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Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D.
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Key Medico-Political Issues PHYSICIANS MUST BE RE-EMPOWERED TO
ADVOCATE FOR PATIENTS,
LATEST UPDATES: EXTERNAL DATA-BASES: FEDERATION OF
PHYSICIANS AND DENTISTS
At the onset, I will confess flat-out that I've not been able to attract overt support for much of what is contained on these Web-Pages. Many people and organizations confess privately to feeling most comfortable limiting their involvement in my work to "holding my coat" while I am doing what they agree is most-desirable. Recognition of this fact has converted me, occasionally, into conducting my own "PR" and this behavior has been misconstrued as excessively self-referential. Candidly, I can't help it, for I view the media as the only major mechanism through which I can deliver messages to the public that would customarily be conveyed via organizations that were not too shy to act forthrightly. Such is life. . . . The two major efforts being promulgated against corporate medical practice in PA (and elsewhere, conceptually) relate to the provider-insurer relationship. One former is manifest as physicians begin to attain collective bargaining rights; the other is manifest by the upcoming hearings to be conducted by the Insurance Department due to its precipitous approval of the consolidation of PA Blue Shield and Blue Cross of Western PA. The major effort to maximize the potential of tobacco control activities is the ongoing challenge (in PA Superior Court, in PA Commonwealth Court and in the U.S. Supreme Court) to the onerous "Master Settlement Agreement" between Big Tobacco and Big Government (Commonwealth of PA); the recent Engle Verdict in Florida illustrates how America will be shortchanged, both legally and fiscally, if I am unsuccessful in changing it. The data contained on these pages are intended to promote a deeper appreciation for the urgency of these concerns. Therefore, that I've had to "do my own PR" is a natural outgrowth of this process (rather than excessively self-referential) for journalists have often been the most-interested people when I've attempted to entice anyone to contemplate the implications of such myriad causes. And when my motives are questioned, I subject myself to intense scrutiny and, thereby, behaviorally pledge that future success (should it occur) would yield a comparable philosophical approach to public/professional communications. Thus, included are key e-mail updates generated and distributed with regard to these (and other) medico-political activities. The hyperlinks provided above also yield a generic ORIENTATION to how I have tried to organize data on my Web-sites; a connection to the preferred collective bargaining organization with which I've become associated during the past two years, the FEDERATION OF PHYSICIANS AND DENTISTS; a compendium of baseline information regarding my BLUES LITIGATION; the key TOBACCO LITIGATION BASELINE DOCUMENTS generated during 1999; and a virtual wonderland of high-quality and unique journalistic achievement regarding socio-economic forces affecting medicine, both locally and nationally, PHYSICIAN'S NEWS DIGEST (of which I'm on the Editorial Board, serving at the pleasure of Mr. Jeffrey Barg, Editor and Publisher). Included, also, on these Web-Pages will be information provided more
generically within the realm of Medical Politics, such as my 2/2000 filing with
regard to the implementation of the PA "Patient's Bill of Rights" Regulations
through the Department of Health. Finally, included are efforts to
encourage Philadelphia City Council to authorize construction of a new Phillies Ballpark
at a site NW of 30th Street Station. I'm just about glutted, but I have
discovered that each new "cause celebre" related to its predecessors.
. . .I'm always open for more! Navigation may be facilitated by use of the customary FrontPage "Shared Borders," by consulting the Contents, or by hyperlinking to an index of all documents uploaded on the (5 megabyte) "@Home" website. Tobacco-related information resides in a (50 megabyte) website in Geneva, Switzerland hosted by Ruben J. Israel, who administers the "Globalink" server funded through the UICC, the (International Union Against ["Contra" in French] Cancer. "There's a whole lot of hyperlinking going on" within both this Web-Site and those which are related to physician unionization and tobacco control. Comments or suggestions may be conveyed by e-mail, or communicated by more traditional methods by writing (via FAX or snail-mail) or calling (at any time). INPUT (IN MYRIAD FORMS) IS NEEDED REGARDING EACH OF THE ABOVE-DETAILED ISSUES! Robert B. Sklaroff, MD |
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To contact me--Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D.--just send an e-mail (rsklaroff@comcast.net).
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