Sobering Thoughts

Sobering Thoughts: Town Hall Meetings on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: "Prenatal exposure to alcohol is one of the leading causes of preventable birth defects and developmental disabilities. During the past 30 years, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), including fetal alcohol syndrome, have gradually begun to attract attention. However, awareness and understanding of the disorders remain low, and people who are affected are seriously underserved. The FASD Center for Excellence held a series of town hall meetings in 2002 and 2003 to gauge the issues surrounding FASD nationwide. On the basis of its findings, the center proposed a series of recommendations to begin to remedy some of the deficiencies that were identified."

Health insurance companies help block mental health parity bill

Wellstone Action - Wellstone Action Network: "Health insurance companies help block mental health parity bill' by Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Aided by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, insurance companies successfully have blocked legislation to make them provide equal coverage for mental and physical illnesses if their policies include both. President Bush endorsed the concept two years ago. Today, supporters of the bill are willing to settle for a scaled-back version they hope Congress will pass in 2004. "

Health insurance companies help block mental health parity bill

Wellstone Action - Wellstone Action Network: "Health insurance companies help block mental health parity bill' by Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Aided by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, insurance companies successfully have blocked legislation to make them provide equal coverage for mental and physical illnesses if their policies include both. President Bush endorsed the concept two years ago. Today, supporters of the bill are willing to settle for a scaled-back version they hope Congress will pass in 2004. "

Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa’s Future

Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa’s Future - New York Times: "Yet almost half of Ethiopia’s children are malnourished, and most do not die. Some suffer a different fate. Robbed of vital nutrients as children, they grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual labor. Some become intellectually stunted adults, shorn of as many as 15 I.Q. points, unable to learn or even to concentrate, inclined to drop out of school early."

Governor Blunt's Medicaid Transformation Report

Missouri Dept. Social Services - Programs & Services for Health Care: "The Medicaid Transformation Report describes Governor Blunts plans to replace Missouri Medicaid with a new program called Missouri Health Net in which every Missouri citizen would have a 'health care home.'"

Senator Gibbons (R-Kirkwood) on Mental Health in Missouri

STLtoday - News - Editorial / Commentary: "The Department of Mental Health recently received a $14 million, five-year transformation grant from the federal government. The funds will help support the strategic planning, workforce development and technological enhancements required to transform Missouri's public mental health delivery system into one that is more patient-oriented, efficient and cost-effective."

New Poll Finds Broad Support for Health Care Reform

New Poll Finds Broad Support Among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans for Drug Price Negotiation, Reimportation, and Prioritizing Children for Coverage of the Uninsured...Views on Stem Cells More Mixed - Kaiser Family Foundation: "While there is debate in Washington about whether and how to do it, substantial majorities of Democrats (92%), Independents (85%), and Republicans (74%) support allowing the government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare (85% overall, including 65% strongly and 20% somewhat favoring it). There is also widespread support for permitting Americans to buy lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada (79%, including 55% strongly and 24% somewhat). Eight in 10 people believe drug price negotiation will make medications more affordable, while 31% believe it will result in less research and development by U.S. drug companies."

Poor Scores for U.S. Health and Mental Health Care

Poor Scores for U.S. Health and Mental Health Care Systems on New National Scorecard: "A new report on U.S. health care shows that the system falls far short of what it could achieve. On a national scorecard of 37 indicators, the overall score was 66 out of 100, with wide gaps between the best and worst states. The findings indicate that improved performance in key areas would save an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 lives annually and $50 to $100 billion in health care spending. "

Sample Letter to the Editor

STLtoday - News - Editorial / Commentary: "The members of the Midwest Regional Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Training Center were shocked by 'Some say it's OK to drink when pregnant' (Nov. 29), which implied that it is safe for pregnant women to drink small amounts of alcohol. The article contained little credible research and tried to obfuscate the issue by claiming that the research was confusing and controversial. The article relied on the voices of women and obstetricians who are not in the vanguard of American medicine. In fact, numerous studies document the deleterious effects of alcohol during pregnancy. "

Doctors aren't chaplains

Doctors aren't chaplains - Los Angeles Times: "A concerted effort is underway to make religious practices part of clinical medicine. About two-thirds of U.S. medical schools now offer some form of training on the role of religion and spirituality in medicine, according to Dr. Harold Koenig of Duke University."

