Tips for PR; Most Admired; 2nd Rant - Healthcare;; Get Data on YOU!

"...keeping you great"

HEADLINES:

Ruckus/Rant #2 -- Healthcare!! I promise this will be the last rant for a while - just finishing out the week doing as Seth Godin, in honor of Steve Jobs, has asked us to do, more below but first...

Apple is World's Most Admired Company -- Fortune's annual list is out and in another nod to Steve's legacy this week and Tim Cook's brilliant leadership, Apple is again the World's Most Admired Company. Rounding out the top 10: Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, Starbucks, Walt Disney, Southwest Airlines, American Express (not for long?), GE, and Coca-Cola. I noted Amex because yet another large merchant has dropped the Amex card - Costco. ApplePay and other payment innovations will be driving even more positive changes in our banking systems.

5 Ways to Maximize PR -- my latest Venture column in Fortune is online (and unlocked). Here are 5 ways to get more from your PR efforts:

1. Skip the canned press releases -- and what to do instead - thanks Cameron Herald
2. Staff it -- thanks David Nui, CEO of TinyPulse (employee mood monitoring)
3. Own the relationship -- thanks John Ruhlin, Ruhlin Group (corporate gifts)
4. Don't blow it -- be available immediately
5. Give back in a unique way -- thanks Beautologie owner Dr. Darshan Shah

27-employee TinyPulse has garnered over 100 media mentions using many of these techniques. Take 1 minute to read through the five tips and specific examples. And number 6? Respond to requests for stories - thanks to all of you who do.

My Healthcare Rant -- ...it starts with this NY Times article I've been harboring for several months. In essence, a daughter's 91 year old father is dying and he just wants to go home to be with his music and art, however, notes the article:

"No matter what I do, they want you in a nursing home," Ms. Stefanides told him, promising the placement would be temporary. "I think they're making money off you."

For a year they transferred her father from one terrible institution to another, often without notifying family. Responds the father when his daughter asks why he's atrophying in one institution:

"They never move me," he answered. "I'm lucky if they come to change me."

The article continues, "On some days he went hungry, he told his daughter. Rushed workers left his food tray on the air-conditioner, where he could not reach it. Several times, he fell out of bed trying." After desperately fighting the system for a year, her father died a painful death in the hospital. Toward the end, the article notes:

The funeral home director told her the deep pressure ulcers on her father's body were the worst he had ever seen. The records she obtained showed that in the last year of his life, his care cost at least a million dollars. Was that the best, she wondered, that a million dollars could buy? "He didn't die in his bed, and that's what he wanted," she said. "I still feel that I let him down."

The VA hospital mess isn't an isolated case - and it's only going to get worse. It's a long article, but worth reading.

Death from Measles -- vaccines have been in the news again lately. When I was young, children received a handful of vaccines. Today, children receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines, in addition to all the flu vaccines (a $30 billion industry). Interestingly, in the case of measles, deaths had dropped in the US to almost zero by the time the vaccine was even introduced in 1963. Changes in sanitation and nutrition created the largest drop in almost all childhood deaths prior to the introduction of vaccines:

"Bought" the Documentary -- this week, until March 6, you can view this documentary I've supported (I'm actually helping fund a second in the making called "UnDoctored"). Notes the film producer:

What we've learned during the making of this film is very concerning. The bottom line is that we are all getting sicker as the healthcare industries get richer. These are not conspiracy theories they are statistical realities. How bad does it need to get before we stop putting profits before the health of our children and future generations? There is a problem and we hope our film is part of the solution. Our government has certainly been "Bought" by lobbyists, change needs to happen and it begins with concerned parents and citizens.

You can access a free viewing any time before March 6th - then there will be a nominal cost again.

Finally Going Mainstream -- The Riordan Clinic (I'm the Board Chair) is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The Riordan Protocol for using IV Vitamin C as an adjunctive to cancer treatment is finally, after all these years, going main stream (I've been getting IV Vitamin C for almost 2 decades to stay healthy vs. the massive doses of antibiotics I used to take twice per year). It's taken a lot of work with researchers at NIH and the FDA to reach this point. Notes this press release about our next IVC Academy for physicians:

Thirty years ago, Dr. Hugh Riordan treated his first cancer patient with high doses of intravenous vitamin C. The patient was a 70 year-old gentleman with kidney cancer and metastasis to the liver and lungs. Dr. Riordan offered to treat this cancer patient "palliatively" with 30 grams of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) intravenously twice a week. After 15 months of therapy, the cancer was gone.

It goes on to note, "Some 70,000 vitamin C infusions later, Dr. Riordan and his research team demonstrated scientific evidence to support the use of high dose ascorbate in the adjunctive care of cancer patients. Studies at the US National Institutes of Health have since replicated and advanced these findings." Making progress!

So My Rant -- I trust the crowd over the experts (and government) - to pick hotels and to decide what is best for my health. It's when a few, for the pure sake of profit, falsify data (Merck, J&J, etc. have all been exposed after valiant efforts by whistleblowers - detailed in "Bought") and lobby for legislation that forces me and my physicians-of-choice to follow protocols that our own research and personal experience suggests are wrong, that's when something needs to change.

A Solution? -- education and healthcare are a mess in the US - and busting our budgets - an average of $15k per student per year for education; an average of $10k per every person in the US. And as business leaders, having successful healthcare and education systems are critical to our global competitiveness, so it is something we should care about. So a suggestion -- give everyone healthcare and education vouchers (Sweden and The Netherlands have had education vouchers for decades and crush our outcomes). This still provides for universal education and healthcare, but lets the crowd choose how to allocate (I can spend on IVs vs. drugs) vs. some lobby-driven government officials and/or supposed experts. When we broke up the monopoly of AT&T, the industry has flourished since - with innovation driving down the costs and upping the quality by magnitudes. We can do the same in healthcare and education.

At a Minimum -- get data - and I mean health data about you. Each of us is unique, like our fingerprints - so "universals" just don't work universally. My data from last summer showed I'm low in Vitamin D, Zinc, and oleic acid - and I know precisely by how much. It might be different this year. And I know that I don't store Vitamin C as well as other people and given the amount I travel on airplanes (at altitude you precipitate out many key minerals) I need to adjust my intakes accordingly. And I've been proactively working to reverse the telomere-shortening process that produces aging the past six years - something that is becoming more main stream as well with this latest Salk Institute study. Remain informed and hope you have the resources to pursue your own path outside the system - so long as they let us!

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