Trump's Horrendous Mismanagement of the Coronavirus Pandemic: Don't Say You Weren't Warned

 The Washington Post published just the latest in a growing genre, short-term retrospectives on how the Trump administration horrendously mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic.  (See earlier examples here in Vox and here in the New York Times)  While no country was able to cruise through the pandemic, and some arguably have done as badly or worse as the United States, our country seemed uniquely positioned to fight a pandemic and lead the world in doing so.  We were the richest, spent the most on health care, and had an enviable record - at least prior to the Trump administration - pandemic preparedness.

However, so far we have failed, badly, fatally, and shamefully.

We Warned You

We cannot claim any ability to predict pandemics.  We never predicted this one.  However, on Health Care Renewal we published warning starting in early 2016 that were Donald J Trump to be elected president of the US, he would prove to be uniquely badly qualified to lead on health care and public health.

No Health Policy, No Health Policy Advisers, Word Salads in Response to Health Care Questions

In February, 2016 we posted that while Trump was then a leading candidate, he had "no health plan" and "no health care policy advisers." 

His one major health care proposal at the time was to somehow reduce the cost of drugs by $300 billion.  He did not seem to then realize that $300 billion was the then estimated total cost of drug spending. When asked about the mandate provided by the Affordable Care Act his response appeared to be a "word salad."  When asked about health policy during a debate, "Mr Trump only seems to have repeated the notion of selling health insurance across state lines to increase competition, interrupted by non sequiturs insulting Senator Rubio and insurance executives.  The Minnesota Post writer and I could find absolutely no other content."  

My conclusion at the time was:

We live in perilous times when a candidate with such reckless approaches to critical problems continues to attract adulation.

Given this, should it be a surprise that President Trump had no real public health policy, and undermined standard public health approaches to pandemic prevention? 

Per the Vox timeline above, as early as on January 22, 2020, Trump said to CNBC

We have it totally under control.  It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.  It's - going to be just fine.

A History of Promoting Health Care Related Scams

In March, 2016, we posted about the Trump Network, a scam that involved the selling of apparently worthless nutritional supplements using equally worthless diagnostic tests. 

The basis of the scam was a "network-marketing" (or allegedly "pyramid marketing") scheme in which individuals got monetary incentives not just for selling vitamins and tests, but for recruiting new marketers. In this case, the company sold "nutritional supplements" supposedly custom-designed for each customer based on results of a proprietary urine test.  However, 

there appeared to be no publicly available data on how the tests worked, what they actually tested, or how accurate they were.  Then there was no data about how the test results could rationally be used to suggest particular mixes of vitamin supplements.  Also, there was apparently no public data about what vitamins were in the potions sent to consumers, their purity, their strength, etc.

Worse, there was no evidence that any of this provided any benefits to the people who ended up taking the vitamins.

Trump bought the company that initially innovated this scheme and rebranded it the Trump Network in 2009.  He then enthusiastically marketed its products, and careers marketing them. Marketing videos that include Mr Trump are still readily available online,



In the video, Mr Trump said "Americans need a new plan. They need a new dream. The Trump Network means to give millions of people a new hope." 

Nonetheless, by 2011 the Trump Network was finished. 

My conclusions then were:

What damage could such a leader do to health care?  And what other damage could a man who so cavalierly fleeced the little people with his dubious nutritional product marketing scheme  do, especially to the little people who now so unconditionally support him?

Is there a better example showing why we as a society need to completely rethink who gets to become our leaders?  My only hope is we can do that rethinking in time to prevent a disaster.  

How did that work out for you? 

Based on this, is it any surprise that President Trump promoted unproved "cures" for COVID-19 such as hydroxychloroquine; hired "experts" who promoted herd immunity in lieu of a vaccine, which would likely result in millions of deaths were it to be implemented; and even suggested that people should ingest bleach to prevent infection?

According to the Vox timeline, as early as on March 19, 2020, "Trump incorrectly claims that the Food and Drug Administration approved the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine for treating Covid-19."

Denying Asbestos-Related Disease, PTSD and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Asserting Vaccines Cause Autism and Pornography is a Major Public Health Hazard

In November, 2016, just before the election, we posted a catalog of medical/ health care/ public health nonsense that Donald Trump had disseminated.  

These included denying that asbestos is an important health hazard; that post-traumatic stress disorder is a manifestation of weakness, not a mental health problem; that chronic traumatic encephalopathy is "a little ding on the head," not a potentially severe neurological condition; and that vaccines cause autism.  In addition, the 2016 Republican Party platform that Trump endorsed asserted that pornography is a major public health hazard.  

My conclusion at the time was:

It is disturbing when one candidate for the most powerful political office in the US repeatedly disregards the best clinical and public health evidence, and offers ill considered opinions about public health that could potentially harm patients.

Based on this, is it surprising that during a pandemic, President Trump seemed to declare war on biomedical, clinical and public health science, and on professionals who try to implement scientifically based health care and public health?

According to the Vox timeline, as early as on April 17, 2020, "Trump calls on his supporters ... to 'liberate' Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia...." Those supporters later threatened health care professionals advocated a more scientific approach. 

Summary

The history was there.  We were warned.  We paid a tremendous price.  Will we be smarter next time? Will we survive next time?

Politically Driven Public Health Disinformation - the Latest Examples: Dread Infections, Porn Causing White Male Impotence

It used to be all about the money. We had previously noted deceptive public relations practices, including orchestrated stealth health policy advocacy campaigns, to sell health policies favoring big health care corporations.  Third party strategies used patient advocacy organizations and medical societies that had institutional conflicts of interest due to their funding from companies selling health care products and services, or the influence of conflicted leaders and board members.  Some deceptive public relations campaigns were extreme enough to be characterized as propaganda or disinformation.

Also, we had previously noted health care leaders often were unfamiliar with, unsympathetic to, or frankly hostile to their organizations' health care mission, and/or health care professionals' values. Again, most such examples seemed to be generated by leaders who put their organization's revenue, often in parallel with their own compensation ahead of patients' and the public's health.

But now, it seems to be all about religous or political ideology.  We discuss examples of disinformation in the health care and public health spheres that seems driven not by people wanting to sell products and services to make money, but by political ideology.

Rumors of Immigrants with Deadly Infectious Diseases

In 2018, we discussed nonsense about migrants supposedly infected with smallpox (look here).  In 2019, there are rumors of other deadly diseases.

[influenza hospital, Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918, for the Spanish Flu epidemic] 


Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

In April, 2019, Rollcall and the Arizona Republic traced the course of a rumor that Central American migrants seeking US asylum were carrying drug resistant tuberculosis.   According to Rollcall, tt may have been inspired thus:

The unfounded rumor of a public health crisis in Yuma [AZ] follows several viral and misleading stories in conservative media that families seeking asylum from Central America were bringing in dangerous infections.

But the source of the particular story, according to the Republic, was that:

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot said he was told about 12 tuberculosis cases at a San Luis detention center by federal authorities in a March 23 briefing. He shared that information with Lines and said he stands by it still. 

Here "Lines" referred to one Jonathan Lines, "a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party," according to Rollcall. He also is

a board member of the Arizona-Mexico Commission, a 501(c)4 advocacy organization chaired by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey with the aim of boosting bilateral trade, according to an aide.

So,

Lines ... lead a delegation of Republican lawmakers along the border. The group also included Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter of California, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, Dusty Johnson of South Dakota and Pete Stauber of Minnesota.

Also on the trip was Dr John Joyce, a member of the US House of Representatives,

13th District [of Pennsylvania] Republican, a dermatologist by trade, [who] is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and has echoed his calls for a border wall.

Lines had "made unsubstantiated claims about tuberculosis in a video."  Joyce posted the video made by Lines to a Facebook page, since taken down. He also made a

bogus claim that immigrants seeking refuge over the Arizona border brought drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis to the U.S.

Joyce made the false claim in a briefing with reporters during a congressional trip led by Arizona GOP Rep. Andy Biggs last week to the U.S.-Mexican border near Yuma, Ariz. The claim was then echoed in the national press.

'My concern is what about the person who wasn’t coughing and wasn’t recognized as having tuberculosis, and they didn’t come here for treatment for their disease,' Joyce said. 'They could be released in a day and a half and be sitting at a restaurant (table) beside you.'

That was all ultimately debunked.

Local public health officials quickly shot down rumors of an outbreak, clarifying that there have been zero cases of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in the county for the last six to seven years, and further, no present cases of tuberculosis in Yuma at all.

'I can say, after confirming with the Yuma County Health District, there is no drug-resistant tuberculosis in Yuma County,' Kevin Tunell, a Yuma County spokesman told the Arizona Republic. 'Further, there are no cases of tuberculosis involving migrants in Yuma County at this time.'

Who knows, however, how much traction the original warnings about tuberculosis got, and whether those who believed them saw, or credited the attempts to debunk them?

Note here that this little disinformation campaign seem to have been politically motivated, an attempt to justify the Trump administration's claims about the dangers of migrants at the border, and the need to build a wall.  It is particularly disturbing that the disinformation got picked up beyond the shadowy recesses of the web, to be propagated by political leaders into the main stream media.

