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Pornography Is Bad For America

March 31, 2010

Pornography Is Bad For America

The following is a copy of a post that I did some time ago. I represent it here because I know that not many of those who view my current posts are likely to search back through my history of postings. I also represent it because a friend and former colleague has asked my opinion  on a matter related to pornography and its effects upon culture.

My last, deep and comprehensive, analysis of the research literature on the effects of pornography was published 12 years ago. I spent two years on this project, almost exclusively and will not be able to match that effort again at this time. I am certain that there are new findings that will support and that will not support my conclusions. I am also certain that, as in my previous analysis of the data available, the philosophy and politics of many readers will bias their views of my own .

As a psychologist, my own assessment is not just based upon the research findings, however. It was, and remains, based upon the principles/laws that underlay the Social Learning Theory, Operant Conditioning and Respondent Conditioning of humans and other animals. These principles, laws, and learning mechanisms predict that certain response tendencies will emerge from repeatedly pairing orgasms with a particular class of  stimuli. Within this process new patterns of sexual arousal can be learned, new thoughts and images can become very frequent, new patterns of behavior can be fantasized, and new patterns of sexual behavior will become more likely. The conditionability of the consumer of pornography is especially heightened during puberty, but is also present in adulthood.

The depictions in modern pornography include, children and young teens ( simulated or real), homosexuals, groups, aggression, torture, disfiguration, feces and urine, and animals, to name only a few categories.

Given what I have learned about human conditioning and learning over the past 47 years of study and observation (36 years as a professor and  a concurrent 30 years as a psychotherapist), there is no way that flooding a population (children included) with the vivid pornographic depictions listed above will not produce an increased rate of human sexual actions that are harmful to a large number of individuals involved, in many different ways, and to their socioculture.

I have added an interesting article (following my own) from another source, to update my own post with more current observations of the many ways that problems produced by the porn industry can affect peoples lives.

Yes, there is research and opinion to suggest no-harm from the infusion of pornography into various cultures. I simply do not believe it.

My original posting follows:

It is so popular and comfortable to say that “whatever consenting adults choose to do is okay”. But there are consequences beyond what consenting adults choose to do, when they do “it” publicly. The same can also be said about some of the things that consenting adults do in private.

The hard reality is that many of our newly granted sexual freedoms (illegal less than one life-time ago) are severely damaging everyone, especially our young adults and children. These new sexual freedoms must therefore damaging our culture: How could it be otherwise?

As a psychologist,  I have frequently witnessed the devastating effects of  the scientifically flawed conclusions of  President Johnson’s Committee on Pornography which recommended the legalization of pornography in 1970.

In 1986 President Reagan’s Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography concluded that the earlier Commission’s findings of no relation between pornography and antisocial behavior was “starkly obsolete”. We now know much more about the effects of pornographic sexual stimulation upon humans than we did in 1970. What has been learned explains much of our sex-related human suffering and loss brought by a series of ignorant and irresponsible Court decisions mandating a nation-wide torrent of dramatically explicit pornography.

The following is a brief summary of scientific research findings about the effects of pornography viewing upon human thoughts, emotions, and behavior that I previously published [Mawhinney, V.T. (1998). “Behavior and Social Issues”, 8,  2, 159-193].

1. Violent portrayals of sex can increase sexual aggression in the viewer. Graphic sexual violence is common in XXX and R-rated films rented by adults and teens from neighborhood video rental stores.
2. Much of  pornography depicts women in grossly disrespected, exploited, and/ or sexually  abused rolls. I am stunned by the absence of outrage among Women’s Liberation organizations.
3. The millions who masturbate while viewing the deviant sexual displays that flood the internet (teens and kids, urine and defecation, pain and torture, and sex with animals, etc.)  are auto-erotically conditioning their own increased appetite for such portrayals. The same is true of any genre of pornography.
4. Both violent and nonviolent sexual portrayals can increase aggression in men when some other impulse-control impairing event is added such as drugs, alcohol, or frustration.
5. Commonly depicted rape scenes in which females finally acquiesce, and enjoy the sex,  perpetuates the idea that female pleasure is a common outcome of forced sex.
6. Viewing rape depictions can reduce the estimated seriousness of such assaults for both men and woman and the severity of the punishment that they recommend for the rapist.
7. Viewing pornography can cause the viewer to overestimate the commonality of the sexual activities observed. It can also increase the viewers expectations that such behavior will occur in their own relationships with others and that others will probably be willing participants.
8. Viewing pornography “primes” the observer to think about sex more often and this increases the probability of sexual behavior.
9. Watching attractive male and female sexual models in pornography can reduce the viewer’s judgement of the attractiveness of their own mate,  increasing dissatisfaction.
10. Pornography was a very small industry in the early 1960’s. By the mid-1990’s its revenues had grown to over 10 billion dollars per year. One recent estimate places this nation’s annual “mainstreamed” pornography earnings at about 56 billion dollars. The legalization of pornography has stimulated monumental new business growth and very substantial new revenues for our predatory government.

