Dr. Theodore Levy explains how a decline in our health care system could happen a little at a time, so citizens might not even realize the cause of their problems.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Nathan Clark George
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010This month’s member spotlight is about Christian musician Nathan Clark George, who wrote a song based on Galatians 6, the passage Samaritan has put in its materials to highlight the theme of bearing one another’s burdens. He’s made the song available free for members. Visit NathanClarkGeorge.com and click on the “Free!” tab to download it.
Award winning artist Nathan Clark George describes his music in simple terms, preferring not to talk of the typical labels and categories.
“There are sort of two sides to my writing. One is Scriptural, just setting passages of Scripture, like Psalm 111 and Psalm 24 to music. Another side of my music is just pulling from family life.”
Nathan and his wife Patricia spend much of their time touring in a cramped motor home with their six children: (more…)
Medical tourism expands as alternative to new law
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010Professor Sarah McIntosh writes, “Across the globe, entrepreneurial individuals and organizations are looking at the possibility of providing medical tourism services at an increased rate, particularly in the wake of the new U.S. health care law. Costa Rica’s rising medical tourism industry could serve as a test case for this as providers prepare to benefit from the impact of the new regulations in the United States…”
Read the article at the Heartland Institute’s website.
Kentucky court decision won’t affect Samaritan Members
Friday, August 27th, 2010Yesterday the Kentucky Supreme Court rendered a 5-2 split decision finding that Medi-Share, a health care sharing ministry, was insurance and did not qualify for a “Religious Publication Exemption.” (An exemption crafted for charities operating a health care sharing ministry.) The decision won’t affect Samaritan members. See the press release for more information.
Please transfer the potatoes …
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010Laura in our operations department shares this after a long day answering phones at Samaritan:
After answering many calls yesterday and transferring them to the appropriate extensions, Nathan, at dinner, asked me to pass him a drink. I slipped and said, “Yes, let me transfer that to you.”
Geography lesson in sin
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010Jon Acuff offers a sobering, needed essay on our vulnerability to sin thanks to our failure to, simply, get away from it. Or at least the potential for it, especially where adultery or fornication is concerned. Many Christians today have forgotten the fact that your spouse is your spouse, and that people of the sex opposite of you aren’t. There are no “friends” of the opposite sex. God created men and women to be in specific types of relationships; “friends” isn’t one of them.
Read Acuff’s post and painstakingly review your relationships.
Boston doc streamlines appointments
Thursday, July 29th, 2010Last year, we wrote about primary care physicians making creative changes to how they practice medicine, changes that benefit both them and their patients. Here’s another doc who has made a change, Dr. Dennis Dmitri of Boston. Dr. Dmitri doesn’t take advance appointments. You need to see him that day? You call that day and get a time. Waiting time is slim.
Are the patients or the psychiatrists mental?
Monday, July 5th, 2010Some are wondering if it is the patients or the psychiatrists who are crazy now that the latest mental disorder has been revealed: orthorexia nervosa, meaning “healthy eating disorder.” It’s making the internet rounds, coming to a blog, Facebook post, or Youtube video near you.
Do you avoid processed foods and take vitamins? You might be crazy!
Joking aside, there certainly can be serious disorders related to eating. However, this one seems to border on the absurd, and has been mocked all over the web. Some commentators even say it’s a politically motivated attack on health conscious consumers, who just won’t go along and buy all their mass-produced food from heavily subsided multi-national corporations. Others say it’s laying the groundwork for government regulation and taxation of vitamins and supplements.
This latest mental disorder has been officially classified in the U.K., not in the United States’ infamous DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which has been the subject of heated debate among doctors and psychiatrists since it was first published in 1952.
To pick only one of numerous examples, here’s a book by two California university professors presenting the case that “the DSM applies the language of mental illness to everyday behavior, transforming ordinary reactions to life’s vicissitudes into billable pathology.”
It seems safe to say that “healthy eating disorder” is yet another example of political correctness run amok. Hopefully, it won’t come across the pond to the U.S. Keep on endeavoring to eat healthy. You aren’t crazy.
More docs refusing new Medicare patients
Friday, June 25th, 2010From USA Today:
WASHINGTON — The number of doctors refusing new Medicare patients because of low government payment rates is setting a new high, just six months before millions of Baby Boomers begin enrolling in the government health care program.
Recent surveys by national and state medical societies have found more doctors limiting Medicare patients, partly because Congress has failed to stop an automatic 21% cut in payments that doctors already regard as too low. The cut went into effect Friday, even as the Senate approved a six-month reprieve. The House has approved a different bill.
This was already a trend, only exacerbated by the health care bill. The solution is not to increase government spending, but to make charity-based care for the elderly more workable.
h/t John Goodman
July Member Spotlight: Grady Hauser and Baton 100
Friday, June 25th, 2010
By Michael Miller
For Grady Hauser’s sons, Saturday mornings as children didn’t mean sitting in front of a TV to be assaulted by cartoons and advertising.
Instead, Colson and Graham would routinely go somewhere for breakfast with Dad, who would use the opportunity to talk to them about principles they would need then and later in life.
“It was those Saturday mornings that we memorized Scripture, discussed spiritual and life principles—and ate enough Egg McMuffins to last a lifetime,” Colson says.
Samaritan Ministries member Grady has distilled those Saturday morning dates and other times with his boys into Passing the Baton: 100 Life Principles and Skills Every Father Needs to Teach His Children—principles and skills designed to last a lifetime, and with much more value than breakfast sandwiches.
Passing the Baton, endorsed by men’s ministry leader Steve Farrar, gives guidance on how dads can teach their children things like holding up the Bible as the Christian’s final authority; how your house can reflect Biblical values; worship and fasting; when in doubt, don’t speak out; pornography as a progressive and ugly trap; small acts of unexpected generosity; meeting and working with powerful people; 10 questions when considering marriage; sleep with dogs and you get fleas; reading a map with a compass; changing a tire—in the dark; cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the Heimlich maneuver and first aid; loaning and collecting money; and managing a checking account.
A quick perusal of just those 14 topics (see the full table of contents here) also reveals the structure of the book. Grady starts with a spiritual foundation, proceeds to general principles, then to general skills, and ends with financial principles and skills. He breaks each category into age-appropriate groupings: elementary (5-11), early teens (12-15) and older teens (16-18+). The book is designed to be used repeatedly through many years.