Ebola Virus

We do not have such detailed information about he track of rumors of Ebola virus infected immigrants at the southern border.  However, the Associated Press did report in June, 2019,

Texas health officials said Tuesday there are no 'suspected or confirmed cases' of Ebola in the state as social media posts have falsely suggested in the wake of immigrants arriving from Africa, including Congo, where an outbreak in has surpassed 2,000 cases.

The false claims, ranging from there is an Ebola 'outbreak' in Texas to reports of a few confirmed cases, have been circulating since April. The erroneous claims are also spreading at a time when Border Patrol officials said last week there has been a 'dramatic' rise in the number of migrants arriving at the Texas border from African countries, although they remain a small fraction of the total number of migrants apprehended.

'We do not have any suspected or confirmed cases of Ebola right now in Texas,' said Lara Anton, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also unaware of any Ebola cases nationwide, spokesman Benjamin Haynes said.

Note that propaganda accusing hated others of being infected with dread diseases is an old part of the authoritarian playbook.  In particular, from the US Holocaust Museum, the second version of the Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew)

contained notorious antisemitic sequences. These scenes compared Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources.

Disinformation about disease outbreaks may make it harder to fight real disease outbreaks.  An op-ed in the New York Times by Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, warned

When the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching a cure and inoculating the population. The second is new, and one you might not have thought much about: fighting the deluge of rumors, misinformation and flat-out lies that will appear on the internet.

He speculated,

Misinformation can affect society’s ability to deal with a pandemic at many different levels. Right now, Ebola relief efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being stymied by mistrust of health workers and government officials.

It doesn’t take much to imagine how this can lead to disaster. Jay Walker, curator of the Tedmed conferences, laid out some of the possibilities in a 2016 essay: people overwhelming and even looting pharmacies trying to get some drug that is irrelevant or nonexistent, people needlessly fleeing cities and leaving them paralyzed, health workers not showing up for work, truck drivers and other essential people being afraid to enter infected areas, official sites like CDC.gov being hacked and discredited. This kind of thing can magnify the health effects of a pandemic many times over, and in extreme cases could lead to a total societal collapse.

Pornography as a Plot to Render White Males Impotent

Sometimes you cannot make this stuff up.  We have discussed, most recently in April, 2019, here, how many US state legislators have been promulgating resolutions condemning pornography as a major public health hazard, despite the lack of clear evidence to justify this belief.  They seem to have put more emphasis on this supposed threat than on much more evidence-based public health hazards.

[Porn has been around for a long time in the US: Times Square, 1973]


We had speculated that this peculiar focus was based on sectarian religious beliefs about the evils of pornography.

Note that since April, another state legislature has gotten on board.  In May, 2019, the Arizona Republic reported,

Republican senators on Monday adopted a measure declaring pornography a public-health crisis and urging the state to 'systemically prevent exposure and addiction.'

The resolution — approved by the House in February — deems the 'societal damage of pornography…beyond the capability of the individual to address alone.'

It argues that porn can lead to human trafficking, sexual abuse, infidelity, low self-esteem and eating disorders, among other issues.

The Republican supporters of this measure did not cite any epidemiological evidence about the dnagers of porn. Their Democratic opponents suggested that the state should focus on better substantiated public health threats, such as the measles outbreak, rising suicide rates, and the opioid epidemic.

Instead, per a Republican backer of the measure:

'Billions of dollars worldwide are being made upon this industry that is poisoning the minds of our citizens,' [Sen Sylvia] Allen said, calling porn 'the root problem for many of the other problems that we're experiencing.' She said it contributes to sexual activity at young ages, sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies.

'It has morphed into something … horrible,' she said.

Although perhaps her remarks had a religious tone, religious justification for her non-evidence-based beliefs was not apparent.


In June, 2019, the New York Times reported that the sudden emphasis on the evils of pornography may have come from not just religious fundamentalist beliefs, but political extremism from the deepest internet.  The article opened with this chilling example,

Buried in the anti-Semitic manifesto of the 19-year-old man who recently opened fire in a synagogue near San Diego is a sentence in which he blames Jews for 'causing many to fall into sin with their role in peddling pornography.'

To enlarge on this example,

some of the suspects in racist attacks and their supporters have invoked the societal ills caused by pornography in manifestos or online forums.

White nationalists, misogynistic clubs and online forums have also drawn a connection between pornography and anti-Semitism. Many of the adherents appear to be young men who blame the prevalence of pornography online for their own struggles and what they perceive as society’s decline.

'Any right-leaning dude on the internet in 2019 is at least aware of the phenomenon,' said Daniel Harper, a podcaster who tracks white nationalism online.

For example, a forum on Reddit is a support group of sorts for 440,000 members who take breaks from masturbation and porn for what they believe to be mental, physical and sexual-health reasons. The Proud Boys, a self-professed 'western chauvinist' group, encouraged a similar message.

These dark beliefs turn out to be nothing new, but perhaps are having more influence in the current era in which political extremists now seen to be welcomed into the mainstream.

The theory that Jews are trying to control the West by using porn to render white Christian men impotent has deep roots. Among its exponents are several elder statesmen of the current white nationalist movement, such as David Duke, who, in a 2016 Twitter feud posted: 'Jews dominate porn — why are ‘Christians’ ok with that?'

During the 2018 race to fill Paul D. Ryan’s Wisconsin congressional seat, long shot candidate Paul Nehlen, a self-avowed 'pro-white' advocate, was suspended from Twitter for circulating a video titled 'The Jewish Role in the Porn Industry.' He has since made other racist comments and been suspended again.

There are also hints that the extemism of white supremicist politics on this topic may not be entirely divorced from the more open condemnation of pornography by some fundamentalist religious groups.

Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said the anti-porn rhetoric was baked into the culture of the violent white supremacist groups he investigated in the 1990s.

'In any sort of fundamentalist culture, there is a desire to control sexuality, and this one’s no different,' he said.

Discussion

There have always been snake oil salemen and quck health care practitioners.  Some years ago, proponents of evidence-based medicine (EBM) were dreaming of a world in which honest discussion based on critical thought about the best available evidence from clinical research would lead to a health care revolution.  Early on, though EBM  faced difficulties from deceptive marketing and manipulation and suppression of medical research in service of promotion of drugs, devices, and other medical goods and services.

Now EBM seems under seige by a new wave of propaganda and disinformation, not so much to sell products, but to further religious or political ideologies (for other examples, look here) , or national interests of hostile countries (look here). The health care dysfunction we now see will seem like nothing compared to the dark sort of dysfunction that could be generated by health care and public health based on sectarian beliefs, extreme political ideologies, and the interests of hostile foreign powers. The time for complacency and excuses is past.  Any health care professional who cares about our national future must get on the information barricades and fight for science and the truth in health care.   

From "Forced Injections" to "Sorcery," - More Examples of Partisan Ideology and Religious Sectarianism Trumping Evidence in Health Policy and Public Health

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is about medical-decision making based on critical review of the best applicable evidence from clinical research informed by knowledge og biology and medicine, of the patient's biopsychosocial circumstances, the patient's values, and of ethics and morality.  Advocating EBM, and evidence-based health care, public health, and health policy was sometimes slow going, but at least health care professionals often seemed open to these ideas.

Now we seem to be in an alternate universe.  We have discussed the rising tide of health care and public health policy unsupported by evidence, and sometimes supported only by nonsense.  This tide seems driven by ideology, partisanship, and religious sectarianism.  Furthermore, we see more and more examples of political leaders embracing such policies apparently without any input from health or public health professionals.  We discussed several relevant cases in March, and then April, and included them in an interval summary of the "new (ab)normal in health care dysfunction" in May.

Less than 10 days later, we have accumulated enough new examples to be worth summarizing, presented in alphabetical order by state.

Arizona Republican State Legislators Push Vaccine Exemptions in the Face of a Measles Outbreak, While Decrying Pornography as a Greater Public Health Hazard

In February, 2019, Arizona state legislators were pushing to further relax requirements for and even discourage vaccination.  According to CNN,

Arizona lawmakers voted last week to advance three bills that would make it easier to get exemptions from the state's vaccine requirements, and which would require doctors to provide much more information to patients and families about potential harms that vaccines pose.

The bills cleared the House's Health and Human Services Committee on a 5-4 GOP-led, party-line vote, and head to the Rules Committee on their way to the floor.

HB 2470 adds a religious exemption to the existing law requiring vaccinations, and carries an amendment that would eliminate the requirement for parents to fill out an exemption form that informed them of potential consequences of not vaccinating their children. Those consequences can include requirements to keep children who haven't received vaccinations out of school during disease outbreaks.

HB 2471 requires medical providers to give detailed information about vaccines, including the prescription's package insert, to parents.

It was not clear that any of the legislators pushing these measures based their arguments on evidence about vaccines, the diseases they may prevent, or public health in general. Instead, for example:

the bills' sponsor, Rep. Nancy Barto ... told Capitol Media Services: 'These are not, in my view, anti-vaccine bills. They are discussions about fundamental individual rights.'

