“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.
The Last Frontier in Outsourcing?
March 12, 2008
With the costs of US health care rising along with growing awareness of its oftentimes comparatively poor quality, more and more Americans are going abroad for health treatment - half a million in 2005 - mostly to Mexico and other Latin American countries.
The loss of American manufacturing jobs was the first casualty of the global economy. Many thought service jobs would be safe: you can’t have your latte poured or your office cleaned by someone in another country. But as American telecommunications and technology jobs have drifted to India and elsewhere, health care jobs seem to be following suit.
Charity Fills the Gap in Health Care
March 3, 2008
Helicopters hover over the remote area. Impoverished locals who have gone months without access to much-needed health care look up and know help has arrived. Soon, the American doctors and their medicines and supplies will be dropped into these people’s midst and will set-up impromptu clinics where, after traveling up to 200 miles and waiting in line for hours, those who arrive first may finally get the health treatment for which they are desperate.
Where is this happening? The United States of America.
Remote Area Medical is a charity that was created to provide health care in Third World countries. Now 60% of its work is done in urban and rural America.
Beware Drug Reps Bearing Gifts
February 21, 2008
Only 1 in 3 medical schools have policies to prevent conflicts of interest between their academic departments and the drug or medical device companies that may fund individual researchers. Only 6 U.S. medical schools are completely free from the “influence” of pharmaceutical kickbacks. While universities as private institutions set their own rules on ethics and proprieties, government can regulate medical professionals and health care.
Now Minnesota is leading the way in banning drug company gifts to doctors. In 2005, a state official decided that current law allowed the state to forbid drug makers from giving doctors more than $50 worth of food or other gifts per year. Since then, this kind of direct-to-doctor marketing has decreased, with the number of visits from drug reps declining twice as fast as the rate nationwide.
SWF Looking for CHC
February 14, 2008
What if you were battling cancer but didn’t have health insurance? How far would you go to get it? Like immigrants who marry citizens to get a green card, at least one person is trying the approach of looking for love - and coverage. Both heartbreaking and humorous, this article has the story of a Seattle woman who used her blog to advertise that she was looking for a Canadian man who would marry her and share his government-sponsored health care coverage.
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