Source:  Associated Press

New federal guidelines will allow patients treated at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics to use medical marijuana in the 14 states where it’s legal.

The directive from the Veterans Affairs Department in the coming week is intended to clarify current policy that says veterans can be denied pain medication if they use illegal drugs. Veterans groups have complained for years that this could bar veterans from VA benefits if they were caught using medical marijuana.

The new guidance does not authorize VA doctors to begin prescribing medical marijuana, which is considered an illegal drug under federal law. But it will now make clear that in the 14 states where state and federal law are in conflict, VA clinics generally will allow the use of medical marijuana for veterans already taking it under other clinicians.

“For years, there have been veterans coming back from the Iraq war who needed medical marijuana and had to decide whether they were willing to cut down on their VA medications,” John Targowski, a legal adviser to the group Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access, which worked with the VA on the issue.

Targowski in an interview Saturday said that confusion over the government’s policy might have led some veterans to distrust their doctors or avoid the VA system.

Dr. Robert A. Petzel, the VA’s undersecretary for health, sent a letter to Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access this month that spells out the department’s policy. The guidelines will be distributed to the VA’s 900 care facilities around the country in the next week.

Petzel makes clear that a VA doctor could reserve the right to modify a veteran’s treatment plan if there were risks of a bad interaction with other drugs.

“If a veteran obtains and uses medical marijuana in a manner consistent with state law, testing positive for marijuana would not preclude the veteran from receiving opioids for pain management” in a VA facility, Petzel wrote. “The discretion to prescribe, or not prescribe, opioids in conjunction with medical marijuana, should be determined on clinical grounds.”

Opioids are narcotic painkillers, and include morphine, oxycodone and methadone.

Opioids are considered high-risk links to all kinds of potentially harmful conditions including depression, alcoholism and erectile dysfunction.  Although marijuana has not been used as an erectile dysfunction medication  before, it’s also widely believed that it has the ability to enhance performance among men who may be suffering from ED.   

Under the previous policy, local VA clinics in some of the 14 states, such as Michigan, had opted to allow the use of medical marijuana because there no rule explicitly prohibiting them from doing so.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are 14 states and the District of Columbia with medical marijuana laws. They are: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. New Jersey also recently passed a medical marijuana law, which is scheduled to be implemented next January.

______________________________________

My Take:   It’s pretty obvious why the Fed has so many roadblocks out there against the use of marijuana as a legally prescribed medication for certain health conditions.  If they legalized it 100%, what would that do to the drug manufacturers of narcotics that are now prescribed for pain issues that have been proven to be just as effectively treated by marijuana?  Who would buy Viagra if marijuana did the trick for those suffering from ED?

What if the world refused to buy big company products and made their own perfect organics producgts at home, using plants and natural ingredients available at any market or community garden?  What would happen if organic skin care took over the need for fancy makeup and expensive eylash extension kits , porcelain nails or lipstick selling for $14 a tube. 

Maybe it’s time we just took a hard look at not only the superfluous use of lash extensions and makeup, and Viagra and other addictive narcotics and prescription meds and make some better choices about using natural and plant-based products over chemicals?

Other Resources:
Kids Count
Searching for a quality child care finder  service online should not be difficult.  What is difficult is making sure the childcare facilities these sites recommend are safe, fully licensed and above all legitimately interested caring for your child.  Beyond anything else you should always ask a center for at least three parent references before you decide to enroll your child. 

Decal Décor
Looking for a fun and inexpensive way to spice up your walls?  Try vinyl wall lettering or decals.  They make really fun wall letters and stickers and decals for kids’ rooms that are fun and easy to remove as they grow out of certain themes.  

SOURCE:  Los Angeles Times

Here’s some news you’ve been waiting for: Chocolate is a health food!

Well, maybe not. But it can be part of a healthy diet. It’s true – 70% of dieticians said you can eat 100 calories worth of chocolate each day “while maintaining a balanced lifestyle.” Nearly as many agreed that you could eat that much chocolate daily and still lose weight.

OK, so that survey was not scientific, and the results don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of dieticians as a whole. But the survey sponsor is still eager to share its finding that nine out of 10 registered dieticians say people are more likely to stick with a weight-loss diet if the plan includes “treats.”

By the way, the survey sponsor was none other than the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition, which supports research on “the health benefits of cocoa, chocolate, nuts and more,” according to its website.

