In Health Care Overhaul, Language Matters
By UWE E. REINHARDTUwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton.
Sitting at breakfast last Sunday morning and listening to my soliloquy on President Obama’s radio address of the previous day, my wife impatiently interrupted me to administer a tongue lashing on my sloppy use of English.
“Why do you always speak of reimbursing hospitals?” she queried. “When have you last said ‘May I reimburse you?’ when checking out of a hotel? And what do you mean by Medicarepayment cuts? Does it mean spending by Medicare actually goes down? If so, why does Medicare spending always go up after such ‘spending cuts’?”
To my complaint that she was being pedantic, she responded: “Language matters, because it induces habits of the mind and actions that follow from them.” (On this point, see this marvelous little book).
Fixing Medicare
There is no way to wrestle down the deficit without reining in Medicare costs. Ensuring that the program provides quality health care coverage to millions of older and disabled Americans is essential. These goals are not incompatible, but they require a judicious approach to policy making that is depressingly absent in Washington.
Medicare is nothing less than a lifeline for 49 million older and disabled Americans. It helps pay for care in a wide range of settings, including hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, doctors’ offices, hospices and at home, as well as for prescription drugs.
Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care
By BENEDICT CAREY
Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.
The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster careare given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.
Health care? N.H. residents not buying it
Say they have more to fret about
Eat like a Mediterranean — but how?
Here's what the research says — and doesn't say — about the Mediterranean diet.
By Karen Ravn, Special to the Los Angeles Times
November 21, 2011
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