December 8, 2011
To Fix Health, Help the Poor
By ELIZABETH H. BRADLEY and LAUREN TAYLOR
New Haven
IT’S common knowledge that the United States spends more than any other country on health care but still ranks in the bottom half of industrialized countries in outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. Why are these other countries beating us if we spend so much more? The truth is that we may not be spending more — it all depends on what you count.
In our comparative study of 30 industrialized countries, published earlier this year in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety, we broadened the scope of traditional health care industry analyses to include spending on social services, like rent subsidies, employment-training programs, unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, family support and other services that can extend and improve life.
Posted: December 9
Updated: Today at 8:46 AM
MaineCare now helps many pay for medicine and a place to live.
AUGUSTA — Jean Greenleaf of Winthrop gets help from the state each month to pay for her prescription drugs. It's a benefit she will lose if spending cuts proposed by Gov. Paul LePage become reality.
CLICK HERE to see the schedule for next week's public hearings on Gov. LePage's proposed Department of Health and Human Services budget.
Through its MaineCare program, the state now covers a portion of the $600 monthly cost for drugs including insulin, which she needs for her diabetes. LePage is proposing to reduce or eliminate two programs that pay for prescription drugs as part of a plan to eliminate a projected $221 million budget deficit in the Department of Health and Human Services over the next 18 months.
http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&title=LePage%27s+cuts+would+hit+seniors+hardest%2C+advocates+say+%7C+The+Portland+Press+Herald+%2F+Maine+Sunday+Telegram&urlID=466576997&action=cpt&partnerID=561087&cid=135299823&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pressherald.com%2Fnews%2Fcuts-would-hit-seniors-hardest-groups-fear_2011-12-09.html
Autism boom: an epidemic of disease or of discovery?Autism rates have increased twentyfold in a generation, stirring parents' deepest fears and prompting a search for answers. But what if the upsurge is not what it appears to be?Alan Zarembo December 11, 2011
December 12, 2011 When Care Is Worth It, Even if End Is Death
By PETER B. BACH, M.D.
Twenty years ago, I helped save a man’s life. I met him in the emergency room of the hospital, just a year after I finished medical school. His cardiac monitor, the first thing I noticed, showed fast and irregular beats with bursts of a messy, wavy rhythm called ventricular tachycardia. His heart was convulsing. Then I looked at him: a middle-aged man breathing rapidly and lying very still, complaining of belly pain. My first thought was that the blood flowing to his large intestine had clotted off. That explained the symptoms. Soon, if not already, bacteria would start to leak into his bloodstream from his gut. Then he’d become overwhelmingly infected.
Drug Scarcity’s Dire Cost, and Some Ways to Cope
When Jenny Morrill, who has been battling ovarian cancer since 2007, went to the hospital for her scheduled chemotherapy treatment in June, the nurse greeted her with both good news and bad. “She said, ‘The good news is that you’re doing really well on this drug Doxil. The bad news is that we have no Doxil to give you,’ ” said Ms. Morrill, 55. “My jaw dropped.” Ms. Morrill, a mother and a former arts administrator who lives near Kingston, N.Y., is one of thousands of patients with ovarian cancer, multiple myeloma, AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma or other cancer who were left in the lurch last summer when supplies of Doxil, a chemotherapy drug less toxic than many comparable agents, ran out because of production problems at the only plant that made it. DECEMBER 9, 2011, 6:00 AMSocial Insurance and Individual FreedomBy UWE E. REINHARDTThe continuing debate over the Affordable Care Act and the commentary on this blog have convinced me that nothing can ever unite Americans on their vision of an ideal health system. We need different health insurance systems for different Americans. I mean by this not Americans who differ by age or ability to pay but Americans with different notions of a just society.
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