Posts Tagged ‘regulatory’
Social Media in Politics
10/15/2012
I’ve posted several articles about social media in HEALTHCARE, including:
- Patients Find and Help Each other in Social Media
- Social Media Growth is Fastest among Boomers
- Consumers use Social Media more than Health Companies
- Physicians find and help Patients through Social Media
- Physician use of Social Media
This article is about social media in POLITICS. While I try not to subject you to my own political views, they probably shows sometimes when I discuss things Obamacare, Medicare, regulatory oversight, and the future of medicine. But no matter what side of the issues you’re on, you may enjoy this infographic, because so many health-related issues are at stake in this year’s election. And if you feel compelled to do so, share your thoughts below and justify your views to others.
No Comments »
Understanding Obamacare
10/12/2012
Healthcare became a hot potato during this political season, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Governor Romney wants to repeal “Obamacare,” but what’s actually in the law and why was introduced in the first place? To address these common questions, I’m reposting one of my first articles on the topic.
This article describes a great presentation by Dr. James Rohack on Health System Reform. Rohack is a practicing cardiologist and Director of Scott & White Center for Healthcare Policy. He is also a professor at Texas A&M Health Science Center and was the president of the American Medical Association from 2009 to 2010 during debates over Obama’s Healthcare Law.
The presentation was held in Sun City, a planned community north of Austin for retirees with active lifestyles. It didn’t include handouts, but I was able to find some of Rohack’s slides online and offer them below with my notes.
1 Comment »
The Waiting Room, a feature length documentary
10/08/2012
Certified Nurse Assistant Cynthia Y. Johnson at Highland Hospital in The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room is like a punch to the gut for people cast off and left out of our U.S. medical care system, what some call the best in the world. When Democrats and Republicans vie for your votes and debate healthcare reform, remember that these are not the people they are talking about. Most don’t even notice the plight of those at the bottom — this ugly underside. But our politicians, and the billionaires who set their agenda, should be made to watch this documentary, because these are the 47 percent they talk about — the people left out of the American Dream. They’re real people.
This character-driven documentary film uses unprecedented access to go behind the doors of Oakland’s Highland Hospital, a safety-net hospital fighting for survival while weathering the storm of a persistent economic downturn. Stretched to the breaking point, Highland is the primary care facility for 250,000 patients of nearly every nationality, race, and religion, with 250 patients – most of them uninsured – crowding its emergency room every day. Using a blend of cinema verité and characters’ voiceover, the film offers a raw, intimate, and often uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers cope with disease, bureaucracy, frustration, hope and hard choices during one typically hectic day.
The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and uninsured small business owners. Steel workers, cab drivers and international asylum seekers crowd the halls. (movie trailer follows)
As Our Health Goes, So Does Our Economic Recovery
09/26/2012
It’s the Health Care, Stupid:
As Our Health Goes, So Does Our Economic Recovery
By Peter Abaci, M.D., Chronic pain specialist
(original on Huffington Post)
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
– Albert Einstein
As we head into the final stages leading up to election day, expect the fight over whom and what is best for our economy to rage on. Debating how best to stimulate the economy has been anointed as the de facto topic of importance heading into our upcoming election, but let’s not forget that the health of Wall Street and Main Street is inextricably linked to the health of our citizens. As I have written here in the past, I am no economic expert, but I do work in the trenches every day in a profession that impacts our nation’s budget like no other.
The fact that doctors like me seem to drive the spending of tax dollars more than other occupations like teachers, governors, and generals tells you right there that health care is the elephant in the room of any debate on our economic future.
No Comments »
Will the Affordable Care Act Help Telehealth Flourish?
09/17/2012
Nurse Jennifer Witting stands beside newly installed telemedicine equipment at the Aspirus Keweenaw Hospital in Laurium, Mich., on June 20, 2012. Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
By Brian Heaton (original article at govtech.com)
Opportunity is knocking for telehealth to become a common method of practicing medicine in the U.S.
One-on-one Web-based video chats and other electronic consultation between doctors and patients isn’t new — it’s been used throughout the U.S. in varying degrees for a few years now. But health-care reform, a ballooning and aging population and a shortage of available family physicians may be a perfect storm that could blow the doors open for telehealth to go mainstream.