No data yet on the benefits of the switch from traditional tobacco to the E cig.  Electronic cigarette starter kits are also not yet anywhere on the recommendations list.

The Hershey Center stepped up its commitment to your health this week by becoming a corporate sponsor of the American Dietetic Assn., the professional group for nutritionists and dieticians. (The organization can be found online at EatRight.org. In doing so, Hershey joined an esteemed list of health food purveyors, including the Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo and Mars Inc. (Yes, the soda companies also sell juice and water, and Mars makes Uncle Ben’s rice, but that doesn’t make them health food companies.)

The folks at Fooducate are understandably appalled (if not surprised) that the ADA would let itself be influenced by big bucks from candy and soda makers. “Instead of a very simple message – ‘less candy’ – we’ll hear ‘moderation,’ ‘balance,’ ‘chocolate is healthy’ and other messages that help nudge consumers to buy more snacks instead of less,” according to a post on the Fooducate blog.

The Sustainable Food blog got to the heart of the issue: “If the world’s largest group of nutrition professionals is in bed with junk food giants like Pepsi and Mars, how can consumers believe any of the organization’s dietary advice?” Instead, the blog suggested that “folks can get better dietary direction from a fortune cookie.”

And for those of you readers pursuing a healthy, balanced lifestyle, you can eat 48% of a classic milk chocolate Hershey bar or 56% of a Hershey Special Dark without exceeding the 100-calorie daily limit.

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MY TAKE:  Frankly, I’m not a fan of chocolate. I know, call me nuts!  But I’d rather get a nice set of monogrammed note cards than a box of candy for V-day.  I do also happen to be a fan of those fluorescent personalized sticky note cubes.  We’ve made baby boy birth announcements recently for my sister.  I’ve even heard of people using them to create really cool marriage announcements.  My daughter and I enjoy leaving them all over the house with little notes, making art projects with them and sometimes even sticking them on ourselves for fun. 

OTHER RESOURCES:
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Medical Hair Replacement Therapy
Thinking about a Phoenix hair transplant? The procedure is painless and effective, and whether you work with an AZ hair replacement expert or one on the other side of the country, the process is supposed to help you replace dead follicles with healthy ones, which in turn helps you grow real hair again.

Source: Associated PressAccording to the findings in a new Danish study men who are obese by age 20 will die eight years earlier on average than others their age.

The research, presented at the International Congress on obesity in Stockholm, also indicated that obesity usually develops before the age of 20 and that most people are unlikely to develop obesity later in life.

More than 5,000 military conscripts took part in the study, starting from age 20 through to age 80. Some 2,000 of them were obese when they began the trial.

The research concluded that the risk of premature death in already obese men increased 10 percent for every point surpassing the healthy level of 25 body mass index points. Body mass index is used to determine a person’s body fat through a calculation using height and weight.

“At age 70 years, 70 percent of the men in the comparison group and 50 percent of those in the obese group were still alive and we estimated that from middle-age the obese were likely to die eight years earlier than those in the comparison group,” said Esther Zimmermann of

Copenhagen University Hospital.

Zimmermann, who led the study team at the hospital’s Institute of

Preventive Medicine, said the research accounted for the influences of smoking, year of birth, and education but not other factors, such as hereditary diseases.

The research did not include women, but confirmed findings made in similar studies.

Last year, an American study published in the medical journal BMJ said obesity could slash women’s chances of reaching the age of 80 in good health by nearly 80 percent. The researchers found that for every one-point increase in their body mass index women had a 12 percent lower chance of surviving to age 70 in good health.

A British study published in Lancet in 2009 found that people with a body mass index from 30 to 35 die about three years earlier than normal, while those who were morbidly fat, with an index above 40, die about a decade earlier.

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My Take: There’s got to be fifty ways to lose stomach fat for men, or to at least get down to a weight that is going to lower the mass index for better health and longevity. I think one of the primary roadblocks for many in trying to lose a fat stomach is laziness in nutrition.  There are way too many fast food options these days, and not just the drive through kind.  Grocery stores, too, have lately begun to offer so many short-cut meal options that it’s almost like no one has time to cook a healthy meal. 

 This is beyond sports nutrition.  And it’s not something organic multivitamins can correct either.

Men and women alike need to learn to lay off the fast food, get out and exercise a little more often and start taking better care of themselves.

 Other Resources:

Legal Zones
If you hire a Boston criminal defense law firm be sure to ask for at least three references.  Every god Massachusetts federal lawyer or criminal lawyer will offer you names and contact information for cases they’ve tried so you can get a solid reference before you pay good money for legal representation.

