Black and Blue

I’ve always been puzzled and bemused by the irony that North Carolina, a state so consistently “red” in Presidential elections, has a state government whose executive branch and House leadership is predominantly “blue”. And it has always seemed to me that the “bluer” larger cities (via their newspapers) have always been frustrated by their inability to completely impose their will on the “red rurals”.

I was in pubic service during the Clinton administration – and (if you’ve been to the website you know) I have good reason to hold the Democrats in low regard. Indeed, I suspect I might be a Democrat by now were it not for Slick Willie and Hill. When I filed my original complaint with former USDHHS Secretary Shalala (back in 1999), everybody in Atlanta and Bethesda dived under their chair. And when I got sued over it, no one there so much as lifted a finger to stop "the twins", Bob Morrison & Steve Eblin, from pursuing their little “destroy Mary Johnson” vendetta on the public’s dime.

When he was Senator, I wrote John Edwards several letters about my situation – and go no help. By that time he was already running for President, and I joined a number of other constituents whose representation fell by the wayside . . . sacrificed to the “greater” goal of putting our own Kennedy wannabe in the West Wing. Later it made my blood boil when, during his campaign, the former malpractice lawyer proposed more loan-repayment-for-public service programs – when he had done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help a constituent burned by one of those programs.

As an aside, during the 2004 election, my Daddy gave me a great bumper sticker. It says, "I live in North Carolina and I'm not voting for John Edwards" . Pops mailed it to me when I was living in Memphis - and told me to put it on the car before I drove home. It was great! I got lots of honks and thumbs-up and high-fives on I-40. Not a single one-fingered salute. The sticker is still on the car . . . for alas, if the News & Observer has its way, I expect I will need it again.

For years I have been dismayed by the ability of the Hunt, and then Easley administrations, to snow the general populace about matters relating to education and healthcare. I’ll pick up a Powerball ticket every now and then, but this lottery is a bad idea – exchanging one set of problems for another. And the failure of the state and federal governments to hold ANYONE responsible in the "let-the-plebes-buy-the CEO's-yacht" scam that was “disproportionate share” is just incomprehensible to me. A half-billion Medicaid dollars gone . . . “poof” . . . some of the most respected hospitals in the state involved . . . NCDHHS completely asleep at the wheel . . . but unlike Enron, no one is going to go down on this one. The last I heard, Howard Coble and former governor Jim Martin (now a Carolinas Medical Center VP) had quietly slithered up to Washington to plead the case for an under-the-table, pennies-on-the-dollar settlement. It's odd again that two Republican war-horses should be doing Easley's dirty work, but I expect that's all about the money. The drenched-in-blue North Carolina press knows nothing and isn’t investigating anything. Once again it’s about sucking up to who is in power – and it’s crystal clear who the News & Record and the News & Observer want that to be.

If Ronald Reagan was coated in Teflon, I don’t know what Mike Easley is wearing.

I LOVE the Jim Black Must Go website. Joe Sinsheimer, a Democrat, got fed up with the sleaze that permeates his party's leadership, and started the website . . . an unapologetic, in-your-face challenge to the status quo in Raleigh. Some very stupid (supremely arrogant) moves by Black gave the website and the “ethics reform” movement the boost it needed – most notably the mandatory eye-exam for kindergarteners fiasco (a subject upon which I extensively blogged). I mean, the guy is an optometrist who will directly financially benefit from the law . . . and he thought no one would be the wiser when he slipped it into a bill without ANY debate? The NC Pediatric Society (NCPS) and NC Medical Society (NCMS) . . . the professional advocacy groups that “don’t do individual advocacy” were apparently caught off guard on the backlash. When Steve Shore of the NCPS sent out a general e-mail talking about the implementation of the program back in January (a “too-bad-so-sad-it’s-the-law-now-you’re-going-to-have-to-live-with-it” blurb), I fired one right back:

“Steve, I am sorry, but I must have missed something here. In this era of politicians & insurance companies saying that they want physicians to manage their patients' healthcare in a fashion that uses public resources & moneys more responsibly (the fiasco of "disporportionate share" notwithstanding), WHY is the state of North Carolina now mandating eye exams for all healthy schoolchildren?
I refer patients to opthalmologists who fail screens or have medical issues/reasons, but what is really going on here? What's next? Mandatory ENT visits?
Isn't Jim Black, the embattled speaker, an optometrist?
This just SMELLS.
Mary H. Johnson, M.D., FAAP

Of course, neither the NCMS nor NCPS have responded to any of my correspondence for quite some time. I have the audacity to be furious about what happened to me in Asheboro . . . about all of the lies and subterfuge and outright violations of law and medical/legal ethics . . . and I have NOT done what they all wanted by just rolling over and going away. I’m written off as a “whack-job” because it’s easier to do that than admit your sacred public-service programs don’t work. The NCMS lives in the much deeper pockets of the North Carolina Hospital Association anyway. I served on a Joint NCMS/NCHA “Peer Review Task Force” back in 2002 – a summer of taking days off from work (no pay) to attend meetings with hand-picked hospital CEO’s (who had nice fat expense accounts to get through their day) and a few other minority doctors (some similarly burned – or who knew those who had been) to talk about what everybody knows is a growing problem – the abuse of medical peer review for economic gain. Absolutely NOTHING came of the recommendations the committee made . . . because the NCMS completely caved to the NCHA when the time came to implement the reform measures (which included common sense things like due process for physicians, defining good faith, and whistleblower protection). Nothing. Nadda. Zip. THIS is my primary professional advocacy organization in action.

Needless to say, I don’t pay them dues anymore.

Black must go. But it’s only a start. To quote an editorial in the WSJ (on 3/26/04): “A reform movement needs a strong leader, one committed to pushing positive changes past the guardians of the current corrupt system. Black is not that person. He had no bona fides for seeking government reform. To the contrary, his record indicates that his is one of the leading architects of the sleazy system under which NC government operates.”

All good people (red, blue and purple) say, Amen!