Today's news reveals that the Federal government will begin funding a study of why senior citizens are falling. I wish I were more hopeful that this meant that something constructive might result. It seems AARP has a hand in sponsoring this effort and I wish too that this meant that they were serious about a constructive outcome.

    But I am not hopeful. Parties unknown will secure tax dollars distributed by politicians all too eager for headlines and campaign contributions but seniors will still be subject to the indignities of our all too expensive American way of health. They might even conclude a secret protocol that insists that it's the ever growing numbers of these seniors that is the problem. Why can't they just realize, these pesky seniors that is, that they ought to do the right thing by arranging a peaceful transition out of this world. I am quite certain our health care professionals would aid and abet that decision. After all Tom Brokaw has informed us these old codgers are a courageous generation. It's the numbers of them stupid. We must have fewer numbers of them.

    My cynicism offends me. It was born of struggle for a better way. The right honorable Senator Bill Frist wrote a letter on my behalf to a Mr. Tom Scully who headed the appropriate Federal bureaucracy. Mr. Tom Scully told me he would look into the matter.
I was looking for a rule change that would allow prevention of bedsores rather than all the funding going to treatment of inevitable bedsores. Mr. Scully told me to call Ms. Ballantine, the appropriate staff person. She was at least honest. What she told me was enough for me to cease and desist my hope of scratching the federal hog. I tried letters to Frist, to his brother who heads-up the family health care conglomerate and a few others.

    But why, you might be inquiring, did I need a rule change in order to get into the federal feeding trough myself? Why couldn't I just take my story to individual providers? It is because they have lost the will to do the right thing on behalf of these frailest of our loved ones. They have fought their last battle years ago. They have suffered themselves for trying to do what their caregivers heart has told them is proper. The decisions are no longer made by people who see patients. The medical professional is now a bureaucrat. If he plays by the rules good things happen to him. If he doesn't the bad things descend.

    The last health care reformer I encountered who couldn't be called hollow was destroyed by this federal health care monster. I will tell you about that encounter another day. For now I am reeling with the news that we are going to be docked millions more to determine what we know. I could solve your problem Senator Milkulski. I just cannot afford a single dollar for your campaign. And of course my solution would kill the golden goose that are bedsores for countless firms that depend on them.