December 24th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Health Policy, Research
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Obesity impacts income, especially among women, according to a report from The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services’ Department of Health Policy.
In 2004, wages among the obese were $8,666 less for females and $4,772 lower for males. In 2008, wages were $5,826 less for obese females, a 14.6% penalty over normal weight females, the researchers concluded after examining years 2004 and 2008 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
The research shows that there are significant differences in wages dependent upon race that couldn’t be accounted for by measuring pre-recession (2004) and recession (2008) measures. In 2004, Hispanic women who were obese earned $6,618 less than those who were normal weight. In 2008, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
December 23rd, 2011 by Jessie Gruman, Ph.D. in Book Reviews, Health Policy
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My friend and former Chair of the CFAH Board of Trustees, Doug Kamerow, has written a book that I think you will like.
Besides being a mensch and witty as heck, Doug is a family doctor and a preventive medicine specialist. In his new book, Dissecting American Health Care: Commentaries on Health Policy and Politics, these four characteristics constitute the lens through which he comments on scores of events, controversies and changes in public health and health policy that have taken place over the past four years. For example, Doug writes about last year’s debate over the H1N1 vaccine, the papal position on condoms and HIV, how prevention fared in the health care reform act (ACA) and his attempt to Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
May 3rd, 2010 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Research, True Stories
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[Here's a] good article [from] the New York Times written by a doctor [Pauline Chen, M.D.] about intrusive aspects of electronic health records (EHRs) on doctor-patient communication. An excerpt:
“…just because EMR improves information sharing and retrieval, it doesn’t necessarily follow that our communication with patients and colleagues will also be better.”
Read the rest of the article here.
*This blog post was originally published at a few thoughts from a tumor surgeon*
March 22nd, 2010 by BobDoherty in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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As part of their closing argument against health reform, Republicans argue that Democrats who vote for the bill will be ignoring the will of the American people, at their own political peril. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accuses Democrats of wanting “to plow ahead on a partisan bill Americans don’t want.” McConnell is correct that just about every recent poll shows that majorities of Americans dislike the current legislation. But supporters of the legislation counter that it really has more public support than a simple “for it or against it” poll would yield.
The Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll finds that the country is evenly divided on the legislation, but large majorities support many of the major provisions in the bill. And when asked about the next steps for health reform:
32% said that Congress should “Move soon to pass the comprehensive legislation that has already been approved by the House and Senate.”
22% want to “Put healthcare on hold, so Congress can work on other priorities and try to deal with it later in the year.”
20% want to “Pull out a few key provisions where there is broad agreement and pass those, even though this won’t be comprehensive reform.”
19% want them to “stop working on healthcare” this year. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*
March 17th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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It’s interesting to see how different things are over at The Health Care Blog. First, it’s different to have to write “health care” instead of healthcare. I personally am all for not using up or resources by adding the space between the two words. Ihaveconsideredeliminatingspacesaltogether, but it gets confusing. Iwon’tdothat.
One of the big differences I see is the perspective of the readers and commenters. I write here for a group of people I largely consider friends, cohorts, or at least sympathetic to my cause. After all, people are coming here by their own volition (I assume nobody is getting this blog forced upon them as some sort of punishment, although that may be a bad assumption). But the readers at THCB (as we insiders call it) are much more argumentative and much more likely to be “experts” in the area of healthcare delivery. Certainly the other folks writing there are far more sophisticated than me (not that that’s a hard thing), and are much more well-read in the area of HC reform. The debates in the comments section are quite stimulating, although sometimes you have to wipe a little blood off of your screen. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
