Health and Sanity category archive
Anti-Vax Facts 0
The Deseret News skewers the notion of “religious objections” to vaccinations.
But the world’s major faiths — Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam — have no explicit prohibitions against oral or injected vaccines. At times, some followers or preachers within a given religion or sect may have spoken against vaccination, but researcher John D. Grabenstein of Merck Vaccines, writing in the scientific journal Vaccine in April 2013, could find no sustained teaching against the practice in any major faith community.
According to the story, even Mary Baker Eddy said that vaccinations were okay.
A Picture Is Worth 0
GOP Health Plan: Don’t Get Sick. If You Do Get Sick, Die Quickly 0
John Romano comments on those states that still refuse to expand Medicaid so as to take full advantage of the Affordable Care Act:
How about Florida, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wisconsin? They all lag behind the U.S. average for percentage of residents 25 or older with bachelor’s degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
And how about Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia? They’re among the states with the highest number of convictions of public officials in federal court from 1976 to 2010, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.com.
Do read the rest.
Welcome to the Machine 0
A new mother, a doctor no less, describes her experience as a patient in the Medical-Industrial Complex.
Do read it.
“Don’t Get Sick. If You Do Get Sick, Die Quickly.” 0
(Open tag fixed.)
A medical student summarizes the effects on Virginia’s rural poor of Republicans’ partisan rejection of Medicaid expansion. A snippet:
However, our state legislature has demonstrated their allegiance to partisan politics over the health and welfare of the commonwealth. As a result, chronic diseases are more prevalent here in Appalachia than in any other part of the United States.
For example, disparities in cancer screening between Appalachian and controlled non-Appalachian populations result in significantly higher cancer incidence and mortality here in Appalachia. In addition, five-year survival rates for cancer patients in Appalachian populations are significantly lower than their non-Appalachian equivalents.
Medicine Show 0
Wendell Potter explains the scam. A nugget:
The purpose of that campaign — a campaign that’s ongoing, by the way — is to protect the profitable status quo by obscuring an empirical truth: that when it comes to access to affordable health care, millions of Americans might as well be living in a third world country. And that’s still true today, more than four years after Obamacare became law.
Facing the Music 0
There has been a fascinating exchange in the Roanoke Times, one that illustrates well the mean-spiritedness that underlies wingnuttery. I’ll let it speak for itself.
Part one (which I mentioned here in these electrons).
Profit Motive 0
We need single-payer (emphasis added–read the rest).
And although access to health insurance can help stave off medical debt, it doesn’t solve the problem. About 10 million insured Americans have medical bills they are unable to pay. The Harvard researchers found that three-quarters of the medical debtors they studied had health insurance.
As long as the primary goal of health insurance is paying country-club fees for health insurance CEOs, we are screwed.
“Obamacare Is Made of People” 0
Jon Stewart tackles the D. C. Federal Court’s fantastickal reasoning for sabotaging the Affordable Care Act.
Below the fold in case it autoplays.
ACA 0
In the Roanoke Times, Randolph Walker expresses his gratitude for the Affordable Care Act. A snippet:
I’m celebrating because I have an appointment with Dr. Ken Tuck.
Dr. Tuck is an ophthalmologist, and a good one. As far as I know, there is nothing wrong with my eyes. However, I’m 53 and have not had a routine eye exam in probably 10 years. I put it off because I had no insurance.
Sick-Making 0
When I was a toddler, my parents nearly died of the mumps, which is quite serious in adults. I’m old enough to remember when parents lived in fear that their children would catch whooping cough and other diseases that, because of vaccinations, have become no longer a worry–at least, not until the recent anti-vax fraud and the hysterical fools who fell for it.
Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the California Department of Public Health, said 3,458 cases of whooping cough have been reported since Jan. 1 — including 800 in the past two weeks. That total is more than all the cases reported in 2013.
I trust that Jenny McCarthy and her ilk are happy about the harm they have done.
