In response to the shattering harms of the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress sought to shore up the U.S. health care system with billions of dollars in emergency aid. But the federal agency that helps to oversee the institutional care for the elderly, sick, and injured performed poorly as a steward of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. The Health….
Continue ReadingArchives for August 2020
Missouri the latest state to show big backing for Medicaid and Obamacare
Voters keep sending Republicans — in statehouses, Congress, and the White House — a clear message: Americans want affordable, accessible health insurance, most notably as offered under the GOP-loathed Affordable Care Act, and especially for the poor and working poor via Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. This issue, if anything, may be rising in importance to….
Continue ReadingAs world takes note of historic nuclear horrors, U.S. Covid carnage surges on
Last week the world took note with appropriate solemnity a terrible historic moment: The first military use of nuclear weapons, with explosions 75 years ago of bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The resulting carnage — which the United States said was needed to end the horrors of World War II, especially….
Continue ReadingWith 18 billion reasons to doubt Big Pharma, president’s fiats seem iffy, too
For those trying to clean up the costly harms that Big Pharma inflicts on Americans, the how-to details not only matter, they can be confounding. For evidence, just ask federal court officials trying to unravel part of the finances of the opioid and overdose crisis, or the Trump Administration’s soggy efforts to deal with skyrocketing….
Continue ReadingThe big Alzheimer’s puzzle: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Blood, too?
It isn’t just the testing for the novel coronavirus that has already anxious Americans upset these days. Controversies also are swirling around existing and developing ways for experts to screen older patients for cognitive decline, namely dementia and its most familiar form, Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60%-80% of dementia cases, is the….
Continue ReadingTime for nursing homes to pay for staff tests, Maryland and other states say
Imagine in an alternate world in which it is not the poor and ravenous Oliver Twist who implores the world for more porridge, please. Instead, think of the “poor me” cries coming from Bumble the Beadle or Mr. Limbkins, two nefarious guys who exploit kids at the venal workhouse to which Oliver is consigned. Welcome….
Continue ReadingVA ripped for ER abuse of suicidal vet and ‘Covid cocktail’ at state homes
Veterans Affairs officials are taking yet more fire over medical services provided at the sprawling agency’s facilities: An internal watchdog ripped a Washington, D.C., VA emergency room for abusing and sending away a mentally troubled patient who then killed himself. And House members demanded to know why institutionalized and elderly vets were treated for Covid-19….
Continue ReadingWith Covid-19 surge unchecked, testing, tracing, and key data teetering, too
How big and bad is the now-unchecked Covid-19 pandemic and the damage it is inflicting on this country? The United States persists as the novel coronavirus epicenter, blowing past previous record numbers of infections to more than 4.5 million. The disease has edged toward claiming the lives of roughly 155,000 Americans. Imagine if the equivalent,….
Continue Reading