Med: Free booze for the homeless

I'm sure the righties will just LOVE this one:

Giving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of booze may improve their health and their behavior, the Canadian Medical Association Journal said in a study published on Tuesday.

Seventeen homeless adults, all with long and chronic histories of alcohol abuse, were allowed up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day -- a glass an hour from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- in the Ottawa-based program, which started in 2002 and is continuing.

After an average of 16 months, the number of times participants got in trouble with the law had fallen 51 percent from the three years before they joined the program, and hospital emergency room visits were down 36 percent.

"Once we give a 'small amount' of alcohol and stabilize the addiction, we are able to provide health services that lead to a reduction in the unnecessary health services they were getting before," said Dr. Jeff Turnbull, one of the authors of the report.

"The alcohol gets them in, builds the trust and then we have the opportunity to treat other medical diseases... It's about improving the quality of life."

First they attack Christmas, now those crazy lefties wanna give all the homeless folks an endless suppy of Jack Daniels? Obviously, homeless people don't deserve any sort of quality of life.

This is why I love medical policy: because every once in a while, the stuff that makes no sense whatsoever (or that sounds like something some crack-smoking monkey would say at 3 AM) winds up being the most cost effective and best outcome intervention.

Common sense is overrated, my friends. P values are not. Woohoo!