Mon Dec 29, 2008 at 20:25:43 PM PST
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| Yesterday was the bloodiest day of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1967. The human rights crisis in Gaza has reached unbearable heights. Check out Global Voices Online's "Palestine: The Bloodiest Day since 1967" and LA Macha's post "Attacks on Gaza".
This attack occurred after months of Israel sealing off Gaza, cutting off electricity, clean water, and medical care for months now, as punishment for the Hamas' actions.
Please feel free to post (productive, not hate-filled) comments about this situation, specifically about violence and human rights, or post your own diary on the situation. |
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Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 23:13:20 PM PST
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From yesterday's kff health policy report, reporting on a washington post-abcnews poll of 1000 americans about health care and the new administration:
Seventy-seven percent of adults believe that Obama should make major reforms to the health care system, compared with 20% who said he should not, the poll found. Of those supporting major reforms, 51% of adults believe that Obama should seek them immediately after he takes office, and 26% believe that he should wait until later in his presidency, according to the poll. Sixty-eight percent of adults believe that Obama will have the ability to make major reforms to the health care system, compared with 28% who believe that he will not have the ability, the poll found.
Lots of shoulds and wills here. What stands out is that the desire for status quo is being filed in the big red file named "trash". let's see if that desire transforms into something greater. |
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Wed Dec 17, 2008 at 17:15:38 PM PST
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(We welcome orangeclouds115, a wonderful activist and blogger who created La Vida Locavore, a blog you should get to know, about all things related to food and foodpolicy. Thanks to orangeclouds 115 for freely sharing here, and we send our deepest condolences. - promoted by los anjalis)
Interest in mental health is a new thing for me. I work in health care and write about food policy (because I believe that it is counterproductive to "reform" our health care system while feeding ourselves crap) but mental health issues were always somewhat peripheral for me. Until I got a call a few weeks ago, telling me that my 23 year old brother was dead.
In the weeks since then, I've plunged headfirst into every book I could find on anxiety and addiction - the problems that plagued him - and I've begun going to therapy for bereavement myself. So all of a sudden mental health issues are my #1 concern. |
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Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 20:30:34 PM PST
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I love love love geek doctors. And ones who don't mind making fools of themselves to creatively express how the body works. Check out this video of Dr John Grammer performing living arrhythmias. The sequence with this title is brilliant: PVC --> Ventricular Tachycardia --> Flutter --> Fibrillation --> Defibrillation |
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Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 20:07:29 PM PST
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Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, recently accepted the Right Livelihood Award, otherwise known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in Sweden, along with three other absolutely amazing women. More on that to come, but first, she interviewed Brian Palmer, a professor of social anthropology, about Sweden's politics. After a surprising revelation that the Moderate Party of Sweden hired Karl Rove to consult on electoral issues, they delved into health care:
AMY GOODMAN: I've been very interested in the social welfare system here, as the United States deals with greater unemployment, the crisis of healthcare. You have a social welfare system where healthcare is free in Sweden. And yet, you're seeing increasingly private hospitals and private insurance?
BRIAN PALMER: Yeah, many small changes to, in some way, make it harder for the general welfare state to function-for example, creating-allowing the creation of a private children's hospital in Stockholm only for paying customers and people with-
AMY GOODMAN: "Paying," as opposed to "pain," customers?
BRIAN PALMER: "Paying," yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Paying customers in pain.
BRIAN PALMER: Indeed, who will pay the full cost of their children's care, or people who have private insurance to do that. What this will do is start to create this kind of thing, will start to create groups of middle-class people who no longer have such a stake in the general welfare system, because they feel, well, I'm buying it anyway privately, and that will gradually erode middle-class support for the general welfare system that up to now has had very high levels of support from the middle class.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the health insurance companies that are coming in?
BRIAN PALMER: They are very, very eager for this business. And it's a tremendous irony that, just at a moment when Americans, some of them discussing Michael Moore's film Sicko, see the very unethical behavior of different kinds of health insurance and health management companies, many of those same companies are getting the opportunity to buy pieces of Swedish healthcare clinics, parts of hospitals-according to a new law, even entire university hospitals can be sold out to private companies-so that as Americans have mostly become skeptical of these companies, they're being invited to Sweden to do damage here.