The longer-term consequences of  our incompetent sexual experiment are unprecedented personal and financial costs for increased illegitimate births, sexually transmitted diseases, rapes, child molestations, sexual infidelity in relationships and increased divorce rates. The flood of pornography is a significant partial determinant of all of these painful events. I submit that this is not “new found freedom”,  it is a deadly form of social chaos.

And what about our local strip clubs? The mixture of sexual stimulation, tension,  alcohol, and  frustration in a testosterone “saturated” local strip club frequently ends in physical brutality, violence, and death. Only the naive are surprised and shocked.

Do you really think a community gains more from these sex clubs than it loses? The costs to a city’s reputation are incalculable. The financial losses will be enormous. Consider the costs to law enforcement, emergency medical services, hospitals, and to our judicial and penal system. This “little object lesson” is an example of bad behavioral contagion. It is the spread of damaging behavior patterns within our lives, in large part, caused by the drug and sex practices that are encouraged by our own socioculture.

Of course one can make the First Amendment argument. But our founding fathers could never have dreamed that the meaning of “freedom of expression” would be so distorted as  to inflict an avalanche of vivid pornography upon this nation. Many of us, born and raised in the 1940’s and 1950’s, felt very free indeed: We enjoyed freedom from the culture-wide pornography related human misery that now, directly or indirectly, enslaves us all to its consequences.

What do our children learn from all of this? And how many of us care anymore? It saddens me to say this, but each generation appears to be breeding a next generation that is increasingly more troubled than the one before. Our addiction to pornography is a large part of this problem.  If you think that this culture’s sex, drugs, violence, and other impulse-control problems are bad now—just wait. There is much worse to come.

What can be done? The mark of emotionally healthy individuals and cultures is their ability to deny immediate gratification to achieve long-term rewards. All across this great nation, good citizens and their good governments must do all that they can to reverse our cultural sexual addiction contagion— and we must do it very soon. Eliminating the recreational sex industry within your own communities is a step in the right direction.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.   11/08/09

This is a slight revision of an article that I published in the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune approximately 9 years ago.

Check out some additional information that will augment and animate my own:

http://dannimoss.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/statistics-on-pornography-sexual-addiction-and-online-perpetrators/

VTM,     3/31/10

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Schizotypal Personality Disorder

March 28, 2010

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Schizotypal symptoms are truly odd. These individuals do not quite meet the requirements for a diagnosis of schizophrenia (a more serious disorder), but they show many milder similarities —minus the verbal incoherence and complete loss of touch with reality as seen in active schizophrenia. Schizotypal symptoms include ideas of reference (the words of a popular song “are instructions for me to do something”), strange superstitions, the feeling that they can “read minds”, or that they can see the world through a “sixth sense” (seeing ghosts). These individuals think and talk in odd ways that are elaborate but vague and  complicated; their thinking is paranoid in nature; they show inappropriate or flattened emotions; lack close friends outside of their immediate family; and they show excessive social anxiety and suspicions fears. People with this disorder are at risk for suicide attempts and to be hospitalized with other mental psychological problems.

A Representative Example
 
The mother brought her child for treatment because he was overly-interested in weapons, combat games, and always wanted to dress in black. The mother showed distinct features of schizotypal personality disorder in that she believed that she could communicate with her dead relatives when she was in a certain mental state. The state she described was that of being tired enough to go to sleep, yet not quit being sleep: but she also had to be in a high state of need or desire to communicate which in order to achieve success. Her mood while elaborately describing this process was high, almost giddy. At times she would become extremely serious and lower her voice to a whisper. The lady also said that she could detect “life forms” in a room without ever seeing them. She proceeded to describe times when she could feel them and later discovered a family pet sleeping behind a piece of furniture. She swore that she had seen the ghost of a former pet (a black puppy wearing a red collar under a table) and asked her therapist not to show skepticism about this event to her son.

