Daily Archives: April 5, 2007

It’s time for The Masters

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augusta_national_golf2.jpgThe venerable Masters Golf Tournament begins this morning at that golfing Zimbabwe in Augusta, Georgia. Golf Digest’s John Hawkins does his usual fine job of handicapping the field and, somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t think that Tiger Woods is putting well enough at the moment to be a clear favorite for the tournament.
There have already been some interesting comments this week that reflect that the competitive juices are already peaking. Defending champion Phil Mickelson had the following response to a question during his press interview:

Q. Sticking with the green jacket theme, what did it feel like two years ago to help [Tiger Woods] put on the [The Masters green] jacket?
MICKELSON: I don’t know, but I remember what it felt like last year when he put it on me. (Laughter).

Meanwhile, Arnold Palmer will kick off the tournament for the first time by hitting the ceremonial first tee shot that Ken Venturi, the late Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazan and Sam Snead used to handle for many years. Despite the fact that Arnie is no longer playing competitively, he still has a good bit of feisty competitiveness in him. The following was his response to questions during his press interview on Tuesday when asked about rival Gary Player’s quest to play in more Masters tournaments than Palmer:

Q. Gary Player is going to tie your record this week for most Masters played. He’s talking about breaking it next year. What are your thoughts just about that?
PALMER: Well, if he isn’t embarrassed, I won’t be embarrassed for him. (Laughter). [. . .]
Q. He’s in pretty good shape.
PALMER: What does that mean? Are you saying I’m not in pretty good shape?
Q. Maybe he has like 30 more years left or so.
PALMER: Who gives a shit? (Laughter). If you can’t win, it doesn’t matter. That’s s-h-i-t. (Laughter). Hey, he’s my friend and I love him. I can also have fun with him, too.

And asked whether he would he do any ìarm-twistingî in the future to get Jack Nicklaus, who won a record six Masters, and Gary Player, a three-time winner, to hit future ceremonial tee shots in what would be a nostalgic reunion of what was once golfís Big Three?

ìTo let them join me,î Arnie replied with a chuckle, ìor to tell them to stay away.î

Which brings us to the following email that my brother Mike passed along to me that was written by a fellow who viewed an advance screening of a a very special television show that CBS will air before the final round of the tournament on Easter Sunday:

This Masters Sunday will be special. I know this because it’s going to begin with Arnold Palmer winning the Masters. The 1960 Masters, that is. “I wanted two generations to see what the magic was all about,” said CBS golf commentator [and former Houstonian] Jim Nantz, the man who made this resurrection possible.
We’ll be able to re-live the ’60 Masters, one of the more exciting finishes in history, because Nantz pried the original broadcast footage loose from the Augusta National vault, went to the incredible time and expense of having it colorized, and turned it into a one-hour show that CBS will air as the lead-in to its Sunday final-round Masters coverage.
This is footage that has never been aired since its original broadcast. The best part is, it’s not presented in a highlight package with talking heads. It’s shown as if it was a live telecast, featuring host Jim McKay (who left CBS later to join some upstart show known as ABC’s Wide World of Sports — wonder what ever became of him?) with coverage of the last four holes.
I watched a screening of the finished product and offer this advice: Don’t miss it. The 1960 Masters had it all. A classic Arnold Palmer charge and Ken Venturi’s agony of defeat. The old guard — Hogan and Snead — and a young gun — some amateur named Nicklaus. There was a minor rules controversy. There was an innovative new scoring system for television invented by CBS director Frank Chirkinian. And there was the great man himself, Bobby Jones, the legendary founder of Augusta National and the Masters Tournament, holding court as the host of cabin festivities.
This show is a slice of golf history and a classic piece of broadcast history. If you hate goose bumps or nostalgia, don’t watch. This show, a labor of love for Nantz, is one “Wow!” after another. Here’s a short list of reasons to watch:

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The sad case of Dr. William Hurwitz

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HurwitzTakesTheStand04.jpgFor you doctors out there who believe that what happened to Jeff Skilling could never happen to you, take a moment to read the NY Times’ John Tierney’s chilling opening blog post on the re-trial of Dr. William Hurwitz, the Virginia doctor who is a sacrificial lamb for America’s voracious drug prohibition policy. Dr. Hurwitz is being prosecuted on drug trafficking charges for prescribing pain medications that his patients allegedly abused or sold without his knowledge:

