Dr. William Duncan goes public in his support for HBOT & the IHMA.

I have personally witnessed the miracle of Hyperbaric Oxygen in my life and the life of my loved ones. I also have a great deal of training as an economist, and understand very well what these damaged lives mean to our society. One of my best friends in High School, who graduated from MIT and went to work for Dow-Corning, just had a stroke. He should have been immediately treated, in the emergency room. We need his brain. We need the other brains out there as well. Imagine, you mothers out there with 3 hour feeding times, twice each day, how much better your child would be if he or she had been treated immediately after the injury. I just spoke with Polly Spare, President of Voice of the Retarded, the parents group, about my mentally handicapped brother being treated and having a great leap in his intelligence. She is excited, because there is nothing out there for these children either. I've seen this work for battered women, drug addict alcoholics, and victims of child abuse.

It costs us far more not to treat with HBO than it does to treat with it. I discovered talking to one Hyperbaric UHMS doc, when I mentioned I'd love to see a study done on this by Regina Hertzog at Harvard (a brilliant Health Care economist), he said, "We used her back in 1980! She's brilliant.) That she is. Right now, IHMA needs money in their research fund so that she can be hired.

One UHMS doctor, skeptical about brain injury, but who informed me he was a top notch researcher, treats just 11 patients a day at his huge hospital-based multiplace chamber. Dr. Harch treats 30 - 50, and doesn't advertise for patients at his facility. I wonder who has more experience with Hyperbaric Medicine?

I was told, "but they're charging money at these outpatient facilities!" Yes, they are, and I don't know about other parents out there but I willingly withdrew money from my retirement to get my brain injured son treated, who was a perfect example of a wasted life, and he'd been in the Navy, treated by one of UHMS's finest physicians (who never treated him with Hyperbarics) and had even been to Walter Reed's Brain Injury center (where they just wanted to do open brain surgery.) He needs more treatment, 40 more, but cannot afford the time off to go back to New Orleans (now that he is gainfully employed, expecting my 6th grandchild, and happily married, all of which happened since last January. All of his misery could have been prevented by one or a few Hyperbaric oxygen treatments when he was 16 and had his first concussion. Walter Reed told me he might not have had his big one if his little one had been taken care of. But, they're just collecting statistics!

When you look at the numbers, they can be deceiving. Take stroke, for example. 1,757,917 Americans were treated for stroke last year under Medicare. The average treatment cost per patient was $3,169 for acute care, to evaluate, stabilize, and tell them how much brain tissue they've lost. Against a $3,000 cost per patient, HBO for 40 treatments looks expensive, except for two things. First, acute care with HBO does not require as many treatments, because you are preventing brain tissue from dying. A few treatments would be very cost effective in the short term. But this does not tell the whole story. One Blue Cross official I talked to said, "Bill, how much does this cost." Excluding the SPECT scans, which they pay for anyway, I told him it would cost about $7,000. He said, "Shoot, Bill. I could spit $7,000 to help these people. Do you know much it costs me for home health care and rehabilitation?" The long term care, even for severely injured, would reduce the overall cost of caring for them, even if the government is not necessarily paying for that cost currently. Ask any CP Mom whose kid dropped from a 6 hour per day feeding schedule (2-3 hour sessions per day) to ½ hour twice a day. It is that kind of care differential.

One interesting thing one of the UHMS doctors mentioned. I told him about one CP parent I'd talked to who burst into tears when I asked her what she thought of the treatments. She said, "I now have a relationship with my daughter." Her daughter was 6 or 7. The lady turned out to be a judge. The UHMS doc said, "You know, now that you mention it, I've noticed that many of these CP parents are professionals." Hmmmmm, is there something they're missing?

Finally, there is something that you can all do right now. It will make a huge difference to the future of HBOT and Members of Congress will listen because you vote for them.

Dr. Bill Duncan
Rep. Istook (R-OK-05)
Washington DC 20515-3605

Dr. Duncan works for congress and oversees the NIH and CDC, CMS, and AHRQ. He was also responsible for getting a 2 million dollar grant for the UHMS and has now put his full support behind the new IHMA