health care
revere | April 14, 2010I am pro-abortion. Not in the sense that I think abortions are good. I don't. In the sense that I am pro-surgery for medical conditions that can be surgically treated, or pro-pharmaceuticals for medical conditions that can be treated with drugs. I consider an unwanted fertilization to be a medical condition with significant consequences that can be treated. Now that I have gotten that out of the way I hope I can be free to state some ambivalence later about some other matters related to the anti-abortion movement.
But no ambivalence about a woman's ability to get an abortion. Roe v. Wade was…
terrasig | April 12, 2010If you've never heard of Mark Fiore, you should. And will.
Mark Fiore of the San Francisco Chronicle was recognized today with the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.
For a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Awarded to Mark Fiore, self syndicated, for his animated cartoons appearing on SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, where his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a…
revere | April 1, 2010The AMA just took over a journal called Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. In fact they proudly announced they were the exclusive publisher and distributor of the journal, formerly published by Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. I wouldn't even know about it except it was in connection with a press release of an article likely to be of interest any health care worker: ":Which Health Care Workers Were Most Affected During the Spring 2009 H1N1 Pandemic?" by Santos, Bristow and Vorenkamp of Weill-Cornell Medical School in New York. And the AMA even said it was redesigning the…
denialism | March 29, 2010With the recent victory of this administration in passing health care reform I felt it was time to talk again about the importance of this issue and some of my own experiences in the last year of my surgical training.
I was, and still am of the belief that reform, whatever form it might take, will be successful as long as we manage to make health care universal. Partly because our system already is universal but defective. No matter if you have insurance or not, if you show up in a hospital with a problem that needs to be addressed, we'll treat it. We ethically can not turn people away…
revere | March 21, 2010The US House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on one of the many required, but in this case crucial, steps to beginning an overhaul of the chaotic situation of American health care. By all accounts the vote is close, which is really pathetic. What is being proposed in the US is a baby step in absolute terms, although it is huge in terms relative to the historically backwards and reactionary character medical care in the US. I hope it passes, since not passing it would leave tens of millions without insurance of any kind and most of the rest of us insecure about the coverage we have.…
milhayser | March 3, 2010
On Universe, Claire L. Evans interviews sci-fi world-builder Ursula K. Le Guin. Their conversation centers on the Google Books Settlement, which seeks to "circumvent existing U.S. copyright law." While Le Guin hopes her books will become more accessible in the future, she says "the vast and currently chaotic electronic expansion of publishing should not be controlled solely by corporations." On Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel reviews China Mieville's new novel The City and the City, which is about two cities that enforce very strict boundaries despite being "co-located" on the same real…
sastyk | March 2, 2010One of the pleasures of blogging here has been the focus that this community has on issues of public health. Doing everything we can to maintain the health and well-being of populations through a shift into a different model of life is an issue that is deeply important to me - I don't always agree with everyone who writes here on these issues (and, of course, they don't always agree with each other ;-)), but I am struck with admiration of the degree of concern for the public welfare expressed by my Science Blog Colleagues.
Which is why I'm being so presumptuous (since I am a science writer,…
grrlscientist | February 25, 2010tags: neuroscience, health, medicine, health care, blindness, poverty, India, Pawan Sinha, TEDTalks, streaming video
Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain's visual system develops. Dr Sinha and his team provide free vision-restoring treatment to children born blind, and then study how their brains learn to interpret visual data. The work offers insights into neuroscience, engineering and even autism.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their…
revere | February 13, 20102009 was a dismal year, economically speaking -- unless you were a health insurer:
If no health care overhaul passes Congress, health insurers may be in for a windfall -- and one far larger that most Americans probably realize.
According to a study by a pro-health reform group published Thursday, the nation's largest five health insurance companies posted a 56 percent gain in 2009 profits over 2008. The insurers including Wellpoint, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Aetna and Humana, which cover the majority of Americans with insurance.
The insurers' hefty profit gains came even as 2.7 million more…
milhayser | February 5, 2010
Vaccines have guarded health and life for centuries, relegating once devastating diseases to near total obscurity. But many people now take vaccines for granted, and some blame vaccines for autism and other disorders. On Respectful Insolence, Orac reports the downfall of 1998 research which first tied MMR vaccines to the occurrence of autism in children. As Orac writes, "hearing that the man whose bad science launched a thousand quackeries had finally been declared unethical and dishonest [...] brought joy to my heart, the joy that comes with seeing justice done." ERV jumps on other news…
grrlscientist | February 4, 2010tags: health, medicine, TEDMED,health care, ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, technology, internet, Jamie Heywood, TEDTalks, streaming video
When Jamie Heywood's brother was diagnosed with ALS, he devoted his life to fighting the disease as well. The Heywood brothers built an ingenious website where people share and track data on their illnesses -- and they discovered that the collective data had enormous power to comfort, explain and predict.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2010tags: health, medicine, health care, diagnostics, poverty, technology, George Whitesides, TEDTalks, streaming video
Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for regions that are most in need. George Whitesides' ingenious answer, at TEDxBoston, is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.
