Email Bill Meyer, Podcasts on BillMeyerShow.com
Bill Meyer’s Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/BillMeyerShow
_________
MONDAY 3-20-23 PODCASTS 6AM – 7AM – 8AM
TUESDAY 3-21-23 PODCASTS 6AM – 7AM – 8AM
WEDNESDAY 3-22-23 PODCASTS 6AM – 7AM – 8AM
THURSDAY 3-23-23 PODCASTS 6AM – 7AM – 8AM
FRIDAY 3-24-23 PODCASTS 6AM – 7AM – 8AM
___________________________
Wednesday 3-22-23 Bill Meyer Show Guest Information
6:35 Eric Peters, auto journalist at www.EPAutos.com talking the latest on transportation, politics, always a great talk.
7:10 State Senator Dennis Linthicum is on from Salem and we talk about the latest bills and outrages.
7:35 The gun bills get a hearing today, the latest from State Rep. Lily Morgan
8:35 Dr. Marilyn Singleton—an anesthesiologist in California talks about what STATES can do to lower healthcare costs.
Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton is an anesthesiologist in Redondo Beach, California. She received her medical degree from University of California (San Francisco) School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 years.
States Can Lead on Lowering Health Care Costs
By Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton
February 23, 2023
While most of the health care debate is focused on fights over expanding federal government healthcare programs, a new Congressional Budget Office report on reducing what insurers pay for hospital physician services offers ideas for how states can reduce health care costs for their citizens by enacting supply side reforms that we already know work.
According to the CBO, one factor keeping insurer costs high is that “markets have become more concentrated than they would be otherwise because of barriers to entry.” Many of these barriers are imposed at the state level and range from limiting the number and type of providers in a particular area to requiring specific credentials to offer certain services.
What these barriers have in common is that they limit competition and patient access to care. Removing them would promote competition among providers and ultimately reduce costs.
States looking to reduce healthcare costs should focus on these four areas of reform identified by CBO: eliminating Certificate of Need and scope of practice laws, expanding the use of telehealth, and permitting doctors to work across state lines.
Certificate of Need (CON) laws require government permission before new providers can add or expand healthcare facilities or services in particular geographic area. In many cases, CON laws essentially confer monopoly status on existing facilities, which restricts patients’ options and keeps costs high.
The federal government enacted a CON law in 1974, but the law’s evident failure resulted in repeal in 1986. However, 35 states and the District of Columbia still have CON laws on their books. Repealing these laws would boost competition and lower costs.
While CON laws limit services, state scope of practice laws limit the ability of healthcare workers to provide care. Many states do not allow non-physician providers, such as advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants, to practice to the full scope of their training. They must work under the supervision of a physician.
With a physician shortage is looming and 65 million Americans not having sufficient access to a health care provider, scope of practice limitations make no sense. As the CBO report states, eliminating these laws would “reduce prices on average.”
Telehealth has improved patient care with its effectiveness and efficiency. Patients can get treatment even in inclement weather and are less likely to cancel or postpone an appointment due to transportation issues. Health care providers can see more patients by minimizing the gap between appointments and without exposing themselves to an infected patient. Telehealth assures privacy and safety that no waiting or exam room can match.
While telehealth cannot always replace and face-to-face visits and is not appropriate for all services, it has improved patient care with its effectiveness and efficiency. Patients can get treatment even in inclement weather and are less likely to cancel or postpone an appointment due to transportation issues. Health care providers can see more patients by minimizing the gap between appointments and without exposing themselves to an infected patient. Telehealth assures privacy and safety that no waiting or exam room can match.
Many states have expanded the used of telehealth, but many only temporarily. New permanent laws promoting telehealth will give a boost to the industry and allow more people to experience its benefits. However, to get telehealth’s full benefit, states need the issue cross-state licensing of providers.
Expanding the use of telehealth alone will leave some health care savings on the table. To get the full benefit, states will need to adopt procedures that ensure an uncomplicated process for mutual credentialing of providers between states.
For example, suppose you live in one state but are seeing a specialist in another. While you can see the out-of-state specialist in-person, you could not see that same specialist over the internet from your home. Consulting a specialist should be effortless whether you are two towns or two time zones away.
These reforms should not be controversial. The Covid pandemic saw all 50 states suspend or waive some of these barriers to save lives. For instance, some 23 states temporarily expedited their CON approval processes or waived it.
Medicare’s decision to cover telehealth services prompted states to change their own policies and expand telehealth. And every state eased licensing rules. We all remember those doctors and nurses flooding into New York City to help. Well, New York had to waive licensing requirements to make that happen.