Suspected Causes

Schizotypal personality disorder is thought to be associated with odd and confusing family communication styles and may also have a genetic basis. This personality disorder may have biological similarities to schizophrenia Increased levels of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, and enlarged brain ventricles as well as attentional deficits occur in both disorders. There is correlational evidence that relatives of depressed individuals are more likely to show schizotypal disorder. The reverse is also true.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D. ,     3/28/10

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Borderline Personality Disorder

March 27, 2010

Borderline Personality Disorder

Individuals who show the behaviors associate with Borderline Personality Disorder are severely impaired. Their behavior is marked by frantic efforts to avoid abandonment (real or imagined) by loved ones. Their personal identity and feelings of worth are impaired by frequent negative evaluations of themselves.

The likelihood of abandonment is frequently imagined, though real abandonment is more likely because of their own exceedingly unstable behavior and emotions and their inability to maintain lasting relationships with others. Major mood swings normally lasting a few hours to a few days involve strong anxiety, depression, anger, hostility and even aggression against others and/or themselves. Self-mutilation and suicide attempts are common part of this behavior pattern and so are drug abuse and addiction, hyper-sexuality, law breaking, as are reckless driving and irresponsible money management.

Relationships with borderline disordered individuals are fraught with the person’s normally angry states, temper displays, and frequent verbal or physical fights. Short-lived episodes of confused reality can occur under stressful conditions. Such episodes often involve extreme forms of paranoid thinking. As you might imagine, this marked instability can produce short but very intense relationships with others.

A Representative Example
 
A lady sought personal therapy for relationship problems that she was having with her live in boyfriend. She also complained of not being able to separate herself from her grandfather’s ashes, which she had carried with her through several moves over the past several years. Grandpa resided in an urn on top a coffee table in front of her couch.

But sessions mostly focused upon her relationships with her live-in boyfriend and they vacilated between her idealizing this man and angrily condeming him for his neglect of her and his possible autoerrotic masterbatory activities. She was obsessed with feeling loved by him. She described how when they made love that she had to have direct and intense eye-contact with him at all times during sex. She said that this helped their souls to more deeply merge and that she could more accurately detect his pashion and love for her that way. However, she and her boyfriend had frequent fights in which she would push and hit him until he would also become aggressive with her.

The boyfriend moved out shortly thereafter and the lady became greatly agitated and self-mutilated by superficially cutting her wrists as she had done several times before.

Suspected Causes
  
Borderline personality disordered individuals have frequently suffered extremely damaging treatment at the hands of their parents, caretakers or others. Such maltreatment often includes incest or sexual abuse, often over prolonged periods of time. Sexual victimization is more often found in woman. These individuals have often had numerous caretaker parental substitutes necessitated by abandonment, death, or the breakup of their parents.

It is possible that the basis for borderline personality disorder can be inherited. Close relatives of afflicted individuals are five times more likely to show borderline symptoms than is the general population. Also, certain biological abnormalities have been found among borderline individuals including low

levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin (associated with angry depression and suicide) and abnormal dopamine activity (associated with transient psychotic states).

It is thought that growing reports of this disorder may be partially caused by the rapid changes that our culture have experienced within the last thirty years. Chief among these disruptions are increased rates of divorce and unmarried cohabitation both of which pose various hardships and even dangers to children.

Sadly, the lady described in the Borderline personality disorder case was born out of wedlock, sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend, physically abused in one foster family, sexually abused in a second foster family, and disliked and rejected by the children in a third foster family.

