October 14th, 2009 by AlanDappenMD in Primary Care Wednesdays
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I am approaching an important anniversary of my heart attack. Until then, I had missed but a single day of work due to illness since starting medical school in 1975. Even in the middle of the heart attack, I played an entire ice hockey game, slept a few hours, had a business meeting with a fellow doctor at Starbucks, and went back to the office to see patients. In retrospect, my actions could be labeled as folly, bravado, machismo, denial, and lucky. I accept all labels as true. Without a trace of shame I have shared this archetypal story with friends, and patients hoping that by laughing hard enough at me, I might prevent at least one person from dropping dead from stupidity. Read more »
October 13th, 2009 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Medscape has a physician portal and they asked the question: “Where would you like to practice medicine?” The responses from physicians were varied with lots of complaining and joking like “Dubai”, but this reply from a family medicine doctor got my attention. I think he speaks for many physicians.
- I would like to work in a fantasy world.
- One where I didn’t have to worry about someones economic status. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
October 13th, 2009 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Health care reform has become a deeply political subject. And like other subjects that have become political, wading into them can be perilous.
Take two recent examples from the world of business to see what can happen.
In August, John Mackey, the CEO of the Whole Foods supermarket wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on against the proposed health care reforms. From a policy perspective his views were within the mainstream. But from a political perspective he was sharply to the right of his customer base. The result? Whole Foods was hit with organized protests and boycotts. Mackey had greatly tarnished his personal “brand,” if not that if his company.
Another CEO did something similar just a few days ago. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
October 13th, 2009 by John Briley in Health Policy
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If you still think we don’t need healthcare reform in the U.S., consider this: A 4-month-old baby is being denied health coverage by an insurer in Grand Junction, Colo., because the baby is too fat, the Denver Post reports. Details: The 4-month-old boy is in the 99th percentile for his age in height and weight. He is being exclusively breast fed by his mother and has grown from around 8 pounds 4 ounces at birth to nearly 17 pounds. Four. Months. Old. Pediatrician deemed him healthy. Parents are healthy and relatively fit, and also have a healthy 2-year-old boy.
And people say the government is going to destroy our healthcare system?
OK, let’s be reasonable: Chances are, once the wildfire of press around this spreads sufficiently the company will rescind its decision and offer this lad coverage. (And, for the record, he could be covered by the family’s prior insurer but the parents decided to shop around because that firm raised the family’s rates by 40 percent after the boy was born.) And, no, I don’t know of other cases where someone was denied coverage for the “pre-existing condition” of having been born hungry. So in the interest of fostering adult-level debate let’s acknowledge that this is probably a VERY isolated case and does not reflect the ethos of all insurers everywhere.
But still: A fat baby getting denied coverage is beyond ridiculous. Read more »
October 13th, 2009 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News
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Even though we intuitively think that a particular color looks the same to different people, researchers from The University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University have uncovered that the brain plays a critical role in color perception. The brain actually assigns colors to objects and with a bit of tinkering one can fool the brain to assign the wrong color to an object being viewed. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
