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Show January 22, 2004 THE MAGNA TIMES, WEST VALLEY NEWS & KEARNS POST Editorial l ii MAGNA TIMES Second class postage paid at Magna, Utah 84044 USPS 325-58- 0 For two weeks last summer, every day in my family practice office in Pineville, Kentucky felt like a funeral. All of my patients were crying, the staff w as crying, I was crying. I was also scrambling to find OB doctors for the 70 women 1 was caring for who would be delivering their babies in the next few months. I simply cant describe how excruciating it was to leave my patients in Kentucky and head for Utah. It was a personal nightmare. I'm writing this letter to ask Utahns to please give arbitration a chance, so 1 don't have to repeat it. It wasn't just, that 1 was going to miss my patients or the small town 1 had grown to love. It was that I knew that the pregnant women I was taking care of would have to start traveling almost two hours south to Knoxville, Tennessee or an hour and a half north to Lexington, Kentucky for their prenatal care and deliveries. This w as very troubling for me. 1 already had patients driving 200 miles to see me so I knew what a burden it would be. Just one year earlier there would have been eight physi- - 8980 West 2700 South Magna, Utah 84044 HOWARD STAHLE PublisherEditor BONNIE STAHLE Advertising Manager QUENTIN CASPERSON Assistant Editor KOLBY REBER Production Manager Graphic J Layout Designer DARCIE PACKARD Graphic Layout Designer PERI KINDER Staff Writer STEVEN ROSE Staff Writer SCOTT DURAN Staff Writer JEANA QUIGLEY Staff Writer CARLOS ESTRADA Shop Foreman DALE SIMONS Sports Columnist Pressman Copyright, Magna TimesWest Valley News . All rights reserved. Reproduction, reuse, or transmittal of all matter herein is prohibited without prior written permission by the publisher or editor. The Magna Times and West Valley News are published each Thursday Subscription $25 per year $30 per year out of state Postmaster: Send change of address to: Magna Times 8980 W. 2700 So. Magna, UT 84044 (801) 250-565-6 or FAX (804) 5 magwestxmission.com The Magna Times is a bonified newspaper Letters Welcome Readers are encouraged to share opinions by sending letters to the Editor, Magna TimesWest Valley News, 8980 W. 2700 S. Magna, Ut. 84044, 5 letters can also be sent via fax to or at magwestxmission.com 250-568- Laughing M Life Escape foam Tieatittf TV has to be unrealistic Reality of television ever created. ("Alf," "Mork & Mindy , and "The Brady Bunch excluded.) Why should 1 care w hich egotistical, gets booted off the program? I say kick them all off. Tell them to go buy some d, clothes. I'm sick of spoiled rich girls, TV weddings, anything with the name Joe in it, people stranded on islands (unless it's real and n permanent), and celebrities trying to look has-bee- hip. I'm tired of extreme makeovers, fear factors, Donald Trump, bachelors and Ryan SeacresL None of this is remotely "real to me. Now, if TV producers want to show REAL reality, here's a show premise: Toddler Terror Follow a toddler through a morning of destruction. Watch as the cute, little whelp spills maple syrup on the floor; laugh it up as the small creature flushes mom's diamond wadding ring dowm the toilet Giggle hysterically when the innothrow's up cent all her breakfast on the living room carpet. See the mom cry as she runs from disaster to disaster. There's some development Notice the promise made by these children to never participate in sports ever again. two-year-o- ld reality. n Or:w .i - iii i Finally: Entertain the world of television viewers wdth i i Drivers Gone Mad Videotape a father as he teaches his teenage daughter how to drive. Observe the father's pale expression as his daughter takes a comer on two wheels; survey the chaos as the father gently tries to correct a driving -- error. Watch the teenager fly into a rage and scream, "lm Not As Perfect As You, Dad! Maybe Someday 1 Will Be, But I'm Just Not! See the daughter throw the parking brake on in the middle of traffic and exit the vehicle. More reality. How about: Ballistic Soccer Parents Observe mothers and fathers humiliating their children by yelling at soccer officials and coaches. Study the effects of constant criticism on a child's social dans area in the to Randall choose Walters possible for me to operate in the from in our county or Guest Writer Knox county But like me. every sinnearby. one them had been of gle forced to leave practice when malpractice insurance jumped from S 3,000 to S98.000 in one year. In fact when I left residency just three years ago my premiums were only S7.000. The jump from S7.000 to 51 3.000 almost doubled my costs, the jump from S 3,000 to 598.000 more than quadrupled them, and I was being told to expect that over the next three years any doctor delivering more than 15 babies a year would between paying 51 80.000 and S225.000. How 1 1 could they predict that? Because it was already happening next door in Tennessee. A resident coming out of practice today in areas like Kentucky and Tennessee will pay S60.000 his or her first year for coverage to deliver babies or do surgery. Some of us who faced leaving Kentucky said we would go "bare, meaning we'd take the huge risk of practicing without malpractice insurance. It's pretty interesting, but doctors who go without malpractice insurance don't often get sued there are no deep pockets there. But die hospital in our county had a policy that required any physician who delivered babies or did surgeries there to carry malpractice insurance, so that wasn't an option. I did have a choice that would have allowed me to stay I could have in Kentucky. modified my practice so that 1 no longer did surgeries or delivered babies. That would have cut my malpractice insurance costs by about S70.000 a Family Reunion