By Michael Kaufman

Is it just me or are we being inundated by an unusually large amount of bad news lately? Trayvon Martin….the murderous attack on Jewish schoolchildren in France….the ongoing carnage in Syria….escalating oil and gas prices…the right-wing legislative assault on women’s healthcare….Need I go on?

And speaking of healthcare: Will the Supreme Court really strike down the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) so insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit healthcare institutions and providers can go back to doing “business as usual”? (Business as usual: denying coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and sons and daughters above age 21;  restoring the “donut hole” so prescription drug costs will soar for many people with chronic diseases; and millions of Americans having to go without care because they can’t afford it.)

Closer to home, we see Orange County political officials planning to sell Valley View (the county nursing home renowned for providing quality care) to a private, for-profit business. At the same time, Orange County Executive Ed Diana is still pushing for construction of a new, multimillion dollar government office building rather than repair the existing storm-damaged facility in Goshen. I happen to agree with those who think the building is a funny-looking eyesore rather than a historic landmark and/or work of art….but that is beside the point. As lawn signs around the county proclaim: Just fix it!

And the Valley View situation is a reflection of the ongoing underfunding of public health at all levels of government. An analysis released by Trust for America’s Health, a think tank supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that federal funding for public health has been “insufficient” for the past six years. At the same time, public health budgets at the state and local levels have been cut at drastic rates.  A recent study conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials found significant cuts to programs, workforce and budgets at local health departments around the country. Since 2008, those departments have lost a total of 34,400 jobs due to layoffs and attrition. Combined state and local public health job losses total 49,310 since 2008.

Also closer to home, Governor Cuomo has refused to order an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Michael Lembhard by police in Newburgh. Upon learning of the governor’s decision, Michael Sussman, attorney for the Lembhard family, said, “Today is a sad day and a day of a missed opportunity.  The governor has chosen not to appoint a special prosecutor…. The result is that our community must trust the results of an investigation conducted by an agency, the Orange County DA’s office, with very close ties to the City of Newburgh Police Department, which relies on that department for many of its cases and which has every institutional interest in exonerating that department and its members in this and every other case.”

Sussman, who represented the family of D.J. Henry, the Pace College quarterback shot and killed by police in Westchester in October 2010, said “Michael’s death brings to mind other great tragedies which have affected too many families.” Nevertheless, he urged family members and witnesses to cooperate with the local investigation and he called on Newburgh residents to use “peaceful and non-violent means to demonstrate their profound anger at Michael’s death. Only by the exercise of restraint and respect for human life can we honor the fallen.

“The City of Newburgh, said Sussman, should hire an independent law firm to investigate and determine whether the officers who killed Lembhard violated departmental rules and regulations “and, if so, should take disciplinary measures….in a manner consistent with the rule of law and the due process rights of the officers.” Lemnhard’s family, he noted, “is deeply angry and frustrated at the loss of Michael…. Our imperative as their brothers and sisters and our responsibility as residents of this county remains to see that justice is done….We will spare no resource toward that objective.”

Sussman heads up the Orange County Democratic Alliance (http://www.democraticalliance.com/), which is active on a number of fronts to make life in our county better for all of its residents. And for those interested, Occupy Orange will meet Thursday, March 29, at 6:30 p.m.at theInteractive Museum, 23 Center St., Middletown. Organizers request that you bring “a positive spirit, and your ideas about what we can accomplish together.” Maybe some good news will emerge as a result of their activities.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman 

Every time I listen to a speech by one of the Republican candidates for president I think of H.L. Mencken’s comment, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Mencken died in 1956, well before the advent of cable TV, the internet, and the “information superhighway.” But somehow his words seem more applicable than ever. How else can one explain the strong support for Rick Santorum among women voters in Tuesday’s Republican primaries in Alabama and Mississippi?  

An article titled, “The Santorum Strategy: Why the Right Wins Even When It Loses,” posted earlier this week on the commondreams.org website by George Lakoff, provides a few clues. “The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum,” wrote Lakoff,  professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, and other recent books. 

“It is about pounding the most…. conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign and guaranteeing a radical conservative future forAmerica.” Lakoff warns progressives against taking Santorum and the other GOP hopefuls lightly, as some do now. “I am old enough to remember how liberals (me included) made fun of Ronald Reagan as a not-too-bright mediocre actor who could not possibly be elected president. I remember liberals making fun of George W. Bush as so ignorant and ill-spoken that Americans couldn’t possibly take him seriously. Both turned out to be clever politicians who changed America much for the worse. And among the things they and their fellow conservatives managed to do was change public discourse, and with it, change how a great many Americans thought.” 

The Republican presidential campaign has to be seen in this light.

“Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation,” says Lakoff. Language activates complex brain circuitry rooted in moral systems. “Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry.” This he says is important when considering the role of so-called independents, whose brains can shift back and forth between conservative and liberal views. “The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened.” 

Part of the Republican strategy, he says, is to get liberals to argue against them, while repeating conservative language. “There is a reason I wrote Don’t Think of an Elephant! When you negate conservative language, you activate conservative ideas and, hence, automatically and unconsciously strengthen the brain circuitry that characterizes conservative values.” 

This message is lost on those liberals and progressives who talk derisively about the Republican presidential race. Lakoff cites several examples, including Maureen Dowd who gleefully described the GOP candidates as “ridiculously weak and wacky.” 

“I hope that they are right,” says Lakoff. “But, frankly, I have my doubts. I think Democrats need much better positive messaging, expressing and repeating liberal moral values — not just policies….That is not happening.” He thinks this was a major factor in the thrashing the Dems received in the 2010 elections.