In his legendary career in chemistry, George Whitesides has been a pioneer in microfabrication and nanoscale self-assembly. Now, he's fabbing a diagnostic lab on a chip.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from…
revere | February 1, 2010If you want to know why I despise every Republican Senator and Democratic Senators Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Max Baucus, "Independent (of morals)" Joe Lieberman and probably a bunch more whose names I am repressing, it's because they enable and support and help entrench as the bedrock of our health care system, insurance companies. Here's what these companies are like:
A Boulder County jury has ruled that a health insurance company must pay $37 million to a Lafayette woman whose health insurance policy was canceled after she was seriously injured in a car accident.
The insurance…
grrlscientist | January 27, 2010tags: health, medicine, TEDMED,health care, medical records, GPS, geography, geomedicine, Bill Davenhall, TEDTalks, streaming video
Where you live: It impacts your health as much as diet and genes do, but it's not part of your medical records. At TEDMED, Bill Davenhall shows how overlooked government geo-data (from local heart-attack rates to toxic dumpsite info) can mesh with mobile GPS apps to keep doctors in the loop. Call it "geo-medicine."
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the…
sastyk | January 25, 2010We've all been down with colds this weekend, nothing really serious, just uncomfortable. Or rather, nothing really serious in my estimation. My husband, on the other hand, is always pretty sure he might be dying whenever any minor virus hits him. So far, though, he's still alive and seems to be more or less ok.
What Eric does inevitably get when he gets sick is the lingering cough. This is no fun, of course - but it does have its compensations. One of them is the homemade cough syrup. Most studies show that over-the-counter cough medicines are fairly ineffective - one found that a…
revere | January 6, 2010Rush Limbaugh has done a personal biopsy of the US health care system and found it healthy:
"Based on what happened to me here, I don't think there is one thing wrong with the American healthcare system. It is working just fine," he said.
Limbaugh, a multimillionaire, said he got no special treatment, but the staff made his stay "almost like a hotel." (Reuters via ABC News)
What "happened to him" was that the obese 58 year old media bloviator with enough internal rage to kill a dozen normal sized people was afraid he was having a heart attack and called his girl friend, Kathryn Rogers, to let…
revere | December 20, 2009We're only just learning some of the crap that's in this health care deform compromise/giveaway to the insurance industry, but some of it has come out (via the Manager's Amendment .pdf [and I admit I don't exactly know what this is except it contains legislative language allegedly in the bill]). For starters, rest easy. Your fucking guns are safe. If you are a woman, no similar concessions to your uterus (h/t McJoan at DailyKos).
One of the things we are told by apologists for this monstrosity is that it has all sorts of great provisions for prevention and wellness promotion. I'm in public…
revere | December 19, 2009We are on record as favoring single-payer health care and taking certain things like vaccines out of the market system, but beyond that we don't do much health care politics here. But we have opinions, like everyone does, opinions formed by working for more than four decades within the health care and public health professions. Other than that, we are like most of you. Consumers of health care with our own particular view of the world. And since everyone else seems to be talking about it, so will we. At least we will today.
Everyone knows that what Republicans hate and fear about health care…
sastyk | December 18, 2009A while back I argued that there's a rule - when the US spends a whole lot more and uses a whole lot more than everyone else, what we usually get back isn't just less than everyone else gets for the same buck, it is dramatically worse. I called it my rule of 10 times the price = 10 times crappier. It applies to an astonishing range of American actions - from our military budget and its results to the oil we invest in agriculture.
Back then, one of my examples was healthcare, which I pointed out was at least 4 times crappier (and at least 10xs or more for those who can't get it at all, an…
milhayser | December 10, 2009
Last month, lawmakers in Ontario, Canada introduced legislation that would award prescription rights to graduates of two naturopathic schools. Should students subject to different educational standards be granted the same powers of prescription? On Terra Sigillata, Abel Pharmboy calls it inconsistent for the naturopathic community to "want the right to prescribe regulated medicines while simultaneously decrying medicine and science-based investigative methods," adding that "homeopathy is diametrically opposed to dose-response pharmacology." You can learn more about homeopathy here. Then…