If there were any doubt that the New York Times got the message from Al Gore's acceptance-speech attack on the HMOs, check out the news story on the front of the metro section of this morning's Times. The story runs under the headline "An Achiever's Unraveling," with the subheadline, "Fall of Doctor Accused of Killing Her Parents." The article tells the story of a woman with manic depression who lost $250,000 in an attempt to start a hotel on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. The woman has been divorced twice and was arrested once for showing up at a "go-go bar" in New Jersey in a "go-go outfit" and attempting to perform a "birthday dance on the bar for her husband." Her husband's birthday had been four months before and he wasn't at the bar.
So, who is to blame for this woman's apparent murder of her own parents, aged 92 and 86? (The woman's lawyers say they are preparing a defense "based on her questionable mental state," the Times reports.) Well, naturally, it is the fault of the HMOs.
In fact, in today's Times story, before we hear about the failed hotel, before we hear about the manic depression, before we hear about the go-go bar episode or the second divorce, we learn that "like so many doctors, she grew disenchanted with the direction of medicine under the penny-conscious strictures of managed care."
Her second husband is quoted in the article as saying that the accused murderer "felt a whole lot of people were involved in medical decisions who shouldn't be. Instead of providing care to people, she was dancing to some of the tunes that insurers and whatnot played."
Well, if the alternative is to leave the medical decisions entirely in the hands of accused murderers, there may be something to be said for getting the HMOs involved.
Gore Operative Identified: An article in the national section of today's Times identifies Michael O'Hanlon as "a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has informally consulted for the Gore campaign." That's an improvement over the August 31 issue of the Times, where Mr. O'Hanlon was quoted on the front page criticizing Richard Cheney and was identified only as "a defense policy specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington." Now they tell us he's a Gore operative.