Health care, put in the bill that each state's citizens vote on a public option? Campaign finance. Voluntary public financing won't work? The health care debate is heavily influenced by health donations. Statistics on lobbying. Tom Daschle, wife lobbyist. Pet insurance compared to human insurance, health care costs. Where the waste is. People billing. Poor primary health care. Disease prevention. Expand Medicare to make it become the public option? As more take it on, the cost to the Federal government is higher?

People being sent home the day after major surgery. People going bankrupt because of health care costs. Tying health to jobs is involuntary servitude. France spends half as much on health care. Right wing states try to cut services. Can any meaningful changes come up as amendments? Obama, etc. want to move quickly, but it has to be a good strong product, universal, affordable. Bernie would rather take the time it needs. Clunkers.

Psychiatry has become short visits then prescriptions as it makes most money. A recent Ottawa study looked at depression, had to use the Freedom of Information Act as drug makers don't have to publish studies which show that their drugs don't work. There is no difference between the drugs and placebos. They looked at all the recent drugs. All the school shooters seem to have been on SSRIs, Thom thinks they disconnect people from emotions. Lewis tried Zoloft for one week, and found himself not caring about anything, it was totally frightening. You should take what you prescribe, first, although maybe not antibiotics. People in the study were 10% from normal practice, the rest too extreme. Social networks, relationships are most important, our brains are molded by them as kids. The new field of epigenetics, how genes are modified by life experience. Experience can change DNA, which gets into sperm, so affects the offspring. It lasts at least 3 or 4 generations. Behaviors like war, the kind of society, we are changing our own genes.

Terry Deacon found that evolution causes genetic degradation instead of making it more complex. It makes it more simple because as you get to be bigger brained, you rely much more on social control, not genetics. So we're really degraded chimpanzees.

Narrative Medicine. Looking at the brain as a story-making organ; we naturally make stories to make sense of the world. For example, if you are abused as a kid, you have a story that there is something you cannot talk about, something about you, that affects all your relationships. Change the story; there is nothing wrong about you, find a different story where you are a good person. Victim stories. The story that you have to be born with talent and genius. In "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell says you just need a little talent and you have to put in 10,000 hours. Edison said it was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. John Lennon said the Beatles became so famous because of the gigs they did in Hamburg where they had to play 13 hours a day for 100 consecutive days.

Thom's mom who recently died had Alzheimer's. They decided not to give her the drugs, it was not worth the side effects. A new drug is being marketed. The UK got hold of the unpublished data, and decided not to pay for it. Even the published study doesn't say anything about clinical outcomes, just an improvement of performance a little on scale, hardly noticeable. The only thing that works is to have human beings involved. Thom's family kept bringing her back. Having someone available for emergencies means an year can be spent at home.

A caller knew somebody so manic she did not sleep for days, they gave her a sleeping pill so that she could sleep, and then the caller could sleep too. Sleep can break the cycle. Whatever works to get you to sleep.

Toxic effects of Aspartame, the artificial sweetener, which is also a drug, which Don Rumsfeld got approved. All drugs have side effects and some of them are dangerous and some of them can kill you. How people can change their own stories. Group of friends. Healing circles. People can point our assumptions, stories that need changing.

Cyrus the Great and Jack Welsh, one created an empire, the other GE, both lasted. Jack Welsh invented outsourcing. Jack Welsh created productivity, jobs. Alexander the Great and Dennis Kozlowski. Carly Fiorina rescued HP by outsourcing. Churn vs stagnation. China, imports. Alexander Hamilton. He said the current problems are due to the Fed printing lots of money 5 years ago, Fannie and Freddie, and 'mark to market'. The Glass Steagall Act. Lincoln fired those who were not performing, Obama should fire Bernanke, etc.

A modest proposal 2009: If single payer health care is off the table and we also can’t get a public option how about a lottery system for health care. Those without health care can spin the wheel at the hospital or doctor’s office to see if they’ll be one of the lucky ones to get care that day.

• How does the "old girls club" stack up against the "old boys club?" Thom will challenge Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum...are females at the top doing better than their male counterparts?
• actor/activist/author Mike Farrell will be here to tell us about his new book "Of Mule and Man"
• JoAnn Volk of the AFL-CIO stops by for our weekly labor segment to talk about the fight for health care reform
• the best of the rest of the news, and your calls