Survivor. Meet relatives you never knew you had, and probably wish you didnt. Imagine Uncle Larry playing a drum roll on his wooden leg. See Great-AuEdna do her Roaring .Twenty's striptease. Watch as Cousin Mary sticks her finger in her ear- - and then in the fruit salad. Pray that you'll be voted out of the W. and year might have it made black. (Most of my patients were below the poverty line and 90 percent of my practice was Medicaid so reimbursements for care were small.) I didn't need to get rich, but I couldn't afford to go in the red every month for as far into the future as I could see. I left Kentucky, but it was a I came personal nightmare. here because I knew if 1 gave up delivering babies and doing surgeries. I'd be sacrificing the very vision I had of myself as doctor when I made the decision to go into practice. I wanted to work in an underserved, rural community, and I wanted to do it as a general practitioner who could do all of the routine care, but also an emergency hysterectomy if it would save a life. I w ant to be able to stop and help a stranger on the street. That's why I became a doctor. What makes my work meaningful to me is knowing that in three years in Kentucky I saved the lives several of people who would have died without my help. I was able to do emergency hysterectomies on two women with serious obstetrical bleeding. They would not have survived the tw commute to an urban hospital. I had another patient who ruptured her spleen and wouldn't have made the helicopter ride. Kentucky is a lot like Utah, air transport and ambulances are possible, but sometimes weather causes real delays. In one case, it was almost four hours before our helicopter could transport a woman with a serious chest injury. I was able to keep her alive until they did. till I'm growing to love Panguiteh, Utah and the people here, just like 1 did in Kentucky. I want to be a doctor who saves lives in areas where care isn't readily available and easy to access. And what I really want is to be able to do all of die things I'm skilled to do deliver babies and do surgical procedures like appendectomies. hysterectomies, gall bladders and other emergencies surgeries that people in rural areas need. I simply don't want to do what small town physicians have been forced to do which is limit their practices to runny noses and back pain. I've some skills to brought Panguiteh that they haven't had in a few years, and I want to be the doctor I'm trained to be. Look, I have stacks of statistics on what doctors like me are going through right now. I just got a note from the Kentucky Medical Association that says 400 physicians left Kentucky in the last nine months, most of them in obstetrics and surgery. The major point I want to make is this: It happened to me in Kentucky in three short years. My malpractice rates went from an annoying problem to completely dire in 24 months. applaud the Utah legislature's leadership in trying to find an alternative way to resolve disputes. Give arbitration a chance. Patients will be compensated if they are harmed. But the time to stop the hemorrhage of physicians having to leave practice just because they want to do real work is now. This is not an issue of physician greed. It's not a money issue, it's a survival issue. It can happen here take it from someone who lived through it. 1 ur ' Randall W. Walters, MI) Panguiteh, Utah nt family. Maybe "real reality is so extreme no one would ever believe it, let alone televise 1 it. think I'll just read a book. (Guess what? After months of pleading, screaming and blackmailing, I finally have an e- - . mail address that works. Send any comments, financial awards or observations to, laughatlifel 1 8nsn.com. ) mm ?r, Happening? What's wasam out?How I? I 'm currently just digging out of the ton of papers that accumulated on my desk while I was out with pneumonia! And with the drugs Im on the last thing I want to do is dig (or anything else but sleep!) but the show must be published! Hate to wax on about me and my problems when this column is about solving you and your problems, but I was sick and got behind. Anyway, the follow-u- p items I promised were some phone numbers for Canadian DRUGS : That is the number for I Mediplan Pharmacy-Canad- a's Leading mail-ordpharmacy even if they say so themselves. According to their very own literature they have filled more than 1.5 million er prescriptions since 1999. And they don't do the hidden charges thing or "Dr. Review fees you may have heard or read about (I need to clarify that neither I nor any other U.S. agent can get a commission for recommending these peopl- e- in fact I lose business from my pharmacy buddies.) In addition, there are many programs for poor people-so- me from the government and others that are Keys to accessing the programs are to simply ask and keep on asking. Ask your druggist first Let him know he is about to lose business unless he can help you. Ask the companies themselves. Most big pharmacy companies have programs for lower income people; many have a toll free number associ ated with the program too. Examples: Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, , 672-643- 6 Novartis Care, Pfizer, Together Rx., 1 Ask your friends. Don't believe every advertisement you see on TV. The big budgets saying they are the cheapest come from somewhere. FINAL FACTOID: More people are being made into paupers by the lack of Long Term Care policies than any other cause. More on this later. Thanks Seniors you're Smokeless tobacco delivers four times more nicotine than cigarettes. No wonder you're spending your family's d grocery money on something not worth a spit. hard-earne- Just another example of how tobacco affects us all. To quit, call or visit lltahQUitnet.CORI. great Q. R. Casperson (Sr.) Questions? Comments? Call T&3TDUTQ , |