Why I Hate the Press by Trudi M.

The saying goes that someone who thinks they know everything is irritating to those of us who do. I guess that is why I hate the press.

For those of you who may not know this, my job entails me serving as a quasi-expert on health policy. I supposedly try to scout out information for state officials on trends and innovations in health care that can help them do their job better. Well, I don't know everything and I always put "expert" in quotes because there is a whole heck of a lot I don't know about health care.

But one thing I have learned from my studies of this mammoth field is that the press often get stories completely wrong about health care. Now I know this because it is my job to know this field in a more specialized way than most reporters. And I can tell you that if you are getting your general impressions about health care from the press then you probably have a completely skewed vision of how health care really works. From press accounts one would think that our doctors are being paid by health plans to deny us care because all the plans care about is money. The only exception is when the drug company pays the doctors off to prescribe us drugs we don't need or that kill us and they know it and are trying to cover it up because they just want to make money.

And we often swallow this crap. BUT STOP RIGHT THERE. Do we ever stop to think about the hidden agenda of most reporters and editors in feeding us this crap? The hidden agenda is that they want to sell us papers, have us watch their show and gain market share. Unfortunately rosy news does not sell papers, sensationalism does.

Now in my observation, 3 out of 5 news stories on health care really do not paint an accurate picture of the real issues. So, extrapolate the sensationalist coverage of health care issues across all different areas of public affairs and I think you will come to the same sinking conclusion I have about most news. It is mostly overblown sensationalism, whether done by the National Enquirer or by CBS. Rather-gate was a rare gaffe that exposed the often seamy underside of journalism - reporters and editors want to sell papers and producers want to get you to watch their show. So they will often create fires where there are none and then blame everyone else when the house burns down.

One recent example of this is Vioxx. There is good evidence that this drug taken at high doses increases the risk of heart attacks and one estimate is that as many as 100,000 people may have died prematurely as a result. Now this is really important to get the word out about this risk. However, what is not being talked about in many cases is that one of the major reasons these drugs are prescribed to people with arthritis is because long-term use of other pain relievers such as naproxen and ibuprofen can cause severe damage to the stomach. So much so that some people's stomachs develop ulcers and some even bleed to death because of this damage. Every drug like Vioxx has risks. Doctors and pharmacists and others have to weigh the risk of heart damage occurring against risk of stomach damage and the quality of life issues for, say, a 76 year old woman with severe arthritis. HEart damage may occur in 12 years but if she doesn't take a medication like Vioxx or Celebrex then she could be disabled by arthritis pain or develop a severe stomach ulcer and die in 5 years. What is worse? These kinds of scenarios are not being talked about at all in the press. And as a result, a lot of people are going to stop taking or not have access to medications they need.

I could go on and on about various media stories related to health care that are just wrong headed in their approach. I will just have to say - trust me - the media often do not get their facts right and often miss the boat in truly informing the public. I am glad that bloggers have started to help the public see through the major media's new clothes. At least there are alternatives now to the major media. Long live weblogs!!

Trudi's Top Ten Ways to Deal With Stress

Nothing like a new baby, an out of control job, Christmas shopping and relatives coming for the holidays to send the ol' blood pressure off the charts. Here's how I am dealing with it:

10. Blogging (how'd you guess?)
9. Insomnia (another easy one)
8. Baking fattening holiday sweets
7. Eating fattening holiday sweets
6. Consuming large quantities of coffee.
5. Speaking in various foreign accents - just for the hell of it. (You zink I'm kidding donchu?)
4. Muttering under my breath (okay I do that all the time)
3. Answering mundane emails at work (trying to fool myself into believing that I am actually accomplishing something in the 15 minutes before the next meeting.)
2. Breaking out on my face like an unwashed, hormonal adolescent(okay this one is not pretty)
1. Multi-tasking

Speaking of multi-tasking, I just burned my cookies. No, literally. They were victims of multi-tasking gone wrong. Blogging and baking don't mix apparently, especially when you forgot to set the timer to tell you to take the cookies out of the oven. Gotta go.

Shopping paralysis Trudi style

I generally am a decisive person. But there are certain times that I am afflicted by what I call shopping paralysis. Perhaps shopping induced comatose state would be a more descriptive term. This rose whatever the name is not sweet but very annoying.

I am trying to buy my daughter a winter coat and mittens for her birthday. The selection for coats is relatively small for her size so that choice is made fairly quickly but then I turn to the hat and mitten rack. OH MY GOSH!! There are literally 30 or 40 different kinds of hat and mitten sets to choose from. More than half an
hour later, I have finally drag myself away from the rack and stumble off to buy the set I selected for my daughter.

It is not that the store did not have a set I liked. Noooo. I was paralyzed by cuteness. (I have learned this is more common when shopping for girls things than boys things.) There were so many darling hat and mitten sets, I just couldn't pick only ONE, for crying out loud. There were pink velour sets with sparkles all over, fleece hats with sweet little stripes and little balls of fabric on the crown of the head, knit hats with scandavanian snowflake patterns trimmed in faux fur at the bottom, hats with little princesses on them, and others with snowflakes stiched with silver thread. There were pink and white and blue and purple sets - and this just for the girls section. There were sets with famous characters on them - dora, blue, disney characters. Then there were the plain jane cheap sets with just one color at the low low price of just 3.99 a set. The faux fur sets were nearly $15. This is human creativity and consumerism run amok.

Now did I have 30+ minutes to stare paralyzed with indecision at the hat and mitten rack at the local department store? No. Did my daughter even actually need a hat and mitten set? No, actually she had mittens already (but they didn't match her new coat) and the coat I bought came with a hood. But what did I do? I spent my scarce time and resources getting something entirely because it was too cute to pass up. There's a sucker born every minute. I just didn't want to believe it was me.

Now the postscript to this story is that I put the mid-range priced, hip-looking, pink and blue striped fleece hat with the ball on the crown on my daughter last night. She looked so cute and she pranced around the living room for an hour, both of us clearly enthralled with this new purchase. Of course, it was money well spent. What was I thinking. What kind of a price can you put on cuteness anyway?

I am sure I will be afflicted with this form of paralysis often over the next few weeks. I just hope my pocket book can withstand it.

Season's Greetings.