For example, says Lakoff, “Consider how conservatives got a majority of Americans to be against the Obama health care plan. The president had polled the provisions, and each had strong public support: No preconditions, no caps, no loss of coverage if you get sick, ability to keep your college-age child on your policy, and so on. These are policy details, and they matter.” The conservatives, however, never argued against any of those specific provisions. “Instead, they made a moral case against ‘Obamacare.’ Their moral principles were freedom and life, and they had language to go with them. Freedom: ‘government takeover.’ Life: ‘death panels.’ 

“Republicans at all levels repeated them over and over, and convinced millions of people who were for the policy provisions of the Obama plan to be against the plan as a whole. They changed the public discourse, changed the brains of the electorate — especially the ‘independents’ — and won in 2010.” 

Today, Democrats continue to miss the big picture. The extreme conservative discourse of the Republican presidential race has the same purpose, says Lakoff “and conservative Republicans are luring Democrats into making the same mistakes. Santorum….is the best example. From the perspective of conservative moral values, he is making sense and arguing logically, making his moral values clear and coming across as straightforward and authentic, as Reagan did.” 

The idealized conservative family, explains Lakoff, is built around a strict father, the natural leader, assumed to know right from wrong, whose authority is absolute and unchallengeable. He makes decisions about reproduction and he sets the rules. “Children must be taught right from wrong through strict, moral discipline. According to Lakoff, this concept extends onto the nation as a whole. “To be prosperous in a free market, one must be fiscally disciplined. If you are not prosperous, you must not be disciplined, and if you are not disciplined, you cannot be moral, and so you deserve your poverty. 

“For conservatives, democracy is about liberty, individual responsibility and self-reliance — the freedom to seek one’s own self-interest with minimal or no commitment to the interests of others.” According to Lakoff, the conservative populism personified by Santorum — in which poor conservatives vote against their own financial interests — depends on those voters having “strict father family values,” defining themselves in terms of those values, and voting on the basis of those values, thus choosing strict fathers as their political leaders.

 And as long as the Democrats have no positive moral messaging of their own, the strategy will go unchallenged and conservative populism will expand. “Moreover,” says Lakoff, “repeating the Santorum language by mocking it or arguing against it using that language will only help conservative propagate their views.” 

Democrats have been gleeful about the Santorum birth control strategy, taken up by conservatives in the House as a moral position that if you want to use birth control, you should pay for it yourself. Democrats see this as irrational Republican self-destruction, assuming that it will help all Democrats to frame it as a “war against women.” But according to Lakoff, the logic used by conservative populists, including many women, embodies some of the most powerful aspects of conservative moral logic: 

•Reproduction is the province of male authority.

•The strict father does not condone moral weakness and self-indulgence without moral consequences. Sex without reproductive consequences is thus seen as immoral.

•If the nation supports birth control for unmarried women, then the nation supports immoral behavior.

•No one else should have to pay for your birth control — not your employer, your HMO, or the taxpayers.

 Having to pay for your birth control also has a metaphorical religious value, says Lakoff: “paying for your sins.” And from this “slippery slope narrative,” the next step is that no one else should have to pay for any of your health care. And the step after that is that no one else should be forced to pay for anyone else….period. Everything should be privatized: education, safety nets, nursing homes, etc.  “It doesn’t take a village to raise a child,” Santorum is fond of repeating on the campaign trail. “It takes a family.”

 “That is what makes conservative moral logic into such a powerful instrument,” says Lakoff. Mock it at your own peril.  

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

In the years since leaving sports writing to make a living as a medical writer I have had the opportunity to report on some developments that have dramatically changed the practice of medicine in the United States and around the world. Maybe one day I will write about some of them but today I want to tell you about one of the lesser endeavors of my career, a project I worked on in 2003 that I’d all but forgotten about until just the other day.

It was an eight-page highlights of a roundtable discussion titled “Current Concepts in Facial Hair Removal,” published by means of “an unrestricted educational grant from Women First Health Care, Inc.” In the publisher’s box it said, “Editorial content does not necessarily reflect the view of the sponsor or the publisher.” (That was the medical publishing equivalent of a used car salesman saying, “This car is a cream puff.”)

As editor I was responsible for the content, based on the comments of four leading dermatologists, all of whom spoke with great enthusiasm about Vaniqa (eflornithine), then as now the only prescription cream approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “clinically proven to reduce the growth of unwanted facial hair in women.” The product is currently marketed by SkinMedica.

The doctors who took part are excellent clinicians, all of whom I know and respect. The information we provided in the newsletter is solid too. If I did not remember the piece it was only because the subject matter was not on the same level as the ones I alluded to in the first sentence. But, as I learned the other day, it might well have been so.

You see, I’ve been reading Medical Apartheid, a book by Harriet A. Washington, subtitled “The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.” It is a powerful and well documented indictment of centuries of abuse of African Americans as unwilling and unwitting subjects of medical and pharmaceutical research.  Fortunately, according to Washington, most of the abuses against African Americans have been curtailed. But some shameful practices continue to take place on the continent of Africa and other Third World Countries. 