In this case, was she expousing a fundamental right of a parent to increase the likelihood that the parent's child would get an unpleasant, and dangerous disease, and to transmit such a disease to others?  Soon after, in March Arizona recorded its first case of the measles, affecting an 11 month old child.

Meanwhile, Arizona state legislators decided to worry about the public health hazards, not of the measles outbreak, but of ... pornography.  We had noted also  in March that Republican legislators were pushing the notion, unsupported by evidence, that pornography is a public health crisis.  In May, CBS reported,

A Republican-backed measure in the Arizona State Senate to formally denounce pornography as a public health crisis has passed. The resolution, which does not require the governor's signature for approval, will now go to the secretary of state to be certified. According to text of the bill, the legislation claims that pornography 'perpetuates a sexually toxic environment that damages all areas of our society.'

It goes on to claim, without any medical citation, that pornography is 'potentially biologically addictive and requires increasingly shocking material for the addiction to be satisfied' leading to 'extreme degradation.'

Again, the resolution seemed to have only Republican support. It was "Introduced by Republican Rep. Michele Udall and backed by six other Republican co-sponsors...."

While there is very good evidence that measles vaccination prevents the disease, that the disease can have serious, sometimes fatal consequences, and that measles is easily transmitted to others; and there is no good evidence that pornography is harmful, the legislators treated the latter is a more serious threat.  I saw nothing to suggest they had any personal experience in medicine, health care, or public health, or that they consulted anyone with any expertise in their areas.  Although they cited "individual rights" to support vaccine exemption, they were silent about rights to free expression that might have been affected by their crusade against pornography.  Finally, all the legislators prominently involved in these moves were from one party.  


Oregon Republican Party Derides Vaccinations as "Forced Injections"

This story comes via Vice News on May 8. In response to a bill sponsored by Oregon Democrats that would remove the "moral exemption" for vaccination,

Oregon’s Republican Party isn’t on board with this whole 'forced injections' thing — otherwise known as mandating kids get their shots against life-threatening illnesses like measles, mumps and rubella.

'Oregon Democrats were just joking about 'my body, my choice' while rammimg (sic) forced injections down every Oregon parent's throat,' the state’s official GOP account tweeted Monday night, apparently referencing the Democrats’ argument that Republicans shouldn’t interfere with a woman’s ability to access abortion.

Note that parents are making decisions about measles vaccinations, which are injections, for their children, not themselves in this context.  Although Oregon apparently has not had its own measles outbreak, there is one in neighboring Washington state.  According to Vice News, the vaccination rate in some parts of Oregon may be as low as 80%, reducing herd immunity and making the risk of an outbreak high.  Again, I could find nothing to suggest whoever in the state Republican party coined the perjorative "forced injections" had any understanding of the data about vaccine effectiveness versus adverse effects, or the severe consequences and transmissability of measles.  Finally, again this seems to be making a discussion of public health partisan.

Texas Republican State Legislators Also Advocate More Vaccine Exemptions, While One Accuses Public Health Authority of "Sorcery"

In April, the Corpus Christi, Texas, Caller-Times reported that four Texas state legislators were introducing bills to make it easier to avoid vaccination,

H.B. 3857: by Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, would prohibit doctors from refusing to see unvaccinated patients. Pediatricians tend not to want unvaccinated children in their waiting rooms, exposing other children and their parents to preventable deadly diseases like measles. Pediatricians are kind of funny that way. So are parents who believe in vaccination.

H.B. 1490: by Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, would make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccinations. But perhaps of bigger concern is that it would prevent the Texas Department of State Health Services from tracking non-medical exemptions. This would make it harder to respond to outbreaks and certainly harder to predict them by identifying potential hotspots.

H.B. 4274: the 'informed consent' bill by Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, would require doctors to explain the benefits and risks in detail, including ingredients in the vaccines. That may sound like a good thing on face value. But this is technical information that is more likely to cause confusion and fear than understanding and appreciation. It's like telling someone what's in menudo first, then trying to get them to eat it.

H.B. 4418: by Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, would let nurses rather than only doctors sign off on vaccination exemptions.

The reporters tried to understand the rationale for these bills.  The best they could do was to write

that it appears to be a mix of political opportunism and ignorance. Suspicion of vaccinations is suspicion, period, and suspicion helps drive votes. The ignorance part is best summed by Zedler, who told the Texas Observer that concerns about measles are overblown because it's beatable 'with antibiotics and that kind of stuff.' The punchline is that antibiotics don't kill viruses and measles is a virus.

Note that we had discussed Rep Zedler's remarkably wrong headed statement that measles can be treated with antibiotics here.

The Caller also noted that

not one of these bill sponsors is a medical professional or scientist. Nor are they acting on the advice of medical professionals or scientists. If they had listened to and heeded medical advice, they would not have filed these bills.

In May, a follow to this story was a bit wilder.  The Washington Post reported on the latest antics of Rep Strickland, who introduced the fourth bill in the list above,

 A Texas state legislator unleashed a vilifying attack on a leading vaccine scientist Tuesday, accusing the doctor of 'sorcery.'

It started with a report published Monday by the Texas Department of State Health Services that noted the state recorded a 14 percent rise in parents opting out of their children’s vaccinations. It was a new statistic that alarmed Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

'We have more than 64,000 kids not getting vaccinated in the state of Texas, and that doesn’t account for the over 300,000 home-schooled kids,' Hotez said during an interview with The Washington Post.

Hotez took his concerns about the report to Twitter. And then he received an unexpected, seething personal attack from the Republican state legislator, Rep. Jonathan Stickland.

New school #vaccine exemption numbers reported yesterday by @TexasDSHS. Now >64,000 kids not vaccinated, with #Austin schools, which can no longer be considered safe for kids. All to benefit outside #antivax groups from CA NY DC monetizing the internet. Where is our leadership? pic.twitter.com/x92gIZT3m9 — Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) May 7, 2019

'You are bought and paid for by the biggest special interest in politics,' Stickland wrote. 'Do our state a favor and mind your own business. Parental rights mean more to us than your self enriching ‘science.’'

In a tweeted response, Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine scientist, noted to Stickland that he does not receive money from the vaccine industry; instead, his work focuses on 'neglected disease vaccines for the world’s poorest people.'

Stickland, who told The Post he is 'not anti-vaccination,' tweeted his response to Hotez.

'Make the case for your sorcery to consumers on your own dime,' the Republican, who represents an area of suburban Fort Worth, snapped back Tuesday. 'Quit using the heavy hand of government to make your business profitable through mandates and immunity.'

(Hotez is not part of a for-profit business, either as a dean at the Baylor College of Medicine or as an endowed chair at the nonprofit Texas Children’s Hospital.)

What was the rationale for Strickland's position?

'It comes down to whether the government should be mandating what’s right for us,' Strickland said. 'I side with the individual.'

So note that Rep Strickland not only apparently falsely accused Dr Hotez, a recognized public health expert, of a conflict of interest, but of "sorcery," that is, witchcraft  The latter was apparently not clearly satirical, or metaphoric.  This suggests that underlying the ideology may be some very extreme religious sectarianism.  It looks like the idea of a witch hunt is not dead.

Discussion

As we noted above, here are three more cases in which politicians in three states, all Republican, none of whom had any obvious background or expertise, in medicine, health care, or public health, pushed public health policies that were unsupported by evidence and poentially harmful.

Their rationale seemed at best ideological, based on "individual rights."  Yet while focusing on the rights of parents to not vaccinate the children, they ignored how these rights could adversely affect the children, and anyone who might be exposed to disease the children might acquire.  In the case of Arizona, they also simultaneously ignored rights of free expression while they denounced pornography.

Since all the polticial leaders involved were Republicans, and in some cases their advocacy was in the context of deriding their Democratic political opposition, it seemed that their public policy stances were also partisan.  Such ideologically based and partisan arguments should alarm health care professionals who are sworn to put the patients' and the public's health ahead of other concerns, including political ideology.

Finally, the last case, which included a state legislator accusing a physician and public health expert not only of having a conflict of interest (which he apparently did not have), but of "sorcery," their public health stances also seemed to come from religious sectarianism, at its most extreme. Such  arguments are also concerning because they seem to be an attempt to use the govenrment to promote a particular set of religious beliefs ahead of patients' and the public's health, and to impose these beliefs on people of other faiths.  This apparently contradicts the US constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion.

True health care reform would require government officials to use evidence, rather than personal ideology and particularly rather than their own religious beliefs when making health care and public health policy. 

    

The Rise of Ideologically or Theologically Based Medicine, Public Health, and Health Policy - Recent Examples

I have long been a proponent of evidence-based medicine (EBM), and evidence-based health care, public health, and health policy.  EBM, for example, is about medical-decision making based on critical review of the best applicable evidence from clinical research informed by knowledge og biology and medicine, of the patient's biopsychosocial circumstances, the patient's values, and of ethics and morality.  We have discussed challenges to EBM based on manipulation and suppression of clinical research, often in the financial interests of those hawking particular medical products of services.

A newer challenge to evidence-based medicine, health care, public health and health policy seems not to be commercial, but ideologically or theologically based.  I noticed the following recent cases that illustrate this concern. 


