Wow. To think some find him out of touch but what a home run. Who wouldn't want a tax deduction that will lower your taxes a few bucks in return for an annual average cost of at least $12,000 for a family. What a deal! It sounds like such a practical plan because we all know how easy it is to shop around for a good deal on say, a 401K plan. Business always makes it clear and easy to understand what charges are there and what you get for your money so there is no possible way consumers could be bamboozled.
Tax rebates and throwing people to the wolves in McCain's "you figure it out" system could only make sense to the personal-jet-flying-fraud from Arizona. Creating tomorrow's problems, today...it's John McCain.
For people who say they love life so much they sure have a funny way of showing it. Why is the GOP always fighting against science and propping up business over people?
Experimental blood substitutes raised the risk of heart attack and death, yet U.S. regulators allowed human testing to continue despite warning signs, says a scathing new report.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration fell short, the report contends, even as red flags popped up during studies by five biotech companies. Rules barred the agency from releasing company trade secrets, and that kept some information hidden and may have led to unnecessary heart attacks and deaths, wrote the authors, who are government scientists and consumer advocates.
"There shouldn't be secret science," said the lead author of the report, Dr. Charles Natanson, of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Safety data need "to be made public expeditiously so science can build on the mistakes" of previous research, he said.
"The Chernobyl catastrophe became planetary and even now continues to take its toll on people's health and the environment," the health ministry said in a statement.
On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, contaminating large parts of Europe but especially the then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Over 25,000 "liquidators", mostly Ukrainians, Russians and Belarussians who worked on the ruined reactor and constructed a concrete sarcophagus enclosing it, lost their lives, according to official figures.
The official UN toll in September 2005 set the number of the accident's victims in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus at 4,000, but the figure had been contested by non-governmental organisations.
Officially, Ukraine alone numbers 2.3 million people qualified as "having suffered from the catastrophe."
Just how stupid does one have to be to believe that the US health care system is the best? Sure, if you are Charles Prince (shamed Citi CEO) or maybe Lee Raymond and money is no object, it's great. How can we be such a wealthy country yet leave so many people behind? I must have missed those Christian lessons that highlighted why it was good to evolve into such a nasty, mean-spirited, me-me-me country. We leave so many behind yet shower praise on the greediest. Aren't we just a clever bunch?
Mark Windsor looks exhausted. For a week he's been undergoing radiation treatment on a cancerous tumor in his neck. A metal rod fused to his spine keeps his head stable. His muscles there are gone, the result of multiple failed surgeries to rid him of his disease. He can't turn his head sideways or look up or down. So his look stays fixed, despite his fatigue.
If I probably had gotten some good treatment several years ago I probably would have been cured," Windsor said from his home in Atlanta, Georgia.
The reason he didn't get care sooner -- he couldn't afford it, because he didn't have insurance. Windsor, a self-employed photographer, has had bone cancer -- a rare chondrosarcoma -- for more than 25 years. At 52, that's almost half his life. While he's found help from a few generous doctors, his efforts to survive have often been desperate. And now he's learned, largely in vain.
Another proud legacy of the Bush administration, news you'd probably expect to hear from developing nations, not the United States of America in the year 2008. This is the kind of news that should make people bitter, very bitter:
For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.
In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.
The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.
The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.
I'd like to say this news is shocking, but nothing shocks me anymore. Oh, one other point from the article:
The phenomenon appears to be not only new but distinctly American.
"If you look in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, we don't see this," Murray said.
All those countries have some form of system that provides for universal health care.
There have also been similar studies about the dangers of wifi, especially for children. Ten years ago when mobile phone studies first started to emerge I was curious but interested in seeing more. Today, I'm glad that I cut back on using one though wifi is another matter.
It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.
Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.
Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones.