Senior Care
Monmouth County NJ at home nursing care is not cheap.  But if you need to find a solid Ocean County New Jersey (NJ) doctor house call operator you can save yourself some headaches if you know the facts.  Check here for information from the New Jersey Visiting Nurses association.

Source: CNN

Harry and Barbara Cooper have some tips for how their marriage has lasted seven decades.

On the day of their 72nd wedding anniversary, they leaned toward each other, hands tenderly clasped, as they peered into the camera.

‘It’s a give-and-take situation,” said Harry, as Barbara, giggled. “I give, and she takes.”

This is an unconventional showcase for any elderly couple in their retirement home, but a typical day for two of the oldest bloggers in Los Angeles, California. Harry recently turned 98. Barbara is 93. The Coopers rely on their granddaughters to videotape their chat, which is later posted on their blog, “The OGs” (short for Original Grandparents).

Harry and Barbara have become an internet sensation, attracting thousands of fans since their blog debuted in late 2008. Their grandchildren helped them launch the OG blog as a way for them to share their wisdom, humor and relationship with the rest of the world.

When most people their age shy away from the mysteries of the Internet, the pair boasts 1,900 Facebook fans. Barbara, whose dark hair has turned to a wispy white, also tweets and posts restaurant reviews on Yelp.

But perhaps what’s most fascinating for readers isn’t the couple’s ease with the Web, but it’s the strength of their marriage. At a time when statistics show every other marriage ending in divorce in the U.S., Harry and Barbara have proved a relationship can last a very long time.

They have witnessed important moments in history together — World War II, President Kennedy’s assassination and the terror attack on New York’s Twin Towers.

They’ve been inseparable since they first met on a tennis court in Los Angeles in 1937. Harry, then 24, was playing a game while Barbara, then 19, showed up with friends in her high heels. She caught his attention.

“Barbara was a pretty girl,” he recalls. “She was very, very polite, and we got along pretty good.”

On their first date, Harry took her for a drive in his car, and they did what most young love birds did back then: They munched on popcorn and listened to crooner Bing Crosby.

Harry proposed swiftly, about four months after their first date. He had asked Barbara’s father for permission to pop the question. Harry sold himself as a hard-working man with $116 proudly saved in his bank account.

The couple were outside a jewelry shop in Pasadena, California, window-shopping when Harry turned to Barbara and said, “Someday, I’m going to buy you a ring like this.”

He gave her gold wedding band with small diamonds. She kept the ring on her finger until her elbow surgery a few years ago.

Over the years, he proved himself to be a fine husband, Barbara said. In addition to serving in the Army, Harry was a delivery man and started a shoe business. At one point, he worked a dangerous position as a boilermaker’s helper. Barbara spent most her time at home, raising their two children.

“It was happy,” said Barbara about the early years of their marriage. “It was building one dollar on top of another.”

By the 1960s, their children, who had been the center of their worlds, had grown into young adults ready to start families of their own. Their initial years as empty-nesters were challenging, but the couple found comfort in each other.

Barbara describes Harry as a sweet, content and happy man.

Harry holds similar feelings. He calls Barbara his “guiding light.”

Harry and Barbara celebrated their 25th anniversary with a trip to Europe. Then the first grandchild came. Today, they have seven of them.

The couple can’t remember what they did for their 50th anniversary, but for Harry’s 80th birthday, they recalled, the family went on a three-day cruise to Mexico.

No need for a New Jersey alimony attorney here.  This couple is as solid as a rock. They dare any  Bergen County lawyer or divorce attorney to challenge their ties.  All kidding aside: they are happy. 

“We are just content individuals,” Barbara said, adding, “We landed on our feet. We have a fine family.”

But the couple experienced several emotional setbacks in 2007 when both their children, who were in their mid-60s, died. One died from a heart attack and one from cancer. The couple battled anguish and sadness after their children’s deaths.

Granddaughters Kim Cooper, now 43, and Chinta Cooper, now 21, who live in the Los Angeles area, encouraged their grandparents to move to a nursing home nearby. There, the blog was born.

“They are so adorable together,” Kim says. “Their incredible romance shines through in everything they do. They are funny, inventive, unusual characters.”

In the video segments on the OGs, viewers can easily spot the enduring bond between Harry and Barbara. They lean in on each other and stare at each other when they talk. They laugh and smile together. They make being married, even at their old age, look effortless.