Theologically Based Medicine and Public Health Promoted at the DHHS

In July, 2018, we discussed the case of Dr Diane Foley, who was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs in the US Department of Health and Humas Services (DHHS).  At the time we noted that Dr Foley publicly proclaimed that adoption of children is harmful because it is a "double death;" and teaching children about barrier contraception is harmful because it is "sexually harassing."  Dr Foley also ran an organization called Life Network, which ran so-called "crisis pregnancy centers," which ran abstinence-only sexual education programs in part based on Dr Foley's beliefs about the harms of teaching about barrier contraception.  There seems to be no good evidence about the sort of harms Dr Foley attributed to adoption or barrier contraception.


Nonetheless, on April 4, 2019, ReWire reported that the DHHS would give control of  Title X federal family planning and teen pregnancy prevention and the Office for Adolescent Health (OAH), which administers the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program to the Office of Population Affairs, which is run by Dr Foley.  In response, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA),

the ranking Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee with oversight over HHS, questioned the Trump administration’s motivations behind the plan. 'It is unclear how the reorganization will result in better policies and services for those served by these offices, including adolescents, women, low-income communities, and individuals with infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS,' she wrote. 'In fact, it is difficult to understand how this reorganization does anything other than consolidate control at HHS headquarters and prioritize ideology over the needs of the women, teenagers, and children the affected programs serve.'

In fact, there is reason to believe that Dr Foley based her beliefs more on her ideas about theology than on a political ideology.  Life Network's website has stated (see our post linked above) 

'Through our pregnancy centers we have the opportunity to see God use the miracle of ultrasound to change and save lives,' Life Network’s website says. The first element of its mission is 'presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ.'

Thus the Trump administration seems to be consolidating power over US government family planning programs in the hands of an individual who is basing her decision making not on medical or public health evidence, but on her version of a particular type of Christian theology.

Ideologically or Theologically Based Public Health Policy about Pornography Promoted in Another State Legislature

NBC Montana reported on April 16 that Montana legislators are the latest to join the quest to label pornography a public health hazard.  

One resolution state house lawmakers are taking up in Helena would label pornography as a public health hazard in Montana.

If passed, Montana would have to address pornography through education, research and state policy.

The state would have to implement measures to prevent pornography exposure and addiction, offer recovery help, and create programs that hold broader influences accountable.

The proposed resolution included assertions that, for example, pornography causes

violence and abuse of women and children by presenting rape and abuse of women and children as harmless

and

psychological and physical distress, deviant sexual arousal, difficulty in forming or maintaining intimate relationships, and problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction

and

increases sex trafficking of women, sex trafficking of children, child sexual abuse, and child pornography;

Yet as we noted in March, 2019, there is no clear evidence supporting any of these assertions.  So Montana Republican legislators join those in Arizona, and also those in Kansas, Utah, and Idaho (look here)  in pushing legislation that attacks the "public health" hazards of pornography based on no clear evidence.

The genesis of the notion that pornography is a dire public health hazard is not clear.  As we noted here, though, in Utah, at least, beliefs about pornography could come from the doctrine of the Church of Latter Day Saints, which includes:

'depiction, in pictures or writing, that is intended to inappropriately arouse sexual feelings' to be 'a tool of the adversary,' the descriptor Mormons often use for Satan.

At any rate, since the proponents of these measures all seem to be Republicans, there also is suspicion that their beliefs about pornography are ideologically-based.

Ideologically Based Beliefs About Vaccination Policy Espoused by President Trump, the Governor of Kentucky, and in Multiple State Legislatures

We recently discussed how a Russian disinformation campaign has led parents in the US and elsewhere to avoid vaccinating their children for various diseases, in turn leading to outbreaks of measles in the US and other countries. Along with this disinformation campaign, various government leaders have also espoused views about the benefits and harms of vaccination, and vaccination policy that are virtually free of evidenciary support.

In March, 2019, the Louisville Courier Journal reported on the example set by the Republican Governor of Kentucky. 

Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview Tuesday that he deliberately exposed all nine of his children to chickenpox so they would catch the disease and become immune.

'Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox,' Bevin said in an interview with WKCT, a Bowling Green talk radio station. 'They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children. They were miserable for a few days, and they all turned out fine.'

Governor Bevin seemed to imply that chickenpox is an annoying disease, but one that does not cause severe adverse effects.  However, varicella is not innocous.  According to the CDC clinical summary, it can cause secondary bacterial skin infections in children.  Rarely in children, but more commonly in adolescents, adults, pregnant women, and people with immunocompromise, it can cause severe complications including pneumonia, sepsis, and various other secondary bacterial infections.  Varicella is highly contagious, so unvaccinated children can infect other unvaccinated people who are more susceptible to complications.

Yet Governor Bevin ignored all that.  His rationale for not vaccinating his own children and not mandating varicella vaccine for other children was conveyed in his interview.

Bevin also suggested that the government stay out of mandating vaccines. In Kentucky, varicella (chickenpox) is among vaccines mandated for all children entering kindergarten, though parents may seek religious exemptions or provide medical proof that a child has already had the disease.

'And I think, why are we forcing kids to get it?' Bevin said in the radio interview, speaking about the chickenpox vaccine. 'If you are worried about your child getting chickenpox or whatever else, vaccinate your child. ... But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason they choose otherwise. This is America. The federal government should not be forcing this upon people. They just shouldn’t.'

So his ideology that "the federal government should not be forcing this upon people" seemed to trump any risks children run because their parents choose to not vaccinate them, even just "for some reason."

The Louisville Courier Journal also interviewed "Dr. Robert Jacobson, a pediatrician and expert in vaccines and childhood diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,

Before vaccination was available, chickenpox killed as many as 100 adults and children a year, he said.

'I think it is taking a big risk that you don’t need to take,' Jacobson said. 'It's not just a risk your children are going to have. You're putting other people in the community at risk because of your decision.'

 Note that this is not the first time that Governor Bevin expressed beliefs about public health that were not evidence-based.  In this post, we noted that in 2018 he suggested that mass school shootings are due to exposure to television shows about zombies, and in 2019 he suggested that exposing children to severely cold weather is risk free.  So he does seem consistent in the absurdity of his public health beliefs.  Unfortunately, he is in a position to endanger the public's health according to these beliefs. 

There are other US state level political leaders who seem to rely on idology rather than evidence in making decisions about health care and public health.  On April 16, 2019, Politico reported widespread attempts by Republican state legislators to free people from requirements that they vaccinate their children,

Democrats in six states — Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Washington, New York and Maine — have authored or co-sponsored bills to make it harder for parents to avoid vaccinating their school-age children, and mostly faced GOP opposition. Meanwhile in West Virginia and Mississippi, states with some of the nation’s strictest vaccination laws, Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to expand vaccine exemptions, although it’s not yet clear how much traction they have.

In Washington state, which has one of the biggest measles outbreaks, a bill in the state Senate to narrow vaccine exemptions passed through the health committee without the support of a single Republican. The same thing happened in legislative committees in Colorado and Maine over the past week.

Again, the Republicans seemed to base their attempts to decrease vaccination requirements on their ideology of expanding personal choice.

many are loath to diminish the right of parental control over their children’s bodies, and yield that power to the government.

Politico provided an example of a New York state legislative leader who opposed a bill that would limit religiosu exemptions to vaccination mandates.

Andrew Raia, ranking Republican on the New York Assembly’s health committee, said he wouldn't support the bill. While not totally convinced by constituents who link their children’s autism on vaccines, and unaware of any real religious injunction against vaccination, he said, 'I’m not a religious leader, and I’m not a scientist either, so it’s my job to weigh both sides.'

I suggest that his arguments are at best evidence free, but also could have been

complicated by the fact that President Donald Trump and two of his Republican primary foes, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) an ophthalmologist, and Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who is now HUD secretary, both voiced support for disproven theories linking vaccine to autism during a 2016 debate.

In fact, as reported by the (UK) Independent in 2018,

On more than 20 occasions, Mr Trump has tweeted about there being a link between vaccines and autism, something experts at the government’s leading public health institute say is not true. He also repeated the claim during a Republican primary debate, a remark that was immediately dismissed as false by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

Summary

Outbreaks of infectious diseases previously considered controlled now bedevil the US and other developed countries.  They seem to be caused in part by parents' resistance to vaccinating their children, despite strong evidence that the vaccines are relatively effective and have harms that exceed their benefits, both for the children vaccinated and the public health.  In turn, the resistance to vaccination seems increasingly inspired by government leaders whose actions are based on ideology, or sometimes theology.

The ideologically based arguments seem to come from some sort of a crude libertarianism that holds that parents should be free to choose not to vaccinate, more or less regardless of the effects of their decision on their children, or other people.  Such arguments should alarm health care professionals who are sworn to put the patients' and the public's health ahead of other concerns, including political ideology.

The theologically based arguments are also concerning because they seem to be an attempt to use the govenrment to promote a particular set of religious beliefs ahead of patients' and the public's health, and to impose these beliefs on people of other faiths.  This apparently contradicts the US constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion.