First of all, a great summary of the argument against a two-tiered health care financing system (a public system and a private system).
Second, right after Amy Goodman made the whole "paying as in opposed to pain customers?" remark, she actually laughed! It's nice to hear her laugh, she's so strictly professional that she doesn't show much emotion. |
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Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 14:31:40 PM PST
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(cross-posted at LAist)
Photos by jbhangoo via flickr
Today marks the 24th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster -- one that has been called the "Hiroshima of the chemical industry" and that took place in Bhopal, India. Around midnight on December 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. Safety systems were not operational and the gas spread through the city. Thousands died that night, more than 20,000 have died to date as a result of the effects of the exposure, and over 100,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the exposure. From Bhopal.org, a harrowing account of the fateful night 24 years ago:
Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by the Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighborhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets. |
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Tue Dec 02, 2008 at 20:41:33 PM PST
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| I know, I know, this post comes almost a month too late. But better late than never. So, yeah, Yes We Did! (check out shephard fairey's beautiful Yes we Did sticker here)
Many of us put so much into the election, celebrated in the streets, and then dealt with a fair amount of exhaustion, burnout, and post-celebratory angst. Many of us had to pinch ourselves each day in the week ahead, to make sure we really were awake and Barack Obama really was the President Elect of the USA.
As we watch/involve ourselves in/hold accountable the new Obama administration, Cure This will continue the discussion around our core questions:
What does it mean to heal, individually or as a community? What is health justice? How is our health fiercely connected to the wellness of our neighborhoods? What do we prioritize in transforming our communities? How do we begin to dream again, especially when so many of our struggles revolve around reacting to the problems of the day, or around just surviving?
Because, as Naomi Klein has said, "This is our progressive movement. It's ours to lose." And ours to dream about and build together. |
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Fri Nov 28, 2008 at 13:19:57 PM PST
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| There's a evil wind blowing people off their fragile grasp on Employer Sponsored Insurance (ESI) plans. Our economic woes are increasing unemployment of people who can't utilize the dysfunctional and expensive COBRA system. It's not a short term trend. Unemployment is forcasted to be at 7.3% by May 2009.
We dodged a bullet with John McCain and his health care initiatives. Some here might say John McCain's health care plan never had a chance of passing even if he were elected. Some say the same about Obama now. Well, it looks like part of what McCain wanted is actually happening. People are losing their ESI's or are going onto the private market or going bare where they will not fare well.
This is BushCo's health care legacy. His inability to understand, let along manage the market, his inability to see how managing stock prices is not the same as managing business operations is bearing some ugly fruit - equal numbers of unemployed and uninsured. Bush's bass ackward approach to economics is pushing our unsustainable health care system over the cliff. |
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Wed Nov 26, 2008 at 09:09:18 AM PST
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(More from new user lovinginthewaryears. - promoted by los anjalis)
In my life I have struggled with partner violence, eating disorders, depression, self-injury, disassociation with reality, and addiction. I have been in three different mental hospitals, four different times. |
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Wed Nov 26, 2008 at 09:00:01 AM PST
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(We welcome, with open arms, new user lovinginthewaryears. We are thankful to her for courageously sharing her personal story. - promoted by los anjalis)
Hello!
I am new to Cure This and a little bit shy, so I wanted to introduce myself first.
I am a woman of color in my mid-twenties, recovering from partner abuse and abuse from the mental "health" system in my teens. Over three years ago I began suffering from chronic pelvic pain, and since then I've gone through tons of tests with no results. I have pain in my pelvic region all day every day, sometimes it is worse, sometimes not so bad, but always there.
[read more...] |
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Tue Nov 25, 2008 at 23:24:24 PM PST
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This Thanksgiving, a reminder about the numbers of Americans who face hunger on a daily basis:
A new USDA report on hunger just came out - but unfortunately, they don't even show the full extent of the problem. The numbers are from 2007, pre-economic-shit-hitting-fan.