Barbara is better known as “Cutie” on their blog, where she wears several hats. As a food critic, she recently wrote a review of French pastries at a local restaurant. She danced in a video where she showcased her moves, waving her arms and sashaying her hips. In another post, she offered her opinion of Lady Gaga’s music video “Alejandro.”

“I think it’s nothing new, it’s nothing charming,” Barbara wrote in the music-related post last month. “It’s got no message. I’m sorry, I did not enjoy this.”

Readers can also seek Barbara’s advice on the “Ask Grandma” video series. Even with her meek voice, she delivers no-nonsense answers on friends, family and relationships.

Harry appears online as “PopPop,” a nickname given to him by his granddaughter Kim when she was a child. He’s the quieter sidekick in the duo, but he has his own section of the blog called “PopPop’s Adventure Corner,” where he tells jokes and sings songs he learned in the Army.

When Harry isn’t blogging, he enjoys eating raw fish, spicy foods and Chinese dumplings. He broke his leg last year and now has titanium in his thigh. He uses a walker now, his family says, and requires more care than Barbara.

Barbara spends her days watching daytime judge shows and, of course, she visits Harry every morning. She suffered a heart attack a few years back but has been healthy since then.

So what’s the secret to their marriage?

“We have a solid marriage,” Barbara says. “It isn’t Romeo and Juliet every day, but Harry thinks I’m OK, and I love him. We are accepting of each other.”

And that’s good enough for them.

_____________________________ 

My Take:  Any Philadelphia defense lawyer would be hard-pressed to get this couple to crack.  In fact, I bet the best Philadelphia PA criminal defense lawyer or  South Carolina construction attorney for that matter couldn’t manage to make this couple say something mean about the other. The only attorney they might need is a  NC social security disability attorney.  Living as long as they have as married couple, they must have some good advice about staying healthy, too.

Other Resources: 

Money to Work

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Old Glory and More

Looking for inexpensive confederate flags or miniature Texas state flags for a party or special event?  How about Betsy Ross flags for decorations?  They are available online at many specialty e-tailers.  These make great toppers for cupcakes and can even be used for school projects.

Cited: Medico Legal News

It is hard for anyone to admit they are at fault as well and saying they are sorry.  However, it is even more difficult when American doctor who is made a mistake that had devastating results because it could mean a lawsuit that could in his or her career.

Doug Wojcieszak recalled the way doctors literally ran away from his mother in the hallway of the hospital after their fatal misdiagnosis of his brother Jim in 1998.

“It’s a cultural thing in medicine, that initial instinct to pull back and to sever the relationship with the patient or the family and clam up as a way to mitigate or reduce the chance of a lawsuit,” he told AFP.

His brother had walked into the hospital complaining of chest, shoulder, neck and stomach pains — classic signs of a possible heart attack.  Because he was only 39, and “a big, strong guy”, the doctors automatically assumed he was having some kind of stomach problem.

When his parents brought him back the next day in excruciating pain, they had a closer look but critically mixed up his X-rays with those of his father, who had undergone tests in the same hospital months before.

“His blood test is showing heart distress, but they are looking at my dad’s charts showing no blockage, so they misdiagnose my brother with a bacterial infection to the heart,” explained Wojcieszak.

Doctors plied Jim full of antibiotics for the next two days and by the time they realized their error it was too late — he died during emergency open heart surgery as they tried desperately to unblock four major arteries.

The tragedy was hard for the family to take, but their grief was compounded by an ensuing cover-up that meant they had no choice but to sue. Eventually, struggling to find any kind of closure, a settlement was reached in 2000.

For those who would like to avoid any hospital stays and doctor errors . . . Pilates exercise and fitness system was developed in the early 20th century.  There are now more than 11 million people who practice the discipline regularly.  Pilates has been called Contrology because it is a method that uses the mind control muscles.  It focuses on the core postural muscles to keep the body balanced and are essential to providing support for the spine.  It is so popular that it even has its own Pilates exercise equipment.

“My parents had to relive the death of their first-born son for two years,” said Wojcieszak.

Five years later he founded The Sorry Works! Coalition to unite fledgling projects that encouraged doctors to disclose mistakes, apologize and offer compensation.  His coalition argues that solving the malpractice crisis is not a legal problem, involving complex reform of America’s tort laws, but simply a customer service one.