True health care reform would require government officials to use evidence, rather than personal ideology and particularly rather than their own religious beliefs when making health care and public health policy. 

Another Missing Link Discovered: 1969 IRS Rule Change Allowed US Hospitals to Discriminate Among Patients Based on Ability to Pay

Prelude: the Suits in the Elevator

Another long night on call of my interniship was over.  Having managed to wolf down breakfast and brush my teeth, disheveled and in unwashed scrubs I stumbled into the elevator on my way to the wards.  In it were some of well-groomed people in nice suits.  They looked at me with wrinkled noses, oozing disdain.  I wondered who they were: pharmaceutical representatives?  Somewhat troubled, I disembarked the elevator and went to work, just another house-staff cog in the teaching hospital patient care machine.  The suits went up to the management floor.  Later I would learn they were top hospital executives....

Introduction: the Rise of Health Care Dysfunction

Despite some protestations to the contrary (e.g., here), the US health care system has been plagued by dysfunction.  According to a recent Commonwealth Fund study, the US was ranked 11 out of 11 in health care quality, but 1 out of 11 in costs.  Traditionally, health care reform has targeted ongoing problems in the cost, accessibility and quality of health care, but reform efforts have yielded little improvement.  (For example, recently the Accessible Care Act seems to have improved access, but hardly addressed cost or quality.)

In the early 2000s, before we started Health Care Renewal,  we encountered lots of disgruntled health care professionals who thought that health care was going off the rails, but had no idea what to do about it.  Some crude qualitative interviews, and a lot of delving into news stories about health care dysfunction suggested a number of factors that seemed to enable increasing dysfunction, but were not much discussed.  They included threats to the integrity of the clinical data base, including manipulation and suppression of clinical research; deceptive marketing; distortion of health care regulation and policy making; bad leadership and governance; concentration of power, abandonment of health care as a calling, perverse incentives putting money ahead of patient care, teaching, and research; the cult of leadership; managerialism; impunity enabling corruption; and taboos preventing honest discussion. (Look here for details.)

As a medical student, I was idealistic, thinking it was all about taking care of patients in a humane way, based on science. Was I just completely naive?  Others, however, have described health care in the US from the end of World War II into the 1960s as underfunded, but earnest in pursuit of the mission.  It was also a very human affair, not based in large organizations and big business.  Physicians practiced as individuals or in small groups.  Hospitals were local, community-based charitable organizations or teaching hospitals tied to single medical schools.  Insurance was largely provided by regional non-profit organizations or the government. 

We seem to have stumbled down a dark path since those days. Now everything revolves around huge hospital systems and for-profit corporations.  Physicians are now largely corporate employees.  It is all about money.  And we have the most most expensive health care system in world.  How did we get from there to here?

Early on, many of the people we met seemed to insist that it was all inevitable.  Some changes admittedly were not too hard to explain.  For example, after government started providing insurance to the elderly and poor, and research spending ramped up, costs rose, and in the Nixon administration the government outsourced cost control to commercial managed care.  By the 1980s, as Ludmerer wrote in Time to Heal (p 365), under pressure from managed care:

The field of hospital administration became more tightly affiliated with programs of business administration, and hospital administrators increasingly held M.B.A. degrees.  The new hospital administrators assuemed business titles (president or chief executive officer rather than superintendent or director), demanded and received corporate levels of compensation, and retained hordes of management consultants....

Now I could recognize those suits in the elevator.

However, the roots of the huge changes that happened in the US from the end of World War II to now were frequently unexplained.  Why could not business oriented management still put patients first? Why were the new managers so ill-informed, ignorant of or even hostile to the health care mission, self-interested, conflicted or even corrupt? Why did regulation of health care seem so big, yet so ineffectual?  Why were the prices of some goods and services so far beyond any value that they could have provided?  Etc, etc, etc.

Since the early 2000s, we have learned more about the historyof health care dysfunction, and also stumbled upon some missing links that added to the explanation. 

For example, we have discussed:
- how market fundamentalist lawyers challenged the power of medical associations to enforce medical ethics, allowing the commercialization of medical practice (look here)
- how government failure to enforce the responsible corporate officer doctrine allowed the impunity of health care corporate management (look here)
- how an obscure AMA committee (Resource Based Relative Value Scale Update Committee, or RUC) took control of the government process for setting physician payments, hugely favoring payments for procedures and invasive treatments.

This week, we found another missing link.

An Obscure IRS Rule that Allowed Hospitals to Discriminate Among Patients According to Ability to Pay

On March 5, StatNews published a commentary by Patrick Masseo entitled "IRS Rule Changes Helped Create a Payment-Focused Hospital System."  It noted

Often overlooked are small regulatory changes, such as adjustments to Internal Revenue Service codes over the past 70 years, that have allowed hospital care to evolve from a charitable mission into a profit-driven industry.

The historical background is

In 1956, as hospitals were evolving into centers for medical interventions, the Internal Revenue Service issued Revenue Ruling 56-185, which applied solely to hospitals. This ruling was the first to allow hospitals to qualify for federal tax exemptions if they fulfilled qualifications related to providing health care. That represented a deviation from the previous requirement of affiliation with a religious institution or fulfilling another charitable purpose.

Revenue Ruling 56-185 established four criteria that a hospital must fulfill to qualify for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status:

- be organized as a nonprofit charitable organization for the purpose of operating a hospital for the care of the sick

- be operated to the extent of its financial ability for those not able to pay for the services rendered and not exclusively for those who are able and expected to pay

- not restrict the use of its facilities to a particular group of physicians and surgeons, such as a medical partnership or association

- net earnings must not benefit directly or indirectly any private stakeholder or individual

Through criteria 2 of Revenue Ruling 56-185, the IRS — not the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of government — mandated that tax-exempt hospitals must provide care to patients who were unable to pay without an expectation of payment.

 However, for reasons that remain unclear,

  

In 1969, the IRS issued Revenue Ruling 69-545, which updated the federal tax exemption requirements for hospitals. This ambiguous ruling, written as a case example rather than a defined list, included a subtle change of language that permitted tax-exempt hospitals to restrict access to care depending on a person’s ability to pay. For many individuals, that meant their health insurance status. According to Revenue Ruling 69-545, a hospital that operates as described as follows (emphasis added) would qualify:

The hospital operates a full time emergency room and no one requiring emergency care is denied treatment. The hospital otherwise ordinarily limits admissions to those who can pay the cost of their hospitalization, either themselves, or through private health insurance, or with the aid of public programs such as Medicare. Patients who cannot meet the financial requirements for admission are ordinarily referred to another hospital in the community that does serve indigent patients.

This language is a subtle yet monumental contradiction of the IRS’s original 1956 guidance, which stated that a 501(c)(3) hospital 'must not, however, refuse to accept patients in need of hospital care who cannot pay for services.'

Revenue Ruling 69-545 was neither an act of Congress nor a flashy executive order, yet it laid the foundation for the U.S. health care system to become driven by payment, a privilege of the rich and a necessity continually out of reach for the poor.

There was almost no public discussion of its change and its implications

The year after this ruling appeared, The Tax Lawyer, a publication of the American Bar Association, described the 1969 rule change as 'representing a shift by the [Internal Revenue] Service from requiring the admission of a substantial number of charitable cases in order to qualify for exempt status.'

A 1971 paper written by Marilyn G. Rose for the Catholic University Law Review correctly forecast the implications of this new ruling. 'Most importantly, this tax policy [Revenue Ruling 69-545] operates as unwise health policy by perpetuating and enlarging the gulf between the health care available to the rich and that available to the poor,' Rose wrote.

Beyond those publications, I found little evidence of journalistic coverage of the 1969 rule change. Only a handful of academic papers on it were published between the 1970s and the 1990s.

New IRS rulings have not substantially changed the effects of the 1969 ruling.  Since 1969, but especially in the last 30 years, we have seen increasing evidence of hospital leaders' hostility to the traditional mission that put patient care ahead of all else, including revenue generation.  Instead, even in non-profit institutions, leaders have appeared to adopt the shareholder value dogma propogated by business schools, putting revenue ahead of all else (look here).  Of course, as revenue goes up, hospital management has been able to command even greater compensation.  When revenue generation is the main goal, perverse incentives drive ignorance, conflicts of interest, even crime and corruption.

And yet it took 50 years to discover this missing link.

And it raises further questions.  Who was responsible for the 1969 regulatory change?  What was the motivation for it?  Why did it attract so little attention at the time?  Why did nobody really notice it for 50 years?
 
Discussion

Those who are ignorant of history... are unlikely to be able to fully challenge its effects.

As we learn more about the hidden history that explains where we are today, a bigger meta-question is why there has been so little curiosity about the roots of our current health care (and broader political economic) dysfunction, at least until now.

When people do not look to answer questions, it  may be that they fear what they will find.  

While we try to push for all the reforms that are so badly neeed, we are handicapped by our ignorance about how our current troubles came to be.  We must vigorously seek reform while simultaneously vigorously investigating why the world went wrong. 

