Health Care Reform Articles - March 3, 2012

Too Many Medical Tests, Too Little Care?

To the Editor:

Re “If You Feel O.K., Maybe You Are O.K.,” by H. Gilbert Welch (Op-Ed, Feb. 28):

Having recently retired after 34 years in primary care, I couldn’t agree more with Dr. Welch and his commentary about preventive health care. And one of the real tragedies of this changing focus in health care, evaluating the well instead of taking care of the sick, has been for physicians to have full clinic schedules of routine exams while the sick must fight to get into clinics or seek care elsewhere, as in urgent care centers or emergency rooms.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/opinion/too-many-medical-tests-too-little-care.html?tntemail1=y&_r=1&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print

In New Jersey, a Battle Over a Fluoridation Bill, and the Facts

By KATE ZERNIKE

For all its renown as an engine of pharmaceutical and biotechnology progress, New Jersey has long lagged in what public health officials call one of the 10 biggest health advances of the last century: fluoridating its water.

While 72 percent of Americans get their water from public systems that add fluoride, just 14 percent of New Jersey residents do, placing the state next to last, ahead of only Hawaii, and far behind nearby New York (72 percent), Pennsylvania (54 percent) and Connecticut (90 percent).

A bill in the Legislature would change that, requiring all public water systems in New Jersey to add fluoride to the supply. But while the proposal has won support from a host of medical groups, it has proved unusually politically charged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/nyregion/in-new-jersey-a-battle-over-fluoridation-and-the-facts.html?tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print

MARCH 2, 2012, 11:07 AM

When I Needed Help

By JANE GROSS

Recently major eye surgery left me almost blind, jelly-legged, unable to drive, shop, cook my own meals, do the laundry, shower, safely climb the stairs — all the tasks we take for granted. All the tasks many of the frail elderly cannot do for themselves, that they generally do not want strangers in the house helping them to do.

For years, I’d been sagely advising adult children to recognize when their parents were approaching the point at which they were not safe at home alone, to anticipate it and begin talking and planning before a crisis. For years, I’d been deconstructing Mom’s or Dad’s reluctance to accept help: control and independence were slipping away, being helpless was humiliating, this was Step 1 in a fearsome process. I was full of suggestions about how to win them over with reason, persuasion and, if necessary, little white lies.

I got it. I got it intellectually — but not viscerally.

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/when-i-needed-help/?pagemode=print

Maine GOP delays health insurance exchange until court ruling on Obama plan

By Jackie Farwell, BDN Staff

Posted March 02, 2012, at 6:45 p.m.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Republicans have hit the brakes on setting up the state health insurance exchange mandated under President Barack Obama’s controversial health reform law.

They’ll wait until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the law this summer before forging ahead, said Sen. Rod Whittemore, a Republican from Skowhegan who is chairman of the legislative committee tasked with establishing an exchange.

States are mandated to set up the exchanges, designed to serve as marketplaces for businesses and consumers to shop for health insurance, by 2014. States that don’t will have to hand the reins over to the federal government.

Rather than run the risk of the feds stepping in to set up Maine’s exchange, the Republican majority on the committee is sketching out a “bare bones” system that would kick in only if the Affordable Care Act survives the court challenge, Whittemore said.

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/03/02/politics/maine-republicans-decide-to-wait-on-health-insurance-exchange-see-if-obamas-plan-is-overturned/print/