Our High-Tech Health-Care Future
By FRANK MOSS
Cambridge, Mass.
WHY can’t Americans tap into the ingenuity that put men on the moon, created the Internet and sequenced the human genome to revitalize our economy?
I’m convinced we can. We are in the early phases of the next big technology-driven revolution, which I call “consumer health.” When fully unleashed, it could radically cut health care costs and become a huge global growth market.
Over the past few years, innovations like electronic health records and the use of mobile computing devices in hospitals have begun to improve medical care delivery. Consumer health information Web sites and online disease support groups have made millions of people active participants in their own health care.
Journalist finds good news in U.S. health care system
Posted Nov. 11, 2011, at 5:13 a.m.
LEWISTON, Maine — There’s good news buried in the U.S. health care system’s web of unfairness and inefficiency, argues best-selling health care writer T.R. Reid.
Some medical communities are trying hard to cut the cost of health care. And it’s working, Reid told a Bates College audience Wednesday.
“In many places in America, the doctors actively work to get prices down,” said Reid, who is hosting a PBS documentary in February on what he and his colleagues found. “A lot of doctors said to us, ‘I have a mission to care for the physical health of my population. But I also have a mission to care about the fiscal health of my community.’ That was really striking to me.”
It happens too little, said Reid, who has traveled around the world comparing health care systems.http://bangordailynews.com/2011/11/11/health/journalist-finds-good-news-in-u-s-health-care-system/print/
Seeking a Cure for Troubled Hospitals in Brooklyn
By NINA BERNSTEIN
When the pain in his groin was too great to bear, Ralph Hutchins, who works as a mover, headed to the crowded emergency room at the nearest hospital one recent Tuesday, his life at risk. Tanya Boynton, a mother of four who works 12-hour shifts, hobbled into another emergency room from a homeless shelter, afraid illness would end her job.
They needed care in the heart of Brooklyn, not far from the world’s richest concentration of premier hospitals. Only a few private hospitals have survived in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville and Bushwick to serve poor patients like them. Now all are in such dire financial shape that a small group of veteran health care planners appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is debating last-ditch measures to save them.
Top 10 health care myths to ignore, part one
Posted Nov. 10, 2011, at 12:51 p.m.
This is the first of two articles about 10 important myths in the Great American Health Care Debate.
There are sweet-sounding myths in the American odyssey to a viable health care system, siren songs of simple solutions that lure us onto the rocks of irrelevant debate. It’s time for us all to stop believing them and stop fighting over them. Then, these myths would no longer divide and distract us and draw our collective attention away from the real issues and work necessary for real progress and change.
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