Trumping the Evidence - The Donald Denies Asbestos Related Disease, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy but Asserted Vaccines Cause Autism

One of the main causes of health care dysfunction identified by demoralized health care professionals in our 2003 qualitative study was threats to evidence-based medicine, and by extension, evidence-based public health and health policy.(1) Since then, we have frequently discussed threats such as manipulation and suppression of clinical research to further vested interests, and distortion of research dissemination, such as ghost written articles, often enabled by individual and institutional conflicts of interest.

These and other causes of health care dysfunction which we discuss, however, have hardly been the stuff of political debates. In particular, US presidential campaigns often feature very bland discussions of health care, when they feature them at all. These discussions, furthermore, usually are limited to health insurance, but rarely challenge the unusual American system which relies on for-profit health care insurance.

So Health Care Renewal usually does not provide much content relevant to political campaigns.

The 2016 presidential election season has not been usual. True, one campaign, that of Hillary Clinton, has featured the detailed, but relatively bland policy points that we usually see.

Her opponent, Donald Trump, is very different. He is known for wide ranging unscripted comments. In particular (barely) reported instances, his comments have included apparent attacks on the clinical or public health research evidence base. (I used the word "appearent" since nothing Mr Trump writes or says is ever that clear.)

Denied Asbestos Related Disease

The best reported example is the oldest. A Mother Jones article from June, 2016, noted that in Mr Trump's presumably ghost-written book, Art of the Comeback, he wrote that asbestos is "100 percent safe, once applied," and it "got a bad rap." He also claimed that

the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.

It is possible that these comments arose from Mr Trump's resentment of the costs of asbestos removal from his many real estate holdings.

Nonetheless, the evidence that asbestos is a major health hazard is old, but quite clear. (See summaries by The National Cancer Institute, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration.) Asbestos can cause asbestosis, which may lead to severe respiratory insufficiency, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. The application of asbestos can be very hazardous, but once applied it can still endanger not only those who remove it, but firefighters, other first responders, etc.

Ridiculed the Concept of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

On October 3, 2016, the Washington Post reported,

Donald Trump told a group of military veterans on Monday that some members of the military develop mental health issues because they are not 'strong' and 'can't handle it.

'When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over. And you're strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it,' the Republican presidential nominee told an audience of military veterans at an event in Northern Virginia on Monday morning.

Allowing for Mr Trump's famously chronically garbled syntax, he appeared to say that PTSD is not a mental illness, but simply a manifestation of weakness. However, there seems to be no data to support this assertion, rather the contrary seems more likely to be true (for example, see the links in this article.)

Scoffed at Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

In a story apparently only reported in the sports sections of the media (for example, here in USA Today on October 12, 2016), Mr Trump appeared to dismiss the dangers of concussions,

Trump likewise demonstrated a poor grasp of concussions and lashed out at the NFL when he commented on a woman who passed out in the crowd.

From the speech:

'That woman was out cold, and now she’s coming back. We don’t go by these new, and very much softer, NFL rules. Concussions..’oh, oh! Got a little ding on the head. No, no, you can’t play for the rest of the season.’ Our people are tough.'

This isn’t the first time Trump has ridiculed the NFL for its increased awareness of brain injuries. At a rally in Iowa earlier this year, he made similar comments.

Via Mic:

'Football’s become soft. Football has become soft,' GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said (twice) at a rally in Iowa on Sunday.

'But football’s become soft like our country has become soft,' he added to cheers and nods. 'It’s true. It’s true.'

'What used to be considered a great tackle, a violent head-on [tackle]. … You used to see these tackles and it was incredible to watch, right?' Trump said.

Rather than being a "little ding on the head," there is pretty convincing evidence that concussions can lead to real neurological problems. See the website of the Boston University CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) Center, which provides this summary,

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head. CTE has been known to affect boxers since the 1920s. However, recent reports have been published of neuropathologically confirmed CTE in retired professional football players and other athletes who have a history of repetitive brain trauma. This trauma triggers progressive degeneration of the brain tissue, including the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau. These changes in the brain can begin months, years, or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement. The brain degeneration is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, progressive dementia.

The Center's personnel wrote a 2009 review article(2), available here, which supplies considerably more detail.

Asserted Vaccines Cause Autism

A September, 20, 2016, Huffington Post article noted that Mr Trump has been a proponent of the theory that vaccines cause autism at least since 2012,

The Republican nominee is a full-blown proponent of the notion that vaccines cause autism, a theory that researchers have studied and rejected over and over after a medical journal helped launch the notion with a 1998 article since retracted.

Lots of autism and vaccine response. Stop these massive doses immediately. Go back to single, spread out shots! What do we have to lose.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2012

I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

Again, at best, the link between vaccines and autism is very controversial at best.  Most reviews suggest that the evidence supporting any relationship is very limited, for example, see the 2003 review by Wilson et al(3) and the 2016 review by Taylor et al.(4)

The Republican Party Platform Which Trump Presumably Approved Asserted that Pornography is a Public Health Hazard

At least partially related is this story, as reported by CNN in July, 2016,

The Republican Party will declare internet pornography a 'public health crisis' under an amendment added to the draft party platform Monday at preliminary meetings in Cleveland.

North Carolina delegate Mary Frances Forrester successfully proposed the amendment in a subcommittee of the platform committee Monday morning.

'The internet must not become a safe haven for predators,' the provision states. 'Pornography, with its harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the life of millions....'

It appears that this provision conflates adult and child pornography.  There seems to be no good evidence that adult pornography creates health risks.

(Note: there is some irony in this story, as Mr Trump has appeared, albeit fully dressed, in several softcore porn videos, see stories here and here.  He also nominally wrote a racy novel, which was actually ghost written, see story here.  Also, his current wife also has appeared in one "lad mag" photo shoot sans clothes, see story here.)  

Comments

We have been discussing threats to the clinical and public health evidence base for a while.  We are used to discussing distortions of the evidence base that serve to support vested interests.

However, I cannot recall casual attacks on specific parts of the evidence base by apparently woefully uninformed political candidates.  It is not unusual for candidates for public office to talk about health care, public health, and related policies.  It is unusual for them to make assertions about specific evidence about particular diseases, and their risk factors and causation.

It is disturbing when one candidate for the most powerful political office in the US repeatedly disregards the best clinical and public health evidence, and offers ill considered opinions about public health that could potentially harm patients.

But Mr Donald Trump is a very unusual candidate.  Perhaps this is why Scientific American, which "is not in the business of endorsing political candidates," took a strong position against what Mr Trump has been saying about science.

'If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.'
—Richard Feynman

Four years ago in these pages, writer Shawn Otto warned our readers of the danger of a growing antiscience current in American politics. 'By turning public opinion away from the antiauthoritarian principles of the nation's founders,' Otto wrote, 'the new science denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced before.'

Otto wrote those words in the heat of a presidential election race that now seems quaint by comparison to the one the nation now finds itself in. As if to prove his point, one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality.

Americans have long prided themselves on their ability to see the world for what it is, as opposed to what someone says it is or what most people happen to believe. In one of the most powerful lines in American literature, Huck Finn says: 'It warn't so. I tried it.' A respect for evidence is not just a part of the national character. It goes to the heart of the country's particular brand of democratic government. When the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, scientist and inventor, wrote arguably the most important line in the Declaration of Independence—'We hold these truths to be self-evident'—they were asserting the fledgling nation's grounding in the primacy of reason based on evidence.

While this election may have effects that go way beyond science, particularly the integrity of the clinical and public health evidence base, those concerned about these issues need to take heed now before the voting is finished.  

References

1. Poses RM. A cautionary tale: the dysfunction of American health care. Eur J Int Med 2003; 14 (2003) 123–130.  Link here.

2. McKee AC, Cantu Rc, Nowinski CJ et al. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Athletes: Progressive Tauopathy following Repetitive Head Injury. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 2009 July ; 68(7): 709–735. doi:10.1097/NEN.0b013e3181a9d503.

3. Wilson K, Mills E, Ross C et al. Association of Autistic Spectrum Disorder and the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine: A Systematic Review of Current Epidemiological Evidence. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2003;157(7):628-634. doi:10.1001/archpedi.157.7.628. Link here.

4. Taylor LE, Swerdfeger AL, Eslick GD. Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies. Vaccine 2016; 32: 3623–3629. Link here.

It Has Come to This? - Donald Trump's "Truly Absurd," "Word Salad," "Gibberish" Health Care Policy

Health Care Renewal is officially non-partisan.  We do not endorse candidates for office, or political parties.  That does not prevent us from commenting on policy issues, and on pronouncements and actions by politicians and government officials when they relate to the issues that interest us.

So, we have criticized excessive coziness among politicians and government officials on one hand, and big health care organizations and their leaders on the other.  We have noted conflicts of interest affecting politicians, particularly the revolving door, and other shadings towards corporatism.  We have noted how health care policy discussions may focus on health care financing, while ignoring some of the bigger issues we discuss  (For example, see our discussions of health care reform, and particularly this one of the then new US Affordable Care Act). These include: leadership of health care organizations by generic managers (managerialists) who are unsympathetic or even hostile to the health care mission; deceptive practices involving marketing, the manipulation and suppression of research, stealth health policy advocacy, stealth lobbying, etc; and timidity in regulation and law enforcement, leading to outright impunity of health care leaders.

