Health Care 2.0
June 17, 2008
You may have heard the phrase “Web 2.0.” It refers to how we are now in the second phase of the role that the Internet plays in our lives.
Originally the Web was a source of information and entertainment, written and produced by “professionals.”
In recent years, Internet users have themselves moved onto the Web - actively creating content, blogs, and new software and tools. You could say that the Internet has exploded, and is continuing to explode.
So Health 2.0, then, involves these new ways of using the Web in order to share and make use of health care information. As with Web 2.0, oftentimes this means promoting a very individualized and personal online experience.
Country Living
June 13, 2008
Most Americans live in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas and suburbs. Around 1 in 5 Americans live in the “country” – farms as well as small towns.
When country folks get really sick or injured, they typically have to make the long trip to a city medical center to get expert help. Though 20% of America’s population is rural, only 9% of its doctors are.
A recent study suggests that special programs in medical school to train students for country caregiving could boost the numbers of doctors available.
The DNA Dilemma: Desperate for a Diagnosis?
June 11, 2008
Yesterday, we posted on last month’s passage of the Federal Government’s Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
We hope that the law will help protect Americans’ coverage and employment despite their genetic likelihood for disease. This should allow them to feel more comfortable with seeking information about their own DNA in order to better manage their health.
Prior to this legislation passing, however, patients were seeking more private ways of testing their DNA - primarily through take-home kits.
DNA, Disease, and Discrimination
June 10, 2008
Can you imagine being faced with the difficult decision of having your breasts removed - not because you have breast cancer, but because you’ve determined that you carry the genes for it? Women at risk for the disease can now find out whether they have the same DNA that killed their mothers and grandmothers.
In recent years, advances in genetic research have helped push medicine into realms once reserved for science fiction.
In the 1850s there were only 140 categories of disease, differentiated by their symptoms. By 1993, genetic mapping had allowed scientists to distinguish 12,000 categories of disease, to determine that some diseases were linked genetically despite having widely different symptoms, and to find better drugs and measures to treat or prevent these diseases.
Diabetes: Drugs, Diet and Data
May 27, 2008
Picnic season is upon us – a time for cookouts and gatherings around the grill or at the park. This means burgers and hot dogs, potato salad and chips, ice cream and lemonade. This means we’ll be tempted to pack on pounds even as we’re trying to cram ourselves into shorts and bikinis.
For those Americans with diabetes, all the starch and sugar that come with summertime meals and outings are a serious hazard not just for their waistline but also for their health.
Have a Heart
April 9, 2008
Have you heard the flak that began early this year over the now infamous ad for the cholesterol drug Lipitor? In the world of marketing nothing beats celebrity.
In the view of Pfizer, apparently, nothing beats a celebrity doctor to convince folks that the science behind a medicine is sound. Thus began the 2-year ad campaign in 2006 in which the famous inventor Dr. Robert Jarvik touts what became the world’s best selling medication, Lipitor, with billions in sales. Except that, even though Robert Jarvik got his M.D. and created the artificial heart, he is not licensed to practice medicine. (He tells his side of the story here.)
“Is Inequality Making Us Sick?”
April 4, 2008
As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in America, the gap between the healthy and the unwell also widens. Several weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released data showing that life expectancy for the most affluent group of Americans exceeds that for the poorest Americans by nearly 4.5 years or 6% on average.
- Health gains for the poor are decades behind those for the wealthiest Americans, whose life expectancy in 1980 was higher than that of the most impoverished in 2000.
Dialysis Treatment – A Punch in the Kidneys
April 2, 2008
Here’s a fact that may surprise you: kidney failure is the one disease that you can get coverage for – from the Federal Government - no matter what.
For this reason, after 30 months of treatment by a private insurer, dialysis facilities bill Medicare regardless of whether the patient is over 65 or financially stable. For those with kidney failure (End Stage Renal Disease) due to diabetes or other causes, having a machine take over the complicated (and therefore expensive) task of cleaning their blood several times a week allows them to live.
New WhatIf Content on Health Care Costs, Resources
March 27, 2008
The newest pieces on our website expand from the interactive quiz we put up a couple weeks ago:
Do you think you know what’s behind rising health care costs?
Take our quiz and find out. The Top Ten claims about what’s causing health care costs to steadily climb are exposed as true, false, or a little of both.
For a brief explanation of the answers to the quiz - how common claims about rising health care costs fit into the whole story - check out our new Health Care Costs Summary.
Hurricane Katrina Also Destroyed Health Care
March 21, 2008
As of yesterday, heavy rains and melting snows brought rising floodwaters to the U.S., submerging areas stretching from the South through the Midwest towards the Northeast. Thousands of people were forced to flee 250 towns and cities. Images of people escaping their neighborhoods on rowboats and of the tornado that ripped through Atlanta last Friday may have evoked in some recent memories of another terrible weather event in a major Southern city.
This August will mark the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the costliest and one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. In 2005, the storm swept through coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, and Alabama.
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