What’s an internist to do when an 81-year-old patient, already in failing health with advanced emphysema, seeks a second opinion because he’s been told his prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels are unacceptably high? This senior also has been advised to schedule a prostate biopsy urgently to determine if he has cancer. Can this discussion with….
Continue ReadingArchives for September 2018
With a knee you can see: Yes, Obamacare helps to cut costs and improve care
Federal regulators may be forced to reconsider their plans to curtail a cost-containing experiment that affects some of the most commonly performed surgeries — knee and hip replacement procedures that hundreds of thousands of seniors undergo annually through their Medicare coverage at a cost to taxpayers of billions of dollars. Under the Affordable Care Act,….
Continue ReadingNursing homes and assisted living facilities assailed for risky and shabby care
Nursing homes, by scrimping on their staffing to maximize their profits, put their residents at grave risk for infections that too often have grisly and deadly results. Low-rated facilities run by Uncle Sam to care for elderly veterans also may be concerning. And those oft-pricey assisted living facilities may have their own response to dealing….
Continue ReadingBig Tobacco skunks regulators yet again in finding new ways to target teens
Big Tobacco and its allies long have exploited evolving media to hawk harmful products, promoting them as desirable and sexy in print, movies, radio, television, and online. So, it’s not exactly a surprise that these merchants of death have become masters of marketing on social media, targeting young consumers worldwide. Their latest campaigns may let….
Continue ReadingAs 2018 season kicks off, college football reckons with head trauma harms
College football has kicked off its fall season with a flourish, but the signs are increasing that concerns about players’ health and safety may slash at the game’s size, spectacle, and importance. Just as the pro leagues were forced to answer in court for the harms that athletes suffer due to repeated blows to their….
Continue ReadingSex gets riskier as syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia cases spike for fourth year
Although Americans may be having less sex, it’s getting riskier than ever, with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis spiked for the fourth consecutive year in 2017 to a record high of nearly 2.3 million diagnoses. “We are sliding backward,” Jonathan Mermin, a doctor….
Continue ReadingPool safety in question after near-drowning in DC public pool
After a 7-year-old girl was found unconscious at the bottom of a public swimming pool in northeast Washington, D.C., on Labor Day, pool patrons immediately questioned how it was that another swimmer, and not a lifeguard, was the rescuer who saw her and pulled her to safety. The lifeguards did administer resuscitation to the girl,….
Continue ReadingExasperation abounds over lavish profiteering by doctors and hospitals
Doctors and hospitals have become nothing less than unhinged with the numbers they put into their medical bills compared to what rational, reasonable patients expect to pay, new media reports show. Kaiser Health News Service — and Vox, the online information site — deserve consumers’ thanks for their running exposes of excessive medical bills. These….
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