President Barack Obama might agree as he has instructed Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to examine such projects as part of a 25-million-dollar program to curb medical malpractice lawsuits.

“We’re thrilled that it’s part of the national debate,” said Wojcieszak, who dismissed the existing system as a “never-ending fight between lawyers and doctors, pointing fingers and yelling and screaming”.  Malpractice reform has stalled in the United States for decades, even as studies indicate more than 100,000 people die each year as a result of an estimated 15 million preventable medical errors.

In high-risk specialties such as neuro-surgery and obstetrics, doctors also fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on insurance premiums to offset the risk of professional error.

Obama surprised many when he promised a new look at the complex issue as part of his ambitious health care overhaul, defying the conventional wisdom that malpractice reform is only a Republican cause.

Republicans, backed by the doctors, argue that caps should be imposed on the amount of damages patients can receive, but Obama told the American Medical Association in June such measures would be unfair to those wrongfully harmed.

He is leaning more towards special courts and programs like Sorry Works, and Sebelius has been instructed to award grants from early 2010 to states and hospitals that find innovative ways to address the malpractice mess.

Tim McDonald, chief safety officer at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, finds himself at the vanguard of this movement.  His doctors maintain communication with families when things go wrong, conduct full investigations of any errors and then apologize, when appropriate, before fast-tracking cases for possible settlement.

Since the program launched in 2006, the culture of admission has helped doctors introduce new monitoring procedures for sedation, develop a better system to prevent blood clots, and even find equipment left inside patients.

“We had a case where we left a sponge behind and totally changed our process for how we prevent those,” McDonald told AFP.

“There are certain patients at risk for leaving things behind and we actually get X-rays on them even when we think we’ve accounted for everything in the operating room. We’ve found several objects in those patients by having changed that process.”

Susan Steinman, director of policy at the American Association for Justice, the leading organization for trial lawyers in the United States, is also on board.

“I think that ‘Sorry Works’ in particular has a lot of merit and has been used successfully by several large university hospitals,” she told AFP.

“It’s a good program because not only does it look at ways to reduce litigation costs; it looks at ways to reduce medical errors.”

Insurers were very skeptical at first as they thought disclosure would increase the number of lawsuits.

“That hasn’t happened,” said McDonald. “Instead, we’ve been able to show we’ve prevented certain kinds of events from happening again.”

For Wojcieszak, the Sorry Works revolution can’t come soon enough.

Patients and families can live with screw-ups, even fatal screw-ups so long as someone’s got the integrity to stand up and say: ‘I made a mistake, let’s talk about how I can try and make this right by you.’

“This is simply just taking care of people and reaping the benefits.”

People make mistakes including doctors.  Giving them away to apologize without the threat of lawsuit can change things and the Sorry Works can help accomplish this.

_______________________

My Take: My mother always taught me to apologize if I did something wrong, why can’t the doctor do the same?  If a doctor does something wrong that was something he could not foresee, and he should apologize even know what technically was not his fault.  In this type of situation does lawsuit could also bring even win.  However, if the mistake adapter makes was completely avoidable, the doctor should pay for his mistake.

The problem with lawsuits is simply, how do you put a price on life?  In a medical lawsuit, especially one that involves a death, a private autopsy usually needs to be performed so that they can see how the mistake was made.  This involves getting forensic anthology services other than those provided in the hospital or state.  Then they need to hire a Los Angeles court reporter to take depositions from nurses and doctors that were connected with the case.  There are many litigation support services in LA that can help in this type of case.

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Other Resources

NJ Child Custody Lawyer

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Did you know that nearly 365,000 women underwent breast augmentation in the United States in 2005 alone?  An Oakland California breast augmentation surgeon will tell you that breast implants are utilized for a number of purposes.  One of which is for breast cancer victims.  These patients utilize breast implants for reconstructive purposes after mastectomy.  Women with disproportionately small breasts or with asymmetry may use implants to provide balance, proportion and harmony. Breast implant options include smooth-round, textured round, contoured/tear drop-textured and for each of these implants: low/moderate and high profile widths are available and finally either saline or ‘gummy bear-elastic’ silicone fill.

Medication for Erectile Dysfunction

The FDA has approved a new use for tadalafil last year, which is the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis.  Tadalafil, sold as Adcirca, is now approved to improve exercise ability in people with pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is a rare, life-threatening lung disorder that causes high blood pressure in the lungs.  The FDA has approved three oral medications for ED.  They are sildenafil, also known as Viagra, Levitra, also known as vardenafil, and Cialis, also known as tadalafil.  As you can see, you and your doctor have a choice, which depends on your health and preferences.  You can buy Viagra, Cialis or Levitra for ED.

