Leonard Zwelling

         If the GOP debate on February 25 at the University of
Houston taught us anything, it displayed the foolishness of Donald Trump. When
he and Marco Rubio got into a punching match about health care reform, Marco
kept asking about Donald’s “policies” to replace ObamaCare and Donald kept talking about how
breaking down the state boundaries for insurance purchase would increase the
number of “policy” options for consumers. Senator Rubio wanted to hear how Mr.
Trump would supplant the ACA. What are the Donald’s policies? The Senator from
Florida was quite specific about his plan. Mr. Trump has no plan, so had to
conveniently misunderstand what Senator Rubio meant by “policies” as in insurance contracts.

Trump has no plan to get Mexico to build the wall on the border. He has no
foreign policy plans at all. He has no plan to make up for the loss in federal
revenue that would occur with his plan to cut taxes, beyond the hackneyed elimination of “fraud
and abuse.” In other words, Mr. Trump hasn’t told us HOW he would do anything
beyond “Making America Great Again.” Why anyone would trust The Donald to make
any progress should he gain the White House is beyond me.

         I think the same can be said about Dr. DePinho’s Moon Shots.
I understand that he wants to cure cancer and advance prevention and detection.

         Judging by his actions, Dr. DePinho will be curing cancer by
firing some of the great leaders in American cancer care and replacing them
with internal candidates of far lesser accomplishments. How will that work?

         Dr. DePinho will turn state money into new drugs. I’m still
waiting for his first successful therapeutic. It certainly wasn’t the Aveo drug.

         He lauds the faculty while making their lives harder with
increased patient loads and now an electronic medical record unlikely to speed up
any processes at all.

         And what ever happened to Watson? Moriarty must have got

         At some point, hopefully very soon, the general wisdom and
the zeitgeist will coalesce into a basic mistrust of those who declare goals
without revealing strategies or tactics. That would be The Donald and The

         Unfortunately, it is also the Hillary. It is not that she
has not been specific about what she would do or how she would do it. She has.
What she has not been is transparent about why anyone would trust her to do it.
With her it isn’t HOW, but How do we know? Her record that she is so proud of
is filled with underhanded behavior while her husband pursued his dalliances,
her dishonesty about Benghazi and her unwillingness to reveal what she said in
the $650,000 speeches for Wall Street. And let’s not forget about the emails.
How could anyone assuming the job of Secretary of State NOT know that classified
emails would be sent to her and allow them to be parked on a private server?
Give me a break.

         Neither Donald nor Ronald will tell us how they are going to
fulfill any of their lofty promises. Mrs. Clinton will tell you how she will
accomplish great things. But why would you trust her?


         If, as I expect, The Donald and Hillary duke it out in
November, the only certain how is How is it possible that we have come to this
and how will the country survive? No worries. We survived a host of bad
Presidents and we will again. But the lack of How may lead to a collective OW for a few years.

3 thoughts on “EXTRA: How?”

  1. About those electronic medical records. Ask any physician at NYU and he/she will tell you that EPIC is not only user unfriendly, but doubles the time it takes to see a patient. So i wondered why institutions would use it if decreases profits. I was told that the lure of EPIC is its billing platform. Does that mean it streamlines and organizes upcoding?

    1. More likely it is very good at capturing all physician activity that can add to the bill. For example, if a doc does his own test for blood in the stool, EPIC probably drops a charge. I also believe it is used to capture data for research and to meet the requirements of meaningful use, although I am unsure as to whom its use is meaningful.

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