I've had this killer flu for three and a half weeks now, and it's still lingering as a persistent cough, so I figured I'd go see the doctor in Chris' building. She said, yep, you've got the flu that everyone else has, and you might have a chest infection. Her prescription? Get an X-Ray. Ugh. An X-Ray. Does my insurance cover it? If so, how much? So, I paid the whopping 22 Euro (33 bucks) bill to the doctor, in cash (she paid me my change out of her purse), and called Blue Cross to see if they cover me while I'm abroad. After a good 20 minute phone call, I found out that if my French X-Ray center isn't "in network" then I have to pay a $300 deductible and 70% of the cost. At this point, I figured I'd better find out how much this X-Ray is going to cost, since for $300, I'd rather just have the doc dope me up on antibiotics and screw the X-Ray. The doc warned me that X-Rays are much more expensive than doctor visits. So I just called the X-Ray people and asked how much a chest X-Ray costs. Are you ready? 45 Euros. That's 67 bucks or so (and it would be only 45 bucks if the exchange rate weren't so out of whack). I just looked online and found that chest X-Rays go for around 200 dollars in the states. Amazing. So I'm going to suck it up and pay my 67 dollars for the X-Ray out of my own pocket. Tell me again how European "socialized medicine" is so bad?
Okay, just got back from the doctor (the x-ray was fine). I scheduled my appointment a few hours in advance, it was for 3:30pm (or 15h30 as they say here), and they took me at 3:33pm. I was out of there in 15 minutes, and that included seeing a doctor afterwards to explain what the x-ray said (and I then promptly left my x-ray in the check out line at the grocery - someone's in for a surprise with their creme brule!) Bottom line: Still not seeing what's so bad with the health care system over here.
In another example of Hillary's resume being a wee bit padded, it seems that Hillary didn't create the children's health insurance bill after all. In fact, her husband's White House was initially against the bill. But in all fairness to Hillary, I hear Barack Obama is black. From the Boston Globe:
[T]he Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill. And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996....
privately, some lawmakers and staff members are fuming over what they see as Clinton's exaggeration of her role in developing SCHIP, including her campaign ads claiming she "helped create" the program. The irritation has grown since Nov. 1, when Clinton - along with fellow senators and presidential candidates Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and John McCain - missed a Senate vote to extend the SCHIP program, which was approved without the votes of those lawmakers.
Yes, the same Bush who never hesitates to blast lawsuits as the real cause of high health insure. No, surely increasing health care costs have nothing to do whatsoever with the polluted environment. Nope, no studies have ever drawn the link between polluted air and...oh, there has been. Never mind. And here I thought he cared about every human life, but that's not really the case now, is it? Polluters obviously count for more.
EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.
"It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Industry is of course whining about the costs involved if they are forced to clean up the air. Don't these people breath? Don't they pay for health care? Surely the EPA and White House are not blind to the health care costs involved with polluted air. It's hard to imagine such a small slice of society holding so much power over others but for the Republicans, they consistently only care about what industry wants without consideration for everyone else. The ruling is expected on Thursday so we will find out soon enough.
This is a major step forward for health care in America. For twelve years, the GOP leadership refused to let this bill move forward:
The House voted Wednesday to require equal health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses when policies cover both.
The 268-148 roll call was cheered by advocates who have been fighting more than a decade for what has come to be called mental health parity.
Supporters said the measure would help end the stigma of mental illness and create greater access for people needing mental health and addiction treatment.
Opponents warned it could drive up health care costs and force some employers to drop insurance coverage.
The "Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007" was named for the late Minnesota Democratic senator who championed the issue for years and who was killed in a 2002 plane crash.
"It's a historic step," said the late senator's son, David, 42. "It's a civil rights bill for people with mental illnesses and chemical addiction. It forces insurance companies to treat them as they treat others."
Forty-seven Republicans joined 221 Democrats in voting for the bill. Three Democrats voted against it.
The House vote sets the stage for talks with the Senate, which passed a narrower version of the bill last September with support from business and insurance groups.
Considering the widespread use of anti-depressants this is big news. As a person who tries to do just about anything to avoid pharmaceuticals (I don't react well to them) I wonder if the medical community will start promoting alternative treatments such as diet change and other natural remedies. The problem, according to the pharma industry, is that it is difficult to run tests on alternative treatments and have mathematical results as you can with modern medicine. Perhaps. I also believe that all too often Big Pharma cherry picks data or entire studies, as this new report suggests. One could easily view this as falsely overcharging insurance companies and consumers and another reason why health care is so expensive.
Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.
The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.
When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs.
Health Net was ordered to pay $9 million after cutting coverage in the middle of breast cancer treatment. It says a lot about why the US system is in shambles, that this could even happen in the first place. In the McCain "free market" health care system, how much more often would this occur? Any Health Net customers should take notice and plan accordingly.
Bates' attorney William Shernoff said he wanted other insurers to take notice of the award.
"We are going to put a stop to this practice," he said.
