Vitals is an ambitious project — providing free information and patient ratings on doctors throughout the U.S.
I’ve checked on a number of my doctor friends and every one of them is included in the database, so it appears to be quite thorough. Inasmuch as the project is quite new, there are not many patient reviews yet. But the information provided is cleanly presented and quite helpful.
My sense is that this is a very good idea.
Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit (for example, here, here and here) on the questionable nature of the prosecutions of the executives who were involved in the AIG/General Re finite risk transaction that prompted Eliot Spitzer to demonize Hank Greenberg.
However, I’ve never written as eloquently about the injustice of those prosecutions as Anthony O’Donnell does in this I&T post about the sentencing of former AIG vice-president of reinsurance, Christian Milton.
As noted previously here, the human toll of the criminalization-of-business lottery is incalculable. Careers destroyed while lives and families are shattered.
A truly civil society would find a better way.
The late author John Updike loved to write about and play golf, and his death this week reminded me of a fine speech that he gave about the game during the United States Golf Association’s Centennial Dinner in New York in late 1994.
Thankfully, the USGA has posted Updike’s speech on its website, the beginning and closing of which is set forth below. The entire speech is a must read for any golfer:
When I was asked to speak to you this evening, my first thought was, "Oh, no – my golf is not nearly good enough!" But then I reflected that one of the charms of the game is that nobody’s golf, not even Fred Couples’ and Nick Faldo’s, is good enough – good enough to please them and their supporters all the time.
Golf is a game that almost never fails, even at the highest levels on which it can be played, to mar a round with a lapse or two, and that at the other extreme rarely fails to grant even the most abject duffer, somewhere in his or her round, with the wayward miracle of a good shot. I am here – I have written so much about the game – because I am curiously, disproportionately, undeservedly happy on a golf course, and perhaps we are all here for much the same reason. [. . .]
When did American golf come of age? Some might say in 1904, when Walter Travis won the British Amateur Championship, the first foreigner to do so. Some might pinpoint the 1920s and the international admiration and affection won by the great Bobby Jones. But perhaps most would specify the happy moment in September of 1913 when the unknown 20-year-old Francis Ouimet beat the two foremost British players, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, for the U.S. Open Championship – an upset that made news, not just golf news. The moment is commemorated by a USGA Centennial logo, based on a well-known photograph.
Look at it; what do we see? Two figures, one of them our heroic golfer, a workingman’s son who happened to live in a modest house across from The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. He picked up golf balls on his way to school, he watched the matches across the street, a member gave his older brother some cast-off clubs, the young Ouimets fell in love with the game. Francis played without fuss; needing, on the 18th green, needing to sink a 5-foot putt to enter a playoff with the Englishmen, he rapped it at the back of the cup without a second look. The next day, he calmly beat Vardon by five strokes and Ray by six. And who is the other figure in our logo, a little figure? He is Ouimet’s caddie, a local 10-year-old called Eddie Lowery, carrying a canvas bag that looks to hold about eight clubs. Think of the caddies in today’s championships – burly yardage technicians toting bags the size of small sofas, loudly blazoned with manufacturers’ names for the greedy eyes of the television cameras.
We have come a long way in American golf, but has it been a journey without a price? Amid the million-dollar tournaments and the $5 million clubhouses, might we be losing the unassuming simplicity of the game itself?
This out-of-doors simplicity, surely, lies at the heart of golfing bliss, as we are reminded by our logo of two New England boys out for a walk on a drizzly September day.
All it takes for a golfer to attain his happiness is a fence rail to throw his coat on, and a target somewhere over the rise.
As Super Sunday approaches, check out this Dave Berri post on his final quarterback and running back ratings for the 2008 season.
A few observations:
The Texans’ QB Matt Schaub had the 10th best season among QB’s and rookie RB Steve Slaton had the 4th best season among running backs. Three of the seven QB’s selected for the Pro Bowl rated worse than Schaub. All six of the Pro Bowl RB’s rated worse than Slaton!
QB Chad Pennington, who the Jets discarded in favor of Brett Favre, finished 3rd in the rankings. Aaron Rodgers, who the Packers kept instead of Favre, finished 11th, one behind Schaub. Favre finished 27th, which was among the worst performances in the league. Favre, not Pennington, Rodgers or Schaub, was invited to the Pro Bowl. John Madden does very good PR for Brett Favre.
One of the only five QB’s who rated worse than Favre this season is the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, who just happens to be QB’ing the favored team in Sunday’s big game. Kurt Warner, the opposing QB in the Super Bowl, finished in 9th place, one slot ahead of Schaub.
