Elvis Presley

“Experts” Part II: The Dementia Guardrail Paradox

I grew up with a healthy skepticism of doctors. As anyone who knows the Cole origin story is aware, my biological father was the Beverly Hills surgeon/personal physician to the stars who’s accused of killing Elvis by getting him hooked on drugs and feeding his habit. Dr. Cole absolutely was a pusher, and Elvis wasn’t his only client. He was the go-to guy for the rich and famous when they needed morphine, uppers, downers, whatever. [In Norm Macdonald voice] You know, I’m starting to think he was not a good doctor. But there’s the irony; he actually was quite good, as a surgeon and ...

Coronavirus Crisis Is Trump’s Time to Lead

Not until well into the Democratic debate Tuesday night did the COVID-19 coronavirus come up, and it was Mike Bloomberg, not a CBS moderator, who raised it: "The president fired ...

Fat People Are Killing Us

Last Friday was World Obesity Day, and I celebrated by continuing to stay in shape. Every three years, excess body fat kills twice as many people than the Holocaust supposedly ...

Bad Medicine

Speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the embattled ex-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, defended his choice to increase the price of ...

Vicodin Ingestion Syndrome

A major epidemic in America, which seems to me to have received rather less publicity than its scale would warrant, is the dramatic increase in the number of deaths in the country ...

Obamacare: Mo”€™ Money, Mo”€™ Problems

Last week, the Supreme Court decided we all have to buy government broccoli for $1.7 trillion. This is the analogy fiscal conservatives are using to describe the Obamacare mandate ...

My Mother the Nurse

Obamacare, Romneycare, Ryancare...are you up to speed on this stuff? Don’t look at me. As I’ve already confessed in this space, health is a topic in which I have no ...

Keep Your Ovaries Out of Our Wallets

The wombs of America's women are in the spotlight once again. At a mock hearing arranged by DC Democrats in February, a lantern-jawed 30-year-old law student named Sandra Fluke ...

The $600 Penis Pump

You remember the $600 toilet seat. How could you forget? Back in the 1980s, reporters, cartoonists, and comedians relished the revelation that the Pentagon paid that much for an ...

Staph Infection

Our Scary, Filthy, Killer Hospitals

One would have to be flea-brained to deny that if we had no hospitals, millions of us who are now alive would be dead. Then again, only a paramecium’s cerebrum would deny that a ...

Aggressive Care for the Elderly: Too Much, Too Late

Lying on the backboard, a frail little old lady moaned with discomfort. She had fallen beside her bed in the nursing home and was then tightly bound by straps onto the backboard, ...

Nancy Pelosi

Waive Me

Hear that? It’s the escalating cry of American employers and workers trying to hold on to their health care benefits in the age of stifling Obama health insurance mandates: ...

Rep. Paul Ryan

Simplify, Simplify

Stopped in at my local office-supplies megastore for some printer ink cartridges. Total expenditure: $47.78. Total length of printed receipt: 341/2 inches"€”nearly a yard. Most ...

How Wall Street Destroyed Private Medicine

At my annual check-up, my doctor handed me a sheet explaining the reasons for office fee increases for Medicare Patients. It is worth reporting at length. Medicare fixes the ...


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