Jonathan Fahey, one of the prosecutors in federal court in Alexandria, Va., told the jurors in his opening statement that Dr. Hurwitz was a drug trafficker ó part of a drug-trafficking conspiracy, in fact ó because he prescribed large quantities of OxyContin and other pills while ignoring clear ìred flagsî that his patients were misusing and reselling the pills. The prosecutor said that Dr. Hurwitizís prescribing was ìwithout a legitimate medical purposeî and ìin its wake it left destruction, devastation and death.î [. . .]
[Defense attorney Richard] Sauber used his opening statement to tell the jury over and over that the case boiled down to one question: Was Dr. Hurwitz a doctor or a drug dealer? Calling him a ìpassionate advocate for patients who had been unfairly treated,î Mr. Sauber talked about Dr. Hurwitzís work in the Peace Corps and in Veterans Administration hospitals, and his belief that too many patients were in pain because doctors were afraid to give them proper dosages of opioids. Mr. Sauber also promised to do something that the defense didnít effectively do in the first trial: use expert testimony to show that the dosages prescribed by Dr. Hurwitz were within the bounds of legitimate medicine.

The Hurwitz case is an appalling reminder of how the Drug Enforcement Agency has pursued a perverse agenda in its pursuit of pain doctors. During Hurwitz’s first trial, the DEA actually changed their own guidelines during the trial and removed them from its website because the defense was going to show that Hurwitz prescribed by those guidelines. Meanwhile, DEA head Karen Tandy publicly stated that Hurwitz deserved 25 years in the slammer because he ìwas no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner.î
Sound familiar?

Rationing health care

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rationing.jpgCharles Wheelan, the Naked Economist, lucidly addresses the key issue in regard to the U.S. health care finance system:

Here’s a question to ask any presidential candidate from either political party: How do you plan to ration health care?
If the answer is “I won’t,” then he or she doesn’t understand health care. Or, more likely, they understand health care and aren’t in any mood to talk straight about it.
“Rationing” has a bad connotation, which is odd, because we ration just about everything. In fact, that’s what capitalism does best.
Not everyone gets an S-Class Mercedes-Benz or courtside tickets to the NBA playoffs or roses on Valentine’s Day. Who does? People who are willing to pay for them.
We call that a market, which is just rationing with a more attractive name. Everything worth having is scarce to some degree, so we use prices to figure out who gets what.
Health care is similar to German cars and basketball tickets — not everyone gets everything they want. But health care is obviously different in a crucial respect: People who don’t get what they want may become sick, stay sick, or even die. Unlike roses or Lakers tickets, health care is literally a life-and-death matter.
As a result, the most fundamental policy question related to health care is who gets what kind of care — or, put another way, how we choose to ration resources. Forget all the other complications, like aging baby boomers, malpractice lawyers, greedy drug companies, shockingly fat Americans, insurance forms in triplicate, and so on.
Do those things help to explain why our system is expensive and getting more so? Yes. But for anyone looking to control costs (e.g., a presidential candidate) those factors pale in comparison to the fundamental health care design question: Who gets what care and why? [. . .]
And therein lies the fundamental inefficiency of the American system. We have no good mechanism for saying “no” to expensive technologies and treatments that provide marginal benefits. If you’re a patient, that sounds terrific; your doctors will spare no expense. If you’re a business trying to keep up with skyrocketing health care costs, or a family trying to pay for benefits, it’s not. And, of course, as insurance costs go up, fewer people will have access to that kind of coverage.
At the same time, we don’t do a very good job of saying “yes” to treatments for the uninsured that would profoundly improve their health.
The combination of those two factors goes a long way toward explaining why the U.S. spends a ton of money on health care (15 percent of the GDP, compared to 8 percent for Britain and Japan and 10.5 percent for France) and gets relatively mediocre outcomes. . . .
In short, the rest of the industrialized world does a better job of rationing health care than we do.
Which brings me back to my original point. Every presidential candidate is going to talk about controlling health care costs. Most are going to talk about expanding coverage, too. Those goals are impossible unless we can design a system that says “yes” to the most cost-effective care — even very expensive treatments, provided they have corresponding benefits — and “no” to treatments with benefits that are too small to justify their costs. In other words, rationing.

Read the entire article. Wheelan doesn’t propose any solutions, but he does an excellent job of framing the issue. Stated another way, to what extent is American society willing to underwrite health care costs that individual citizens cannot afford — or are unwilling — to pay?