When reformers look for ways to slash the ever-higher costs of American medical care, one line item should leap from television screens, print pages, and radio broadcasts: How does the nation benefit from medical enterprises spending $30 billion annually in a growing avalanche of marketing and advertising — and why can’t this be stopped or….
Continue ReadingArchives for January 2019
Add these to your 2019 health resolutions: Hearing, diet, and clutter
We’re still early enough in 2019 that if you felt you didn’t resolve in enough excellent ways to improve your health and well-being, there are a few more solid strategies to check out. You could, for example: Get your hearing checked and ensure you’re protecting and enhancing it in every appropriate way. Dive deeper into the….
Continue ReadingHospitals post price lists, but patients still cannot decipher what care really costs
Ever noticed how tourists strolling our cities’ streets not only pause and peer into the windows of restaurants but they also invariably make a beeline for the menu posted out front? That’s smart consumerism, right, and so common sense that, hey, why doesn’t such price-checking work in medical care, too? Well, think again: The nation’s….
Continue ReadingInspections fail to halt flow of billions of doses of tainted and flawed drugs
Even as Big Pharma launched the new year with yet another round of profiteering price hikes for prescription medications, a new investigation has uncovered how drug makers get away with nasty manufacturing practices, which, combined with lax oversight, send billions of doses of tainted products to market each year, imperiling patients’ health. Sydney Lupkin, writing….
Continue ReadingA clarion call for real safeguards for patients harmed by medical devices
Medical devices race onto the market with little or no effective testing or regulatory safeguards, and a proposed “reform” of the oversight system of products that are implanted in tens of millions of Americans is a sham, safety advocates say. That’s because there are gaping flaws in the proposal to alter the so-called 510(k) procedure….
Continue ReadingWho didn’t see this coming? Patient anger grows over knee surgery hype
With a graying nation projected to see millions of patients undergoing knee replacements each year at an annual cost to taxpayers running in the billions of dollars, it may be past time to ask if surgeons and hospitals promote and perform these popular procedures to excess. Liz Szabo, in a story written for the nonprofit,….
Continue ReadingPatients put at risk by lax oversight at psych hospitals and surgery centers
As the new year gets under way, regulators and lawmakers need to look hard at a nightmare in New Jersey involving a free-standing surgical center and to a nationwide harms occurring in psychiatric hospitals to ensure that these and other institutions improve the safety and quality of their patient care. USA Today and the Wall….
Continue Reading‘Bleed Out’ details how daunting the pursuit of justice can be for harmed patients
When doctors, hospitals, insurers, and their captive lawmakers howl about how unfair malpractice lawsuits allegedly can be for modern medicine, patients who have suffered harms while seeking medical services should require loved ones, friends, and members of their community to view Bleed Out. This new HBO documentary details the decade-long quest by comedian Steve Burrows….
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