After reading some flagrant examples, I was stunned when I came to the following passage: “Some of the research on Africans by Western scientists has been more subtle but equally troubling from an ethical perspective. For example, trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, kills as many as half those it infects in the central African regions of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania….By 1995 the pharmaceutical company Aventis had completed research demonstrating that its drug eflornithine was effective against sleeping sickness, although not against cancer as the firm had hoped. But the company decided to abandon its use against trypanosomiasis, due to high production costs and low profits. It began seeking other profitable uses for the drug, and U.S. researchers soon found one: Eflornithine effectively banished facial hirsutism in women. Aventis and later Bristol-Myers Squibb began marketing the drug as Vaniqa, because many American women were able to part with fifty dollars a month to keep their faces free of hair, while few Africans were able to pay fifty dollars monthly to save their lives.

“It is completely understandable that the firm should focus its resources upon the profitable depilatory use of their medication, but it is disappointing that it chose not to make the drug available cheaply to Africans in order to vanquish sleeping sickness.” Sleeping sickness, explains Washington, threatens 60 million people, only seven percent of whom have access to medical treatment.

Disappointing? Reprehensible would be a better word to describe a system that places profit above the needs of millions of human beings for life-saving health care.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman 

Maggie Thompson lived in the “other” Orange, the one in New Jersey, but the lessons of her life extend far beyond the boundaries of a single city or county. Maggie, who died last week at age 92, spent most of her life trying to make the world a better place.  Along the way she inspired family members, friends and others she met to do the same.

“From very early on, Maggie Thompson was deep in the struggle for equality, taking on women’s rights and civil rights and speaking up for an emerging labor movement,” wrote Barry Carter, who interviewed Maggie in November at Daughters of Israel, a senior care facility in West Orange, NJ, where she spent the last months of her life. “The challenges of an interracial marriage made it even tougher, living in Orange where she was involved in the campaign to desegregate the Orange school system. She was white; her second husband, the late Ernest Thompson, was black and a well-known union organizer.”

Carter’s interview with Thompson, published in the The Star-Ledger of Newark, followed publication of her autobiography, From One to Ninety-one: A Life, which she began at age 90 and finished in nine months.  Carter observed a writing class conducted by Thompson to encourage fellow residents of the facility to write their stories: “Thompson, 91, is every bit the instructor as she lectures from her wheelchair in the cafeteria,” he wrote. “Six students in the class inched their way around the table, some in wheelchairs like hers, others riding motorized scooters.” Guided by Thompson, each penned a short story based on their life experience. 

The reporter could not help but notice that Thompson had to pause frequently “to catch her breath from an oxygen tube attached to a green tank on the back of her wheelchair. She inhales for enough energy to continue, but it doesn’t slow the cancer gradually taking her strength.” Between breaths she told the reporter about her life with Ernest Thompson, the first African-American organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) and director of organization for the National Negro Labor Council. “Together, they helped Benjamin Jones become the first African-American elected to the all-white municipal government in Orange.

“They weathered the McCarthy years, a period of government scrutiny that she describes as hateful and isolating. The FBI watched their home, she says, and questioned their neighbors. It didn’t help that they were dear friends of Paul Robeson, a concert singer, actor, athlete and scholar who spoke out for equality of minorities and workers’ rights throughout the world. In their backyard on Olcott Street, the couple hosted a barbecue for Robeson in 1956, when no one would allow him to perform because of his political activism.”

Not long after the interview, Maggie grew too weak to continue teaching the class, but she continued to post her thoughts on her blog site, MaggieINK (maggieink.blogspot.com) until Dec. 21. Her final post was the poem “Desiderata,” written by Max Ehrmann in 1927, which she introduced with these words: “Take it down, trust it to your memory, put it among your ‘Things To Be Remembered,’ and look at it when your spirits are low. It’s guaranteed to make you feel strong again. Trust me.”

The last verse reads:

 With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy

At the end of the poem Maggie wrote her final message to her readers in large type: “Do all the good you can.” 

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

The “Occupy” movement is about to set up tent in Orange County Feb. 2, thanks to a number of local activists inspired by the ongoing Occupy Wall Street (OWS) campaign. “It is truly amazing how a small, leaderless movement centered in a half-acre park in lower Manhattan captured the imagination of the world and rapidly spread to over 80 countries and 1,000 cities,” says Newburgh resident Bennett Weiss. 

Weiss, a jewelry and arts and crafts maker, says the last year will be remembered as “the year ordinary people took to the streets. From Tahrir Square in Cairo to Madison, Wisconsin, something special was happening: Voices long silenced by fear or deadened by hopelessness rang out in protest. No movement better encapsulates the raw and awesome power of people coming together in new and vital ways than the Occupy movement. And now it’s coming to Orange County.”

Weiss, of course, is one of the organizers. A longtime activist for peace and social justice he was a frequent visitor to Zuccotti Park before protesters were forcibly removed by police. He was also the organizer of a September “Rally for Economic Justice” in New Canaan, Connecticut, home to more than a few well-to-do corporate executives, including General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt. “What better place to demonstrate against the concentration of wealth than one of the places where it is concentrated,” he said at the time.

During his visits to Zuccotti Park he created and distributed more than 3,000 buttons bearing messages, such as “Economic Justice,” “Wake Up From the American Dream, Create A Livable American Reality” and “We’re the 99 Percent.” These activities were described in an article in the Times Herald-Record, eliciting a sarcastic comment from a reader who suggested that by accepting donations for the buttons Weiss was “exercising his rights under our capitalistic system to make money and take a shot at being among the one percent.” This, the reader suggested, seemed “somehow counter intuitive for the OWS crowd.”

Weiss calmly replied, “I don’t ask a penny for my buttons, but rather state clearly and emphatically when asked how much my buttons are, ‘Please make a small donation if it’s easy to do so and please do NOT make any donation if it’s not easy… all I ask is that you wear your button all the time.’ Doing this, I have raised money for a cause I strongly believe in, paid for my button costs, given away thousands of free buttons, and had the good fortune to meet and talk to some of the most dedicated and interesting people. 
 