Protect your children from such  harm no matter what it takes. Vote for representatives that will also work to protect America’s children from abuse and neglect.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.,  3/27/10

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Antisocial Personality Disorder

March 26, 2010

Antisocial Personality Disorder

This destructive personality disorder tends to emerge from childhood patterns of a disregard for the feelings and rights of others and for family, institutional, or social conventions,rules and laws. Childhood diagnoses for such behavior patterns are Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder. These disorders are listed under Axis I in the DSM-IV. I have presented them here with Axis II disorders because I think it is important that you see the tendency of these childhood problems to evolve into similar but more fully developed adult behavior patterns. It does not always happen, but all too frequently these behavior patterns tend to develop through one or two other child and adolescent diagnoses into its fully mature manifestation known as Antisocial Personality Disorder. The developmental steps toward the fully mature personality disorder are as follows:

In Oppositional Defiant Disorder, children challenge adult rules and demands, argue with adults, have often have bad temper problems, lie and blame others for their troubles. These problems normally start before puberty at around eight years of age.

Conduct Disorder is a more severe pattern of problem behaviors in which the rights of others are frequently violated. These children often lie, cheat, damage property, and run away from school and/or home. They may often aggress against others and may even hurt animals for entertainment. Other illegal activities such a robbery, extortion, rape, and murder may also occur in extreme cases. Conduct disorder can start sometime before 10 years or in later adolescence.

When an individual reaches the age of 18 years and still shows the enough of the previously mentioned behavior patterns they will be diagnosed as antisocial personality disorder. Individuals showing these behavior patterns are also sometimes called “sociopaths” or “psychopaths”; the names may change–but the behaviors the same.

As adults, these people show a strong disregard for the rights of others and the rule of law. They appear to have failed to develop the ability to empathize with others and they do not suffer conscious pangs of consciousness if they hurt or kill others. They are impulsive, seek thrills, take risks, are unreliable, spend money foolishly, can be irritable and aggressive, and have trouble maintaining close relationships with anyone. The motto for this category of diagnosis may be “if I want it—I’ll take it, if it feels good—I’ll do it: lying, cheating, manipulating, and stealing is good fun.”

A Representative Example

Not surprisingly, these individuals have problems with drug and alcohol addiction and are often sentenced to prison for criminal behavior. Charles Manson is often cited as someone who shows many of the features of antisocial personality disorder, as well as other psychological problems.

A thirty year old man sought help from a therapist because he claimed to be having problems with his wife and wished to leave her for his girlfriend, of over one year. He attended only several sessions and attempted to persuade the therapist that leaving his wife and four children for his girlfriend was the right thing for him to do.

He contended that his wife was unstable. When the therapist discussed his responsibilities to his wife and children, and his moral obligation to work on his problem (actually only his reported “problem”) he did not return. Predictably he did not pay the bill for his sessions.

It was apparent that he was seeking a psychologist to support him in an impending court battle with his wife. At the start of the first session, this individual, with unmistakable pride and pleasure, reeled off a report of the drugs he had taken (nearly all that we might think of), the fights, the high speed chases with the police, fires that he set, a car he blew up, a “knee capping” (“shoot the guy in the knee cap –it won’t kill them but it will hurt like hell–and others won’t mess with you anymore”), and a stint in prison. He seemed excited to tell the therapist what he called the “Sicilian Motto”: “The sweetest form of forgiveness is revenge!” Yes, these and similar behavior patterns extended back into this man’s childhood; and yes, the diagnosis was antisocial personality disorder.

As you may already surmised, his wife’s psychological problems were largely a result of living with him. She would eventually  divorce him, but he would remain a very damaging factor in his children’s lives. If he would remain connected to him, which is doubtful, he would be a very bad model for them to imitate. If he deserted them, they would suffer feelings of abandonment for the rest of their lives. It is common for such divorcing personality disordered individuals to remain unreliably connected to their ex spouses and children to frustrate and torture their ex and to propagandize their children against her or him. They will frequently spend significant sums of money and time to hire lawyers to drain their meager funds with legal fees and make them miserable.

The above is a strong example of how behavioral contagion can damage others who are associated with someone who suffers from a serious personality disorder. Unfortunately, research strongly indicates that anti-social personality disorder has a significant heritability factor and so behavior patterns similar to those of the problem parent are more likely to show-up in the children as they mature.

Suspected Causes

Genes

Antisocial personality disorder is perhaps the best researched of all the personality disorders. There is strong evidence that tendencies to show antisocial personality disorder can be inherited. Many studies have demonstrated elevated correlations in antisocial behavior of within families.

While some of the similarities could be due to imitation factors, children adopted and raised by adoptive parents still show stronger correlations for antisocial behavior with their biological parents than with their adoptive parents.

