Thursday, October 8, 2009
QD: News Every Day--health care reform / Surgeon General / unlicensed providers
ACP Internist's daily digest of internal medicine in the news continues with sides blurring on health care reform, a new Surgeon General favorable to primary care and the suggestion of continuous credential monitoring for providers.
Health Care Reform
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate Finance Committee's proposal will:
--slow spending growth on medical care
--lower the deficit
--cost less than President Obama's threshold
--cover 29 million uninsured Americans
--cover 94% of all Americans
The Finance Committee's bill requires a vote, possibly on Tuesday, and then will be merged with a bill in the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Now, Congress needs to figure out who will pay for it all, the wealthy or the insurance companies.
Meanwhile, some Republicans who carry the title of "former" are supporting some kind of reform: former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Bill Frist, and former Medicare administrator Mark McClellan. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson cited the Senate Finance Committee's plan specifically.
And while Republican governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bobby Jindal support reforming health care in some way, two Democratic governors oppose expanding Medicare because of its impact on the states.
In case you missed it ...
Regina Benjamin, MD, took one step closer to becoming Surgeon General. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved the nomination; she now goes to the full Senate. But there's no timetable to vote on Dr. Benjamin, a primary care physician.
Nearly one in 5 health care practitioners operate under malpractice allegations, an expired license or false credentials, and nearly 2% practice without a license. The study, done by a company that provides credentialing verification, prompted them to suggest continuous Web-based monitoring instead of reviews every two to three years.
Where one lives impacts the health care received, since insurance coverage, access to preventive medicine and disease treatment vary widely among states, according to a study released by the Commonwealth Foundation. Vermont focused on health care and its robust residents faired the best, followed by Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota and Maine. As usual, the South trundles behind the rest of the nation's health care performance. Mississippi has the worst health care, with Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas rounding out the results.
Labels: disparities, health care cost, health care reform, QD
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
12:18 PM
0 Comments
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A reverse disparity!
Feeling bummed about the loss of your job or your retirement account? Good news! You may be less likely to suffer a retinal detachment. Scottish researchers have found that the risk of retinal detachment is directly related to wealth. "The rate of retinal detachment was 15.4 per 100,000 population among the most affluent patients, compared with 13.6 per 100,000 for the second-most affluent patients, 9.3 per 100,000 for the third-most affluent patients, and 6.9 per 100,000 among the least affluent patients," HealthDay reported.
They have no idea what might cause this disparity. (Or why it matters, we would add.) But the news provides a pleasing contrast to this recent depressing article in Slate which discusses the links between poverty, obesity and poor health.
Labels: disparities, obesity
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
2:13 PM
0 Comments
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A disparity you can do something about
Just about every week, a new study comes out reporting on health disparities between men and women, blacks and whites, etc. Here at ACP Internist, we've discovered that this kind of research tends to attract little interest from our readers--maybe because it seems like the same sad, but inexplicable, story over and over again. No one favors disparities in care and health, but what do you do about them?
But the latest disparity study from the NEJM comes with some solutions. Blacks are vastly more likely to develop heart failure at a young age than whites, the researchers found. They also highlighted three frequent causes: hypertension, obesity, and systolic dysfunction. Control those conditions in young blacks and the disparity in heart failure should decline. Of course, that's easier said than done (if Americans could find a way to control obesity, we'd be looking very different as a country), but it at least gives the health care community something to work on, instead of just more bad news to bemoan.
Labels: cardiology, disparities
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
2:34 PM
1 Comments
ACP Internist hosted Grand Rounds on June 16, wrapping up the best of the medical blogosphere. Click here for the complete wrap-up.
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Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.
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Robert M. Centor, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating medicine and the health care system.
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EverythingHealth is designed to address the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st Century.
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Getting Better is the continuation of Dr. Val Jones' previous blog at Revolution Health. It is devoted to helping people understand health issues from a balanced, scientifically sound perspective.
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A roundup of health policy news drawn from a database of hundreds of Web sites.
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Michael Benjamin, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.
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The alter ego of Kevin Pho, ACP Member, is the closest thing to royalty in the medical blog world.
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The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.
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