“But perhaps more to the point,” he continued, “I DO understand your cynicism. We live in a culture where the bottom line is all that makes sense and greed is the only plausible explanation for hard work. We have arrived at a place where venality is considered the norm and claims of non-monetary motivation are suspect. How sad.”

Weiss says the launching of Occupy Orange will be anything but sad. “This meeting will be a  celebration of the momentous successes of the past year, a pep rally to keep our  spirits high for the  challenges that lie ahead, and an opportunity to learn  firsthand from experienced Occupiers what it’s like on the ground  (sometimes  literally on the ground) of an Occupy site.  There will be great food, music, and speakers from unions and community groups.” 

Sponsoring groups thus far include Orange County Peace and Justice, CSEA of Orange County,   Democratic Alliance, Community Voices Heard of Newburgh, and District 1199, Service Employees International Union. 1199 members were among the earliest trade unionists to show support for OWS.

“The Occupy movement, by raising awareness of the massive dissatisfaction with economic injustice has started a vigorous dialogue that we will keep open,” says Weiss. “Whether your primary concerns are local, as in the case of the Valley View Nursing home closure, regional, as in the case of our escalating home foreclosure rate, or global, as in climate change and never-ending wars, you will find  that promoting economic justice  plays a big part of the solution.”

Diane Newlander of New Windsor, agrees. I’ve been to Occupy groups on Wall Street, in New Paltz and Poughkeepsie, and wondered why there was no ‘Occupy  Orange.’ Now that it is 2012, the time has come to get organized. We are the 99%.  Join us!”

Weiss says there will be “great food” served at the Feb. 2 event but attendees are also encouraged to bring canned goods for a food drive to benefit the needy of our community. The first Occupy Orange meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 2, at Mulberry House, 62-70 West Main, Middletown. “It’s going to be a lively, dynamic extravaganza,” he quips. “I guarantee it or your money back. There’ll be lots of politics, philosophy and pizza for all.”

And if Newlander’s name seems familiar, it is. She has served as chair of New Windsor Concerned Citizens, and was a member of the New York State Advisory Panel on Transportation Policy for 2025. She also was president of the League of Women Voters of Orange County. Her involvement is but one example of Main Street joining with Occupy Wall Street in the fight for economic justice. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s the economy, stupid.
 
 Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman
As one who does much of the cooking and baking in our house, I looked forward to using our new, state-of-the-art, slide-in gas range. The new range was carefully chosen by my wife Eva-Lynne after a painstaking search and review of the literature, not to mention countless discussions with the patient staff at Michael’s Appliances in Middletown. The folks at Michael’s have become accustomed to her repeat visits and Lieutenant Colombo-like style of questioning. (This is a woman who took almost a full year to decide on a new toaster oven after the venerable old Black and Decker I bought used on eBay finally went kaput.)

The new range replaces a recent vintage GE model that worked perfectly. Its only crime was that it was not a slide-in and had a panel that would protrude above the new countertop, thereby marring the esthetic appearance of our renovated kitchen.(My suggestion that we just lop off the offending protrusion was not well received.) We sold the GE on Craig’s list (a whole nother story there) and are now the proud owners of a beautiful new….Electrolux! Not only can you cook and bake with it: Slide it all the way out and you can vacuum the floor too. (That isn’t true, of course, but who knew Electrolux made anything besides vacuum cleaners?)

We’ve had the new range since before Thanksgiving and it seems to work okay once you figure out the basics. But it has so many gizmos that it comes with a daunting 52 pages of instructions. We didn’t find the instructions, buried in a tray in the warming drawer, for several days, during which I mainly stared at the new range and continued to cook with the electric fry pan we’d been using during the renovation. Once, I accidentally tapped the “touch-activated glass control panel,” which suddenly lit up and made a ding sound. A few icons popped up: a light bulb signifying the oven light; a box with the numeral 3 inside and the words “control lock” underneath, and the words “upper oven” and “lower oven,” each accompanied by a timer clock icon.

Just for the heck of it I tapped the light bulb icon. Sure enough, the oven light came on. I tapped it again to turn it off. It stayed on. I tapped it again….and again, to no effect. Just as I was beginning to panic (“Uh oh, did I break it already?”) my frenzied tapping achieved the desired result. (Turns out you have to tap twice to turn the light off.)

Emboldened by my success at turning off the oven light, I tapped “upper oven” and was greeted by a dazzling display of 35 icons, many of which I still don’t understand even though I’ve leafed through the instruction book a few times. Why is there a heart with a wrench sticking out of it? What is the difference between “conv bake,” “conv roast,” and “conv convert?” Why are there three numbered hearts, each with the words “my favorite” underneath? I just want to cook and bake like I always did! This is worse than trying to figure out how to turn on the heat in Eva-Lynne’s car, another recent gizmo-laden purchase that mystifies me when I drive it.

With company coming the next week I had to get some experience cooking with the Electrolux before they arrived. I enlisted my daughter Sadie for tech support and together we opted to use the “perfect turkey” icon. According to the instruction book all we had to do was plug in the probe attachment inside the oven and insert the probe into the turkey as shown in the illustration. The Electrolux would take it from there. It would signal the precise moment when the turkey was perfectly roasted and turn itself off.

We had some flexibility regarding the temperature so we decided to set it lower than the default setting. (Hint from Heloise: Roasting meat at a lower temperature over a longer period results in a moister, more tender roast.) For some reason, however, the touchpad refused to cooperate and kept reverting to the 350-degree default setting anyway. Maybe it was an omen.

