9Whooping cough surge persisting in Maine
Cases are up about 34 percent this year, partly because residents are not getting booster shots.
The number of whooping cough cases in Maine is on the rise, mirroring a nationwide trend that health officials attribute in part to children and adults failing to get booster shots every 10 years.
Dental Abuse Seen Driven by Private Equity Investments
By - May 17, 2012
Isaac Gagnon stepped off the school bus sobbing last October and opened his mouth to show his mother where it hurt.
She saw steel crowns on two of the 4-year-old’s back teeth. A dentist’s statement in his backpack showed he had received two pulpotomies, or baby root canals, along with the crowns and 10 X-rays -- all while he was at school. Isaac, who suffers from seizures from a brain injury in infancy, didn’t need the work, according to his mother, Stacey Gagnon.
“I was absolutely horrified,” said Gagnon, of Camp Verde, Arizona. “I never gave them permission to drill into my son’s mouth. They did it for profit.”
Isaac’s case and others like it are under scrutiny by federal lawmakers and state regulators trying to determine whether a popular business model fueled by Wall Street money is soaking taxpayers and having a malign influence on dentistry.
Our View: On health care, state tries to pass the buck
And unless we address the underlying costs, middle-class citizens will be the ones who pay.
Paying for health care is a game of hot potato, and the players who can't pass costs to others are the ones that get burned.
Gov. LePage and Republican lawmakers in Augusta are preparing to balance the state budget by dumping more health care costs onto other payers, and the big losers will be middle- and low-income Mainers who will end up paying more and getting worse care.
Two recent studies show how this could play out: Last week, The Portland Press Herald reported how demand for uncompensated "charity care" delivered by Maine hospitals has doubled in the last five years. This is the care hospitals provide to people who don't have health insurance or the ability to pay for treatment.
A few days later, the journal Health Affairs found that one in five American adults under the age of 65 have seen their access to health care worsen over the last decade. These include people who have insurance but can't afford to keep up with the rising copays and deductibles their insurance plans demand. Many report self-rationing health care and not getting treatment they know they need because they can't afford to pay.
LePage and Republican lawmakers are proposing for the Department of Health and Human Services what they call "structural reform," which is really just eliminating health insurance for 21,000 people who now receive services under MaineCare.
Published on Friday, May 18, 2012 by St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Medical Students Embrace Medicare for All
If you ever want to rekindle your hope for American medicine, spend time with medical students. These bright, energetic minds are going into medicine for all the right reasons — to help people, relieve suffering and find new ways to cure illness and eradicate disease.
Their idealism is a pleasure to behold, particularly to a veteran physician like me. Yet I'm painfully aware of how our current health care 'system" can undermine students' idealism, especially if they see no alternative.
Fortunately, a better alternative is waiting in the wings: a single-payer, improved Medicare-for-all program. Most Americans, including 59 percent of physicians, want access to an improved Medicare. I'm pleased to report that our physicians-in-training are strong supporters of this truly universal, comprehensive and affordable alternative.
Why? Even before they graduate, today's medical students learn how our Byzantine, antiquated system of patchwork private insurance undermines medical care. They recognize an imperative to correct social injustice, for both moral and pragmatic reasons.
A Successful and Sustainable Health System — How to Get There from Here
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:1020-1027March 15, 2012
ulie Castro is a young doctor from France, a country that proves that it is possible for a nation to offer quality health care for all. All legal residents have access to coverage, and immigrants gain the right to access after three months. Those served by the medical system – including the very poor and the gravely or chronically ill – are likely to receive better care in France than anywhere in the world. Moreover, the sicker you are, the less you pay. Dire illnesses, like tuberculosis or cancer, some chronic conditions like diabetes, and major operations like open-heart surgery, are covered by the social security at 100%.
One System for All: Universal Access to Health Care
The French system’s slogan is, “Everyone contributes according to his resources and receives according to his needs.” And this is not just rhetoric. Ever since the 1940s, France has made budgetary decisions to turn this dream into reality. But in France, as in many other countries, the logic of the market is now slicing away at universal access. As has been proven elsewhere, and as some in French civil society are now realizing, a strong health care system can only survive if the population fights to protect it.http://truth-out.org/news/item/9220-one-system-for-all-universal-access-to-health-care?tmpl=component&print=1
A Successful and Sustainable Health System — How to Get There from Here
N Engl J Med 2012; 366:1020-1027March 15, 2012
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1114777
Hospitals mobilize on health cost bill
Fearing ‘overreach’ by state, they mount lobbying blitz
Last Monday, leaders from Partners HealthCare System Inc. gathered in the dark-paneled office of Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo to lay out their objections to his expansive 278-page plan to tame health care costs.
The House proposal, unveiled 10 days earlier, called in part for closer oversight of the prices and operations of hospitals and their physicians groups, especially more costly ones like those owned by Partners, and influential board chairman Jack Connors requested a meeting.
“This is overreaching,’’ he cautioned the speaker and other key House members. Too much regulation, he warned, referring to the health care industry, could hurt the “golden goose.’’
No comments:
Post a Comment