February 9th, 2010 by Richard Cooper, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
Tags: Budget, Deficit, Economy, Finance, healthcare, Job Growth, Jobs
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Commenting on the President’s budget, an editorial in the Times on Feb 2nd juxtaposed three of our nation’s dilemmas: the deficit, jobs and health care.
“President Obama got his priorities mostly right. The deficit, compared with what it could have been, is $120B. That’s a lot of money. But it’s not too much at a time of economic weakness, when deficit spending is needed to put Americans back to work.”
“Medicare and Medicaid will cost $788B; that should be another reminder of why the country needs health care reform.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at PHYSICIANS and HEALTH CARE REFORM Commentaries and Controversies*
February 9th, 2010 by PhilBaumannRN in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: Blogging, Fragmentation, GSK, Industry, Marketing, Messaging, Pharmaceuticals, Scattered, Social Media, Technology, Vaporization
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- Image via Wikipedia
Was your company blogging ten years ago? If not then why? Google made it easy for you and now you’ve lost ten years of priceless link juice. Given the fragmentation of media in the last ten years, it’s clear now just how relatively little work you actually had to do back then. But that’s in the past. Still, I have bad news for you: what you have to do now is far harder than it was ten years ago. Let me explain.
CONTENT FRAGMENTATION AND SOCIAL DISTORTION
As the Web expands and proliferates novel media, messaging becomes increasingly diffuse and fragmented. The Web creates new opportunities and destroys old standards. It disrupts communication patterns, rattles social structures and ruptures attention spans. Ten years ago, you could leverage your audience-building skills for acquiring and retaining customers. You could even have learned and mastered a skill which traditional marketing didn’t really demand: conversational aptitude. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
February 9th, 2010 by DaveMunger in Better Health Network, Research, True Stories
Tags: AIDS, Disparities, Gender, HIV, Infectious Disease, Race, Rapidly Progressing, Viral Load
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Yesterday I introduced my friend Charles Roth. Charles was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2003 and was already in bad shape. He had been tested as healthy the previous year, but the disease struck quickly, hospitalizing him for a week and keeping him out of work for a month and a half. He returned to work but repeated illnesses due to AIDS meant that by 2006, he was unable to work full-time. A bank executive, Charles still tries to find occasional contract work or odd jobs like résumé writing and tax preparation, but with the recession, these jobs are low-paying and hard to come by. For the most part he makes do with a tiny state disability check and food stamps.
So how typical is Charles’s case? We’ve all heard of success stories like Magic Johnson, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 and still has not developed AIDS. But clearly neither case tells the whole story. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Daily Monthly*
February 8th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News
Tags: Costs, Finance, GDP, Government Spending, Healthcare reform, Medicare, More Than Half, National Health Expenditures
1 Comment »
The federal government may be stalled on health care reform legislation, but the executive branch has been expanding its stake in paying for care.
Yesterday, QD reported that federal and state governments will pay for more than half of the health care purchased in the U.S. by 2012, and likely even sooner. Today, Medicare’s actuaries announced that growth in national health expenditures (NHE) outpaced growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) last year. The recession, H1N1 programs and federal subsidies for COBRA benefits all contributed to the largest one-year increase in history, from 16.2% of GDP in 2008 to 17.3% of GDP last year.
In 2010, NHE growth will decelerate to 3.9% while GDP is anticipated to rebound to 4% growth. But, and this is a big caveat, much of the projected slowdown in NHE growth is attributed to the 21.3% slashing of Medicare physician payment rates called for under current law’s Sustainable Growth Rate provisions. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
February 8th, 2010 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips
Tags: Calcium, Do I need vitamins?, Fat Soluble, Gastric Bypass, Osteoporosis, Pregnancy, Vitamin D, Vitamins, Who Needs Vitamins?
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Some patients love their vitamins, spending hundreds to thousands of dollars annually. At times, they will even forgo proven medical therapy. As more Americans go without health insurance coverage while others face higher office visits and copays, increasing numbers of patients are seeking alternative, natural therapies instead of medical care. Are vitamins really the scientific breakthrough and secret that doctors refuse to recommend or are they simply marketing hype? As any medical school student will tell you, the correct answer to any question is: it depends.
For certain groups, pregnant women, patients with macular degeneration, and vegetarians, vitamins and minerals may be recommended as research finds them helpful. Prenatal vitamins have more folic acid which has been found to decrease the risk of neural tube defects in the fetus. Vegetarians may need to supplement their diet with vitamin B12, iron, and vitamin D, which are absent in their food choices. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
