The race to deal with the existential threat of climate change by making millions of vehicles smarter, more efficient, and environmentally friendly may be on a collision course with safety concerns. As the Los Angeles Times reported, concerns are rising among consumer advocates that makers have zoomed ahead with entrepreneurial and engineering advancements in vehicles,….
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Battle against coronavirus may be boosting rise of drug-resistant superbugs
Patients long have dreaded the possibility that — when already seriously ill or hurt — they also would be hit with debilitating or deadly hospital- or health care-associated infections, aka HAIs. The most nightmarish of these cases involve bacteria or fungi difficult to subdue, even with powerful treatments. Now, with care institutions overwhelmed by coronavirus….
Continue ReadingRich investors buy up MD practices and seek to strip patient safeguards
Wealthy investors want to enrich themselves yet more, partly by pushing doctors to oust patients from their practices unless they sign away invaluable constitutional rights. These rights can protect them if they are harmed while receiving medical services. Patients’ safeguards, however, too often vanish when businesses compel customers to sign on to “forced arbitration,” Bloomberg….
Continue ReadingHospitals start to roll out newly required data on prices and confidential deals
A lot of people in health care across the country are firing up their computers to dig into long-sought, confidential information from hospitals about their prices and deals they cut on them with an array of parties. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the Trump Administration successfully battled with hospitals to get them to disclose….
Continue ReadingPatients get unexpected year-end cheer — new curbs on surprise medical bills
The do-little U.S. Senate and the House gave Americans an unexpected cause for glee at year’s end. Lawmakers approved long sought relief from “surprise medical bills,” the charges, too often whopping in size, that individuals and families rack up for care from all kinds of providers that their health insurers have not approved. Multiple legislative….
Continue ReadingU.S. long hoped to reduce health spending. Now it’s happened, but it may not be good.
The nation has gotten some long-desired, important health care economic news: The country has “bent the cost curve,” seeing 2020 as the first year in at least six decades in which America’s health care spending went down. But this may not be a good thing. As Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the….
Continue ReadingU.S. drug policy and treatment is shifting, even as opioid crisis surges
Drug policy and treatment in this country is shifting in notable ways, even as the nation wrangles with a resurgent crisis in opioid abuse and overdose deaths and awaits a political transition that will determine a new response to drug harms. As an indicator of the changing views on illicit substances, consider that the U.S…..
Continue ReadingU.S. health watchdog issues fraud warning about doctors’ speaker programs
Buh-bye? Arrivederci? Sayonara? Can it be that the coronavirus pandemic puts an end to one of the disgraceful ways that Big Pharma and medical device makers push their wares on all-too malleable doctors — with big-money speaker programs? The inspector general’s office of the giant federal Health and Human Services (HHS) agency has warned drug-….
Continue ReadingWith speeding vaccine clinical trials, a pause that may prove reassuring
The “warp speed” race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine has gotten hit with a yellow flag. It could be a good thing that the product’s makers — Oxford University and AstraZeneca — followed medical-scientific protocols and paused their Phase III clinical trial due to a participant’s unexplained illness. Officially, the company offered spare information about….
Continue ReadingThey’re called ‘nursing’ homes. But what medical care can they really offer?
What’s in a name? The Covid-19 pandemic should force a major change in the big misnomer of long-term care institutions: Let’s stop labeling them with the term nursing — as if they provide significant medical services to the elderly, sick, and injured. Instead, the coronavirus may lead the public to bust the myth put forward….
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