Overall, 11.1% of Americans lived in "food insecure" households during 2007. That is 36.2 million people, or a little less than the entire population of California. Can you imagine? An entire California of hungry people? The government calls that number "essentially unchanged" from 2006 but in reality even if the percentage change is low, it means there are an additional 700,000 people who were food insecure in 2007.
Of those "food insecure" households, over one third have "very low food security" - which I believe, translated into English, means HUNGRY. We're close enough to Thanksgiving that Sarah Palin is doing photo ops next to turkey executions, so I think now is a good time to talk about the state of hunger in America.
From "A Hungry Thanksgiving for Many Americans" - a post by Jill Richardson, including facts about hunger in America (and what the heck food security and insecurity mean), myths about hunger, and how we can help the hungry this Thanksgiving (with some very interesting food policy suggestions in that list). Check out the full post. And check out the blog -- La Vida Locavore is a wonderful community blog that Jill created, with discussions around all things food and food policy. Bookmark it, check it out regularly, it's pretty phenomenal! |
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Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 20:50:05 PM PST
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It seems that a certain Dr. Goodwin, host of the popular NPR program "The Infinite Mind", has received over $1.3 million in compensation from pharmaceutical companies for giving lectures about their products. He served as both a journalist and prominent psychiatrist in his role on the NPR show. The show's since been canceled, after NPR found out about the compensation. But it continues to bring up so many questions. First and foremost: Who can you trust? Here are two examples where things get very sticky:
Dr. Goodwin's weekly radio programs have often touched on subjects important to the commercial interests of the companies for which he consults. In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, he warned that children with bipolar disorder who were left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view.
"But as we'll be hearing today," Dr. Goodwin told his audience, "modern treatments - mood stabilizers in particular - have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children."
Supposedly Dr Goodwin received $2,500 that same day by a pharmaceutical company to promote it's drug for bipolar syndrome. And...
He said that he had never given marketing lectures for antidepressant medicines like Prozac, so he saw no conflict with a program he hosted in March titled "Prozac Nation: Revisited." which he introduced by saying, "As you will hear today, there is no credible scientific evidence linking antidepressants to violence or to suicide."
That same week, Dr. Goodwin earned around $20,000 from GlaxoSmithKline, which for years suppressed studies showing that its antidepressant, Paxil, increased suicidal behaviors.
Check out the article -- "Radio Host has Drug Company Ties" -- in the New York Times. The good news, though, is that this conflict-of-interest information was revealed by a formal investigation by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who has also sponsored the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (S. 2029) of which there is also a version in the House. S. 2029 looks to increase transparency and accountability by requiring drug and medical device companies to publish all gifts and payments over a certain dollar amount, given to physicians.
The National Physicians Alliance is in support of this legislation as part of its Unbranded Doctor campaign. It hosts an informative webpage on this legislation. The legislation is gaining support among legislators, media makers, and conscientious physicians and health systems. It's music to my ears, because as a health care provider, I believe that I (and the public) have a right to know where conflicts of interest exist. I'd really like to know who I can trust. |
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Sun Nov 16, 2008 at 10:45:11 AM PST
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[identifying details have been tweaked, don't worry...]
when i met the guy i was pretty sure he wouldn't make it through the night. he's fifty six, diabetic, hypertensive, and fat. he's got a bad heart and a set of bad kidneys courtesy of the aforementioned, and there's four blood culture bottle growing out a very, very bad bug-- MRSA-- downstairs in the lab. when i meet him, he's hooked up to a bunch of tubes and things that go beep and he doesn't even look at me when i talk to him. did i mention he's bleeding internally from somewhere and we haven't quite figured out where? |
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Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 19:34:02 PM PST
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there is a desk with a bank of monitors set up just so and a computer with all the files you need plopped right in the middle of the unit. swivel your head, or maybe your chair, and you can see all the beds. there's a phone you can reach and enough desk to write on. if something beeps you can usually figure out what it is from there and the nurses can swoop in on you from any direction with only a few steps. i call it the cockpit.
the problem with the cockpit is its visibility. there are two doors leading into the unit and you are easily spotted from either of them. |
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Sun Oct 26, 2008 at 17:22:46 PM PDT
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the weirdest thing about when she died was that nothing else stopped.