When Blind Faith in a Medical Fix Is Broken

When Blind Faith in a Medical Fix Is Broken - New York Times: "A blocked artery is not a good thing. Public health campaigns have drilled that message into the national psyche. Surely, then, whenever doctors find a closed artery, especially in the heart, they should open it. Maybe not. A major study, presented Tuesday at a medical conference in Chicago, challenged the widespread use of tiny balloons and metal stents in people who had suffered heart attacks days or weeks before. Although such treatment can be lifesaving in the early stages of a heart attack, the study found that opening the artery later did no good at all. It merely exposed patients to the discomfort, risk and $10,000 expense of an invasive procedure. "

Insurer Sued for Refusing to Pay Costs of Anorexia - New York Times

Insurer Sued for Refusing to Pay Costs of Anorexia - New York Times: "A New Jersey couple filed suit against Aetna Inc., the Hartford-based insurance company, on Wednesday, claiming that it refused to fully cover their daughter’s treatment for anorexia."

Living With Love, Chaos and Haley

Living With Love, Chaos and Haley - New York Times: "PLYMOUTH, Mass. — When Haley Abaspour started seeing things that were not there — bugs and mice crawling on her parents’ bed, imaginary friends sitting next to her on the couch, dead people at a church that housed her preschool — her parents were unsure what to think. After all, she was a little girl."

Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever

Rolling Stone : COVER STORY: Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever: "There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?"

Poverty

The Mismeasure of Poverty. America’s official quest to describe the circumstances of the disadvantaged in quantitative terms began in the 1870s and the 1880s, with the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the initial efforts to compile systematic information on cost-of-living, wages, and employment conditions for urban working households in the United States.1 U.S. statistical capabilities for describing the material well-being of the nation’s population through numbers have developed greatly since then.

Medicaid Hurdle for Immigrants May Hurt Others

"More than 50 million Medicaid recipients will soon have to produce birth certificates, passports or other documents to prove that they are United States citizens, and everyone who applies for coverage after June 30 will have to show similar documents under a new federal law. The requirement is meant to stop the 'theft of Medicaid benefits by illegal aliens,' in the words of Representative Charlie Norwood, Republican of Georgia, a principal author of the provision, which was signed into law by President Bush on Feb. 8."

A Physician Speaks Out on Health Care Reform

"[I]ncreasingly I've come to believe that if done right, health care in America could be dramatically better with true single-payer coverage; not just another layer -- a part D on top of a part B on top of a part A, but a simplified, single payer that would cover all Americans, including those who could afford the best right now. Representatives and senators in Washington should have to use the same system my patients and I do were they to vote it in."

Obstacles to Generic Drugs Criticized

"The brand-name drug industry is aggressively working to keep blockbuster drugs widely used by the elderly from being sold in cheaper generic versions when their patents expire, the organization that represents pharmacy benefit managers said yesterday. With an unprecedented number of top-selling drugs scheduled to go off patent within five years, the organization said, branded drug companies are constructing roadblocks to potential savings of $23 billion to seniors and the Medicare system."Free Registration Required for the Washington Post

China Has Too Many Men

"The gender imbalance grew out of communist China's draconian social engineering policies, where a woman, after having one child, was forced to make a choice: sterilization or insertion of an IUD (intrauterine device). To make sure the women kept their birth control devices in, the government � starting in 1982 � sent portable ultrasound machines all over the country. They are compact and lightweight and even some small villages got as many as two or three. But in a classic case of unintended consequences, pregnant women realized that the machines could also identify whether they were having a boy or a girl. And, as a result, by conservative estimates, more than 8 million girls were aborted in the first 20 years of the one-child policy."

Struggle Against Pricey Prescription Pills (Multimedia)

Why it's getting harder every day to find ways to save on prescription drugs.