1. Posted by A Yahoo! Health User on Thu, Sep 17, 2009, 9:03 pm PDT

Thank you for these comments. I fear that the health reform movement has little or no real understanding of these issues. I am afraid that the push for better health care really means more of the same for more people - and that will do little good. And it will still spend more money than we have available today. But how do you get these ideas into the health care bill - I don't have any hope.

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2. Posted by A Yahoo! Health User on Mon, Sep 28, 2009, 7:27 am PDT

Dear Dr. Margolis, I have two comments. Your name is on the Johns Hopkins White Papers adverts that I receive by e-mail. I think that you need to know that I consider it below what should be your standard for anything with your name on it. Their intention is to sell health information to older people. It doesn’t work with me – and I doubt that I’m alone. I resent the hyping, the overselling, the egregious tease used in those e-mails. They bring to mind the old traveling medicine shows or the archetypical used car salesman. There was a time, unless I’m a delusional old fogey, when the profession of medicine was top of the heap. Respect for the doc was taken for granted. This marketing, with your name on it, does not protect the reputation of your profession generally, or of Johns Hopkins, or of Dr. Margolis. It blurs lines. My second comment concerns your comments on spending money for sidewalks and preventive medicine. Sidewalk design and construction are too often an afterthought and not as conducive to walking as you imply or as they should be. I believe that more money – and thought – should be spent on sidewalks. Walking (outside, in the rain and the 'shine) should be a delightful experience. We need to give walking the priority in our civil engineering as much as we did before we put in the interstate highway system. Enclosed malls are no substitute. How many suburbs have sidewalks? And yes, other than a few spaces for the really disabled, the grocery store parking lots should be at least a block away from the store. Walking should be encouraged. Circling the parking lot to find the closest space is a very bad habit that we must break. I appreciated very much your comments on prevention. Yes, the trick is to deliver it. I believe that selling the Johns Hopkins White Papers are not the way to go. Prevention is too important to leave it to the Madison Avenue marketeers. If Johns Hopkins has information that is preventive then it should be posted online with free access – without involving the marketing middlemen. It is too important to go through a hyper-marketing treatment. When the nuggets are buried in the hype you do a disservice to the public. Even Consumer Reports magazine has now been seduced into using the cheesy marketing that they deplore in their higher-mnded pages. I do believe that a physician’s time cannot be spent reciting all the prevention do’s and don’t’s to his patients, one-on-one. I don’t want Medicare money spent that way. Most of us can still read standard English and can read it for ourselves – if it’s not buried in hype. The hype only makes one wonder if it’s the real thing or something ginned up by the marketing department. Physicians should assign homework, printed information, or online. Maybe access to your white papers should be billed to Medicare? I sincerely hope that my comments move you to change the cheesier things being done under the Hopkins imprimatur. Sincerely, Roger Dreyfoos

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3. Posted by A Yahoo! Health User on Thu, Nov 19, 2009, 4:38 pm PST

I quote: "Nutrition can be improved in schools by mandating lower-calorie and more nutritious lunches and snacks, as well as by eliminating high-calorie drinks and other unhealthy products in school vending machines. I doubt any action can be "mandated"... to suggest coercive measures be taken is to suggest we are not capable of making rational decisions, and that the Congress knows best how to live our lives. Simeon, you ignore the basic condition in this health care reform— it is a law, meaning it uses threats and intimidation as its underlying premise, and that it essentially tells people how they must live or else you will be fined or jailed. This includes vending machine operators, who are citizens; doctors, who are citizens; and people like myself, who know how to live in a healthy manner and do not require a baby-sitter nor the federal intrusion. The bill is bad because it intrudes on our freedom.. the anti- abortion activists are in arms, the ant-illegal immigrant people, are aghast, and civil libertarians are motived to stop this ju=ggernaut of Federal stupidity and arrogance. You thought Bush are stupid and arrogant: this Congress is too.

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