Although Uncle Sam makes a special vow to provide medical care for those who fight for this nation, he also enjoys special legal shields from lawsuits from them if anything goes wrong with medical services they’re provided. But recent news reports show how past and present service personnel not only suffer shabby medical care but….
Continue ReadingArchives for October 2018
Unhappy meals: Fast food still tops out too many time-stressed eaters’ menus
Americans can’t stop chowing down on fast foods, despite years of warnings about their health harms. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that 36.6 percent of Americans — 37.9 percent of men and 35.4 percent of women — eat some kind of fast food on any given day. As the Los Angeles….
Continue ReadingCongrats on the raise. Too bad it’s gone already. For health insurance.
As various news organizations reported, anxious Americans will vote in less than a month with health care as a dominating concern. A new annual report shows why: Medical costs keep rising, as does the cost of health insurance, notably the coverage most of us get from our employers. Companies keep pushing on to workers higher….
Continue ReadingNot so noble: Big Pharma profiteering off the work of Nobel laureates
The 2018 Nobel Prizes represent a pinnacle of global recognition for path-breaking research, but the awards also surface some less than noble aspects of modern science and medicine. This year’s prizes cast a spotlight on breakthrough findings on how to take off the immune system’s natural brakes to allow it to attack cancer, and on….
Continue ReadingCongress approves 650-page bill to attack opioid crisis, as doubts abound
Congress has approved a major new push to deal with the opioid crisis that kills tens of thousands of Americans annually. Voters can expect President Trump to sign the big bill, passed easily and with rare bipartisan support in the House and Senate, just in time for politicians in the mid-term elections to campaign on….
Continue ReadingBig Pharma takes rare price cut on hepatitis C drugs, but other drug prices continue to march north
Big Pharma has given baby boomers, members of under-represented communities, and American taxpayers rare and promising good news about a product price cut: A drug used in a highly effective multi-course treatment for hepatitis C will see its sky-high price continue to plunge. Gilead Sciences Inc., facing steep competition from other makers and innovations from….
Continue ReadingAs partisans scuffle, Medicare surprises by reducing per-patient spending
Critics may want to carve it up and make it tougher to join, while proponents would expand it and add more money to it. But what could the U.S. health system overall learn from real, rigorous research on Medicare, the major health coverage method for tens of millions of Americans age 65 and older? Politico,….
Continue ReadingBattle is on to bring down sky-high costs of emergency medical transport
Even as District of Columbia officials gave a cautious, interim report on their push to reduce with nurses’ help the expensive misuses of the 911 emergency system, a news organization’s story on a sky-high medical transport bill has underscored why regulators and lawmakers need to fix a pricey part of the health care system: Why can’t….
Continue ReadingWhy should we all get flu shots? 80,000 deaths, including 180 kids, in 2017
Although shots carry their own risks, just as any medical treatment does, new data from 2017’s killer flu season shows the folly of patients ignoring influenza’s wrath and skipping the vaccination for it. Youngsters and seniors, especially, need to get these inoculations. The federal Centers for Disease and Control reported that 80,000 Americans died last….
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