The National Football League, which long has resisted the growing reality that game-related head blows can cause major harms to its players, may be providing yet new and unintended warnings about the sustained damages of concussions. The Los Angeles Times reported that pro football’s pay-outs, as part of its billion-dollar head-injuries settlement with NFL players….
Continue ReadingArchives for August 2018
After feds bust U.S. rep for insider trading in Pharma stock, will Congress drain ethics swamp?
At a time when prescription drug prices keep skyrocketing and Americans pay hundreds of billions of dollars for medications that account for as much as 15 percent of all U.S. health care spending, federal law enforcers provided a rare and jarring sight with the public arrest of a congressman on charges he engaged in insider trading….
Continue ReadingSay what? Mar-a-Lago trio acting as ‘shadow rulers’ of Trump’s VA
So, see, Ike, Marc, and Bruce may be pretty swell guys. They’ve done well in business: Ike in comic books and entertainment, Marc in the law and consulting on white collar crime, and Bruce as a medical concierge who gets affluent patients in to see big name doctors. But this odd trio —Ike Perlmutter, Bruce….
Continue ReadingFor sick seniors, hospitals and nursing homes can be nothing but bad news
In many parts of the developing world, families play a big part in patients’ hospital care. They not only sit for long hours with loved ones, supporting and encouraging their recovery. They also may help with direct services, bathing and cleaning patients, tending to their beds and quarters, and even assisting with their medications and….
Continue ReadingShift-and-shaft: Why is it always patients’ burden to hunt for affordable care?
The health policy wonks and those who purport to “reform” the U.S. health care system may be long on academic and other fancy credentials. But they also persist in demonstrating they can be short on old-fashioned common sense, especially about the way most of us lead our lives. That’s a point emphasized in a recent….
Continue ReadingAs Big Pharma rivals battled to hype opioids, watchdogs dozed. They slumber still.
When Big Pharma pursues rapacious profits and regulators snooze, patients suffer terrible consequences, as new revelations about the opioid crisis show. Kaiser Health News Service , via the Washington Post, and The New York Times both have done excellent investigative digging into drug makers’ role in fueling the prescription painkiller mess that authorities estimate claims….
Continue ReadingMedical valor is on finest display as wind-whipped wildfires roar in California
When a raging wildfire — feeding off blowing winds and weeks of desiccating heat, also whipped up a freak, blazing tornado-like vortex with 140-mile-an-hour gusts and a 500-yard diameter — common sense might have dictated that affected Northern Californians should flee as fast and as far as possible. While many did, correctly heeding authorities’ emergency….
Continue ReadingPediatricians, with blast at FDA, warn of food additive and packaging risks to kids
Moms and dads who have tried to safeguard their kids’ health by emphasizing fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet may need to take yet more steps to protect youngsters from harms associated with chemicals found in common foods and their packaging. The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a formal, research-based caution to consumers….
Continue ReadingColonoscopies carry higher infection risks than previously believed
More than 15 million Americans each year undergo an invasive medical test, roughly once a decade and starting at age 50. If some medical experts had their way, more patients would get this cancer checkup, beginning at an even younger age. But as Emily Bazar, a senior editor and consumer columnist (Ask Emily) for the….
Continue Reading