Health Net said it was implementing a freeze on policy cancelations that would last until the company sets up a third-party review panel to scrutinize cases.
"Obviously we regret the way that this has turned out, but we are intent on fixing the processes to maintain the public trust," spokesman David Olson said.
The award came a day after the Los Angeles city attorney sued Health Net, claiming it illegally canceled the coverage of about 1,600 patients. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo also said the company illegally ran an incentive program in which it paid bonuses to an administrator for meeting targets of policy cancelations.
Slightly aware that health care is a concern for Americans, McCain is leaning on former Senator Phil Gramm as the expert. When they say "revolutionary" what they really mean is a few decades of GOP talking points that have all been proven to be false (and costly) during this second Bush recession in seven years. Leave it all to the market, just as they left it to the market to work out home loans, food safety and Wall Street practices in general. If you think you have problems today, this "anything goes" environment can only mean even more profits for industry, less coverage for Americans and more chaos. Wow, let's all get in line for this.
Putting aside the fraudulent claims of fiscal conservatism (don't they all say that until they have a majority?) McCain is hinting at a bold new health care plan that will turn the world upside down. Ready for this? Tax rebates. Yes, tax rebates. I know, really radical and worth waiting for. I'm still running the numbers on how this will benefit the almost 50 million uninsured Americans who don't have enough money to give a damn about a $2500 or $5000 tax rebate that won't change their taxes, but hey, Gramm is a economics genius. Just ask him! What we all need in 2008 after years of business getting everything is a Wild West free market health care system. This is precisely what we all are begging to have because everyone has so much free time to navigate their new crazy system.
Today, McCain is advocating a plan that's radically different from those of Clinton and Barack Obama, and - if he goes all the way by following Gramm - could revolutionize America's healthcare system. For McCain and Gramm, the problem with our healthcare system - and the reason why over 47 million Americans are uninsured - is that it's excessively, scandalously expensive. The solution, they say, is to let Americans shop for healthcare with their own money. McCain advocates giving tax rebates of $2500 per individual or $5000 per family. With that money, families could purchase policies on their own. What's truly radical about the plan is that it eliminates the tax exclusion for healthcare benefits offered by companies to their employees, and replaces it with the $2500 to $5000 rebates.
Consumers could then use that cash to buy their own insurance in what Gramm foresees as a vibrant, consumer-driven marketplace for healthcare packages.
Blue Cross of California quickly halted its practice of asking doctors to report conditions it could use to cancel new patients' medical coverage after a widespread wave of criticism.
The move announced Tuesday by the state's largest for-profit health insurer came after a report on the practice in the Los Angeles Times prompted an outcry from doctors, patients, the governor and even presidential candidates.
As if it isn't bad enough with Big Pharma and their cozy (and what many consider unethical) relationship with doctors. WellPoint/Blue Cross now want to be even creepier as they are asking medical doctors to spy on patients and report back to the corporate offices. (You may remember WellPoint from the seedy scandal involving the ex-CEO who was having affairs across the country allegedly promising marriage, passing on STDs and screaming "ABORT" to one women he impregnated. A fine GOP fund raiser and a good moral leader, they say.)
While medical doctors so often are game when it involves holidays to the Caribbean or commission/perks for prescribing drugs, this may be going too far. Blue Cross is asking doctors to report any pre-existing conditions so they can use this as grounds for termination or decline payment. When an individual is canceled, good luck finding another insurance company that will accept you.
More after the jump.
Who doesn't have some sort of pre-existing condition? While this can be difficult for working age people, just imagine the consequences for retired Americans. After my father died a few years ago, my mother received the usual series of nasty letters from the insurance company telling her that she needed to move on. (So much for the retirement benefits promised by my father's company.) Maybe person of 73 years exists that does not have any pre-existing conditions but they are rare. This is a period when most Americans will spend a lot of their hard earned money, paying for medical treatment. If my mother was in California and moving to Blue Cross, WellPoint/Blue Cross would be asking her doctor - her doctor! - to turn in a list of pre-existing conditions so they could cancel her. Then again, would it be her doctor or is Blue Cross forcing customers to use their own special list of doctors who will tow the line for corporate?
WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based company that operates Blue Cross of California, said it was sending out the letters in an effort to keep costs at a minimum.
"Enrolling an applicant who did not disclose their true condition (and the condition is chronic or acute), will quickly drive increased utilization of services, which drives up costs for all members," WellPoint spokeswoman Shannon Troughton said in an e-mail to the newspaper.
