Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog

President Bush Launches Last-Minute Deregulation Push

An MSNBC story today talks about a big rush by the administration to push through a raft of new regulations loosening restrictions on such matters as pollution and consumer safety. Here are the opening paragraphs. Please click the link to read the entire story. 

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

'Last-minute assault'
"They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office," said Matthew Madia, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration's penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge "a last-minute assault on the public . . . happening on multiple fronts."

Friday Fun

Great costumes for this pre-election Halloween!

Featured Link - BrowserShots.org

If you maintain a Web site, you should know how it looks in different browsers. Although most people use Internet Explorer, more and more are using Firefox, Safari, or any of a dozen others. One Web site that lets you see how your own site appears in different browsers is BrowserShots. It's very easy to use and really helpful.

Heart Device Maker Thoratec Recalls Implant

The Associated Press reports that heart device maker Thoratec is recalling certain implants after five patients who used these implants have died. Only certain batches of the device have been recalled. The apparent defect is an electrical wire that needs to be replaced.

The recall affects devices with catalog numbers 1355 and 102139, which have been distributed to 153 hospitals and distributors throughout the United States and other countries since the beginning of clinical studies in November 2003.

Camera Lets You Spy On Your Teenage Driver

I just wrote a few days ago about making it easier for people to snitch on your teenage driver. Now here's a story from the Washington Post about actually installing a camera inside your car so you can spy on your kid yourself.Here are excerpts:

Ken Richardson does not have to ride in his 17-year-old daughter's Ford Escort to know when she takes a turn too fast.

The Richardsons are among more than 100 families in Southern Maryland enrolled in a state-sponsored study to install camera systems that record the moments before and after an unusual driving maneuver, such as sudden braking or a too-sharp turn. State officials say the cameras could decrease the number of teen drivers killed in crashes.

Some of the teenagers have other thoughts on the matter.

"I feel like I'm being baby sat, like I'm being watched constantly," said Stacie Richardson, Ken Richardson's daughter. "It drives me nuts."

The cameras are among the latest tools in the struggle to reduce teen car crashes, a problem that has been particularly vexing in Maryland. Last year, crashes involving drivers ages 16 to 20 killed 112 people in the state. Such accidents are often caused not by alcohol or overt recklessness but by simple driver inexperience. The problem has persisted despite efforts by lawmakers to restrict teen driving privileges.

The camera, mounted on the front windshield, captures footage of what is happening outside as well as in the vehicle. It saves about 20 seconds of that footage only when its sensors are triggered by excessive G-forces. Those forces tend to accompany unusual driving maneuvers such as sudden braking or swerving.

Saved footage is transmitted back to DriveCam via a cellular network.

DriveCam experts review the videos, add tips for the young drivers and post them to a Web site where parents can see them a day or so later. Parents receive an e-mail alert when the videos are posted.

Featured Link - CoverTheUninsured.org

Those of us who represent personal injury clients and Social Security disability claimants have to see every day the problems caused by lack of health insurance. Regardless of your politics, no one can argue that our country wouldn't be better off if everyone had some type of health insurance.

One Web site that has this goal in mind is CoverTheUninsured. Here is the mission statement from the site:

The Situation

Forty-six million Americans are uninsured. Nine million of them are children. More than eight out of 10 are in working families. They are our friends, neighbors and colleagues--forced to gamble every day that they won't get sick or injured.

Living without health insurance is a risk no one should have to take.

The Response

Cover the Uninsured, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and to demand solutions from our nation's leaders.

We know that reaching the goal of affordable and stable health care will require changes in public policy. Through Cover the Uninsured, we are working to build and sustain broad-based support for change.

This includes raising awareness and building support among policy-makers, health care professionals, grassroots advocates, faith leaders, the business community and active citizens through Cover the Uninsured Week and reaching out to enroll eligible uninsured families in public health coverage programs during the annual Back-to-School Campaign.

And our work is making a difference.

Thanks in large part to thousands of individuals and organizations working in their communities, concern about access to affordable health coverage is high among American voters. Last year, Congress demonstrated unprecedented bipartisan support for an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover more of America's kids. Broad-based coalitions from across the country and our nation's governors have joined together in the fight.

The time for change is now.

2008 is the year for you to build upon this momentum to increase awareness about the issue, amplify diverse voices on behalf of the uninsured, and demand solutions from our nation's leaders.

Television Ad About The Texas Supreme Court

The ad says it all:

Supremely Embarrassing from Texas Watch on Vimeo.

Friday Fun

I love optical illusions, and this is a good collection of optical illusions. For some of them you need to click the link to the original site to get the full benefit. Enjoy!

Computer Crash Hinders Texas Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Case

According to the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Attorney General has hit a major speed bump in his investigation into Medicaid fraud in Texas, and all because of a computer crash and a failure to backup data. Let this be a lesson to all of us - back up your computer now!

A massive computer crash that destroyed hundreds of the state attorney general's confidential documents may prevent scores of Medicaid fraud prosecutions and has revealed serious problems with a newly expanded state outsourcing of computer services.

As much as 50 percent of the Tyler Medicaid fraud division's files were destroyed in July when a server being repaired by a state vendor wouldn't restart. The scope of the damage is in dispute.

In an apparent oversight, the documents lost were not backed up – meaning that evidence crucial to convicting dishonest health-care providers who ripped off the state's health insurance program for the poor may never be recovered. E-mails and other records obtained by The Dallas Morning News indicate some Tyler investigators lost up to 90 percent of their open case files.    

Chantix And Heparin Lead Reports Of Serious Drug Reactions

The Dallas Morning News today has an alarming story about the dangers of the prescription drugs Chantix and Heparin. Here are excerpts:

Previous research from ISMP has shown that serious drug safety problems reported to the FDA increased markedly from 1998-2005. The FDA case reports provide a signal of possible problems with a drug, but a cause-and-effect connection can only be established through painstaking investigation. If the FDA were a police agency, the reports would indicate "probable cause," but not neccesarily "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." The ISMP study found that heparin accounted for 779 reports of serious problems, including 102 deaths. The FDA, using data that covers a longer time period has reported 238 deaths possibly linked to heparin.

The number of serious problems and deaths linked to medications reported to the government set a record in the first three months of this year, a health industry watchdog group said Wednesday.

The Food and Drug Administration received nearly 21,000 reports of serious drug reactions, including over 4,800 deaths, said an analysis of federal data by the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices, which scrutinized data going back to 2004, and yearly totals dating to the 1990s.

Two drugs accounted for a disproportionately large share of the latest reports. One was heparin, the tainted blood thinner from China that caused an international safety scandal. The other was Chantix, a new kind of anti-smoking drug from Pfizer.

Chantix, which had the most reports of any medication, works directly in a smoker's brain to ease withdrawal symptoms. It also blocks the pleasurable effects of nicotine if the patient tries to light up again. But earlier this year, the FDA warned that Chantix may be linked to psychiatric problems, including suicidal behavior and vivid dreams. The government banned it for pilots. Pfizer said Wednesday it stands by Chantix, and that the volume of reports might be linked to publicity about the drug's side effects.