We have criticized politicians and government leaders of all parties and from all sides of the political spectrum.  For example, in retrospect we criticized the (Democratic) Clinton administration's laissez faire attitude to conflicts of interest at the National Institutes of Health (see summary here and links to older posts).  We criticized flagrant examples of the revolving door involving top Bush adminstration officials (e.g., most recently here), and yet more involving Obama administration officials (e.g., most recently here).

Yet we also acknowledge that most policy discussions by political and government figures are at least well-intended and based in some degree on the facts and knowledge of the health care context (even if we think the results might be misguided, wrong-headed, or tangential.)  So, while health care is not so far the most important issue in the tumultuous 2016 US presidential race, there has been considerable discussion of it.  Most major candidates have staked out health care positions that again appear well-intended and based to some degree on the facts and context (although my point is not to comment on their merits.)

But there has been one major exception. 

The Leading Candidate with No Health Care Plan

Donald Trump currently seems to be the leading Republican presidential candidate.  As reported by the Minnesota Post,

Trump doesn’t have a health care plan. Go to the issues section of his campaign. Really, go there, you won’t believe what you see. A typical campaign website has position papers. Trump has none. The link to 'Issues' takes you to a pretty frightening page of short embedded videos of Trump himself summarizing his positions at a level of detail that you should find insulting.

But he doesn’t even have one of those on health care.

In addition to 'Issues,' the site’s homepage has a pulldown menu called 'Positions.' I don’t get the difference, but who cares? “Positions” are actual written-out position statements, not videos, but only on five issues, none of which are remotely related to health care (nor many other major issues).

So for Trump’s health-care thinking, we have to rely on what he says in debates and speeches and, I suppose, tweets, some of which have been controversial.

The Candidate with No Health Care Policy Advisers

On February 20, 2016, Politico reported that Mr Trump's campaign also apparently has no health policy advisers.  The article noted that Mr Trump had written in one of his books that he would

Lock the best health care policy minds in a room – and don’t let them out until they’ve crafted a plan for providing terrific coverage for everyone.

But he has not said who those advisers might be.  Furthermore, the reporter was unable to determine who, if anyone, is currently advising Mr Trump about health care,

Sam Clovis, Trump’s national policy adviser, insists the campaign is talking with lots of health care experts – but declined to name any of those advisers.

'We have experts around the world who help us on these various topics,' Clovis said in an interview with POLITICO. 'We get very frank and honest input if we do not expose these people to the scrutiny of the press. … As we get further along they might want to come out of the shadows.'

However,

POLITICO scoured the landscape of notable policy wonks – from academics to lobbyists to congressional staffers to think tank fellows – but was unable to find anyone, on either side of the political divide, who acknowledged whispering health care policy tips in the billionaire’s ear. Or for that matter, of hearing of anyone who had talked to his campaign.

'He seems to be a one-man policy shop,' said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, and a leading critic of Obamacare.

So Mr Trump has no clear health care plan, and apparently no health care advisers.  Furthermore, reports of what this candidate has said about health care reveals some anomalies, to say the least.

Reducing Pharmaceutical Costs to Zero?

The Washington Post in a "Fact Checker" feature on February 18, 2016, entitled, "Trump’s truly absurd claim he would save $300 billion a year on prescription drugs," quoted Mr Trump three times on the costs of pharmaceuticals,

'We are not allowed to negotiate drug prices. Can you believe it? We pay about $300 billion more than we are supposed to, than if we negotiated the price. So there’s $300 billion on day one we solve.' –Donald Trump, remarks at Plymouth State University, Holderness, N.H., Feb. 7, 2016

'So I said to myself wow, let me do some numbers. If we competitively bid drugs in the United States, we can save as much as $300 billion a year.' –Trump, remarks in Manchester, N.H., Feb. 8

'We’re the largest drug buyer in the world. We don’t negotiate. We don’t negotiate. You pay practically the same for the country as if you go into a drug store and buy the drugs. If we negotiated the price of drugs, Joe, we’d save $300 billion a year.' –Trump, interview on MSNBC, Feb. 17

The problem here is that the $300 billion figure turns out to be ridiculous.  The Post article noted,

To put Trump’s $300-billion-a-year claim in perspective, let’s first note that Sanders cites a 2013 estimate from the Center for Economic and Policy Research that negotiated drug prices would result in savings to Medicare of between $230 billion to $541 billion over 10 years.

So for virtually the same policy, Sanders is claiming savings averaging $38 billion a year — and Trump is promising a figure eight times larger. (Clinton offers no estimated savings.)

What’s going on here? It’s unclear, because as usual the Trump campaign refuses to respond to any queries about Trump’s numbers.

Furthermore,

total spending in Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) in 2014 was $78 billion. So Trump, in effect, is claiming to save $300 billion a year on a $78 billion program. That’s like turning water into wine.

Finally,

It’s possible that Trump is being sloppy and when he discusses Medicare, he really means to say he would force government-led pricing on all prescription drugs. But the numbers don’t add up that way either.

In fact, depending on the source you consult, total annual spending on prescription drugs in the United States is between $298 billion a year to $423 billion. So that would mean Trump is claiming that he can eliminate virtually any cost to prescription drugs. It would suddenly be free!

So Mr Trump's claims made on at least three occasions about the magnitude of savings that would result from his (unoriginal) proposal to have the government negotiate drug prices were mathematically implausible, if not impossible. 

"Word Salad" about the Mandate

Rather right-wing columnist Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post on February 22, 2016, provided two sets of quotes from interviews with Mr Trump about his position on the "mandate" within the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Note that the mandate imposes a (relatively modest) extra tax on people who do not have health insurance, providing an incentive to have such insurance.  For example, on "Meet the Press,"

DONALD TRUMP: Well, on the mandate, if you look at the mandate, we had a situation where we were, Anderson Cooper, who’s terrific, by the way, and did a terrific job, but we were talking over each other. Look, I want, we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is a total and complete disaster. It’s going to be gone. We’re going to come up with a great healthcare plan, whether it’s healthcare savings accounts, we have a lot of different things. We’re going to get rid of the lines between states, we’re going to have great competitive bidding. But I say all the time, you can call it anything you want. People are not going to die in the middle of the street. People are not going to die on the sidewalk if I’m president, okay?

CHUCK TODD: Well, let me get something definitive from you on this.

DONALD TRUMP: But Chuck, I say that, excuse me, I say that to packed houses with thousands and thousands of people, Republicans mostly, and I get standing ovations. I’m not going to let that happen. If I’m president, we’re not going to have people dying on the streets. So you can call it whatever you want. I don’t call it a mandate, I just say it’s common sense.

CHUCK TODD: No, I understand that. Well, let me ask you this. Do you think that it should be a law that anybody who can afford health insurance has to have it?

DONALD TRUMP: I think, no, I think it’s going to be up to them, okay? I want it to be up to them. But I’m really talking about people that can’t afford it. We’re not going to let people die in squalor because we are Republicans, okay? That’s part of the problem with the Republicans, where somehow they got fed into this horrible position. We’re going to take care of people. But no, people don’t have to have it. We’re going to have great plans, they’re going to be a lot less expensive than Obamacare. They’re going to be private. There are going to be lots of different options. We’re going to have a lot of different options. Right now you have no options. You know why? Because the insurance company controlled Obama because they gave him a lot of money. That’s why you have lines around the states. And you can’t get competitive bidding.

Her summary was:

He insists whatever inanity he said earlier was a mistake, denies he took or takes a liberal position and declares there will not be people 'dying in the streets.' (Does he understand there is a duty now to treat people, but what we are debating is insurance?) Then he ends with assurances he is loved by crowds. Superlatives by the bushel may be funny, but they also substitute for concrete answers. It may seem like a word salad or stream of consciousness at first glance, but it is a salad he tosses up over and over again, each time avoiding close scrutiny.

An article on February 22, 2016, in the left leaning MotherJones stated that Mr Trump had already contradicted his previous approval of the "mandate,"

Trump has now made clear that he doesn't like the individual mandate after all—he just misspoke when he said that to Anderson Cooper a few days ago.

So while Mr Trump has drawn attention to his position on the mandate, that position seems hopelessly incoherent, or as Ms Rubin called it, "word salad."

More "Gibberish"

The Minnesota Post article also noted,

When asked Thursday night under Rubio’s prodding to describe his plan for health care, he said, as he always does, that he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something 'much better.' Then he says (and this is a direct quote from the debate transcript): 'I want to keep pre-existing conditions. I think we need it. I think it’s a modern age. And I think we have to have it.' This is gibberish, especially the explanation that 'I think it’s a modern age,' which may have some meaning but I can’t imagine what.

In addition, in the most recent debate, Mr Trump did emphasize that he wanted insurance companies to be able to sell policies across state lines, although his wording was not so clear,

That weird and confusing phrasing — about 'getting rid of the lines around the states,' which Rubio mocked — as best as anyone can tell means that Trump wants national health insurers to be able to offer standardized plans all over the country, instead of having to meet the particular standards and requirements imposed by individual states. Different states require different things of health insurers, which prevents national firms from offering plans in all states.

