This is from the American Economics Association: [H]er 2007 paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, “The Aggregate Effects of Health Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Medicare.” The paper examines the impact of the most dramatic change in health insurance coverage in American history, the introduction of Medicare in 1965, on the consumption of [...]The average monthly Social Security check is now $1,230. It is not subject to the employment tax and at age 65 you also get great health insurance for only $99.90 a month. Workers at McDonald’s, which is hiring, earn about $8 an hour, pay the employment tax and, most often, don’t get health insurance… We [...]
Patients with soft-tissue sarcoma, a rare cancer that starts in the bodys muscle or connective tissues, now have a new treatment option after the FDA approved GlaxoSmithKlines drug Votrient. Which do you find more shocking: that the Environmental Protection Agency conducts experiments on humans that its own risk assessments would deem potentially lethal, or that it hides the results of those experiments from Congress and the public because they debunk those very same risk assessments? JunkScience.com recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act [...]At the 30-day follow-up telephone call, fewer males reported understanding their follow-up appointments after leaving the hospital as compared to females (78 percent and 87 percent, respectively). In addition, at 30 days post-discharge, females reported visiting their primary care provider at a higher rate within the 30 days after their hospital discharge (57 percent) as [...]Maintaining the president’s higher spending levels will require raising taxes for all Americans, including an 11% increase on those earning less than $200,000. Violence “ages” children’s DNA, the equivalent of seven to 10 years of premature aging. Woman consumed two gallons of Coca-Cola per day. She’s dead at age 30. Woman tries to live on [...]“Quality of life happens to be the element that is most important in motivating people to deal with an illness,” says Noreen Clark, director of the Center for Managing Chronic Disease at the University of Michigan. “People aren’t motivated to follow their clinical regimen if in fact it doesn’t improve the way they function and [...]A cancer-ridden patient takes a pill and overcomes her fear of death not just for the moment but for weeks and months that follow…One researcher imagines retreat centers where the dying could have psilocybin administered to them by a staff trained for the task. Full article by Lauren Slater on psychedelic drugs in the NYT [...]“In many ways, the bill requires the FDA to do things that it is already supposed to do—once more, with feeling,” says Avik Roy. He’s talking about a bill introduced by Sens. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) and Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) Among other things, it would: Retract the dumb 2007 conflict-of-interest rules for FDA advisory [...]At least in Canada. This is from Jason Shafrin on a recent JAMA paper (gated): After controlling for patient case mix, the authors examine variation in hospital spending in the last year of a patient’s life. The authors note that “Higher-spending hospitals differed in many ways, such as greater use of evidence-based care, skilled nursing [...]
Research from Quest Diagnostics suggests nearly two out of three Americans don't follow their doctor's orders properly when taking prescription drugs.
[WSJ Health Blog] Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, painted a stark picture at TEDMED about the difficulty of translating basic scientific knowledge into applications that could be useful to patients.
We need to “build a bridge across this yawning gap,” Collins told the audience at this gathering ...