After Sadie tapped “Start” the oven made a strange whirring noise and a symbol on the touch screen spun around. After one hour there was a ding to announce that our perfect turkey had reached the desired internal temperature. Perfect it was….to make soup with, although a few slices of breast meat could be salvaged for dinner. The stuffing I made was excellent, along with the giblet gravy I’d prepared in a pot on a burner, which mercifully turned on the old-fashioned way via a simple twist of a knob.

A recent email from my cousin Jon in Virginia suggests that I am not alone in my frustration with the recent onslaught of gizmos. Jon is about a decade younger than I and a lot more tech savvy. He works in the wireless industry, which he says “changes like the weather patterns in South Florida, i.e. if you don’t like the climate, wait a few minutes. The new rage in the world of wireless is the creation, sale, and implementation of applications for one’s cellular handset or tablet.

“Whether you carry an Android, iPhone or BlackBerry® in your pocket, there are geniuses around the world giving birth to an app you cannot live without,” he writes. “These magical gizmos span from the ridiculous to the sublime. For around ninety-nine cents you can download a gadget that charts your business vehicle mileage, reads books aloud or even blows out the candles on your birthday cake….

“Despite the tsunami of instruments available, the industry has struggled mightily with one cherished component for years: voice recognition. Whether you are battling a robot voice when trying to reach a customer service representative for human assistance or you are attempting to have your cell phone provide information or complete a task, voice recognition software has gotten the better of all of us. Remaining calm when this software is unable to decipher a simple command, is a mind numbing horror….

“In the 1968 science fiction classic, 2001 A Space Odyssey, an astronaut asks HAL (the villainous monotone voiced computer) to “open the bay doors.” How different would the movie have been if HAL responded ‘Did you say oven the clay boars?’ or ‘Pope on the gray floor?’ I imagine the astronaut might have eventually hurled himself into space rather than continue this futile banter with a machine.”

Jon is currently testing two voice recognition programs he says are equally confounding. “I am not certain what prompted me to take on this assignment. Perhaps I hoped such a challenge might earn me a few months of rest in a sunny facility with soft walls.” If I don’t learn how to master our new state-of-the-art slide-in Electrolux gas range soon, I’ll be right there with him.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman
News that Gov. Cuomo has finally signed into law a bill that prohibits insurers from requiring patients to get prescriptions through the mail was greeted with guarded optimism by owners of independent hometown pharmacies. The law, which passed overwhelmingly in both houses of the state legislature earlier this year, will allow people to fill any prescription covered by mail order at an independent retail pharmacy. But there’s a catch.

The governor said the law will only go into effect after state legislators approve an amendment requiring retail pharmacists to agree in advance to accept the same reimbursement rate as mail-order pharmacies. Just how this will work remains to be seen. Will local pharmacists be able to obtain prescription drugs from pharmaceutical companies at prices similar to those negotiated by health insurers with big mail-order companies such as Medco? If not, neighborhood pharmacies will continue to be squeezed as they’ve become accustomed to in recent years with competition from chains such as CVS and Drug Fair, big-box stores such as Walmart and Costco, and from supermarkets that offer pharmacy services in addition to groceries.

The stark fact is that about 375 independent pharmacies in New York have closed since 2008, according to the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York. The group estimates that between $4 billion and $5 billion for prescriptions leaves the state each year because of mail orders. The organization hailed the Dec. 13 signing by Cuomo as “a tremendous victory for all pharmacies in New York State and the millions of New Yorkers they serve.”

“We are hoping for the best,” said pharmacist Jean Murphy, co-owner of Akin’s pharmacy in Warwick. “We don’t know yet how it is going to work.” The governor provided no date as to when the measures would take effect.

Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA), which opposed the bill, welcomed Cuomo’s insistence on the amendment. “Employers, taxpayers and consumers appreciate Governor Cuomo’s admonition to the legislature to improve this costly, anti-consumer bill,” said Mark Merritt, CEO of the Washington-based lobbying group. “In this economy, employers need every cost-saving tool they can get and mail-service pharmacy is at the top of the list.”

The PCMA casts local pharmacists as anti-consumer villains, as does the New York Health Plan Association (NYHPA), which lobbies on behalf of 25 managed health care plans in the state. In opposing the original bill, the NYHPA declared, “This proposal enriches community pharmacists at the expense of patients and will result in increased pharmaceutical costs.”

As noted previously, the original bill was also opposed by the Business Council of New York State (BCNYS), which condemned it as a “state-imposed coverage mandate [that] will increase overall costs to the health care system, limiting one very real opportunity and option to bend the cost curve in health care without any decrease in access or quality to care.”

This statement is belied daily by the real-life experiences of the supposed beneficiaries of this largesse. After our previous post on this topic last month, Peter B. of Warwick wrote, “I HATE Express Scripts, but have to use them. ALWAYS, ALWAYS late, and when I call, which is every time, I get the same bland crap; nothing even remotely helpful or actionable.”

Consumers forced to use Medco, the largest of the mail-order firms and a spinoff of pharmaceutical giant Merck, regularly voice their complaints via the internet at consumeraffairs.com. Here is a sampling of recent comments:

Heather of Ladson, SC, wrote, “I have had nothing but headaches and issues with Medco from the beginning….You receive different information from each representative you speak with….First, they tried to deny medications that my doctor specifically requested (with prescription and official letter) for me because they were supposedly ‘not covered’ under my plan.”

