A few years from now you’re going to hear Congressdroids bitching because they didn’t have enough time to collect the facts before enacting this bill.

A bit of history.

The story is that in WWII the GIs used to steal the chocolate bars out of all the boxes of K-Rations and use them to buy (rent?) whores. Problem 2 was that fine chocolate doesn’t hold up very well in a tropical climate. Hershey’s set to work on it. The result was the “Field Ration D” bar, a chocolate emergency food bar that didn’t melt as easily and tasted like paraffin wax.

Not only did the Field Ration D bar hold up in the heat, but it also solved the problem of the whores.

A few years later Hershey’s created a slightly better-tasting heat-tolerant chocolate bar called the Hershey’s Tropical Bar. This the ancestor of all American chocolate. I don’t know about the rest of you girls, but I’m looking for a Belgian soldier.

Hershey billed the Tropical Bar as “The Price of Freedom.”

PSYweb DSM-IV Diagnoses and Codes.

PSYweb has a list of the DSM-IV Diagnosis Codes. Notice that there are a lot of psychiatric diagnoses caused by psych meds. This makes it totally clear that your meds can make you sicker, a good argument for doing the minimum meds to make you functional vs. medicating yourself into oblivion.

The following are a few examples of iatrogenic (physician-caused) psychiatric disorders:

292.84

Opioid-Induced Mood Disorder
Yes, pain meds can make you look like a bipolar.

333.99

Neuroleptic-Induced Acute Akathisia
He’s agitated, let’s give him more neuroleptic. Neuroleptics are old-fashioned antipsychotics such as Haldol.

292.12

Amphetamine-Induced Psychotic Disorder, With Hallucinations
Some of the ADHD meds they give to kids, including Ritalin and Adderall, are amphetamines. Can you imagine turning your kid into a Speed Freak?

292.89

Sedative-, Hypnotic-, or Anxiolytic-Induced Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety from anti-anxiety pills? Some of the benzodiazepines can even induce hypomania, however there doesn’t seem to be a diagnosis code for it. Maybe in the DSM-V. Or maybe not. I hear it’s being written by Big Pharma.

Another cool thing on psyweb is a Mood Disorder Flow Chart that is able to distinguish bipolar disorder from the other mood disorders. A real kick in the head is the question “Symptoms Psychotic in nature, occur at times other then during Manic or Mixed Episodes?”

This seems to imply that bipolars don’t have psychotic depressions, but other mood disorders do. Note that the only the 296 numbers are mood disorders, and only a few of those are called bipolar disorder. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

A couple of years ago I did a decision tree for the bipolar disorders based on the DSM-III. It’s a little different from the DSM-IV-based version.

Psyweb also has a decision tree for differential diagnosis, and that’s a better choice than the mood disorders tree, even for diagnosed bipolars. This tree helps you figure out whether you have another psych diagnosis masquerading as bipolar, something that a 15-minute psych eval will definately miss. That would be truly disastrous, being treated for life for bipolar instead of dealing with something less severe. Have fun!

I think I’m going to invent Seroquel jimmies for ice cream.

Hey, Girl Scout friends! Now THIS is a knife.

Get one of these bad boys and you can throw away your tool chest, cutlery, fishing tackle box, and corkscrew. Oh, and fire your auto mechanic. It’s all there.

I can’t help it, I love to window shop at amazon.com. I have NO idea what I was looking for when I found this. I was thinking about getting one for hubby for Christmas as a joke.

What’s really strange is that as I was typing this in, hubby came in with the Hammacher catalog. They’re selling one that has every tool Victrinox ever made. It’s about 5 times the width of this (and 5 times the price) and is simply bristling with screwdrivers for hardware that most people will never even see, much less need to tighten.

Sarah Palin: The Nuclear Option? • View topic - Sarah’s ethics - computer hacking

The above forums are new, but I’m going to get on there and fill them with Truth.

After the recent discovery that Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! account had been hacked, all I could think was “what goes around comes around.” I recently read a book by one of her friends that attempts to justify many of the unethical methods Sarah used to make it in Alaska politics. Too bad to give money to one of her friends, but this thing is a great resource. Read the nice version, then go online with dates and places to get the real story.

Well, we are losing ground. There are a number of groups that are fighting for more humane treatment of mental patients, except that by “humane” they mean “treating the poor benighted bastards whether they want it or not.”

Although there are are indeed patients who are unaware of their illnesses, it is unacceptable to treat all of the mentally ill that way. It opens the door to unimaginable abuses. By the way, anognosia is also found in stroke victims with damage to the frontal lobes. And on a more chilling note, some psychiatric treatments induce anosognosia.

NAMI is once again at the forefront in this growing threat.

Anosognosia Keeps Patients From Realizing They’re Ill
A growing body of evidence points to the fact that for many people with serious mental illness, lack of insight is a medically based condition.
About half of the people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may not be getting the treatment they need because of a brain deficit that renders them unable to perceive that they are ill, according to one expert.
Xavier Amador, Ph.D.: “People will come up with illogical and even bizarre explanations for symptoms and life circumstances stemming from their illness.”
Anosognosia, meaning “unawareness of illness,” is a syndrome commonly seen in people with serious mental illness and some neurological disorders, according to Xavier Amador, Ph.D., who spoke at the 2001 convention of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Washington, D.C., in July.
People with this syndrome do not believe they are ill despite evidence to the contrary, said Amador, who is director of psychology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Treatment Advocacy Center
“The Treatment Advocacy Center has been the catalyst for many positive changes in our laws and a shift in our perception of the importance of intervention. Their unique advocacy is restoring the important balance between individual freedom and caring coercion.”

Legislation
These issues of “involuntary commitment” and “assisted outpatient treatment,” are labeled in academia as “controversial”, a concept interpreted by many as too difficult for the average person to understand. Without the support of scientific research, we all felt until now, intimidated and afraid to be rendered guilty of tampering with everyone’s civil rights. To continue protecting their civil rights only allows our loved ones to remain psychotic, addicted to substances, wandering the streets of the USA, wasting their lives in jails and using, over and over again, most of the economic resources available to treat ALL mentally ill persons. We cannot forget that, not too long ago, freeing the slaves and fighting for an end to discrimination were also considered “controversial” subjects.

Bill mandates treatment for mentally ill (phillyBurbs.com)
Others, though, contend there is little evidence the court orders are effective, and the laws deflect attention from deeper problems plaguing the mental health system, such as a lack of funding for expanded treatment and support services.
Patient advocates fear that law could be abused by applying it whenever a patient disagrees with a doctor’s recommendations. A 2005 state law allows for psychiatric advanced directives specifying treatment preferences when a person’s decision-making is impaired, patient advocates added.
“I believe that the bill has grown out of a sincere desire to help people with mental illness,” said Joseph Rogers, president of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, if it became law, it would have the exact opposite effect.”

Be afraid. Be VERY Afraid. If you disagree with your caregivers, they can pull out the anosognosia label to get you out of the way.

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad from Paris Hilton, Adam “Ghost Panther” McKay, and Chris Henchy

Well, he asked for it.

Sarah Palin: The Nuclear Option?

It didn’t take long for a discussion forum to show up poking fun at Vice-Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s religion/political platform, or what little is known about it. As best I can figure out, she plans to nuke the lower 48 and take her throne in Alaska.

Portions of the first major interview will be televised beginning on Thursday’s “World News with Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.” ABC will also air a special “20/20″ at 10 p.m. Friday devoted to the interview.

Update: The Interview.