It is not the bad driver’s fault who is weaving in and out of the lane in front of you; he may not be able to help it, according to some U.S. researchers.  In fact, according to Science Direct, it can be assumed that children inherit their parents’ driving habits both through genetic disposition and model learning.  Some studies have even shown that parents’ and their children’s traffic violations and accidents correlate, which may be due to life style and exposure of the children to their parents driving style.

This study aimed at investigating the relationships between parents’ and their children’s self-reported driving behavior. The subjects were 174 parent–child pairs who independently completed a questionnaire. —driving style—was evaluated by means of Manchester driver behavior questionnaire (DBQ), while data about driving exposure, life style, accidents, and traffic tickets were also collected. A series of regression models indicated that parents’ self-reported driving behavior explains their children’s respective self-reported behavior, even when exposure and demographic and life-style factors are controlled.

They found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20% worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence.  The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there — about 30% of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.

“These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away,” Dr. Steven Cramer, who led the study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, said in a statement.

Cramer and his team tested 29 people — 22 without the gene variant and seven who had it — asking them to drive 15 laps on a simulator and then repeat the task a week later.  To their surprise, they found that those with the mutant gene did worse, consistently.  The gene controls a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which affects memory.  The team was not really looking for insights into driving but chose the driving test because it uses common skills.

“I’d be curious to know the genetics of people who get into car crashes,” Cramer said. “I wonder if the accident rate is higher for drivers with the variant.”

One study tested whether parents’ driving style predicts their children’s driving style when exposure factors are controlled.  Studies show that parents’ role is important in decisions that affect children’s car use and exposure to driving -related risks. Such decisions partly reflect parents’ life style that they transfer to their children.

For those parents who want to make sure their children know how to drive properly . . . The largest academy driving school NY, that was founded on the principle of safety in 1968, is available in the metropolitan area.  They train on all types of vehicles such as Cars, Motorcycles, Buses, Trucks, Tractor Trailers, and Fork Lift.  They have the pre-licensing safety course or 5 hour class that is required by the New York DMV to insure that new drivers qualify for their drivers’ license.  In fact, they also offer an online defensive driving course that is one of the most trusted and effective defensive driving course options available.  It provides students with a fully approved safety course as well as the NJ insurance rate reduction course designed to help graduates keep their insurance rates low and protect their driving record.

To explain accident involvement of young drivers you can look at the parents who give their child a role model for life as well as driving style that reflects habits and motivations.  Exposure to risk and relationship between parents and children will determine whether conviction and crashes will result from the amount of driving and make exposure to risk more similar.

The results of the study proved that a parent’s behavior behind the wheel does influence their children’s driving even when the major factors are controlled, although this was based on a fairly small student sample.  A detailed analysis showed that the relationship between the child’s and parents driving behavior is an important relationship.  This relationship shows significantly that the more errors and violations that a parent has and are seen by the children influence that specific behavior in their children will also make the same errors and violations.

________________________________

My Take: Are you telling me that they have only just now figured out that children mimic their parents?  I can understand discovering that there is a genetic connection, but they didn’t know the children imitate their parents when they grow up?  This is something that has been known for years!

Take for example a parent who drinks a lot, it is known that usually their child will do the same.  Of course, it does not always happen but it is known that it can happen.  Even a DUI attorney, who defends someone for drunk driving and has children, knows that one day they will probably be defending their clients’ child as well.  They realize that one day that child will need the same DUI defense attorney for the very same offense.  It has also been proven that drinking is genetically connected as well or at least the tendency towards it.

I think parents should send their children to some kind of driving school and not just rely on the high school drivers ed course.  A professional driving school would prepare a person better than any high school course because they that is what they do all day every day.  A high school teacher that teaches driver’s ed also teaches other classes and has to spread themselves pretty thin in today’s school system.

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Other Resources

Bodily Control

By improving your posture and movement, you could conceivably improve your driving.  The Alexander Technique can help improve postural and movement dysfunction by engaging the mind and body to reduce physical misuse.  You can learn to release excess tension allowing the spine to lengthen, the joints to open up, the bones to float away from each other, and the muscles to lengthen. This creates a more coordinated body with graceful movement and improved posture. The result is optimal functional mobility, decreased pain, and a greater sense of well being.  Why not check out some of the Alexander Technique resources that are available online to find out more.