Susan of Drums, Pa., wrote, “I was never notified I would be forced to use the mail order program. And now I am without my medication because I am required to go back to my doctor and spend money I don’t have to get a new prescription….”

Michelle, of Phoenix, Ariz., wrote, “I called to place an order on a prescription and the prescription was never filled. I called back and was told the request was never made, yet I have my confirmation email. The rep then placed another refill request and I was assured it would ship by a certain date as I was almost out of medication. To no surprise the medication did not ship on the date I was advised. I have spent several hours on the phone over the past week with no resolution. I was told I could transfer it to a local pharmacy to be filled immediately.

“I later received a call from Medco stating they tried to transfer it but the local pharmacy didn’t have it in stock….I decided to call the pharmacy myself and found out they do have the medication in stock…. I asked to speak with a [Medco] manager and was advised there was no manager available. I am now left without my medication and have no idea when or if I will actually receive it.”

But the lobbyists at the BCNYS keep spinning: “Typically, mail order pharmacies are an option to employees, not a mandate, and the option usually is accompanied by passing along the savings to the insured in terms of lower out-of-pocket co-pays. If an insured prefers to use a non-mail order pharmacy, it is the informed choice of that consumer to fill the prescription knowing that the co-pay will be higher.” Big Brother would be proud.

Companies that offer mail-order pharmacy as an “option” make it clear they want employees to use mail order. Nonunionized workers in the private sector, fearful of losing their jobs, are likely to comply, like it or not.

Those who don’t are badgered by robot phone calls and mailings from Medco. These start out cordially enough: gentle reminders that you are missing out on a wonderful healthcare benefit and an opportunity to save money. After a while they become more ominous and take on an unmistakingly threatening, invasive tone. They remind you that the cost of your prescription for a specific drug will soon go up if you don’t switch now. They are Big Brother. They’re watching you. And they got to the governor.

Hometown pharmacists are hoping for the best, but the worst would be no surprise.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman
On March 24, 1962 Emile Griffith defended his world welterweight boxing championship against Benny “Kid” Paret. It was their third meeting: the “rubber match.” Griffith had won the first fight, knocking out Paret in the 13th round to win the title in January the previous year. Paret won the rematch by a split decision in September. Then, two months later, Paret made the mistake of challenging Gene Fullmer for the middleweight title. He took a beating from the bigger, stronger Fullmer before getting knocked out in the 10th round. Now just a few months later he was defending the welterweight title against Griffith.

I was 16 then, still learning the fine points of boxing from my father. I also learned a great deal from the astute commentary of Don Dunphy, the great ring announcer for the Friday night fights on ABC-TV’s “Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.” During his 50-year broadcasting career, Dunphy called 200 championship fights and he was at the mike for Griffith-Paret III.

The pre-fight weigh-in had been acrimonious. The Cuban-born Paret taunted Griffith, calling him a derogatory Spanish word for a homosexual. Infuriated, Griffith had to be restrained by his handlers. The animosity carried into the ring as the two battled hard from the opening bell.

Near the end of round six Paret nearly knocked Griffith out with a multi-punch combination but the former champion was saved by the bell. The two then fought evenly for several rounds and in the 12th, Dunphy announced, “This has been a slow round,” just as Griffith was about to unleash a sudden bombardment of punishing blows. He landed 29 punches in a row, the last 18 in six seconds as Paret crumpled helplessly against the ropes. Only then did referee Ruby Goldstein stop the fight. Paret went into a coma and died 10 days later.

Some pointed an accusing finger at “boxing” for Paret’s death, but others blamed Goldstein, who, despite having been a respected veteran referee prior to the bout, never worked another fight. Still others questioned why the New York State Athletic Commission had issued a license to Paret to fight so soon after the pasting he took from Fullmer. Boxing itself lost few adherents. I continued to follow the sport, assuming Paret’s death was an aberration. As far as I knew, the main injuries to boxers were minor cuts, broken noses (like my Uncle Willie had gotten when he boxed in the Navy), and “cauliflower” ears. And every once in a while you might encounter a funny character who acted “punch drunk.” The medical condition now known as “dementia pugilistica” had yet to be defined.

Some six months after the death of Paret, on Sept. 21, 1962, heavyweight Alejandro Lavorante was knocked into a coma in the sixth round of a scheduled 10-round fight with John Riggins in Los Angeles. Lavorante died of injuries sustained in the bout 16 months later. Coming in to the fight with Riggins he had lost five of his six previous matches. In the last two he was knocked out by the young, undefeated Muhammad Ali in the sixth round, and lost via technical knockout to 45-year-old Archie Moore in the 10th. Lavorante was carried from the ring on a stretcher after referee Tommy Hart stopped the fight against Moore, who had been a great light-heavyweight champion and a contender for the heavyweight title, but was far past his prime when he beat Lavorante.

A year after the Griffith-Paret fight, as Lavorante lay dying in a Los Angeles hospital, Davey Moore defended the featherweight championship against Sugar Ramos at nearby Dodger Stadium.

“The fight had been scheduled for 15 rounds,” wrote Morton Sharnik in Sports Illustrated, but in the 10th Moore took such a pounding that his manager, Willie Ketchum, asked the referee to stop it after the bell rang for the end of the round.

Afterward, “Little Davey,” as Sharnik called him, joked with reporters in the dressing room. “Except for a bloodshot left eye, his face was unmarked. It was hard to believe that he had just lost his world featherweight championship in a savage fight.

