Brock could have very easily died had he not come to Bismarck. Canada had not enough staff and had no idea what was wrong with him and why he kept getting sicker.

This is from the New York Post : http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_GCJDJyjiBPnoXPOkTu1x8L

CANADACARE MAY HAVE KILLED NATASHA
By CORY FRANKLIN
Last Updated: 3:51 AM, March 26, 2009
Posted: 2:47 AM, March 26, 2009
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COULD actress Natasha Richardson's tragic death have been prevented if her skiing accident had occurred in America rather than Canada?
Canadian health care de-emphasizes widespread dissemination of technology like CT scanners and quick access to specialists like neurosurgeons. While all the facts of Richardson's medical care haven't been released, enough is known to pose questions with profound implications.
Richardson died of an epidural hematoma - - a bleeding artery between the skull and brain that compresses and ultimately causes fatal brain damage via pressure buildup. With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive.

Could Richardson have received this care? Where it happened in Canada, no. In many US resorts, yes.
Between noon and 1 p.m., Richardson sustained what appeared to be a trivial head injury while skiing at Mt. Tremblant in Quebec. Within minutes, she was offered medical assistance but declined to be seen by paramedics.
But this delay is common in the early stages of epidural hematoma when patients have few symptoms - - and there is reason to believe her case wasn't beyond hope at that point.
About three hours after the accident, the actress was taken to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien, in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, 25 miles from the resort. Hospital spokesman Alain Paquette said she was conscious upon reaching the hospital about 4 p.m.
The initial paramedic assessment, travel time to the hospital and time she spent there was nearly two hours - - the crucial interval in this case. Survival rates for patients with epidural hematomas, conscious on arrival to a hospital, are good.
Richardson's evaluation required an immediate CT scan for diagnosis - - followed by either a complete removal of accumulated blood by a neurosurgeon or a procedure by a trauma surgeon or emergency physician to relieve the pressure and allow her to be transported.
But Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts is a town of 9,000 people. Its hospital doesn't have specialized neurology or trauma services. It hasn't been reported whether the hospital has a CT scanner, but CT scanners are less common in Canada.
Compounding the problem, Quebec has no helicopter services to trauma centers in Montreal. Richardson was transferred by ambulance to Hospital du Sacre-Coeur, a trauma center 50 miles away in Montreal - - a further delay of over an hour.
Because she didn't arrive at a facility capable of treatment (with the diagnosis perhaps still unknown) until six hours after the injury, in all likelihood by that time the pressure buildup was fatal. The Montreal hospital could not have saved her life.
Her initial refusal of medical care accounted for only part of the delay. She was still conscious when seen at a hospital and her death might have been prevented if the hospital either had the resources to diagnose and institute temporizing therapy, or air transport had taken her quickly to Montreal.
What would have happened at a US ski resort? It obviously depends on the location and facts, but according to a colleague who has worked at two major Colorado ski resorts, the same distance from Denver as Mt. Tremblant is from Montreal, things would likely have proceeded differently.
Assuming Richardson initially declined medical care here as well, once she did present to caregivers that she was suffering from a possible head trauma, she would've been immediately transported by air, weather permitting, and arrived in Denver in less than an hour.
If this weren't possible, in both resorts she would've been seen within 15 minutes at a local facility with CT scanning and someone who could perform temporary drainage until transfer to a neurosurgeon was possible.
If she were conscious at 4 p.m., she'd most likely have been diagnosed and treated about that time, receiving care unavailable in the local Canadian hospital. She might've still died or suffered brain damage but her chances of surviving would have been much greater in the United States.
American medicine is often criticized for being too specialty-oriented, with hospitals "duplicating" too many services like CT scanners. This argument has merit, but those criticisms ignore cases where it is better to have resources and not need them than to need resources and not have them.
Cory Franklin is a physician who lives outside of Chicago. 2009 Chicago Tribune; distributed by Tribune Media Services.


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 This excerpt from Going Rouge: Sarah Palin-An American Nightmare appears in the November 30, 2009 issue of The Nation.

...she somberly raised the decision to move the "In God We Trust" motto to the edge of the presidential dollar coin. "Who calls a shot like that?" she said, insinuatingly. Actually, George W. Bush did. It was an embarrassing gaffe that also neatly captures the key elements of Palinism: fact-free conspiracy, hollow patriotism and public religiosity - - the very coins of Republican populist rage.


Consider the role Palin played in the "death panel" hysteria. The source was Betsy McCaughey.... But it was Palin who popularized the term on Facebook. "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide.... Such a system is downright evil." Palin put a face on its supposed victims (her baby, Trig), contrived the expression "death panel" (linking it directly to Obama), raised the specter of euthanasia in the service of a state-run economy.


Palin's power lies not in her capacity to write legislation or win national elections but in her ability to torpedo the democratic process.


In the Palin universe, her unwed pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol, is somehow a poster child for abstinence-only education. An aggressive advocate for opening up oil reserves to drilling, she labels herself pro-environment, a stance exemplified by her love of shooting animals or her husband's hobby of racing snowmobiles across the tundra.


The secret to her success: neither the left nor the right can get enough of her.
  Reply...

She'll make a lot of money..The Wingbat fantasy girl"
She looks great, till she opens her mouth. Reply...

Sarah, Plain And Lying

The release of Sarah Palin's book, "Going Rogue: An American Life," has led to a number of attempts to check her facts. Surprise, surprise! The book takes some liberties with the facts. One such claim? According to the AP, Palin writes that she always made a point of traveling frugally, opting to avoid "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels. Actually, the former Alaska governor once billed her state $20K for travel expenses for her children - - for events they weren't even invited to. Other reports estimated that Palin spent $150,000 on a clothing shopping spree during last year's campaign. To be fair though, she didn't spend it on robes and slippers...

Palin writes that she ran for Governor on small campaign contributions, rejecting donations from big-time donors. According to the AP, "Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC."

"Going Rogue" features Palin's criticism of an aide to Gov. Frank Murkowski, Palin's predecessor, for representing the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline, and then leaving for a job with a highly-paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin claims her administration ended such "revolving door" relationships between the Alaska government and special interests. In reality, says the AP, the leader of Palin's own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the pipeline-building rights.

A series of emails obtained by The Huffington Post reveal the truth behind Palin's famous Saturday Night Live appearance. In the book, Palin says that "from the beginning, I liked the idea that John and I might appear on the show. 'Let's do this,' I said. 'Let's go on and neutralize some of this, and have some fun!'" The e-mails paint a slightly different picture. One dated October 14, 2008, quotes Palin as saying she is "not thrilled" about the idea. "Not after seeing clips of what they've been playing re: my family," she writes to top McCain campaign aides. "I had no idea how gross 'celebrities' on that show and in other celebrity venues could get when it comes to family and other aspects of my life that have nothing to do with seeking the vp slot. These folks are whack."

Remember Palin's infamous interview with Katie Couric? Well, according to Palin, she only sat-down with Couric because Nicole Wallace, former McCain campaign staffer, pushed her to help the news anchor's "self-esteem." Wallace tells a different tale: "The notion that there was a conversation that I tried to cajole her into an interview with Katie Couric is fiction," Wallace said. "I am not someone who throws around the word self-esteem. It is a fictional description."

No Palin interview is complete without a mention of Ronald Reagan, so of course her book includes some praise for the former U.S. President. According to Palin, the Reagan-era recession was far worse than what the U.S. is currently faced with, but he "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all." Hit us with Reply...