"Blue Cross feels it is our responsibility to assure all records are accurate and up to date for HMO providers," she said. "We send these letters to identify members early on in the process who may not have been honest in their application."
And who makes this judgment call? Sounds like it's Blue Cross, an obviously biased player in this situation. A simple, honest mistake could send a customer onto the street without coverage. Worse still, as the article says, patients may hide more serious problems which will then be much more expensive to treat later, if even treated.
When the insurance industry wonders why they are consistently detested in America, this is a prime example. They only want the good customers but who the hell are the good customers? Americans spend more on health care per person than anywhere else in the world and yet the insurance industry is confident enough in their own power that they can pull stunts like this. Sadly, they're probably right. They can and do get away with just about any crazy program they want. Thanks to the GOP program of "let business govern itself" this is the end result.
If WellPoint and Blue Cross want out of the insurance business, fine. If they want to stay in the business, practices like this need to be examined and balanced. As I've said before, here in France (which has it's own problems, of course) I have never once heard someone panic that they were going to be thrown off of an insurance plan or lose their savings due to illness. Not once. As a country we have allowed business to go much too far and it's time we move back to finding a proper balance. Right now, it's a one-sided relationship and that's no longer acceptable.
Naturally, the FDA says everything is just fine but we all know the Bush FDA is about as (pro-industry) one-sided as they come. The only time the Bush FDA ever contradicts business is when they've been forced due to death and/or successful class action lawsuits. Meanwhile, back in the real world, there is a brewing controversy over phthalates in baby products.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a University of Washington pediatrician, said, “The bottom line is that these chemicals likely do exist in products that we’re commonly using on our children and they potentially could cause health effects.”
Babies don’t usually need special lotions and powders, and water alone or shampoo in very small amounts is generally enough to clean infant hair, Sathyanarayana said.
Concerned parents can seek products labeled “phthalate-free,” or check labels for common phthalates, including DEP and DEHP.
But the chemicals often don’t appear on product labels. That’s because retail products aren’t required to list individual ingredients of fragrances, which are a common phthalate source.
What a great system for the wealthiest country in the world. A real model for others to follow, isn't it? How many members of Congress or executive board members of leading American businesses have to head across the border like this? My own mother put off dental work because of high medical costs during my fathers cancer treatment and now is facing $19,000 worth of dental work. She's retired and insurance hardly covers anything so it's not likely that she can afford such an investment, but how many people can whip up that kind of money?
The right wingers in America never fail to jump on any problem story about health care in Canada, UK or Europe though they always overlook issues like this at home. What exactly is it going to take for people to see that there is a serious problem and demand change?
Government promises to rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren't doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children.
The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.
When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found.
The chemical industry always tells consumers (and Congress) that chemical can't pass on through the food chain. The fact is that this is simply not true. A key component of health care and maintaining health care costs is prevention. Are we going to get serious about this or will Congress continue to allow Monsanto and others to sell their chemicals regardless of impact on humans?
This has been covered extensively in the past few days, but I'll briefly add to the general consensus that Megan McArdle's comments on food stamps are absolutely moronic. Basically she says that food stamps shouldn't be part of the economic stimulus package (which they're not, thanks to Republican insistence) because . . . wait for it . . . poor people are fat, so the last thing they need is more money to buy food. You really have to know absolutely nothing about *several* topics to reach a conclusion that abjectly stupid -- including, but not limited to, nutrition, poverty, food stamps, health, diet, food cost, and the demographics of grocery supply -- so it's almost an impressive display of ignorance.
Now, I'm not an expert on any of those things, but I know enough to say that a proper, balanced diet promotes health and often correlates with avoiding obesity. Cheap food generally does not make such a diet, and food stamps make the problem worse, rather than better. You can get a lot of *calories* in cheap food, but (and this is reductive, but true) they're mostly bad calories that don't fill you up, so you consume more than you need and can gain an unhealthy amount of weight (or, to even avoid the health issue, enough weight so that Megan will call you a fatty). Yes, there are plenty of rich fat people, and it's not a precise correlation. But what we need is more education about diet, better access to good food, and to move away from making the whole thing about appearance rather than health and choice.
On a personal note, a little over a year ago I randomly read a book about, well, food. Horrified by what I was (unknowingly) putting into my body, I read much more -- on the