“But no sooner had the reporters hurried out than Moore clasped both hands to the back of his head and cried out to Ketchum, ‘My head, Willie! My head! It hurts something awful!’ With that, he collapsed into unconsciousness. Ketchum called for an ambulance, and Moore was taken to White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles.” He died 75 hours later.

As Sharnik reported, Moore’s death led to an outcry against boxing, with California’s then governor Pat Brown and the Pope among those calling for its abolition.
I met Sharnik when I went to Atlanta to cover Muhammad Ali’s return to the ring after Ali’s more than three-year exile for refusing induction into the Army during the war in Vietnam. Sharnik went out of his way to help a young, nervous aspiring sportswriter feel at ease in the crowded press room filled with unfamiliar faces. The fight took place Oct. 26, 1970. Ali knocked out Jerry Quarry in the third round.

Ali knocked Quarry out again in 1972. Joe Frazier also knocked him out twice, in 1969 and 1974; Ken Norton knocked him out in 1975. Quarry retired in 1983. Out of money and already showing signs of blunt force trauma, Quarry returned to the ring on Oct. 30, 1992, losing in six rounds to Ron Cramner. In the years preceding his death Quarry was diagnosed with dementia pugilisitica, brain damage caused by repeated blows to the head. A progressive malady, similar to Alzheimer’s disease, it left the once-affable Quarry virtually helpless and in the care of his family. He died in 1999 at age 53.
“For a sport so bound up with physical violence, there has been an almost criminal lack of controlled, scientific exploration in the area of protecting that primary target of a fighter’s fists, the human head,” wrote Mort Sharnik after the death of Davey Moore. “If boxing is to survive…some protection must be provided for the delicate tissues of the brain….

“The promoters wail that artificial head protection is certain death at the box office, but this is hardly a consideration when the alternative may be death in the ring.” Fifty years have passed since Sharnik wrote those words. Nothing has changed.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

A young Joe Frazier ... "the little guy"

By Michael Kaufman
“Bum decision,” said my father. “The little guy won every round!” The “little guy” was 20-year-old Joe Frazier. It is hard to think of a man who stands at 5’ 11” and weighs 205 lbs. as “little,” but that is how it looked that summer day in 1964 at the Singer Bowl on the grounds of the New York World’s Fair. That was the site for the finals of the U.S. Olympic boxing trials. Winners in their respective weight divisions would go on to represent the U.S. at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. The heavyweights fought last.

Frazier’s opponent was Buster Mathis, some four inches taller and nearly 100 pounds heavier. Most of the pre-fight buzz had focused on Mathis, especially because he had beaten Frazier in one previous meeting that year—Frazier’s only loss as an amateur prior to the Olympic tournament. Mathis had cruised to the finals, dominating smaller opponents.

We had ringside seats. My father was a knowledgeable boxing aficionado and enjoyed sharing stories with me about his favorite fighters, such as Joe Louis, Benny Leonard and Sugar Ray Robinson. As a young man he had enjoyed putting on the gloves and sparring with his friends until one day he broke the nose of his best friend Abe Bolker, and he never boxed again. Yet he always spoke proudly of his younger brother, my uncle Willie, who was a boxer in the Navy during World War II. And he still followed the so-called “sweet science” or “manly art of self defense,” as boxing was often called.

My first memory of boxing is the Rocky Marciano-Joe Louis fight in October 1951, when I was 5. I watched on a 10-inch TV screen with my father and uncles at my aunt Sadye and uncle Joe’s house in Far Rockaway. Everyone was sad. I didn’t understand what Uncle Willie meant when he said of Louis, “He’s a shell.” A shell was something you found at the beach. By 1951 Louis was years past his prime and fought only because he desperately needed the money.

Some 47 years after the Frazier-Mathis fight in the Olympic trials a few memories still stand out. Mathis was extraordinarily fat. He towered over Frazier but the feisty “little guy” was not intimidated and was the aggressor throughout. My father said the judges almost always prefer the aggressor to a fighter forced to be on the defensive for most of a fight. A rare exception was Muhammad Ali, who we watched train for his first fight with Sonny Liston in 1962. The first day we saw Ali (then still known as Cassius Clay) spar at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach my father said, “This guy has no chance. Nobody ever won a championship fight backing away all the time.” But by the end of the second day he changed his mind: “This kid is gonna beat Liston. I’ve never seen a heavyweight with such quick hands and feet!” Few experts agreed. The final odds for that fight were something like 8-1 in favor of Liston.

Mathis wore his trunks very high in his fight with Frazier in the Olympic trials. He looked comical but it served him well: When Frazier hit Mathis with legitimate body shots, the referee warned him about low blows. In the second round, he penalized Frazier two points for hitting below the belt. Frazier would say later, “In a three-round bout a man can’t afford a points-deduction like that.” Despite losing the second round because of the deduction, Frazier was a clear winner in the eyes of almost everyone but the judges. The decision was heartily booed.

“All that fat boy had done was run like a thief,” Frazier complained. “Hit me with a peck and backpedal like crazy.” When Frazier returned home to Philadelphia he was so upset that he considered giving up boxing altogether. But his manager Duke Dugent and trainer Yank Durham convinced him to make the trip to Tokyo as an alternate in case something happened to Mathis. Good thing they did. Mathis injured his hand and couldn’t compete. Frazier went on to win the gold medal.

Frazier and Mathis would fight again as professionals four years later at Madison Square Garden, and again there were some dubious aspects to the matchup. By then Ali had been stripped of his title for refusing induction into the Army during the war in Vietnam. The Frazier-Mathis fight was proclaimed a “world championship” match by the New York State Athletic Commission. To be honest, I don’t remember the fight as much as I remember the way Jimmy Cannon, a sports-writing legend, spat on the sidewalk as Leonard Shecter and I walked past him on our way in to the arena.