There is evidence that individuals with antisocial tendencies have slower central nervous systems, lower levels of autonomic nervous system arousal and slower skin conductance than normal individuals. They crave excitement and are not much affected by punishing consequences for their inappropriate behavior. One of the earmarks such individuals is their failure to learn from their painful experiences.

Learning

Antisocial personality disordered individuals are very likely to have lived in families that experienced poverty, disorganization, discord, family violence, divorce, abuse and abandonment. Presumably as a result of this, antisocial individuals do not trust others and they lack the moral development and interpersonal empathy so important to normal social relationships.

It is also thought that antisocial parents may teach their children to behave in similar ways through their modeling these behavior patterns and children learning to imitate them. Furthermore, it is very possible that when children tantrum, argue, and become aggressive to parental instructions that parents may “give-in” and terminate their demands, thereby teaching the children to behave in these oppositional and coercive ways to authority figures.

It should also be noted that Children diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder seem to at an increased risk of eventually being diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.

It is likely that any, or all, of these factors could contribute to the development of antisocial personality disorder in any specific case.

Take care to protect yourselves and loved ones from the effects of Antisocial Behavior patterns. Vote for representatives who will work to protect society from increasing rates of Antisocial Behavior patterns.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 3/26/10

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Schizoid Personality Disorder

March 25, 2010

Schizoid Personality Disorder

People who show these behavior patterns are detached from social relationships with others, including their family. They do not want, and do not enjoy, the company of others. They prefer to be alone and normally choose hobbies and vocational activities accordingly. They lack close friends, tend to be unaffected by praise or criticism, and appear cold, aloof, detached, and without emotions.

A Fictitious Example

A family was referred to a psychologist for therapy and parent training by the regional Welfare Department. The children were dirty and showed many other signs of neglect and abuse. The mother was of borderline-normal intelligence and lacked the skills, motivation, and knowledge to care for her children. The father was a cross country truck driver who spent vast amounts of time alone while working. During time-off, while at home, he seldom interacted with the members of his family except to handle the routine matters of cohabitation: vehicle and house repairs, finances, transportation, etc. He had no close friends and refused to attend various social functions. The father encountered the psychologist, and obtained a diagnosis, because of an agency referral of his family. As is typical, was not a bad person and he did not hate people, he was not interested in changing his ways and preferred to be left alone.

Suspected Causes

Schizoid personality disordered individuals frequently have suffered various kinds of neglect and/or physical abuse as well as rejection and various forms of hostility from others. For example this man’s own father was deserted by his mother during his first year. He was raised by his maternal grandparents who were cold, rejecting and abusive to him. He recounted being forced to eat strong tasting fish until it gaged him and caused him to vomit onto his plate at the table. He was then force to eat his vomit. He was made to stand outside in the cold for long periods because he upset his grandmother. When he failed to let the dog out on schedule, the dogs excrement was picked up by his grandmother and thrown in his face.

Most folks would understand why he might not wish to be close with other human beings. The only problem is that to create emotionally healthy children, one needs the ability to feel warmth and love for them and to also spend quality time with them.

Do not forget that the damaging effects of a personality disorder are damaging to the many people who interact with the individual who has this psychological problem. The negative effects of these behaviors can be very contagious to others. As a society we must reduce the conditions that increase the rate of occurrence of this and other psychological problems within our population.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.,    3/25/10

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Welcome to the New Socialist Republic of America

March 24, 2010

Welcome to the New Socialist Republic of America

Well, the dust has settled and our Federal Government has taken over about another one sixth of our economy with the passage of its health care bill.

I understand that there will be attempts to block the implementation of this new socialized medicine bill.

For now, I will hope for the best and try not worry about the worst.

VTM, 3/24/10

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“Health Care in a Free Society”

March 21, 2010

“Health Care in a Free Society”

This is the title of an address that Paul Ryan, sixth term congressional member, gave at Hillsdale College. It was publish in Imprimis, February 201o. The following quotes are some of Paul Ryan’s Main points. The regular print are my additions, the bold print are Ryan’s direct quotes.

1) …the right to care for one’s health does no imply that government must provide the care, any more than our right to eat, in order to live, requires government to own the farms and raise the crops.

2) Government’s constitutional obligations in regard to protecting such rights are normally met by establishing the conditions for free markets—markets which historically provide an abundance  of goods and services, at an affordable cost, for the largest number.