If certain laws and regulations don’t make sense when we’re dealing with a crisis, how do they make sense in normal times? Lives are at stake across our country every day – even when there is no crisis.
It is notable that these reforms were enacted not only quickly but safely. And although an important step in the right direction, these reforms should be part of a broader effort to dismantle the barriers that prevent patients from getting the care they need at a price they can afford.
It is literally a matter of life and death.
______________________________________
Tuesday 3-21-23 Bill Meyer Show Guest Information
7:10 Scott Fein, Jackson County Surveyor. We explorer the controversial RV-Times story about code enforcement issues he’s facing and a “Neighborhood Battle” of sorts. https://www.rv-times.com/localstate/neighbor-war-stalking-order-threats-and-hearings/article_02265f20-bf95-11ed-b757-4f5818dd2174.html
7:35 Josephine County Commissioner Herman Baertschiger talks politics with Bill, The Daily Courier editorial, Trump, the war on your kicker.
8:10 Colonel Grant Newsham, author of When China Attacks: A Warning to America , Colonel Grant Newsham uses his military and China expertise to provide a well-founded,
blow-by-blow account of what China is capable of and what our nation must do to stop the CCP. Drawing from intelligence and experience from his forty-year career in the Marine Corps and the
State Department, Colonel Grant Newsham delivers a stark warning about America’s impending war with China. ColonelbNewsham brings together the military, political, economic, and
social to provide rare insights into how close we are to a hot war and what can be done to avoid it.
______________________________
Monday 3-20-23 Bill Meyer Show Guest Information
6:35 Mark Morgan FAIR senior fellow and former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection
February Border Encounters Show Illegal Immigration Isn’t Abating, It’s Just Being Rerouted, Charges FAIR
(March 16, 2023, Washington, D.C.) — The Biden administration’s new “border enforcement measures” have not succeeded in curbing record levels of illegal immigration, they’ve just rerouted much of the flow through legal ports of entry, charged the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, released Thursday, reveals that the total number of border encounters in February, 212,266, remained at historic high levels. But due to the Biden administration’s flagrant abuse of parole authority, 83,389 illegal migrants were encountered at legal ports of entry by the Office of Field Operations (OFO), instead of attempting to enter between ports of entry.
“The Biden administration is blatantly attempting to deceive the American public into believing they have illegal immigration under control,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “While boasting that ‘only’ 128,877 migrants were encountered by Border Patrol entering between ports of entry in February, OFO encountered 83,389 illegal aliens, and allowed many to enter the country under the administration’s expansive and illegal use of parole authority. The net effect is the same; it just doesn’t look as bad.”
The release of the February data comes one day after Raul Ortiz, Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, testified before the House Homeland Security Committee that the federal government does not have “operational control” of the southern border – a statutorily defined requirement that his agency is obligated to meet. Moreover, Chief Ortiz asserted that operational control is not even a goal of this administration and, instead, the agency’s “new strategy is geared toward mission advantage” – an entirely made-up standard that has no legal definition.
“Even CBP’s efforts to mask the scope of illegal migration by moving 83,389 illegal entries off-the-books, does not tell the full story of the Biden administration’s disastrous border policies,” Stein continued. “The number of people who elude apprehension remains high, while lethal narcotics, including fentanyl, continues to pour across the southern border, where criminal cartels maintain clear ‘mission advantage.’
“No matter how CBP tries to spin it, the February numbers make it clear that the Biden administration is not turning the tide on illegal immigration. And, as the Biden administration is set to end the use of Title 42 in May, the last remaining mechanism in place to turn back migrants at the border, the crisis is likely to get a whole lot worse,” Stein concluded.
7:10 Jackson County Commissioner and Board Chair Colleen Roberts discusses the weekend’s visit and discussion with the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Top of the talk was changing the U.S. wildfire management policy.
8:10 Dr. Dennis Powers with today’s “Where Past Meets Present”.
Dick Fosbury’s Ground-Breaking Flop
By Dennis Powers
Dick Fosbury’s father drove a logging truck, his mother was a teacher, and he grew up in Medford. When at Medford High School, he tried playing different sports. By his own admission, he was a “fair” basketball player (but usually on the bench), a “terrible” hurdler, and tried football as a third-string end. He gave that up in his junior year, when in one drill his good-friend Bill “Earthquake” Enyart (who played in the NFL) blocked him so hard that Fosbury lost two front teeth.