Mathis again wore his trunks high but this time it didn’t help. A relentless Frazier wore down the bigger, heavier man, and the fight was stopped in the 11th round. From 1968 to 1970, Frazier made six defenses, including a fifth-round TKO of World Boxing Association champ Jimmy Ellis in a “unification” fight. But everyone knew who the real champion was, and in the summer of 1970 public pressure forced the overseers of boxing to grant Ali a license to fight again. Demand quickly grew for a showdown between the undefeated champion and Frazier.

Ali knocked out top contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena, setting the stage for one of the most anticipated heavyweight title fights in boxing history. I was privileged to cover those and many other memorable boxing events. But I haven’t watched a fight in years. I’ll explain why in my next post.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Home-town pharmacists throughout New York State thought they’d won a significant victory earlier this year with the passage of a bill in both houses of the state legislature that prohibits health insurers from requiring the use of a mail-order pharmacy as a condition of their pharmaceutical benefit coverage. Implementation of the bill would allow people to fill their prescriptions at pharmacies of their own choosing, without penalty of having to pay substantially more money for their medicine.

That was good news for local pharmacies still struggling to survive competition from chains such as CVS and Rite-Aid, as well as Walmart, Costco and some supermarkets. In recent years they have faced an even bigger and more insidious menace. Large employers are pressuring and in some cases forcing workers to fill their prescriptions by mail order. This has hurt home-town pharmacies such as Akin’s in Warwick, where Robert Newhard and his sister Jean, have been dispensing medicine and expert advice to customers as their father did before them. 

“After years of legislative battles to pass this legislation….it passed with only two negative votes,” Craig Burridge, executive director of the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York (PSSNY), happily reported in the August 23 issue of Pharmacy Forum. “This landmark legislation ‘prohibits insurers from requiring the insured purchase prescribed drugs from a mail order pharmacy or pay a co-payment fee differential when such purchases are not made from a mail order pharmacy.’ This legislation takes effect 30 days after the Governor signs it into law.” And therein lies the rub. Governor Cuomo has yet to affix his signature.

Why hasn’t the governor signed a bill that benefits consumers and local small businesses, and which passed with overwhelming popular and bipartisan legislative support? The answer isn’t exactly hard to find. Opposed to the legislation are big pharmaceutical companies, managed care companies and big business in general.  The Business Council of New York State, which issued a statement in May condemning the bill as a “state-imposed coverage mandate [that] will increase overall costs to the health care system, limiting one very real opportunity and option to bend the cost curve in health care without any decrease in access or quality to care….

“Pharmacy networks and mail order pharmacies are tools used by employers and insurance carriers to provide pharmaceutical coverage with ensuring access to the drugs in a cost effective manner,” says the Business Council. “Typically mail order pharmacies are an option to employees, not a mandate, and the option usually is accompanied by passing along the savings to the insured in terms of lower out-of-pocket co-pays. If an insured prefers to use a non-mail order pharmacy, it is the informed choice of that consumer to fill the prescription knowing that the co-pay will be higher. Consumer choice exists within the current system; employers and carriers are doing what they can to identify options to consumers to preserve the benefits while offering lower cost options.”

The New York Health Plan Association, representing 25 managed health care plans in the state, complained: “This proposal enriches community pharmacists at the expense of patients and will result in increased pharmaceutical costs.” They say their “relationships” with mail-order pharmacies enable them “to provide coverage for many rare drugs as well as high-cost drugs at a reduced cost to the consumer.” Included among the approaches to increase mail-order pharmacy utilization are lower co-payments for 90-day prescriptions. And, they add, “Mail-order companies offer special tracking and reporting systems that help plans and patients monitor and manage prescriptions. They also provide 24/7 phone access and support for patients.”

Robert Newhard says he can’t blame financially strapped customers for taking advantage of the lower cost 90-day prescriptions—something that he and other local pharmacies are now prohibited from providing. But he bristles at the suggestion that the mail-order companies provide comparable service. Numerous complaints lodged by consumers about Medco, the largest mail-order pharmacy, support his view.  For an up-to-date sampling, see http://www.consumeraffairs.com/rx/medco.html and/or http://www.consumeraffairs.com/rx/medco_delays.html.

Medco, incidentally, is a spinoff of pharmaceutical giant Merck.  In 2004 the company agreed to pay $24.9 million to settle state and federal complaints that accused Medco of violating consumer protection and mail fraud laws by switching patients to drugs that were said to add to costs for patients and their health plans. According to The New York Times, the Justice Department “accused Medco of receiving $430 million from Merck, its former parent, to switch patients to more expensive drugs like Merck’s Zocor.” It seems that some people have indeed been “enriching themselves at the expense of patients,” but it isn’t community pharmacists like the Newhards. According to the Times, Medco also “agreed to start telling patients, doctors and employers about billions of dollars in annual rebates that it has received from drug manufacturers for promoting their products.”

Newhard points to the front door of his store, on which is posted his home phone number so customers can reach him directly in case of an emergency when the pharmacy is closed. “All we’re asking for is an equal playing field,” he says.

There ought to be a law….and there is one. It is just waiting for the governor’s signature in Albany. The Newhards and other community pharmacists are asking customers to call the governor’s office at 518-474-1041 or go online at www.governor.ny.gov and urge that he sign the bill into law. Just click on “contact,” enter “A5502-B” as the subject and “Insurance” as the topic.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.