[as always, details are tweaked to keep private things private] |
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Tue Oct 28, 2008 at 22:35:37 PM PDT
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| I got SSD this year, but I won't get Medicare til 2010. I'm sick, so I can only get costly junk insurance. Continuing the irony, if I don't see my doctors regularly and stay on my meds, I'll be "non-compliant" and lose my disability benefits!
I often pass by hospitals and pharmacies. I pass by because I can't afford to enter. For two months, my best friend was in the hospital receiving complex, long-term treatment paid for by her insurance. Without insurance, I wouldn't get that kind of care - if any.
I've survived thanks to a few kind doctors who gave me free care and drug samples. Recently, one of them moved away. Prescription samples are scarce these days, too. I've applied for pharmaceutical "indigent programs" with no luck. My scripts are $1000/mo, so I often do without. And, forget lab work, let alone a hospital stay.
Saddened by Levi Stubbs' death, I revisited the great music of The Four Tops. Listening to Standing in the Shadows of Love, something clicked. I realized that I, too, am standing in the shadows - in the shadows of some of the best health care in the world. From that came my modest tribute to Levi and to the 47M of us without health insurance. |
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Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 00:12:01 AM PDT
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Mind you, Senator Kennedy has been doing all this while dealing with an aggressive brain cancer and complications from other problems (kidney stones, etc). This is WONDERFUL:
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has been organizing and overseeing meetings with members of both parties to draft health care legislation to present to the new president and Congress next year that would extend health insurance to all U.S. residents, the Washington Times reports.
The talks have included 14 roundtable meetings attended by Kennedy aides and staffers for both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Budget Committee, Senate Finance Committee and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Kennedy. Kennedy has monitored the talks, which started in June, through telephone updates from his staff.
The talks also were attended by representatives from a broad array of groups with an interest in health care, including the:
* AARP;
* AFL-CIO;
* American Medical Association;
* America's Health Insurance Plans;
* Business Roundtable;
* Consumers Union,
* Families USA;
* Federation of American Hospitals;
* National Federation of Independent Business; and
* National Retail Federation.
In addition, Kennedy aides have started meeting regularly with consumers and small groups of people representing each area of the health care industry.
The Times reports that the conversations are "extraordinary" because they are bipartisan and have "managed to put in the same room interests that rarely meet -- let alone agree with one another."
Bold emphasis is mine. It truly is the beginning of a new era. I'm going to try to be less cynical too :>
From California Health Line, October 24, 2008. |
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Wed Oct 22, 2008 at 17:05:46 PM PDT
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so here's how you can tell you're the sickest guy in the icu:
1) there's so much equipment around you that they have to airlift the intern in to examine you
2) everyone from the consult services recognizes you from last month (when they were on other consult services)
3) you are the star of impromptu discussions about health care utilization in which there is much sighing and shaking of heads
4) and at least one of your family members, usually someone you didn't know very well, spends roughly half their time demanding to speak to "the doctor" and the other half refusing to sign the "do not resuscitate" paperwork because, well, you just can't get that sick without help.
(identifying details have been fiddled with, but this story has happened over and over and over) |
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Fri Oct 24, 2008 at 23:16:33 PM PDT
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| Wow.
I saw this ad for Tom Udall's congressional run (New Mexico) while checking out a progressive political site and the post was titled "Wow". That's exactly the same reaction I had, after wiping my tears away. I've seen more health-related ads in this election cycle than ever before (in my lifetime).
And again, wow, very effective ad. Thanks Army Sergeant Erik Schei for doing this ad. And best wishes for continued recovery to you sir. |
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Sun Oct 19, 2008 at 19:48:39 PM PDT
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there is nothing more ordinary than death, particularly in the icu. paritcularly with regard to the guy in the corner. let's put it this way-- my money was not on him. so why is it that two days later i keep seeing his face? |
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