He figured out that his “lankiness” shouldn’t be as much a problem in the high jump. When using the standard “scissors” kick, he had cleared 5-foot, 4-inches in junior high and had won a meet or two. His varsity high-school coach, however, insisted on this approach (kicking ones outer, rather than inner leg over the bar), but he just couldn’t get it down.
In 1963, the sophomore headed to a Rotary meet in Grants Pass with twelve schools. He decided that he would do whatever it took for “one last jump.” If he couldn’t clear 5-foot, 4-inches, then he’d always be a third-stringer. At the meet, he cleared that bar; on his next jump, he went 2 inches higher by arching slightly backwards. Driven by desperation, he added another 2 inches by reclining even more and heading more backwards over the bar.
By now coaches and competitors alike were staring at his form. On his fourth attempt, he cleared another 2 inches for 5-foot, 10-inches and landed face-up by clearing the bar. To add 1/2-feet in height in high jumping–in only two hours–was unheard of. He had created a “modified scissors,” by leaping backwards, and landing on his neck and shoulders in the sand (bringing in mats later). The coaches began arguing: Was this move legal, allowable, safe, and what in the heck was it?
Fosbury had spontaneously created a style of his own, totally fracturing what had been taught or used before. It was on-site engineering and serendipity at its highest. During the next full year of his upside-down technique, Fosbury began to lean with his shoulder some 45 degrees to the bar, arch over on his back, and broke the school record of 6-foot, 3-inches.
The novelty continued. One newspaper headlined the image of one jump: “The World’s Laziest High Jumper.” But it was the Medford Mail-Tribune in 1964 that gave a lead of “Fosbury Flops over the Bar.” A reporter had returned, said that Fosbury looked like a fish flopping into a boat, and so came the name, the “Fosbury Flop.”
He placed second at the state championships in his senior year (1965), and then headed on a scholarship to Oregon State University. A contrarian at heart, Fosbury hardly practiced the Flop, saying that “there’s no use wearing myself out.” Promoters invited him to their events just due to the hype that followed. Fosbury kept experimenting and perfected his head-first leap by approaching in a semi-circle, head onto his back, and use a “J’ to clear the bar.
The Los Angeles Times wrote that he “goes over the bar like a guy being pushed out of a 30-story window.” Sports Illustrated had: “He charges up from slightly to the left of centre with a gait that may call to mind a two-legged camel,” and having flung himself over the bar back first, “he extends himself like a slightly apprehensive man lying back on a chaise longue that’s too short for him.”
He first cleared 7-feet during the 1968 indoor season and won the NCAA’s that year. He won the Gold Medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games by clearing 7-foot, 4-1/4 inches, breaking the Olympic and American records, as the crowd stared in amazement
When he returned to Medford, a ticker-tape parade was held for him, but with no buildings taller than two stories, the kids had to run alongside his car to shower him with confetti. He went on The Tonight Show and tried to teach Johnny Carson and fellow guest Bill Cosby how to do the Flop. He slipped, however, on his attempt when he tried doing this with his dress shoes on. Other shows included The Dating Game.
He was top ranked in the world following his 1968 victory, and in 1969 Fosbury won his second NCAA title before placing second in the National AAU meet, plus adding his third Pacific-8 championship. He graduated from OSU in 1972 with a degree in civil engineering and trained for the 1972 Olympics–but didn’t make the team, having lost his competitive interest (by his own admission). Turning professional in 1973, he joined the International Track Association for a few seasons and then retired from track and field.
Fosbury moved to Ketchum, Idaho in 1976 and founded an engineering firm. He was elected to the Medford Sports, U.S.A. Track & Field, and Olympic Halls of Fame. He was a past president and on the Executive Committee of the World Olympians Association, as well as vice president of the U.S. Olympians Association. Further, for over 25 years he taught at track camps and clinics around the world. He retired on a 20-acre ranch south of Sun Valley, Idaho. A statue depicting Fosbury performing his flop was unveiled at Oregon State, his alma mater, in 2018.
He died at age 76 on March 12, 2023. Dick Fosbury is still remembered as one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field, however, thanks to the unconventional Fosbury Flop that’s now the worldwide standard for high-jumping.
Sources: “About Dick,” Dick Fosbury’s Official Website, at Fosbury Bio; Richard Hoffer, “The Revolutionary,” Sports Illustrated, September 14, 2009; Rogue Valley Tribune (his death), March 13, 2023, at Fosbury Passes Away. For images and videos, Google “Fosbury Flop”.