Finally, Berri makes an important distinction between the highly interdependent nature of football in comparison to baseball and basketball:
[W]e must remember that systematic analysis in football is extremely difficult. Unlike basketball and baseball — where player performance is largely independent of his teammates (at least for hitters in baseball) — the performance of football players depends on the performance of the player’s teammates. These interaction effects severely hamper the objective analysis of the game.
And that can be seen when we look at how much time I devote to discussing football. Like I did with basketball, I also have a model to measure performance in football. But the measurement of performance in football really only tells one story. The interaction effects in football cause the performance statistics to be inconsistent. So the players we see perform well today are not necessarily going to perform well tomorrow. Although I like telling that story, it’s really about all I ever say about the NFL.
It’s rarely pleasant for a businessman to have his personal affairs splashed across the front page of the New York Times business section.
But it has to be particularly unsettling for the businessman when he is already the target of numerous civil lawsuits and, quite possibly, a criminal prosecution.
Frankly, I’ve never understood the reasoning of lawyers who advise their clients at the center of such a litigation firestorm to transfer assets to their family members. Fuld and his wife are reportedly quite wealthy, so maybe they have legitimate estate planning reasons for Fuld to transfer his interest in a multi-million dollar home to his wife for nominal consideration.
But Fuld is also subject to numerous civil lawsuits in connection with the Lehman Brothers meltdown. Those lawsuits seek hundreds of millions in damages, and the company’s officers and directors’ insurance likely will not come close to covering those damages. Thus, the fact that Fuld is transferring a valuable interest in an asset to his wife for nominal consideration at this particular time will be of more than passing interest to the plaintiffs in those lawsuits.
Inasmuch as Fuld is the only person in his family who has any civil liability in those lawsuits, why subject other family members to possible fraudulent transfer liability?
Similarly, in the unlikely — but certainly possible — event that Fuld’s litigation problems force him into a personal bankruptcy case, why take the risk that his legal right to a discharge of personal liability for claims against him would be denied because of the transfer to his wife?
However, beyond the civil liability concerns, the main reason that Fuld should not have engaged in this type of transfer under his particular circumstances is simply that it looks bad. Real bad. Not only to potential creditors, but more importantly, to prosecutors who will make the decision on whether to indict Fuld. And, most importantly, to jurors who will decide Fuld’s fate.
For example, remember the criminal case against former Enron chairman, Ken Lay? The prosecutors conceded (bragged?) afterward that it was a very weak case. So, rather than focus on the supposed criminal conduct, the prosecutors hammered away on Lay’s indiscrete use of his personal line of credit with the company. As noted in my concluding post on the seventeen-week trial:
[I]f there was a defining moment in the trial that sealed the defendants’ fate, then it likely came in Week Fourteen during Task Force prosecutor John Hueston’s cross-examination of Lay over the use of his company line of credit.
Although Lay’s line of credit was legal and the company disclosed his use of it in accordance with applicable law, Lay’s repayment of the large draws on the line with Enron stock at a time when he was encouraging employees and the market to buy company stock was an apparent contradiction that the jurors could easily grasp.
Similarly, Lay’s decision to draw down $1 million on the line five days before Enron’s bankruptcy [to help pay off the mortgage on Lay’s condominium] was a disastrous decision for the defense. Although done on advice of counsel, Lay’s last-minute draw as the company was sinking into insolvency looked so bad that reference to that testimony by leaders of the jury during deliberations was probably enough to seal any wavering non-leader juror’s view on whether to convict.
If Fuld is indicted, then you can rest assured that prosecutors will bring his recent transfer to his wife to the attention of the judge during proceedings over the amount of his bond pending trial. And although the transfer has nothing to do with the probable criminal charges against Fuld (i.e., violating the obligation to throw in the towel), prosecutors will try to use it anyway to make him look tricky in the eyes of jurors.
You see, such a transfer plays right into the real presumption these days in business crime prosecutions — Fuld is wealthy and his company collapsed, so he must be guilty of some crime in connection with his company’s demise.
Sadly, being proven greedy is often enough to be convicted of a crime.
It sure is getting hard to keep up with all the rules involved in determining whether an important person gets prosecuted for an alleged business crime.
First, there was the Apple Rule, which was quickly followed by the Dell Rule.
Next, there was the Buffett Rule.
And then we had the GM Rule.
Now, Larry Ribstein reports that we have the Geithner Rule.
None of which is likely to help Wachovia’s Bob Steel, who the SEC apparently believes violated the obligation to throw in the towel.
Does anyone really believe that all these rules and the criminalization-of-business lottery constitutes a coherent policy for regulating questionable business deals?
Although the developers of the proposed Ashby high-rise condominium project didn’t know it at the time, Houston Mayor Bill White did the developers a huge favor by putting up roadblocks to that project.
Can you imagine trying to peddle those condos in the current real estate market? Mayor White’s blocking of the condos ended being a classic "win-win" deal.
