Health and Sanity category archive

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.

Just ask them.

It’s the foundation of Republican policy on health care.

Dick Polman considers recent attempts by some conservative commentators to convince the Republican Party that health care reform of some sort–if not the Affordable Care Act, then an alternative Republican plan–was inevitable, and the failure of the Republican Party to face the challenge. Here’s a snippet (emphasis added):

Psychological impulse indeed. (Ramesh) Ponnuru (one of the columnists linked in the article–ed.) knows darn well that Republicans have never gotten their act together on health reform; either they’ve had nothing to say, or they’ve floated various ideas without bothering to agree on any of them. Helping the uninsured and taming insurance company abuses – that’s not what Republicans do. Coalescing around a positive plan to replace Obamacare – that’s not what Republicans do. In fact, when the Kaiser Family Foundation polled rank-and-file Republicans last month, only 27 percent said they wanted to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a Republican plan. Clearly, their aversion to affirmative governance is endemic.

Read the rest.

In other news, here’s the nearest thing Republicans have to a “health care plan.”

This applies not just to Pennsylvania’s Corbett, but to most Republican governors. Their equation is simple:

Most poors are black (that’s not true, natch, but it’s what they and their racist base believe), and Medicaid helps the poors, therefore it helps the blacks, and we can’t have that, now, can we?

It’s the politics of hate, because hate sells.

Via Balloon Juice.

Just read it.

This is your fee market at work.

The true welfare queens stay out of the light.

Some of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies have slashed payments to health professionals for promotional speeches amid heightened public scrutiny of such spending, a new ProPublica analysis shows.

(snip)

The sharp declines coincide with increased attention from regulators, academic institutions and the public to pharmaceutical company marketing practices. A number of companies have settled federal whistleblower lawsuits in recent years that accused them of improperly marketing their drugs.

“Promotional speeches.”

Yeah.

Right.

They’re not who you think they are, reports the Bangor Daily News.

For example, meet Welfare Queen for a Day Johnson & Johnson (emphasis added):

In November 2013, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay the federal government $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations involving the marketing of off-label, unapproved uses of three prescription drugs.

Maine, according to a report in the Washington Post, would recover $2.8 million from the case, which involved alleged kickbacks to doctors and pharmacies for promoting a trio of drugs — two anti-psychotics and one heart medication.

The settlement funds, according to the Office of the Maine Attorney General, would serve as restitution for state Medicaid funds used to pay for the unapproved medications.

The story goes on to point out that, in Maine during the past three years, individuals have been required to repay a total of under $500,000 in fraudulently or mistakenly obtained benefits, a pittance compared to the amount that health care “providers” have been assessed.

Learn more here.

Via Seeing the Forest.

Deaths from whooping cough soar in Cali. I trust the anti-vaccine zealots find this gratifying:

California health officials cite a variety of reasons for the uptick. A major contributor, according to the state, was declining immunity among children who had been vaccinated years earlier and had yet to get the booster shot recommended at ages 11 or 12.

Other factors include the cyclical nature of the disease and an increasing number of parents opting out of immunizations for their children.

Much more at the link.

I can remember seeing grainy black and white pictures of kids in iron lungs because of polio on the telly vision when I was young. Mumps nearly killed my parents when I was about four (mumps is much more serious in adults than in children). There were many family tales of children almost dying from whooping cough or measles and perhaps tales I did not hear of those who did; I do know that, in the graveyard at the little country church my family has attended since before the War of 1812, there are lots of tiny little graves.

Vaccines put an end to that. Now, fear and hysteria based on fraudulent claims threaten to bring it all back.

Penn and Teller explain vaccination (Warning: Language).

Penn and Teller via PoliticalProf.

Via AMERICAblog.

The Affordable Care Act starts to have real-world effect. The Roanoke Times talks to one beneficiary:

“It has freed me from a weight, a chain, a prison of costs that were astronomical, especially considering my low income level,” said Auldridge, who makes about $20,000 a year working with people with autism.

For Auldridge and millions of others like him with pre-existing conditions, the Affordable Care Act codifies what had been a simple yet elusive concept: that sick people should have access to health insurance, and that the plans they purchase should actually defray their medical bills.

Much more at the link.