3) …we need only look at this history of Medicare and Medicaid—a history in which fraud has proliferated despite all efforts to stop it and failure to control cost has become a national nightmare.

4) The federal takeover of health care that those bills represent would subsume approximately on-sixth  of our national economy. Combined with spending at all levels, government would then control about 50 percent of total national production.

5) (He advocates) the model  consistent with our Constitution, in which health care providers compete in a free and transparent market, and in which individual consumers are in control.

6) Bureaucrats don’t make decisions about health care according to persona need or preference: they ration resources according to a dollar-driven social calculus.

7) (The government will use) a ‘whole life system’ in which government makes treatment decisions based on average life expectancy and ‘social usefulness’—-(decisions would be made by) a Medicare board of unelected ‘specialists’ whose job it would be  to determine the program’s treatment protocols as a method of limiting costs.

8).  Ryan suggest a system a system guided by political liberty and economic principles:

     A. …everyone paying for health care should receive the same tax benefits.

     B. …we need high-risk insurance pools in the states so that those with pre-      existing conditions can obtain coverage that is not prohibitively expensive, and so that costs in hon-high-risk pools are stabilized.

     C. …we need to unlock existing health care monopolies by letting people purchase health insurance across state lines—just as they do care insurance and other goods and services. This is a simple and obvious way to reduce health care costs.

     D. …we need to establish transparency in terms of costs and quality of health care. …Unless the consumer is able to compare prices and quality of services– unless he has an incentive to base choices on that information, as he does in purchasing other goods and services—there is not really a free market.

9) Americans understand that the problems facing your health care system today, real as they are,  can be addressed without nationalizing one-sixth of the American economy and moving us passed the tipping point toward a European-style social welfare state.

Today, we will see if the progressive socialists have pulled off a revolution. You had better hope and pray that they fail.

V. Thomas Mawhinney   3/22/2010

 

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President Obama on The U.S. Constitution

March 21, 2010

President Obama on The U.S. Constitution

Are you surprised?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDUWpLnS63M&feature=related

VTM

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“To Our Patients”: Say No To Obama Care!

March 20, 2010

“To Our Patients”: Say No To Obama Care

Three prominent orthopedic surgeons in South Bend In. have published  their views in the South Bend tribune’s 3/20/10 edition. I have never read a more succinct and complete enumeration of the flaws of Obama care. It will be a long post, but I hope you will read and remember what follows in its entirety.

The following is a full length quote of Fred Ferlic, M.D., Robert Clemency, M. D., and Michael Kelbel, M.D.

We have spoken to many of the orthopedic surgeons in district II and we believe they would all agree with the following general statements:

1) All persons living in the United States should have the opportunity for excellent healthcare.

2) preexisting illnesses should not be an exclusion for obtaining excellent healthcare.

The undersigned orthopedic surgeons agree that healthcare reform is a necessity and the present status quo is unacceptable. However, we believe it must he done with a step by step bipartisan effort to ensure everyone excellent healthcare and decreased healthcare costs. We object to the current 2600 page Healthcare Bill for the following reasons:

1) It creates a government directed program that is financially irresponsible with no idea how to pay for this bill:

A. Medicare has trillions of unfunded liability. Even Warren Buffet, an Obama supporter, states that the current Senate Bill is unacceptable       because it is not cost- effective.

B. Medicaid is growing at 21% each year. The 10-10–6 is disingenuous (10 years of tax increases and 10 years of Medicaid cuts—$500 billion-to pay for six years of spending). Actual ten years of cost is $ 2.3 trillion and the government wants to expand the program dramatically.

2) The Healthcare Bill will create a system of substandard care–all the undersigned have worked at a government hospital (VA), and all agree to:

A. There is rationing of joint replacement and orthopedic service.

B. Directed by a huge inefficient costly bureaucracy.

C. Care directed in a less than cost effective fashion compared to private hospitals and physicians.

3) The Healthcare Bill provides no substantial medical legal reform. The present system of frivolous lawsuits results in:

A. Ever increasing physician premiums that pass the cost onto the patient

B) Ordering unnecessary tests–the Massachusetts Medical society estimates that 25% of tests and procedures are ordered for no medical  reason and are strictly legal.

C) Distrust in the doctor/patient relationship.