Accordingly, I wonder if Mayor White might be inclined to do the same thing in regard to Houston’s proposed soccer stadium?
Things aren’t looking too rosy for MLS soccer these days:
Major League Soccer is not quite ready to carry its own night on TV.
After two years of anemic ratings that started low and finished lower, ESPN executives decided to cancel the league’s regular Thursday night telecast on ESPN2 this season. . . .
“We didn’t see the kind of ratings climb we’d like to, so we’re trying something different,” said Scott Guglielmino, ESPN vice president of programming.
The decision to cancel the regular Thursday night game marks a stunning turnaround for a league that two years ago believed it was creating destination programming that would increase interest in MLS. But even the 2007 arrival of David Beckham couldn’t boost MLS ratings.
MLS games averaged a 0.2 rating and 289,000 viewers on ESPN2 in 2007. Those numbers dropped to 0.2/253,000 viewers the following year. Its highest rating during that period was Beckham’s second regular-season game in August 2007 that earned a 0.6/658,000 households.
Canceling “MLS Primetime Thursday” is a tacit admission that MLS is not strong enough to anchor a regular prime-time slot on its own. ESPN is entering the third year of an eight-year rights deal that pays MLS $8 million annually.
So, MLS franchises are being downgraded by the most important sports programming network in the nation, which can’t be good for the value of those teams. The attendance at MLS games is poor, at least outside Houston and a couple of other cities. And the perception in sophisticated soccer circles is that the MLS is decidedly minor-league.
Meanwhile, Mayor White has already had Houstonians invest $20 million or so in buying downtown property at a premium price for the proposed soccer stadium, despite the fact that the city already owned nearby property that would have been perfectly fine for such a stadium. Moreover, the city will be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars more in infrastructure improvements if the Dynamo owners somehow cobble together their private financing for the stadium.
Now, it’s looking as if the Dynamo may not even have a viable league to play in by the time the proposed soccer stadium is completed in a couple of years.
Pull the plug on the soccer stadium, Mayor. It will be another "win-win" deal.
When you have a spare hour or so, check out this "Oral History of the Bush White House" by Cullen Murphy, Todd Purdum and Philippe Sands in the current issue of Vanity Fair.
The format of the article is a timeline recreating of the last eight years with participants’ observations on many of the major moments and a number of minor ones, which often end up being as instructive as the reactions to the major ones.
The entire article is a must-read, but the following observations of Kenneth Adelman, a member of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s advisory Defense Policy Board, will give you a flavor.
The context of Adelman’s comments are a confrontation that he had with the Defense Secretary several days after Rumsfeld had dismissed the significance of the breakdown of civil order in Iraq by publicly observing that "stuff happens":
So he says, It might be best if you got off the Defense Policy Board. You’re very negative. I said, I am negative, Don. You’re absolutely right. I’m not negative about our friendship. But I think your decisions have been abysmal when it really counted.
Start out with, you know, when you stood up there and said things—“Stuff happens.” I said, That’s your entry in Bartlett’s. The only thing people will remember about you is “Stuff happens.” I mean, how could you say that? “This is what free people do.” This is not what free people do. This is what barbarians do. And I said, Do you realize what the looting did to us? It legitimized the idea that liberation comes with chaos rather than with freedom and a better life. And it demystified the potency of American forces. Plus, destroying, what, 30 percent of the infrastructure.
I said, You have 140,000 troops there, and they didn’t do jack shit. I said, There was no order to stop the looting. And he says, There was an order. I said, Well, did you give the order? He says, I didn’t give the order, but someone around here gave the order. I said, Who gave the order?
So he takes out his yellow pad of paper and he writes down—he says, I’m going to tell you. I’ll get back to you and tell you. And I said, I’d like to know who gave the order, and write down the second question on your yellow pad there. Tell me why 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq disobeyed the order. Write that down, too.
And so that was not a successful conversation.
As the Obama Adminstration begins exploring how to reform America’s broken health care finance system, Kevin Pho makes an insightful observation regarding the current medical treatment of one of the leading reformers:
As we know, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has an advanced stage brain tumor, and was recently hospitalized for a seizure.
Seizures are a common side effect of malignant brain tumors, and often controlled with a variety of anti-seizure medications. There will be times where seizures can break through medication control, leading to the frightening episode that occurred on Inauguration Day.
Family physician Doug Farrago asks some pointed questions about the stellar care that the Senator receives, observing that "he travels around with a team of physicians," and, "most patients in [Senator Kennedy’s condition] usually are in hospice care."
Senator Kennedy should be commended for his efforts to bring about health care reform. But is the care he is receiving, including instant opinions and access from revered institutions like Massachusetts General Hospital and Duke University Medical Center, representative of the kind of care he’s advocating for the American public?
