Microsoft Launches HealthVault
November 26, 2007
Microsoft has done it again. While Americans have been hearing inklings of the progress being made on digitizing their health records for a decade, that day may be fast approaching. Banks and retailers have long known how to provide account access to consumers through the internet. But a large majority of doctors’ offices and hospitals use paper records only. While there have always been privacy concerns about storing a patient’s medical history online, the benefits of doing so are compelling.
- What if you could access your cholesterol levels or immunizations online, without having to call your doctor?
Wal-Mart Health Plan: Always Low Prices?
November 21, 2007
Wal-Mart is the latest to join the ranks of the increasing number of employers who are switching to high-deductible health plans. The main benefit of these plans is the cost savings to the employer who can still attract talent with the promise of health coverage. Wal-Mart employees enjoy the elimination of expensive hospital deductibles and reduced monthly premiums - some as low as $5 a month - and $4 for generic prescriptions. But if a Wal-Mart worker finds herself with serious chronic health problems, she’s still looking at a deductible that may be as much as 10% of her annual income - before taxes. That’s assuming she’s not a new employee on the year-long waiting list for coverage.
TX: Drunk Drivers Pay for Trauma Care
November 16, 2007
For years, states have been using the awards from their lawsuits against tobacco companies to fund health programs. Texas has expanded that philosophy. In 2003, the state passed a law allowing judges to levy fines on those regularly caught drinking (or drugging) and driving. The monies from the repeat offenders are used to help hospitals pay for the ER care often needed by victims of these accident-prone drivers. Often, the funds are used to cover the costs of helping the uninsured - whom hospitals are required to treat by law - when they arrive in the ER after being hit by a drunk or drug-using driver.
Cancer Society Promotes Health Reform
November 16, 2007
Heath care reform causes the American Cancer Society to make a major jump into the world of politics. “In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.” While one in every 10 cancer patients is uninsured, one in every four families afflicted by cancer is bankrupted by the fight, including one in every five with insurance. Though over half a million Americans are expected to die from cancer this year, ACS is targeting the US health care insurance system as the real enemy. Cancer rates won’t go down, ACS thinks, until people get the health care coverage they need to screen for, diagnose, and treat the disease.
Healthcare Bill? Charge It!
November 15, 2007
Make room in your wallet. Big health insurers like Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield are teaming up with banks and financial-services companies to offer credit cards for medical spending. These medical credit cards are tailored for use only at doctors’ offices, pharmacies, hospitals and other healthcare providers. In some cases, these doctors and hospitals are also being enlisted in the marketing of these cards as well as in financing for medical services, since avoiding unpaid medical bills helps their bottom line.
The Pros: The credit lines typically feature zero- or low-interest introductory periods.
Mother at Age 8
November 13, 2007
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and there may be no better example of this than when a parent falls ill. As of 2005, nearly one and a half million U.S. children ages 8 to 18 care for a chronically ill or disabled relative. Their duties range from keeping the sick person company to taking on household responsibilities and medical care like changing feeding tubes or adult diapers. The effects of caregiving on our nation’s youth are seen in this story of a teenager helping her mother deal with Multiple Sclerosis. This family painfully demonstrates a gaping hole in US health care.
From: Your Doctor | Subject: Your Health
November 12, 2007
This article from early 2007 reports that in a 2005 poll, an overwhelming majority of people said they had never received an email from their doctor. Given the growing use of email in all segments of society and for all kinds of relationships and tasks, the failure to use this easy communications tool in health care surprises many. Researchers say doctors have been to blame for the overly slow adoption of email as a way to share health information with patients. But times are changing and some think it will be sooner rather than later that your inbox will have a message from your physician in it.
Health Care Costs Cripple Federal Budget
November 8, 2007
While the federal government’s budget is less in the red this year than last, the Congressional Budget Office is still forecasting future gloom due to rising health care costs. In 2008, total health care spending is projected to reach $2.5 trillion, or 17% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. “Health care is the nation’s largest—and, in many respects, most important— industry,” says Henry Aaron, former assistant secretary at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Health spending is projected to consume more than 30% of gross domestic product in the next 30 years.
HEALTH CARE THREATENS TO OVERWHELM NATIONAL BUDGET
ABC News
November 5, 2007
Election Results: RJ Reynolds Defeats Children’s Health
November 7, 2007
With the country’s election day 2007 now behind us, voters in Oregon have been defeated in their fight to expand public health coverage for needy children. Big Tobacco spent $100 million last year alone to fight cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states, winning in two states and losing in two others. Their recent campaign in Oregon against Measure 50, which would have allowed an 84.5-cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase, has broken that state’s spending record for ballots. Though the tax hike backers had raised over $1 million for their cause, mainly from hospitals and insurance companies, Big Tobacco spent almost ten times that, making a huge dent in the majority support that the measure initially had. Measure 50 was rejected by 60% of the state’s voters.
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