Although Americans may like to think that it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter as much as it does, where they live can have major effects on their health. Geography isn’t an absolute determinant, but key differences have been discerned in how it affects the prescribing dangerous opioid drugs, cancer death rates, some air pollution harms, and….
Continue ReadingArchives for July 2017
Wisconsin appeals court rejects legal changes that GOP seeks nationally
Even as congressional Republicans advance their counter-factual campaign to strip patients who have been harmed while seeking medical services of their rights to seek legal redress, another state appeals court has rejected key GOP arguments about medical malpractice lawsuits. An appellate court in Wisconsin has declared unconstitutional that state’s $750,000 cap on non-economic damages, reinstating a….
Continue ReadingBetter nursing home oversight needed for dangerous facilities
Federal regulators need to ramp up their oversight of nursing homes, big time, with recent news reports and studies finding persistent abuses of elderly patients, including during crackdowns on problem operators, and facilities failing to care for vulnerable charges so they don’t lapse into emergency or hospital care. Jordan Rau and the independent Kaiser Health….
Continue ReadingAre local TV news broadcasts selling out to wealthy medical interests?
Just under half of American adults get their news mostly from local television, and this is especially true for the older among us who also happen to be the heaviest users of medical services. But with local TV content hitting new highs for sheer volume—an average of 5.7 hours every day—watchdog groups are expressing a….
Continue ReadingWhen placenta-eating mom sickens baby, has star health bunk gone too far?
Mocking the vanity, self-absorption, and stupidity of the rich and celebrities may be too feckless a sport. But the tragic spin-offs of the sweeping misinformation their hype mechanisms can generate sometimes just cannot be ignored. If you can take it, New York magazine has put out a detailed story on “The Wellness Epidemic,” a deep….
Continue ReadingPathologists’ errors get new scrutiny as medical tests soar in use, importance
Pathologists are the medical specialists whom few patients ever meet, but they play increasingly important roles in treatment decisions. Some new reports raise concerns about systematic errors in the path lab. The New York Times painted a surprisingly distanced picture of the work of pathologists in a recent report on these medical doctors who are….
Continue ReadingAs opioid drug toll soars, experts zero in on abusers’ mental illnesses, too
Taken from a most favorable point of view, Big Pharma and doctors tried to address a big physical problem for patients when they pushed ahead in recent years with potent painkillers. But now, it’s those troubled Americans’ mental health woes that officials may need to deal with to better battle what has become an epidemic….
Continue ReadingOver 4th, GOP senators seek independence from their health care jam
Republicans in the U.S. Senate will spend a long Fourth of July break trying to figure if they can repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, with their Better Care Reconciliation Act, aka Trumpcare. Their bill, drafted in large part by just 13 GOP senators, some of the most conservative in the Senate,….
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