In the Public Eye

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Haiku of fatherhood
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - 2:51pm

The frozen burgers rage against the propane grille. Our faces grow oily in afternoon sun there at the smog line, at my son’s home on the pathway to Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park.

In the Public Eye

Busted! For acronym abuse
Friday, March 15, 2013 - 1:25pm

I was about three minutes into a presentation when I began dropping the “A-bombs.” I believe the explosions started something like this: “CHA would like CMC to do outreach to area CBOs.”

One vice president screwed up his face and spat out what he guessed I meant by CBO. (Hint: It’s community-based organizations.”  My boss, an SVP (oops, another “bomb”), said something along about how far a onetime professional journalist has fallen when he routinely spits out alphabet soup instead of crisp Reader’s Digest words.

Condoms & "unnecessary variations"
Monday, February 25, 2013 - 11:08am

There’s never a shortage of health news, some of which screams for headlines and some which simply makes one’s head wag.

Condoms & Valentine’s Day: Assemblyman Tom Ammiano chose February 14 to introduce AB 336, which would bar police from using possession of one or more condoms as evidence of sexual solicitation in arrests or prosecution of alleged prostitutes. “They can still arrest people under the law. They would only be prevented from using as evidence the one thing that protects  public health: condoms,” he told the Sacramento Bee.

The "scope of practice" battle
Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 10:55am

Dilemma: Millions more Californians getting covered by health insurance, but not enough physicians to treat them – outlook especially bleak in the Central Valley. Potential remedy: Scale back regulations and allow folks like pharmacists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and optometrists to act as primary care providers – to do things outside their current “scope of practice.”

Salsa, sickness & FB
Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - 10:05am

Had just about reached a vacation rental in Cambria when the cell phone rang. The news: a relative had been stricken critically ill. The caller had learned the news via a Facebook posting.  The dark tidings sent our heads and our next days spinning. Now, a tad more composed, the question I posed myself as a regular user of Facebook and Twitter: Did it matter that Facebook was the medium for conveying a grave message?

We’re not “friends” with the person who posted the message. But we still got the message and confirmed its authenticity with a real person.

The Daffy Duck lingo of politics
Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 1:06pm

Here’s one definition of lunacy. In 2012, more than 4,200 bills were introduced in the California legislature. But there is a good side to this madness. It gives writers and satirists, like Greg Lucas, geysers of material.

Lucas spun some of his favorite political buzzwords the other day to a group of 60 hospital government relations worry-warts, including me, during a lunch break at a California Hospital Association forum at the Sacramento Hyatt.