4) The Obama Bill has no provision in the 2600 page bill for patient responsibility: i.e., epidemic obesity with the secondary type II diabetic complications, illegitimacy with disastrous medical/social repercussions, tobacco abuse, urban violence (gunshots in 2009 accounted for 36 deaths in England-Wales; in the United States gunshot deaths 18,000), etc. Multiple social problems that the government fails to address are thrown in to the medical treatment basket.

5) There are $500 billion in new taxes when unemployment is above 10% nationally.

6) Insurance reform:

A. Does not allow for aggressive interstate insurance competition to reduce healthcare costs. (i.e. lower premiums)

B. There is no formula to reduce exorbitantly high compensation packages for the highest level insurance company executives-total compensation in 2009 for the CEO of Aetna was $30 million, total compensation of  CEO of Well Point/ Blue Cross $18 million.

7) The Healthcare Bill provides no co-pay provisions for the patient. We Believe every patient should have at least a minimal monetary investment in their health care. Totally free care invites utilization abuse. For those persons either mentally or physically incapable of investing in their healthcare allow physicians to write off indigent care as bad debt, or give them a tax credit providing care to the uninsured. Such a move would solve a large part of the country’s healthcare needs and would be very cost-effective.

8) The bill has Medicare cutbacks of $500 billion not to keep medicare solvent, but the shift costs to non-Medicare programs. Part of Mayo Clinic in Arizona no longer takes Medicare patients because of the poor reimbursement and inability to give adequate care.

9) 118 new government boards with ever expanding bureaucracies to coordinate the healthcare mandates.

10) The bill has unethical deal making-Nebraska Medicaid, Louisiana Purchase, the “Doc Fix”, Florida Medicare shame, etc. Most physicians oppose the current 2600 page bill. Only 25% fo doctors belong to the AMA which gave a lukewarm endorsement of the bill, but 75%  of doctors do not belong to the AMA and do not agree with Obama Care. With ever increasing deficits this is not the time to adopt a poorly planned 2600 page bill. Healthcare accounts for about 16% of the American economy with its concomitant large employee base. If you agree with the undersigned please contact our current representative Joe Donelly at 574-288-2780. Please let him know your opinion. This is your constitutional right and privilege.

Fred Ferlic, M.D.      Robert Clemency, M.D.         Michael Kelbel, M.D.

If you agree with these outstanding physicians (Dr. Ferlic replaced one of  my hips  with marvelous results) please protest to your Representatives.

My wonderful wife, Sally, will need heart surgery within a few years. In her 70’s will she be allowed this surgery, or will some board of bureaucrats deem it to be an inefficient use of this Nation’s medical resources?  Will you and your loved ones be at the risk of Governmental control of  your personal health options?

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.   3/20/10

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Obama’s 7 Lies in Less That Two Minutes

March 19, 2010

Obama’s 7 Lies in Less Than Two Minutes

Some people think that it is unfair to expose President Obama’s lying and cheating nature.

 If his shameless shenanigans did not threaten to turn this nation into a European Social Democracy by confiscating  another 1/6 th of our economy through centrally managed health care (making roughly 50% of our nations economic output managed by the Feds), I would simply let it go.  But I believe this could happen within the next ten years. Therefore, I sure as hell  will not let it go. 

Obama’s lies and deceptions are so profound as to appear to this psychologist as being psychopathological in nature.

It is hard to predict when great nations will fall. However, our governmental take-over of health care appears to me to be a major step in that direction. I have been studying the fall of civilizations for the past 23 years, but I will confess that I never anticipated the occurrence of this self-destructive evolution in America. I will humbly endorse the old adage that “life is full of surprises”. 

Please spend less than two minutes to view the following U-Tube video production and see if you do not agree with my views on Mr. Obama’s deeply ingrained deceitful and dishonest ways. Don’t bother to check this out on Snopes.com, it is a video of Obama personally telling us how  he and his administration  will conduct themselves if he is elected.  His ease and facility with lying to the people of America is stark and irrefutable: See for your self.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UErR7i2onW0

You had better let your Representatives know how you feel about the nationalized health-care bill that will be voted on this Sunday.  I believe that you will be very sorry if you do not— and so will your grandchildren.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Indiana University South Bend

Health Services Provider in Psychology

Indiana, Licence # 20090171A

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