As states’ health insurance exchanges — online marketplaces where citizens can compare and purchase insurance plans — begin to debut in advance of the 2014 deadline set forth by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), access to health-care providers should expand for many Americans. Obtaining insurance coverage soon may be easier, but the gap between the number of incoming patients and available primary care doctors is widening.
No Comments »
A Disease-Creation Economy
09/10/2012
Money, Politics and Health Care: A Disease-Creation Economy
By Mark Hyman, MD, practicing physician (original on Huffington Post)
“There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.” –Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and The Discourses
Money in politics is making our nation sicker, threatening our national security, and ultimately destroying the very economic prosperity the “money in politics” seeks to achieve. It is undermining our capacity to care for our citizens and threatening our global economic competitiveness in invisible, insidious ways. The links, connections and patterns that promote obesity and chronic disease are clear, though. The economic and social impacts are evident. As health care consumes an increasingly large percentage of our federal budget, the negative impacts of money in politics have become too alarming too ignore, and never more obvious than in this election cycle of 2012.
1 Comment »
A Proposed Hybrid, Public/Private Model of Health Care
08/28/2012
Occupy Healthcare is a movement to influence and impact the future of healthcare, as well as an online community to discuss healthcare reform issues. Recently they invited me to submit my perspectives, and below is what I sent.
Occupy Health Care – a proposal from Wayne Caswell, Modern Health Talk
Historically, the biggest impact in health outcomes has come from public health initiatives such as clean water, sewage systems, and immunization programs. But that success is minimized by a “sick care” system that is profoundly broken, with perverse incentives to view patients as customers, treat symptoms, and pay practitioners for each test, drug and procedure.
ACA is meant to fix that, with more emphasis on positive outcomes and overall health & wellness, both to minimize the need for medical care in the first place and thus reduce costs, and to maintain a healthy and productive workforce that contributes to a vibrant economy. ACA is a good start, but there’s still more work to be done, and it won’t come from private industry or the insurance model, because natural incentives prevent it.
Contrasting Incentives
I believe that the key to health reform is getting the incentives right, and that means getting private insurance companies out of BASIC health care entirely. Their profit motive gives them an incentive to increase costs, knowing that higher costs = more insurance customers paying higher premiums. What I propose instead is a hybrid public/private model that capitalizes on contrasting incentives, eliminates the need for health insurance, and saves over $1 trillion per year.
2 Comments »
Healing America’s Health Care System
08/13/2012
By Susan Blumenthal, M.D., Former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General
Written in Collaboration with Jenny Shelby
(Original text and statistics graphic from Huffington Post)
Not all threats to our nation are overseas. Within our own borders, enemies such as chronic and infectious diseases, as well as rising medical costs, threaten individuals, families, communities, and the national security of our country. Health care costs constitute 18 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States, amounting to $2.6 trillion. In comparison, approximately 6 percent of the GDP is spent on defense. Although the U.S. spends twice as much on health care as any other nation, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the United States ranks 50th in life expectancy and 39th on the overall health status of its citizens worldwide. America’s health care system is in crisis: It is a “sick care” system, not a health care system. However, healing has now begun. Just over a month ago, the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling to largely uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, a major step toward redesigning the U.S. health care system and improving the health of all Americans. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment »
Is Obesity a Disease? What do YOU think?
08/09/2012
The American Medical Association (AMA) recently took up the question of whether obesity should be classified as a disease but deferred any decision to a later date. As noted in HBO’s The Weight of the Nation, obesity has now become the largest threat to the health, wellness and future survival of our nation. It’s an epidemic and one that needs swift action and an unprecedented public health campaign. But is it a disease? And what would it mean if we called it that? What do YOU think?
American Heritage Dictionary defines DISEASE as (1) an abnormal condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, inflammation, environmental factors, or genetic defect, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs, symptoms, or both AND (2) a condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful.
Even doctors disagree. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments »
Too Much Hype in the Mobile Health App World?
07/27/2012
By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA
[Original post, “Too Much Hype in the Mobile Health App World?” published on The Huffington Post on 7/23/12 in the Healthy Living/Health News Section.]
The Wild West of mobile health (mHealth) is taking the health care industry by storm, but “there are no rules to the game,” said Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D., founder and director at the Center for Connected Health in a recent interview. Mobile health is a “game changer,” he added, but there is a lot of hype because there are a lot of people developing health apps just to “get rich quick.”
1 Comment »
