Sunday Morning Op-Ed Piece

Last week's blog on "Seizing Control" exhibited the maelstrom that exists in the spine industry. Hopefully, the overriding message from our readers will not get lost in the Physician Owned Distributorship sideshow. Physicians hailing other physicians that have started their own POD's, is like Obama hailing Wall Street businessmen as being savvy and on top of their game. There is nothing genius about circumventing the laws and manipulating markets while potentially committing white collar crime. A paradox exists when physicians castigate medical malpractice attorneys, and then cry out for tort reform, while listening to attorneys tell them that their business model is perfectly legal. Eventually, this model will be tested in a court of law. The economic conditions and the state of healthcare is bringing out the anxious and angry climate that currently exists in our country. This is evident by the persuasive and passionate position by many of our readers. Regardless, the fact remains, that the cost of healthcare will be $4 trillion dollars per annum by 2012.

But isn't our behavior a mirror image of our society? We have become advocates in behaving like our highly esteemed politicians and bankers. You know whom I am speaking about, "The those rules don't apply to me generation." The same way that the Street has learned to skirt the rules and manipulate financial instruments by creating credit default swaps, securitizing mortgages and collateralize debt obligations, we continue to look for opportunities where passing the problem that exists in healthcare is easier than dealing with it. Many or our readers can call TSB a cynical platform, yet, we believe that our hope lies with a younger generation that frowns upon the type of behavior that our generation condones.

On a lighter note, TSB was wondering when some industry literati was going to pen a historical perspective on the spine industry. Our vote for the title would be, "A History of Spine, Too Much Monkey Business." We must speculate that someone is either writing, or putting together an outline for future publication. The timing would be perfect considering that nowadays there is no standard in publishing witnessed by the many books that have been published by politicians and businesspeople on every possible subject. Who knows maybe it will be Robin Young? Will it be Hansen Yuan? Will it be Stephen Hochshuler? Will it be Alexis Lukianov? Who knows?