American workers have gotten back a little breathing room from corporations’ intrusive push to try to get them to surrender more of their personal, private health information as part of workplace wellness programs linked to company-provided health insurance plans. This is due to a federal judge’s rejecting a rule by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity….
Continue ReadingArchives for August 2017
Pinpointing cancer’s cause: a costly, complex, maddening challenge
What exactly causes cancer? That may be, recent news reports indicate: a question that’s heading into the billion-dollar range for a Big Pharma firm; a painful conundrum for a Major League Baseball franchise; a difficult and lethal question for more young people with digestive woes; yet another awful example of how Big Tobacco targets healthy….
Continue ReadingRavages of opioid drug abuse epidemic worsen, grow ever more complex
The myriad problems tied to the nation’s opioid drug abuse epidemic seem only to worsen and grow more complex by the day. They are, recent news reports say: contributing to new outbreaks of syphilis, a destructive and deadly sexually transmitted disease that is tough to contain and whose cases had dwindled until fairly recently; leading….
Continue ReadingSolar eclipse was awesome, and you can plan for the next one
Did you find the full solar eclipse to be thrilling and energizing? Hope so. And even if not, you can start planning to see the next one in 2019 in South America and parts of Asia, or in 2024 in eastern Canada, the central U.S., and part of Mexico. If you got your hands on….
Continue ReadingIn heart care, new questions about a familiar test and a surgical option
Hospitals and heart doctors may need to rethink their common test to determine if their patients have suffered a heart attack, and whether a newer alternative open-heart procedure carries with it more risks than benefits. Health News Review, a health information watchdog site, has raised interesting questions as to why mainstream media outlets haven’t paid….
Continue ReadingCan VA’s struggles, successes help improve health care for us all?
Despite the barrage of terrible headlines about reported problems in its care, the VA, aka Veterans Affairs, “continues to perform as well as, and often better than, the rest of the U.S. health-care system on key quality measures [including] patient safety, patient satisfaction, care coordination, and adherence to evidence-based medical practices,” a new study of….
Continue ReadingWhy do so many boomers suffer knee, hip arthritis when our forebears didn’t?
Although grandma and grandpa and even older ancestors before them didn’t live as long nor usually as well as many of us do, they still can provide valuable insights into how modern Americans can avoid painful debilitation that now leads to some of the most commonly performed surgeries on seniors. Want to avoid an inconvenient,….
Continue ReadingNew disclosures deepen scandal over DC hospital’s risky obstetrics care
Doctors and hospitals across the country push the frontiers of medical science every day, finding new ways to improve health care and to change and save lives. But at the same time, some of medicine’s basics—like delivering babies safely and protecting mothers’ well being—also keep getting botched, especially for poor and black women. It’s a….
Continue ReadingConsumers beware: There’s lots of ugly in beauty products
The quest for beauty—whether skin deep or in the eye of the beholder—not only carries high costs. It also can be health risky. Jane Brody reminds us in the New York Times that due “to a lack of federal regulations, the watchword for consumers of cosmetics and personal care products should be caveat emptor: Let….
Continue ReadingWhile other addictions hit crisis levels, we can’t ignore soaring alcohol woes
It’s more than happy hour chardonnays with office mates or malt liquors at a summer barbecue. Public health experts are warning that alcohol drinking is rising sharply, and in especially worrisome fashion for women, seniors, African Americans, Latinos, and Americans of Asian descent. As the nation struggles with addiction crises—especially a plague of opioid drug….
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