With Americans spending more than $3 trillion annually on health care, the corrosive and crazy effects of all that big money can become almost common place. Even still, hospitals, doctors, and Big Pharma still manage to come up with plenty of, Aw, really, c’mon kinds of financial situations. Recent news reports, for example, have focused….
Continue ReadingArchives for February 2018
As tens of thousands seek flu care, a warning on hospital-acquired pneumonia
As tens of thousands of Americans flood hospitals for treatment during the current flu epidemic, some also may end up sicker than when admitted, notably due to an infectious disease that’s a persistent and increasing worry for caregiving institutions: pneumonia. The Wall Street Journal — citing federal statistics that pneumonia is the leading hospital acquired….
Continue ReadingTo treat gun violence as a health crisis, start with existing myth-busting data
When partisans refuse to deal with deadly gun violence as a public health crisis and to support and fund rigorous research to guide law-making, it’s unsurprising that extreme and outlandish notions rush to occupy a noxious space in public discussions — a condition one think tank has labeled “truth decay.” Let’s not stoop, though, to useless….
Continue ReadingDon’t over- or under-estimate preventive medicine as flu epidemic rages
As the flu epidemic rages across the country, it also may be testing the oft-tenuous public respect for preventive medicine, especially as patients get hit with surprise medical bills and experts struggle to explain the complexities and limits of protections afforded by vaccinations. Are flu shots useful or not?, many Americans may be asking, as….
Continue ReadingFDA approves a blood test to diagnose severity of traumatic brain injury
Federal officials offer a glimmer of hope in caring for head injuries, especially the sharp, repeated, and often damaging blows that afflict athletes and which millions worldwide are witnessing, yes, as part of the Winter Olympic Games. The federal Food and Drug Administration has announced that it has approved a long-awaited blood test that can….
Continue ReadingSenate report assails Big Pharma for payments to patient groups for opioid-friendly messaging
A U.S. Senate Committee has ripped Big Pharma for making millions of dollars in pernicious payments to patient advocacy groups, so they could legitimize and assist in promoting powerful prescription painkillers, a practice that investigators say helped fuel the opioid drug abuse epidemic. The committee report says: Patient advocacy organizations and professional societies play a….
Continue ReadingBetter than a thought and a prayer: Treat gun violence as a public health crisis
With estimates that more than 150,000 of America’s young have been exposed to campus shootings since 1979, it seems curious, to be generous, for so many to just bend a knee and not see that the nation is in the grip of a public health crisis — a crisis that with clear thinking could be….
Continue ReadingFor expectant moms, new study’s findings raise a red flag on alcohol use
Even as the nation struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, it’s clear that more public health effort needs to be directed at helping expectant mothers understand how much substances they ingest can harm their kids. The New York Times reported that a new study published in the JAMA medical journal has conservatively estimated that “fetal alcohol….
Continue ReadingUnacceptable, still: Nursing homes turning 180,000 seniors into drug zombies
Imagine if Uncle Sam permitted everyone who lives in Newport News, Va., or maybe Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to be chemically restrained, drugged with powerful medications so they fell, day and night, into a speechless stupor. Now, further envision the furor if these 180,000 souls and their families each were forced to pay as much as….
Continue ReadingWill partisan assault on Obamacare also rack up costs of car insurance?
Although Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration may not want to stop their relentless assault on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, there may be other reasons to persuade them to do so. Researchers at the nonpartisan, not-for-profit RAND Corp., for example, have looked at existing studies and data and asked if the recent GOP….
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