Ira R. Allen's blog
Medicaid? Medicare? What's the difference? Answer at the end.
Ted Kennedy was supposed to make a major speech today about health care. Instead he chose to talk about Iraq, which is a topic for some other diary. But he did touch on health and favorably mentioned his nephew-by-marriage.
Consumers are kings of information and advertising, but does that help in making health care decisions?
Why is that lower-income and less-educated parents are more likely than higher-income and better-educated parents to have their children immunized?
There are a lot of unhealthy behaviors to contemplate at the start of a new year, but reading magazines isn't one of them – even if they are periodicals aimed at teenage girls and full of articles and ads extolling thinness.
Big Pharma gives and Big Pharma takes. The outgoing Republican Congress dabbles again in corporate socialism.
In two separate studies published today, researchers virtually beg the public not to interpret the results too literally. That"s because they deal with alcohol and come up with surprising findings. Once the health virtue of red wine was revealed, people can't seem to want enough good news about giggle juice. But the good news today isn't really good – just interesting.
USA Today examines the navels of the Baby Boomer who turned 60 this year. The L.A. Times talks about Gen X and Gen Y eschewing certain pills. The N.Y. Times talks about Medicaid.
It's hard enough to know what to do, but we ought to be able to do what we know.
It's bad enough to feel like crap when you are sick and dying, but a hospital doesn't have to treat you like that.
"Sound science" is a politically loaded term. But not the science of sound. Researchers are looking into an implantable cochlear device for hearing people and are investigating the link between athletic performance and grunting.
The seasonal pun is too good to pass up, but it's still a good time to toast crusty old John Dingell for at least trying to force the administration to explain why letting drug companies write Medicare legislation is a good thing.
It's easy to criticize a chicken study if your "n" is 525 out of a possible 9,000,000,000. Not so much if your study population is an entire country.
Yesterday, we mentioned the relationship between poor health and poor income. Today, two new studies make the same point, this time to employers, who, as a group, have a tremendous incentive to provide health care. The Wall Street Journal surveyed a number of companies, large and small, and found bottom-line benefits from wellness programs that either encourage or, in some cases, require employees to be screened for various diseases.
Economists are telling us that being obese has economic consequences not just for society but for the individual as well. But it is a chicken-or-egg question of whether fat people are poor because they are fat or fatter because they are poor. In any event, when discussing this question, neither the chicken nor the egg will be on the table very long.