Inheritance

Now that you have sent out those baby shower invitations, you need to think about the future of your child.  You need to realize that many of your habits will be passed onto your child just because you are around your child.  When your child reaches 16 they will be driving and you will be sending out new party invitations to celebrate.  But will they be able to drive safely and defensively?  You might want to consider sending them to a professional driving school when they get close to that age.

Now what?  The Senate finance bill seems to please most people and is about as close as possible reforming the US healthcare system.  Why is this so difficult?

After months of debate, the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) finally passed a version of a bill to overhaul the U.S. health-care system. The final tally for the Baucus bill, 14-9, came with a much-needed boost from Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who joined 13 Democrats on the committee to back the proposal and send it on to the full Senate for consideration. With five separate health-care bills now pending before Congress—two in the Senate, three in the House of Representatives—Snowe became the first Republican to cross the line and throw her support behind the reforms that are central to the Democratic agenda.

The vote moves President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress a huge step closer to achieving something close to comprehensive health-insurance coverage for most Americans and filling some of the biggest holes in the current insurance system. The Senate Finance bill, which would cost $829 billion over 10 years, would require most Americans to have health insurance; in return, insurers would no longer be able to turn down applicants with pre-existing conditions or to charge higher rates for the sick or elderly. Those who could not afford coverage would get subsidies.

The vote left many Democrats convinced that after months of tough slogging, a victory is near in their decades-long quest to bolster coverage for a majority of Americans.

“We’re close enough to the finish line that this will happen; all along there has been broad consensus among Democrats that we should pass reforms this year,” says Bruce Reed, head of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and co-author with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel of The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America. “There are now far fewer moving parts and thorny issues to reconcile than when the process started.”

Much Work Remains

In remarks from the White House Rose Garden, President Obama said the Senate Finance bill “is not perfect.” But he added that the bill “goes a long way towards offering security to those who have insurance, and affordable options for those who don’t. It reins in some of the worst practices of the insurance industry, like the denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions. It also sets up an insurance exchange that will make coverage affordable for those who don’t currently have it.” And he noted that, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, it will not add to the federal deficit.

But even as supporters celebrated, it was clear that plenty more work remains to be done before a bill can be delivered to the President’s desk.

Snowe herself made no bones about that in remarks delivered to the Finance Committee just before the vote. Despite intense negotiations, she still remains unhappy with some of the particulars of the bill. Nevertheless, she told her fellow Senators, she would vote to keep the bill moving as part of her commitment “to continue working the process.”

She’s not the only one not fully pleased. Democrats and Republicans alike are fond of saying that both sides agree on roughly 80% of the bill. Indeed, even industry trade groups opposed to much of what congressional Democrats have proposed—such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and America’s Health Insurance Plans, the health-insurance lobby—agree on many of those same points. The problem, of course, is that all of the most difficult and politically charged issues are in the remaining 20% that has yet to be resolved.

Trying to Find a Compromise

To take only the most contentious issue, liberals in the House and in the Senate continue to insist they won’t back any bill that doesn’t contain a public insurance option—that is, providing consumers the choice of a government-backed insurance plan. Meanwhile moderates and fiscally conservative Democrats in the Senate—never mind moderate Republicans—say they’ll vote against any legislation that does contain a public plan.

That means a compromise is likely that will allow for something that can loosely be considered a public option, even if it isn’t the full-on Medicare-style program that many liberals would like. One option, of course, is contained in the Baucus bill: It allows for the creation of insurance exchanges that would make it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy insurance. Others have suggested more robust co-op programs. And many expect Snowe to offer up an amendment that would create a “trigger” to create a more expansive Medicare-style, government-managed insurer in several years if health-care costs don’t come down and affordability doesn’t improve.

Funding, too, remains a huge issue. While the House bills depend heavily on surcharges on wealthy individuals to pay for the expansion of care, the Baucus bill would rely heavily on taxing insurance companies that offer so-called “Cadillac plans”—extra generous, expensive plans—to fund its proposals. The goal is also to reduce the use of such plans, which economists believe lead to excessive spending on health care. In fact, that remains one of the few elements remaining in the Baucus bill that could help rein in excessive health-care spending. But taxing such plans is anathema to many Democrats and their union backers, whose members tend to have more generous plans than the average worker. This will be the object of an enormous fight, with little clear sign yet as to who will prevail.