As the article noted, this is not a new idea, and how much difference this change would make is not clear. Nonetheless, even after being badgered repeatedly, Mr Trump could not add more substance to his health care plan, nor explain how he might get more substance.

With Rubio pressing in and badgering Trump from the sidelines — the same way Rubio was badgered a few weeks ago by Chris Christie and the way Trump often badgers other candidates — and with CNN’s Dana Bash following up, Trump said his three things: Repeal Obamacare and replace it with something much better, get rid of the lines around the states, and don’t let people die in streets. I always assumed that there was more to his plan, but I never came across the details. And, during the exchange Thursday night, it came out that there is no more. Here’s that chunk of the transcript so you can decide for yourself if I’m missing something. (I’ve done a tiny bit of editing for flow.)[italics added for emphasis- Ed]

BASH: Mr. Trump, Senator Rubio just said that you support the individual mandate. Would you respond?

TRUMP: I just want to say, I agree with that 100 percent, except pre-existing conditions, I would absolutely get rid of Obamacare. We’re going to have something much better, but pre-existing conditions, when I’m referring to that, and I was referring to that very strongly on the show with Anderson Cooper, I want to keep pre-existing conditions. I think we need it. I think it’s a modern age. And I think we have to have it. (APPLAUSE)

BASH: OK, so let’s talk about pre-existing conditions. What the insurance companies say is that the only way that they can cover people [who have pre-existing conditions and would be more expensive to cover] is to have a mandate requiring everybody purchase health insurance. Are they wrong?

TRUMP: I think they’re wrong 100 percent. What we need — look, the insurance companies take care of the politicians. The insurance companies get what they want. We should have gotten rid of the lines around each state so we can have real competition. We thought that was gone, we thought those lines were going to be gone, so something happened at the last moment where Obamacare got approved, and all of that was thrown out the window.

The reason is some of the people in the audience are insurance people and insurance lobbyists and special interests. They got — I’m not going to point to these gentlemen, of course, they’re part of the problem, other than Ben [Carson], in all fairness. And, actually, the governor [John Kasich], too. Let’s just talk about these two, OK? Because I don’t think the governor had too much to do with this.

But, we should have gotten rid of the borders, we should have gotten rid of the lines around the states so there’s great competition. The insurance companies are making a fortune on every single thing they do. I’m self-funding my campaign. I’m the only one in either party self-funding my campaign. I’m going to do what’s right. We have to get rid of the lines around the states so that there’s serious, serious competition. And you’re going to see — excuse me. You’re going to see pre-existing conditions and everything else be part of it, but the price will be down, and the insurance companies can pay. Right now they’re making a fortune. (APPLAUSE)

BASH: But just to be specific here, what you’re saying is getting rid of the barriers between states, that is going to solve the problem...

TRUMP: That’s going to solve the problem. And the insurance companies are going to say that they want to keep it. They want to say — they say whatever they have to say to keep it the way it is. I know the insurance companies, they’re friends of mine. The top guys, they’re friends of mine. I shouldn’t tell you guys, you’ll say it’s terrible, I have a conflict of interest. They’re friends of mine, there’s some right in the audience. One of them was just waving to me, he was laughing and smiling. He’s not laughing so much anymore. Hi.
Look, the insurance companies are making an absolute fortune. Yes, they will keep pre-existing conditions, and that would be a great thing. Get rid of Obamacare, we’ll come up with new plans. But we should keep pre-existing conditions.

RUBIO: Dana, I was mentioned in his response, so if I may about the insurance companies...

BASH: Go ahead.

RUBIO: You may not be aware of this, Donald, because you don’t follow this stuff very closely, but here’s what happened. When they passed Obamacare they put a bailout fund in Obamacare. All these lobbyists you keep talking about, they put a bailout fund in the law that would allow public money to be used, taxpayer money, to bail out companies when they lost money. And we led the effort and wiped out that bailout fund. The insurance companies are not in favor of me, they hate that. They’re suing right now to get that bailout money put back in.

Here’s what you didn’t hear in that answer, and this is important, guys, this is an important thing. What is your plan? I understand the lines around the state, whatever that means. This is not a game where you draw maps...

TRUMP:...And you don’t know what it means?

RUBIO: What is your plan, Mr. Trump? What is your plan on health care?

TRUMP: You don’t know. The biggest problem...

RUBIO: ...What’s your plan?

TRUMP: ... You know, I watched him melt down two weeks ago with Chris Christie. I got to tell you, the biggest problem he’s got is he really doesn’t know about the lines. The biggest thing we’ve got, and the reason we’ve got no competition, is because we have lines around the state, and you have essentially....

RUBIO: ...You already mentioned that [inaudible] plan. I know what that is, but what else is part of your plan?...

TRUMP: ...You don’t know much...

RUBIO: ...So, you’re only thing is to get rid of the lines around the states. What else is part of your health-care plan?...

TRUMP: ...The lines around the states...

RUBIO: ...That’s your only plan...

TRUMP ... Excuse me. Excuse me.

RUBIO: ... His plan. That was the plan?...

TRUMP:...You get rid of the lines, it brings in competition. So, instead of having one insurance company taking care of New York or Texas, you’ll have many. They’ll compete, and it’ll be a beautiful thing.

RUBIO: Alright...So that’s the only part of the plan? Just the lines?

TRUMP: The nice part of the plan — you’ll have many different plans. You’ll have competition, you’ll have so many different plans.

RUBIO: Now he’s repeating himself.

TRUMP: No, no, no. I watched him repeat himself five times four weeks ago...

RUBIO:... I just watched you repeat yourself five times five seconds ago...

TRUMP: I watched him meltdown on the stage like that, I’ve never seen it in anybody...

BASH:...Let’s stay focused on the subject...

TRUMP:...I thought he came out of the swimming pool...

RUBIO:...I see him repeat himself every night, he says five things: Everyone’s dumb, he’s gonna make America great again...We’re going to win, win win. He’s winning in the polls...And the lines around the state. (APPLAUSE)

BASH: Senator Rubio, you will have time to respond if you would just let Mr. Trump respond to what you’ve just posed to him...

RUBIO: ... Yeah, he’s going to give us his plan now, right? OK...

BASH [to Trump]:...If you could talk a little bit more about your plan. I know you talked about...Can you be a little specific?...

TRUMP: ... We’re going to have many different plans because... competition...

RUBIO: ... He’s done it again.

TRUMP: There is going to be competition among all of the states, and the insurance companies. They’re going to have many, many different plans.

BASH: Is there anything else you would like to add to that...

TRUMP: No, there’s nothing to add. What is to add?

After being repeatedly asked about the substance of his health care policy agenda, Mr Trump only seems to have repeated the notion of selling health insurance across state lines to increase competition, interrupted by non sequiturs insulting Senator Rubio and insurance executives.  The Minnesota Post writer and I could find absolutely no other content in Mr Trump's , despite repeated inquiries about the substance of his health care plan.

It does seem reasonable to describe Mr Trump's health care policy ideas as gibberish.

Summary 

Health care and public health affect all Americans, and all people around the world.  Health care in the US is more expensive and less accessible than it is in many other developed countries.  For all the money the country spends, there is no clear evidence that the quality of patient care, or patients' outcomes are better than, or sometimes even comparable to those of other countries  The reforms embodied in the Affordable Care Act (ACA, PPACA, "Obamacare') have increased the proportion of insured patients, but insurance remains expensive for many, and insurance coverage now often has major gaps that mean a major illness can bankrupt a middle-class patient.

Furthermore, the law has done nothing to reduce concentration of power in health care.  It has done nothing to make health care leaders more accountable, especially for their organization's unethical or even criminal behavior, decrease their ability to line their pockets regardless of such behavior, and thus reduce their impunity.  It will not obviously decrease conflicts of interest affecting those who make decisions about patient care or health policy, lock the revolving door between government and the health care industry, end manipulation of clinical research to serve vested interests, or suppression of research whose results offend such interests, etc, etc.

So health care policy is increasingly important, and increasingly demands serious discussion.  A US presidential campaign ought to provide some impetus for such discussion, although health care policy is certainly not the only thing that needs to be discussed.

Most presidential candidates have at least attempted a serious discussion of health policy, if not in person, then in position papers or on their web-sites.

However, the currently leading candidate for the Republican nomination does not seem to have serious ideas about health care. Yet he has said "We’re going to come up with a great healthcare plan."  To substantiate such claims, he has repeated a few vague talking points, and when challenged, seems unable to manage any substantive conversation beyond them.  Some of his verbal pronouncements have been nothing short of ridiculous.  

"in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility...." said a 20th century world leader who inspired adulation, and led to disaster.  

We live in perilous times when a candidate with such reckless approaches to critical problems continues to attract adulation.

ADDENDUM (29 February, 2016) - This post was republished on the Naked Capitalism blog on February 28, 2016.  

ADDENDUM (1 March, 2016) - This post was republished on OpEdNews on February 29, 2016.