“Revenue raisers are key to all this,” wrote Daniel Clifton, the Washington policy analyst for institutional broker Strategas Research Partners, in a report sent to clients hours before the Senate vote. “There is no agreement between the two chambers on the big provisions.”

Combining All Those Bills

The first order of the day will be for each chamber of Congress to merge its separate proposals into one. In the Senate, the more liberal bill passed weeks ago by the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will have to be combined with the Finance Committee proposal. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has already begun negotiations to combine the three bills that came out of different committees. All three of those bills are far more liberal than what the Senate Finance bill contains, most clearly in their backing for a public insurance option.

That should make for plenty of political theater around what is and is not acceptable. Many business groups opposed to various elements of the plan are also likely to intensify their efforts to modify it more to their liking. “Although it was the best effort to date, the Senate Finance Committee missed an opportunity to create a truly bipartisan bill to reform our nation’s health-care system,” said Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a statement released soon after the vote. “As the Senate Majority Leader begins to reshape this bill behind closed doors, it is our sincere hope that he considers the impact this legislation could have on the business community.

“One of the primary goals of health-care reform is the overriding need to reduce ever-escalating costs for both consumers and employers. The Senate Finance bill increases premiums, raises taxes, and creates a new entitlement that will add to the nation’s growing debt.”

The DLC’s Reed and others expect each chamber to come up with a unified bill within several weeks. Then Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will have to battle it out to come up with a combined bill; then both houses of Congress have to vote it through. But at the end of the day, most analysts believe the bill that eventually emerges from the negotiations will most closely resemble the Senate Finance bill and that many of the more liberal preferences will be stripped away.

The reason? The Finance Committee bill meets the President’s demand that the full tab come in under $900 billion and that it not add to the deficit. More important, it’s the only bill that has even a vestige of bipartisan support. Even if no other Republicans sign up, keeping Snowe on board as the bill moves forward will be critical. In part, that’s because her concerns—which have primarily focused on making sure insurance will be affordable for lower- and middle-income families, particularly if buying coverage becomes mandatory—mirror the concerns of many moderate Democrats.

A Timid Bill in the End?

Just as important, 60 votes will be needed on a host of amendments and procedural issues as the bill moves forward in the months ahead. With Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) in ill health, Snowe’s extra vote could provide the needed margin if he is unable to attend.

“The broad outlines of the Senate Finance bill will look the closest to the final outcome,” says Teddy Downey, a policy analyst with the Washington Research Group. Snowe’s support, he adds, will not only give her leverage to keep things moving in the direction she wants, “it will give Baucus, and the White House, leverage to say their bill is the only path to 60 votes.”

That means the odds remain good that a bill will pass. Despite the multiplying threats to back out if a public option is, or isn’t, included, few think recaltricant Democrats would be willing to take the political risk of jeopardizing success and the potential electoral rewards in November 2010 of delivering on the long-sought goal, even if they don’t get all they want. “People need to remember that it’s more important to get this done than hold out for a perfect bill,” says Reed. “We’ll have the opportunity to fine-tune it in the coming years.”

“The left will grumble, a House-Senate conference could be difficult, but a modest bill probably will win enactment late this year,” says Gregory Valliere, the chief policy strategist for Soleil Securities, of the bottom line.  The odds are good that the compromise that emerges will be far more timid than everybody thought.  The question is, how long will it take to fine-tune what does finally emerge.

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My Take: This is not a good subject for me to talk about because I am disabled and on Medicare.  What I do not like about this new health-care system is that they plan to take from Medicare to pay for this health-care system.  They cannot take much, because Medicare does not provide that much!  So where are they going to take it from?

On Medicare, you cannot go to a Tallahassee hair loss surgeon because it is not covered.  Of course, that is not the best example because hair loss is usually associated with age and not a medical condition.  However, on the same type of example, you cannot get Panama City Florida breast implants unless you have had a mastectomy and then that is questionable.

Even certain types of medical equipment that are needed for a good quality of life are not covered by Medicare.  In fact, pulmonary function testing is allowed on Medicare, but what about the HMO that a person uses for Medicare, while they allow it?  Anyone who is disabled and has Medicare/HMO is gambling every time they see a doctor for anything.  They never know if it will be covered or not.  Now they are planning on taking away from Medicare to pay for the new health-care system, PLEASE!

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